It’s Explore Your Archive launch week! This is a national campaign highlighting the work of archives and all the wonderful things we hold in the collections.
Each day this week has a theme – from communication to celebration to light. You can follow along with the hashtags daily on Twitter. Here we will look in slightly more detail at Sunday’s theme of home.
Home
Home will mean different things to different people depending on their circumstances. We are fortunate to hold in our collections the diaries of WW1 soldier RSM George Beck. As well as detailing events in the trenches, Beck described what he got up to when home on leave with his family on Portland. An instance which is all too relatable today occurs in December 1917 when Beck’s home leave is unexpectedly extended. On 17 December, he writes:
Fine morning, get a shock early, Mama comes up & tells me Dolly has measles. Doctor comes about 12.30pm & confirms it, puts me in quarantine for 21 days & sends cert[ificate] to Bttn [battalion]. I go to Lodge at night & have a very good time.
Over the next few weeks Beck records his activities which include lots of walks, catching up with his parents and socialising with friends. Quarantine meant something a little different 100 years ago!
Christmas is a quiet affair spent at home with the children and George’s parents. New Year’s Eve sees the Becks go out to a dance in the evening. On 2 January George Beck cleans his souvenirs to take to the bazaar and makes 33 shillings! On 5 January Beck records that his wife is “very pleased” when their son Claude also contracts measles and the doctor extends his quarantine further. After another three weeks of walks, teas and theatre trips, Beck departs for the Western front on 26 January 1918.
You can read all of George Beck’s diary entries – from his first deployment in August 1914 until he returned home in March 1919 – online thanks to a volunteer transcription project.
Ready to delve deeper?
While only a small percentage of material held in archives is available online, there is now the ability to sit in your home and do basic searching – particularly of ‘births, marriages and deaths’. Many of the Dorset records relating to family history are available via Ancestry.co.uk. You can access these for free if you have a Dorset Libraries card until the end of the year. Read more about using Ancestry to explore your family history on our blog. And we look forward to welcoming you to Dorset History Centre to touch and smell history for yourself in due course.
Share what you find
This week is a great opportunity for you to share with us, your family or friends what you have discovered in archives. Sharing your stories of discovery will help others to understand the importance of archives to all of us.