Teasdale Newsletter

Text Box: Latest News
Regular readers may wonder why this issue is a single page and I can assure them that a new and hopefully much improved website is under construction. We now have our own domain name (see below) and I am sure that problems with ISPs will now be a thing of the past.
Events in 2004 did not quite pan out as expected. I did not travel to Australia as planned due to work commitments and John Robert Teasdale from Rupanyup, Victoria, lost his battle with cancer. His death is a sad loss and I deeply regret not being able to visit him. Our Australian correspondents are as active as always—Ron Goodhew is coming to the UK in the summer & David & Margaret Teasdale are still hoping I can arrange a visit to Australia.
My thanks go to Mike Teasdale in Surrey and Andrew Donolan for their continuing support; just when you wonder when you will find the time to add more names to your records, along comes a welcome input of data.
I would have liked to develop emigration research from the UK to the USA and Canada as this area of research is essential for locating the descendants of modern Teasdales, Teesdales, Tisdales, Tisdalls etc. This did not happen due to work commitments.
Unfortunately, research and work are in constant competition. These one-name studies take thousands of hours and tens of thousands of pounds. Without my irregular work I would not be able to sponsor my research which takes the form of a non-profit organization. If you feel a little frustrated with the time it takes me to respond, bear in mind the time, money and effort that goes into research.
Let’s hope that 2005 will be a year of enlightenment and good luck with all your research.

Text Box: Teasdale Newsletter
66 Broadway
Tynemouth
North Shields
Tyne & Wear
NE30 2LH

Text Box: Welcome

A warm welcome is extended to all the new and existing readers of this genealogy newsletter (Issue 10). There are some 600 regular readers and correspondents from around the world, who have Teasdale or variant name ancestors.
I started to research my family history in 1996 and made contact with many other researchers who had developed their own family trees and wanted further information. I decided to expand my enquires and set up a database to record the civil registration, census, parish records, probate, war records, newspaper records and trade directories in an effort to help myself and other researchers.
The task has been (and still is) enormous and I have received much help from correspondents. Some of them have been researching their ancestors for many years while others have a passing interest but I am happy to receive all information and queries and will always try to help with research.
My direct line of ancestors came from Alston, Kirkoswald, Monkwearmouth, Gateshead and finally Tynemouth, which are all located in the north of England. I have only managed to go back as far as 1685 but some of the names in my database go back to the 14th century.
The object of this newsletter is to provide a focal point for those interested in the surname, including the variant names listed below; space for correspondents to advertise their queries, stories of family history, articles of interest to researchers, links to other useful Web-sites and hopefully to generate more interest in family history. This newsletter is biased towards the area where the name originated only because there has to be a starting point. The story of the Teasdales must eventually cover the United Kingdom and overseas. Family history in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Europe is equally important to us all.
I have visited the land that our ancestors occupied, walked the old routes from their homes to the lead mines. I have stood in the ruins of their homes on Alston Moor, considered the practical difficulties of their lives, wandered in the lead mines in the cold, wet and terrible darkness underground and shared with them some of the tragedy and misery of their lives.
I have sat in the same church pews, in the company of spirits who experienced the happiness of baptisms and marriages and I have stood by the gravesides, now long overgrown, where the husband, wife or child died in tragic youth. The discovery that a mother and child died on the same day defy description.
I speak the same language, the same dialect as our ancestors but have a long way to go on my spiritual journey of understanding and learning.
Sometimes afraid, I am haunted by the ghosts of our ancestors, their courage to leave everything behind to start a new life in another country gives me the inspiration to follow their progress through their sometimes short and hard existence.
I strive to make sense of their lives, to explain why and who we are today. I feel the need to record their life experiences in order to give them some dignity, some purpose of life. I wonder what they would have made of our mission, our interest in them, our need to connect them to us. Perhaps in order to make sense of our world we first need to understand the history of our ancestors.
Tragedy is not confined to our ancestors, of course. We live in very troubled times and share many of the disasters and misery that our parents knew - we have the benefit of hindsight in their case. Let us not forget that in a few hundred years our descendants will be repeating our wonder and enquiry.
If you are a new reader and wonder what you may have missed in previous issues then I can say with some confidence that you have in effect missed nothing as early articles will be included in an archive section of the new website.
Ronnie Teasdale