Who visits here?

Some statistics about recent visitors to this blog:

	Num	Perc.	Country Name
	113	25.57%	United States
	105	23.76%	South Africa
	61	13.80%	United Kingdom
	49	11.09%	New Zealand
	40	9.05%	Australia
	17	3.85%	France
	16	3.62%	Canada
	9	2.04%	Denmark
	6	1.36%	Germany
	5	1.13%	India
	4	0.90%	Norway
	4	0.90%	Netherlands
	2	0.45%	Brazil
	2	0.45%	Russian Federation
	1	0.23%	Malaysia
	1	0.23%	Indonesia
	1	0.23%	Finland
	1	0.23%	Greece
	1	0.23%	Egypt
	1	0.23%	Paraguay
	1	0.23%	Argentina
	1	0.23%	Philippines
	1	0.23%	Sweden

The old school tie

Last Saturday I went to the Founders Day Service at my old school, St Stithians College. I’ve put the details and some photos on my Khanya blog, for anyone interested. I went to St Stithians when the school started in 1953, and did matric in 1958, so this is the 50th anniversary of my matric year, and I wondered if I’d see any old classmates there, but there were none.

I know of some other family members who went to St Stithians, and perhaps there are others who went there that I don’t know about. If any of them see this, perhaps they could leave a comment about their time there.

Family WikiSpaces

You may have heard of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, which is one of the most useful sources of information on the Internet.

Now we have started a family history Wiki on Wikispaces, and we invite all members of the family to have a look at it and join it.

The Hayes and Green family history space

This WikiSpace, called “hayesgreene” is for members of the Hayes, Greene and related families to post family news, history and anecdotes, and to make contact with other members of the family, and learn about the family history.

Who is it for?

It’s for any members of our families, that is, anyone who is related to us in any way. That means, in the first place, anyone descended from any of our ancestors — uncles, aunts and cousins. That includes 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, up to and beyond 15th cousins seven times removed, and their spouses, parents of spouses and children of spouses.

Who are we?

We are Steve and Val Hayes, and we live in Pretoria, Tshwane, Gauteng, South Africa. You can find out more about who we are on our family web pages, and also on our blog (which you’re reading now!)

How do I participate?

You participate by clicking on “join this space”, which you will find somewhere on the left (not here, but in the WikiSpace page). If you are already a member of WikiSpaces, your application will be sent to us. If you are not already a member of WikiSpaces you will be invited to join (and then you can create your own WikiSpaces as well). When we receive your application, we will check to see whether you are related to us in any way, and if you are, your application will be approved and you will be able to add to and edit the information on these pages. But even if you are not related, you can still read the pages.

How does this compare with a blog?

A blog is for changing information that quickly gets out of date. While you can find old blog posts, you have to search for them, and they are not always easy to find. A family history blog can be good as a record of new information found, meetings with family members, reports of family reunions and so on.

What a blog is not so good for is things like anecdotes by and ancestors, biographies, research problems and dead-ends and so on. Updating biographical information on a two-year-old blog post is not much use, because few people will know that it has been updated, and so few will read it. But in a Wiki such information can be updated and added to as more information is found, and it can be found much more easily.

So, if you are related, go and look at the HayesGreene Wikispace, and think of stuff you can add. There’s not much there yet, but there will soon be if we all get working on it.

Bridget Hayes -graduation

Our daughter Bridget graduated yesterday at Athens University as a Master of Theology (I think).

Pictures here (the pictures are on Facebook, and you have to be logged in to see them).

Simon’s birthday

It is our son Simon’s 30th birthday today, and to celebrate he didn’t go to work.

Here he is with our puppy Fluffy Lumpkin, three and a half months old.

Family visits

Val’s sister Elaine Machin (nee Greene) came from Durban on the bus to visit family in Gauteng over Christmas, and we had tea with her and her son Greg and granddaughter Abby this afternoon.

The picture shows Greg with Abby, Elaine and Val.

Hayes, Dunn, Doddrell

Louise Doddrell left a message in the Bravenet Message Forum (see sidebar for link).

She is descended from Gertrude Hayes who married Robert Seymour Dunn, and we’re looking forward to an exchange of family history information.

Hospital

I took Val back to Sunninghill Hospital yesterday, and they checked her arm, said it was healing, but she now needs to visit a physiotherapist, and must be weaned from the sling gradually.

Accident

Val went to a course for work in Johannesburg on Monday and Tuesday, and fell down the stairs at the Balalaika Hotel in Sandton on the way down to the parking garage. When she got to the car she found her arm wasn’t working, so she phoned me and Jethro to come and fetch her, as she couldn’t drive.

I took her to Sunninghill Hospital on the way home, and they put her arm in a sling and did all sorts of X-rays, and asked her to come back and see an orthopaedic specialist the next day. So yestyerday I took her back to the hospital for that, and she got an even more fancy cling, and they said a bone in her shoulder is cracked, so she will be sort of incapacitated for the next six weeks or so.

Miscellaneous family and research information

Today I moved 367 records of people from one genealogical program to another. Most of them were in material sent by cousins, quite a lot relating to the Nipper and Benoke families (descended from William and Ann Allen of Winscombe, Somerset). I hope to have a kind of consolidated pool of information about the descendants of William and Ann Allen to share with any members of the family who are interested. There are some related families about which we have very little information — Purnell and Hill, for example.

There was also some information sent by Diana Richter on the Beningfield and Grice families of Durban.

The other day I met John Sutherland of Australia, who was looking for his grandfather Robert Sutherland, some of whose children were born in Pilgrim’s Rest. I showed him how to look in the archives, but unfortunately there wasn’t much. There was a cryptic reference to a Robert Sutherland who had died in Mozambique, but not enough information to show that he was related.

We’re still having bandwidth problems, so if anyone writes e-mails and they bounce, try again at the end of the month, in case we’ve run out of bandwidth. In the mean time I’ll try to be sparing about looking at other people’s blogs and web pages, to try to make the e-mail last until the end of the month.