As part of our RQG Around the World month, we are pleased to introduce RQG member Linda Hammond

I became interested in my own family history back in 1982 when I learned about my great grandfather who had come to London from Germany. Although Johann was my initial impetus, he was to remain a brick wall until this year when I finally located him in German records!  However, I found plenty of research to follow with other family lines in England and Ireland.

I began teaching genealogy to adult students in Plymouth and also organizing research trips to London in about 1998 and continued until 2005 when I moved to France.  I studied with IHGS (Canterbury) and gained my Higher Certificate in Genealogy in 2006.  My studies then recommenced in 2014 when I started my postgraduate degree
in Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Studies with the University of Strathclyde, culminating with my Masters degree in 2016.  Since 2021 I have been tutoring with the University of Strathclyde on their genealogy courses.  Throughout this time I continued with my work for clients, research their family history.

What I am Working on Now
Apart from working on the certificate and diploma genealogy programs with Strathclyde I’m also working on a number of projects for clients.  These include UK research, as well as French archive work. They vary from researching descendants of French families who rescued British airmen during the war, to locating a grave for an illegitimate child in rural Warwickshire.  This is one of the reasons I so love genealogy, the variety of work.  I also regularly present at genealogy shows and conferences both in the UK and abroad, so am constantly looking for new ideas for talks.  One of my favorite topics is mind-mapping and I am presently writing a book on how to use mind maps in genealogical research.

My Favourite French Resources
One of my favourite websites has to be BnF, the site for the Bibliothèque Nationale de France or the National Library of France.  It has such a variety of collections of books, newspapers, maps and manuscripts, and Gallica, it’s digital library, allows you to access everything online freely.  It’s a mine of information and you can get totally lost browsing through their collections. Equally fascinating are all the departmental archives which are now all represented online.  These allow access to not only BMD and census records, but also military and school records,
as well as maps.

One Thing that People might not know about researching people in France
The French census began back in 1791, however most records for towns begin in about 1826 or 1831.  Censuses were taken every 5 years apart from the 1871, which was taken in 1872 due to the Franco-Prussian war, and the 1916 and 1941 censuses which were never taken due to the First and Second World Wars.