Topics this issue include;
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| 1. eNewsletter. From this month, all eNewsletters will include the following 'Signature' (or message) at the end of the page, in order for you to know the reason why you are receiving the Powditch eNewsletters, as well
as for you to be given the opportunity (should you so wish) to 'unsubscribe' from same.
Whilst none of the eNewsletter recipients have ever requested that I stop sending any more eNewsletters (in fact, it's been more a case of 'please add me to your mailing list' !) I am aware
that under the terms of current internet and emailing practice, there have to be 'safeguards' in place
to protect you from what could be construed as being 'spam' or otherwise unwanted, mail.
"You are receiving this email as you are either a Powditch, a Powditch descendant, or have a connection to the greater family, and as such, you have been an user of the
www.powditch.plus.com/ website. We value your privacy. You can change your contact
preferences by emailing me at
 If you would prefer not to receive the Powditch eNewsletter in the future, you may simply reply to this email with the word "unsubscribe" in the mail subject.
The eNewsletter frequency will not be less than once a month. For offline assistance, please contact
me at John C Algar, 5a Southgate Road, Southgate, Gower, Swansea, United Kingdom, SA3 2BT
Telephone (within the UK = 01792 234554) or (International = +44 (0) 1792 234554)."
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| 2. Welcome I'd like to welcome to this edition of the eNewsletters, the following who have contacted me since the
last issue;-
a. Frank and Daphne Osborne from Bishop Stortford in Hertfordshire, UK. Frank's mother was
Rose Emily Powditch, one of the children of Francis James Powditch (known as Frank), who came
from a branch of the family of which I hadn't previously written much about. I have been in touch with
Frank and Daphne, and indeed there's a large amount of information on its way to them (as well as
to Geoff Youngman in Wells, and to Philip Powditch in Driffield - all of whom are related). Hopefully
the results of my new write-up of that branch of the family (together with photographs and other
documents etc) will be added to the Powditch website in the not-too-distant future.
b. James Recce Volland from Sleaford, Lincolnshire, UK. James' mother is ?Cheryl, nee Powditch,
who is one of the 4 children of the late James Reginald and Vera Powditch, whose own grandfather -
Robert Henry Powditch - was the same grandfather as my late mother-in-law, Phyllis Mary Smith (nee
Powditch). I have made contact with James, but hope that we may be able to help each other re his
family's history in the near future.
c. Zofia Kobylinska who lives in St Dogmaels, West Wales, UK. Zofia's ancestors (the Corfields)
lived in Chile in the 1800s. Zofia wrote to let me know that her Great Grandfather, William Reginald
Corfield, was shipwrecked off Huanillos on 9 May 1877, and that his first wife and 3 children were
drowned. William Reginald Corfield was rescued however, and subsequently he met and married Margaret Elizabeth Frances (born 1858 in Chile). On their marriage certificate, her father is named
as Thomas Francis [sic] - Manager of Copper Works. One of the witnesses was William Henry
Francis who Zofia believes was a Doctor. Indeed, Zofia has found a British Doctor of the same
name (i.e. William Henry Francis) as the Medical Officer for the Antogagusta and Bolivia Railway Co,
in 1913. Margaret Elizabeth Corfield (nee Frances/Francis) had a sister, Amy, who was born in
1865, and she may have had an older sister, Mary A, who was born about 1853, as well as a cousin,
Henry H. Henrichsen, who was also born in 1853 - all of whom were born in Chile. I have already
provided several useful contacts to Zofia, but hope that through the wider family, there may be more
suggestions etc, so if anyone can help Zofia in the search for her Corfield and Francis/Frances
ancestors/ancestry, or if you have any suggestions for leads, etc, please can you let me know, and
I'll pass on the information to her.
d. Pam Kirby who lives in Nottingham, and who has undertaken a wonderfully researched history of
her Linton ancestors; the latter being the surname of my brother-in-law, who, at the tender age of 78,
has decided to discover both his Linton and Bowen roots. I am in contact with Pam, but owe her a
reply at the moment, so I apologise for the delay!
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| 3. Website update Since my last eNewsletter (No.22), changes to the website, have included;-
 Within the homepages of the website (on the Copyright Details page - i.e. www.powditch.plus.com/homepages/copyright_details.htm ) under the heading of Internet Legal Notices and Privacy Policy, subsection 2. Legal Notice, the wording relating to the downloading of part or parts of the Powditch website has been amended and updated to read as follows;-"Whilst the downloading of the Powditch website (www.powditch.plus.com/ ) in its entirety - being
all pages, documents, photographs, data and all and every other piece of information (including
but not restricted to, the intellectual ownership of the website and the information contained therein)
is totally illegal and in contravention of all Internet Laws, Privacy, and the Laws of all civilised
Countries of the World, JCA states that should you require to download specific pages containing
certain material, photographs, data, or any other part or parts of the website, it is mandatory that
you contact JCA in advance in writing (Please note that email format is acceptable)."
I do apologise for the formality of the wording, but as I have been advised that one person in the past
had downloaded the Powditch website in its entirety without seeking any permission from me or from
any of the Powditchs mentioned on the website, and as such total downloading (without written
permission) is in blatant contravention of their (and all) ISPs Terms and Conditions, it is only right that
the wording of the above be amended to reflect the seriousness of their action.
The above amendment has also been added to the Latest News section of the website, as well as to
the bottom of the homepage of the site.
Other changes to the website since the last eNewsletter include;-
the Links page (www.powditch.plus.com/homepages/links.htm) has been rejigged so that when you click on one of the following topics on the page, you will go straight to the relevant section. By my introducing the latter, you will hopefully be able to reach the subject (and thus the link) as quickly as possible. Any problems, please let me know. Also, if you have any websites you'd like me to include on the links page, please let me know and I'll be glad to oblige.
Another change has been to the main access page www.powditch.plus.com/ which has recently had a change of photograph and background colour. I will be changing both from time to time, especially as variety is the spice of life (or so 'they' say!!)Coming soon will be the return of the various Powditch family trees, although they will be gradually
added to the website as the format has been completely changed (hopefully for the better!) - more
details about them will hopefully be in the next eNewsletter.
Something really (I think) exciting, has been the recent application to the whole of the Powditch
website of 'Browsealoud' software solution. Although for the moment it's only for a trial period of
15 days;-
"Browsealoud is a software solution which speech enables website content, and is designed to aid
with accessibility of the website.
With Browsealoud enabled, it is possible to support those who have problems with reading various
sizes of type (especially as some sites use very small fonts), but more especially those with eyesight
difficulties. Another benefit is for Browsealoud being able to help those where English is not their first
language, to understand the Powditch website's content.
To see and listen to this innovation, http://www.powditch.plus.com/ has been 'speech-enabled'
until the end of this week. Should you want to listen to -rather than read for yourself - the content of
the website, just download the plug-in from;- http://www.browsealoud.com/downloads.asp?dl=bl
and follow the on-line instructions.
If you already have the plug-in installed - double click on the Browsealoud icon in your system tray,
click on the "About" tab and click "Update Browsealoud". As you hover your mouse over the content
on the website, the wording on each page will be spoken to you.
As the trial period doesn't have too many more days left to run, if you want to see and hear other websites that have been Browsealoud enabled, go to the www.browsealoud.com website and
check out the list shown (you will, however, have to download the plug-in from the Browsealoud
website in order to enjoy all of the benefits.
Once you have discovered whether Browsealoud is for you (or not), I'd appreciate all of your
comments, whatever they are, especially as I need to evaluate whether it's worth making the
Powditch website permanently voice-activated (or not).
Thank you.
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| 4. Some figures from last year's Gathering. Having promised that as soon as I received information from the Questionnaires (re the 2004
Powditch Family Gathering) that I'd provide some idea of what the general consensus would be if a
second (or further) Powditch Family Gathering was suggested, I thought that you might like to see
the overall result.
From the above therefore, has been deduced that of the 100% who would like to make the Powditch
Gathering an on-going event,
more than half (54%) would like to to be held every 2 years more than three-quarters (84.6%) wish the event to be held for at least 2 days there is more preference for it to be held from a Friday to Sunday (31%) or from a Saturday to Monday (31%), than there is to hold the event from a Thursday to a Saturday (23%). These figures however don't incorporate the 15% of those who either didn't know, or weren't concerned as to which days the event was held, just as long as it was held! of the 'things to do, and places to visit' preferences, the following represent their popularity in % terms;-"A Coach Trip to a Village or Villages associated with the family? (Viewing and shopping/eating)" was the most popular subject, which came out top at 92%;
"A Church Service" was 2nd at 77%
"A Coach Trip further afield, to say the Podike, or to the Norfolk Fenlands, or to King’s Lynn. (Viewing and shopping/eating)" , was 3rd with 54% - and
"A Family Meal at the Anchor Inn" and "A Coach Trip to local places of interest (non-Powditch)" came in at joint-4th, with 46% each
As only 38% expressed any interest in going to Norwich for Viewing and shopping/eating, I have left
this suggestion out of the frame for the time being.
Hope that you found all of the above to be of interest, and that you'll agree that the above suggestions/and desires should form the framework for the next Powditch Family Gathering in
Norfolk.
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| 5. 'Statistics' Over the next few issues of this eNewsletter, I'll be including various statistics which are provided to
me by both my ISP as well as from other links I use, to highlight which pages of the
www.powditch.plus.com/ website are looked at, what 'keywords' are used by individuals in order
to find items of interest, and also what words have been entered into the 'Search' facility on the site's
homepage during the past 2 months.
For this month, I thought that you might like to see the 'top keywords' that are used on search engines
(such as Google, AlltheWeb, Yahoo, etc) by individuals in order to find topics or people on the site,
whilst in future eNewsletters, I'll include other details I get from my ISP (to see just the figures re
'visitors', 'hits', number of pages viewed, and much more besides, have a look at
Well, I hope that you found the above to be of interest, especially if you had entered any of the queries!
At least you can see what many visitors are looking for, and the way the keywords are entered into the
Search box on the www.powditch.plus.com/ home page
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| 6. 'Lost' family member. In my last eNewsletter I wrote about Geoffrey Peter Powditch, who had been born in Wells-next-the-
Sea, Norfolk, and who - about the year 1959 - emigrated to Australia, and was last heard of in 1965,
when he was working in the area of Perth, Western Australia, and I asked whether anyone knew of
his whereabouts.
To date, I haven't heard any news on this front, but I do live in hope! Thank you.
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| 7. 'Stop Press'; Powditch Gathering 2006. Yes, it does look as though there might be another Powditch Family Gathering next year (2006), but
as I want to run a few ideas past you, I'm sending a separate email on the subject, as I need your
urgent feedback.
Please watch out therefore, for another Powditch email which should be with you very soon.
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| 8. Some useful? information You know the feeling. There you are, looking through Google, Yahoo or any of the other Search
Engines, and you are looking for a particular topic, when all of a sudden you find a website, but it's
not in the English language, and the particular Search Engine doesn't have a 'Translate this' facility.
What do you do next? Unless you are proficient in languages, do you desperately look for a French
(or Spanish, or Italian or German, or whatever) to English Dictionary, or do you have a friend who can
translate for you, or do you just ignore the website and move on to something else that you are able
to read?
Well, now there's no need to 'struggle' for there are several websites out there to help you, and one
of them is called SYSTRAN, which 'employs' Language Translation Technology.
By entering (copying and pasting) the contents of a non-English email onto the home page of their
website, SYSTRAN will translate the first 150 words of that message from whichever to whatever
language they support (the same can be done if you want to translate an English message into a
non-English language), and besides the email facility, by entering the name of the website you are
trying to read, into another box on SYSTRAN's homepage, they will translate that also for you (just
remember however that it will only be the first 150 words that are translated)
SYSTRAN's website address is www.systrasoft.com/index.html and besides their free translation
service, they do also sell software for individuals to purchase (useful if you need to translate large
sections of text on a regular basis).
I don't have any connection with this website other than I recently discovered it and have used their
facilities on a couple of occasions, and as it helped me, I thought that it might be a useful tool for you
should you ever need translation facilities. What I would really like, is for someone who speaks more
than one language, to try out the site and provide me with comments as to how efficient the translation
is for them, both from another language to English, and for English to another language. How about it,
are there any linguistic experts out there who could check the efficiency of SYSTRAN's translations?
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| 9. .....and finally! If I owe you an email reply, or if I haven't telephoned you for a long while, I will do so in the near future,
and hopefully we can have a good old 'chin-wag' ! In the meantime, I do hope that you and your
family are all keeping well, and I look forward to hearing from you sometime, especially if you have
any news (either for the website or for the Powditch Archive).
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I hope that you and your family are all keeping well, and I look forward to hearing from you sometime,
especially re your thoughts and comments re the above topics.
John
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NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments is
confidential and may be privileged.
If you are NOT the intended recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of the
content of it or of any attachment; you are instead requested to notify the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to delete it and any attachments from your system.
JCA/Powditch website/Symantec endeavour to ensure that emails and any attachments generated from this email address are free from viruses or other contaminants. However, we cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are transmitted.
We therefore recommend you scan all emails and attachments
"You are receiving this email as you are either a Powditch, a Powditch descendant, or have a connection to the greater family, and as such, you have been an user of the
www.powditch.plus.com/ website.
We value your privacy. You can change your contact preferences by emailing me at
If you would prefer not to receive the Powditch eNewsletter in the future, you may simply reply to this email with the word "unsubscribe" in the mail subject.
The eNewsletter frequency will not be less than once a month.
For offline assistance, please contact me at
John C Algar, 5a Southgate Road, Southgate, Gower, Swansea, United Kingdom, SA3 2BT
Telephone (within the UK = 01792 234554) or (International = +44 (0) 1792 234554).
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