Monthly Archives: August 2019

How Up to Date is Your Family Tree?

by thehistoryinterpreter

Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere so that it is preserved. This is another post that I wrote for the magazine; it first appeared in September 2017.

Just to be clear, I am not asking whether you have added cousin Mary’s latest grandchild born in 2019. What I mean is, how recently have you looked at your pedigrees, files, conclusions, source citations and narrative family histories to see if they are still current? Family history is a never ending hobby, with so many opportunities. You get stuck on one line, no problem, there are others that you can follow. Almost all of us focus on one part of the tree for a while before turning to another. Maybe we have reached a dead end. Or perhaps an enquiry from another researcher, a DNA match, or a chance to visit and ancestral area will prompt us to dig out the Smith family research that has been left in abeyance for a few years. This is when you realise how much things may have changed in the intervening years.

There are likely to be issues with your source citations. There may broken links due to defunct URLS, record repositories may have moved, or have changed their names. For example, I just looked out some UK research that I had not revisited since 2011 and found references to The Public Record Office (Now known as The National Archives) and the Family Records’ Centre, which no longer exists. Other repositories have changed their catalogue referencing system so that the reference numbers I have quoted are no longer meaningful. It is probably still possible to follow my research trail as the records themselves have not changed but I clearly have some updating to do.

Of course, with the abundance of new records that are now available to me online, or have been indexed, making it harder for my family to hide, there will also be scope for me to add to this part of my family history or at least to tie up some loose ends. This is another way in which my family history is not up to date. You may be familiar with Thomas MacEntee’s concept of the ‘Genealogical Do-Over’, which encourages those of us who have been researching for some time to effectively start over again, filling in gaps, citing sources and making sure that our relationship linkages are sound. When we first start on our magical genealogical journey, instinct often encourages us to race back as far as possible, as fast as possible. Indeed the first question a non-genealogist will often ask is ‘how far back have you got?’ Of course, the important question is not ‘how far back are you?’ but ‘how much do you know about the people on your tree?’

A complete do-over, as advocated by Thomas MacEntee, may be too daunting a prospect for some of us. After all, there are all these exciting new ancestors to be found, why would we spend time going back over the old ones? If we can’t face a ‘re-do’, then we should most certainly be revisiting and revising at regular intervals. Is our family information up-to-date? Is there anything we can add in the light of newly available information? And, most importantly, if we were doing this research now, would we still feel that John is father of Richard and so on?

How ever carefully crafted a pedigree might be, with multiple pieces of evidence pointing to a particular relationship, we need to remember a salutary lesson – we can be wrong. Almost everyone who has spent a few years doing genealogy will have found themselves half way up someone else’s family tree at some point. Either that or we aren’t looking hard enough. Do take time to revisit, to revise, to update. Fresh eyes and fresh sources can often break down the brick wall that led you to abandon a particular family line in the past. Good luck.

News from the Cobbles for fans of Barefoot

by thehistoryinterpreter

I hope no one is reading this expecting Coronation Street spoilers. There have been some lovely communications regarding Barefoot on the Cobbles lately. Firstly, two lovely readers, without internet access, took the trouble to write me letters saying how much they had enjoyed it. I also had an email from a reader from New Zealand who not only praised the book but said I had inspired her to write the story of her own family history tragedy. I have also been contacted by two relatives of the minor characters in the novel. One leading to ongoing research into the family, which may turn out to be intriguing.

This has been interspersed with precious time spent with my descendants; there may be more about that later. I have also started another run of my In Sickness and in Death course and the students are wonderfully active, sharing stories of the ailments of their ancestors. One of the best parts about Pharos courses is the interactions between the students. This has all taken my mind off a few recent technical hitches. Yesterday a very forbearing audience sat through a presentation that really did need the accompanying slides, when my laptop (and a backup laptop) failed to communicate with the projector. I am also juggling external hard drives, in an attempt to recover files that have been damaged due to a corrupted memory stick. Fortunately they were backed up and I realised before I overwrote the complete files for another back up. A salutary lesson not to rely on memory sticks/data sticks/flash drives, call them what you will.

In the course of checking files to see if they were damaged, I came across I passage that I wrote for part of Chapter 1 of Barefoot but which was left on the cutting-room floor. I thought you might like to read a little about Polly as a young girl.

1884

Polly Wakely leaned back on the Devon bank that edged the lane leading from Horns Cross to Peppercombe. Her two younger sisters, tired of gathering bluebells, sat beside her. All had severely plaited hair and identical rough, linen smocks. Polly, on the brink of womanhood, had abandoned her bonnet in an act of defiance. She was meant to be shepherding her sisters home from school but the temptation to linger in the spring sunshine, to stretch the time between the agonies of the classroom and the drudgery of chores at home, had got the better of her. Polly did not begrudge having to mind Ada and Ethel, in fact she quite enjoyed it. She hoped that she might have children of her own one day, in an unfathomable future that seemed impossibly far ahead. The role of chaperone to the younger members of the family had, until recently, been the task of her older sister, Jane. Jane, shy and retiring had found it difficult to discipline the two youngest girls but Polly was firmer. Despite their very different personalities, the Wakely sisters had always been self-sufficient, content with each other’s company and united against the taunts of their classmates.

            A small group of children turned the corner and spotted the Wakelys. Here was an easy target.

            ‘Yer ma tellin’ fortunes today then?’

            Polly was not as feisty as her eldest sister, Lydia, now working away in service but she had had years of practice standing up to bullies and defending her own. She knew that the comment was intended to provoke a reaction, perhaps to initiate a fight. She had succumbed to this when she was younger, arrived home with hair pulled, face scratched and pinafore torn. She considered herself too old for such scraps now and she had learned that there was nothing the tormentors hated more than to be ignored. She turned her back and pretended that she had not heard, putting a warning hand on Ada’s arm, to indicate that she should do the same.

            The oldest boy picked up Ethel’s discarded bouquet.

            ‘What’s these ole flowers for then?’ he mocked, tossing the drooping blooms over the hedge. ‘Going to pop them in the pot and make a spell?’

            Polly groaned inwardly, would this stupid tale never cease to dog their lives. Ethel was less resilient than her sisters and was distressed at the loss of her flowers but she knew that she must not give this big boy the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

            One of the girls in the group was regarding them with sympathy but her companions quelled any attempts at compassion.

            ‘Them’s nought better than gypos, don’t you go frettin’ over them. Turn you into a toad as soon as, they would.’

            Polly knew she had to be brave, that her ma would be cross if Ada or Ethel went home in tears and told tales of what was responsible for their distress. As each of her children left toddlerhood behind, Eliza Wakely had urged them to ignore such taunts. She understood their pain, she had suffered the same in her turn. In fact, thought Polly, although there had been no school to endure in those days, it had been worse for ma and her sisters. Their very surname, Found, had marked the family as out of the ordinary. It had all been ages ago, before even ma’s grafer’s time but still the rumours swirled. Going back some, the original Found had been just that, found in the church porch over Morwenstow way and Polly and her sisters were suffering for it still.

Peppercombe

Method Genealogy – standing in the footsteps of your ancestors

by thehistoryinterpreter

Until recently, I was a columnist for the In-depth Genealogist Magazine and also wrote for their blog. Now the magazine is sadly no more, contributors have been invited to re-post their blog material elsewhere so that it is preserved. This is a post that I wrote in October 2016. Comments in {} are new additions.

We are probably all familiar with the concept of Method Acting, where the actor attempts to fully identify with a part by living as their character lived, or sharing experiences but method genealogy? As diligent family historians, it is something that we should all be practising. We need our ancestors to be as fully rounded as possible, to lift them from the two-dimensional pedigree and to understand what their lives would have been like. When I wrote my book Coffers, Clysters, Comfrey and Coifs, about seventeenth century social history, I said, “Our seventeenth century ancestors may be people that we can identify, or they may be lurking, nameless, waiting to be discovered. In either case they existed, therefore we owe it to them to find out more about their way of life.” The same is true of more recent inhabitants of our family tree. {Incidentally, if you would like to contribute to the campaign to make room for me to publish more books – copies can be obtained from me}.

Option 2 - CopyI recently discovered this beautiful photograph of a member of a family that I am researching. It isn’t actually my own ancestry but she will one day I hope be part of a novel based on incidents in her family’s life, so this could be my cover photo. She has bare feet. She lived on a cobbled street. What is it like to walk that street barefoot? I don’t know but I need to. Ok, I’ll be honest, I’m probably going to wait for better weather but I will be trying this. {Yes I wrote the book and yes I tried it – but not for long. And yes – another opportunity to relieve me of book stock and increase the free space in my house}.

Part of my life is spent as an historical interpreter, so I do get to dress in period costume. Have you any idea how difficult it is to go upstairs in a full length skirt? What about household tasks? That bucket you need to fetch from the well could weigh four stone (30kg), oh and you probably need eight bucketfuls of water a day. What is a home like without electricity? I get to try this in my 400 year old cottage when our power fails.

Reality television has often attempted to get people to turn back time. In some cases they go back to their centrally heated homes and twenty-first century luxuries every night. Even if it is a more sustained experiment, the participants know it is only temporary but such experiences are the closest we may get to the lives of our ancestors. What is it like to carve a homestead from virgin forest, to clear, to plough, to plant and to hope for an eventual harvest? How does it feel to set off on a six week sea voyage, knowing  that you will never again see those you have left behind?

If we are physically capable, we need to enter the realms of experimental archaeology to find out what processes were involved in the occupations of an ancestor. If we know they walked a certain route to school, to work, or to migrate, then can we walk it too (if only virtually with the aid of Google Earth)? What was the terrain like? What marks on the natural or built landscape may they have passed?

Family History is not just about following shaky leaves {and believe me, ‘shaky’ is an appropriate description for many} and amassing the largest family tree in the world. It is about getting under the skin of those we have discovered and doing the best we can to gain an insight into their ways of life. {Oooh, opportunity for another advertisement – if you would like to add depth to the deaths of your ancestors, join me on my Pharos Tutors online course ‘In Sickness and in Death: researching the ill-health and deaths of our ancestors’ – starts on Tuesday folks!}.

More Cornish Wanderings with Family History for Good Measure

by thehistoryinterpreter

I know it was a while ago now but I did have another day of holidaying to share. So just in case anyone is wondering why they have been left in limbo, or in our case in Cornwall, here is the final episode.

After an early morning look at Looe for another fishing boat fix for my travelling companion, we head to Cotehele. On the way we fit in another family history parish. Since I have been home, I have been trying to take these newly-found Cornish ancestors further. One just might be a ‘gateway’ ancestor, taking me back to Medieval times and potentially royalty but let’s not get ahead of myself. It holds together well back to 7x great-grandfather Richard Rowse/Roose/Ruse/Ruze but I need to convince myself that his potential father Walter (who does seem to be the only Walter around at that date, didn’t marry until he was in his forties. Further speculation needs to wait until I can get to the new Cornwall archives.

082 15 July 2019 CoteheleOur first task at Cothele is to hunt out our memorial tree in the fruit orchard. We think we know roughly where it is. We also think we know what variety it is but we fail to locate it. Once again we are hampered by the environmentally friendly attempt to let the orchard go wild. Tramping through long grass trying to find a variety label that has probably long since gone is not fun. Reception provide us with a guide, which suggests that we are looking for the wrong type of tree. I am still not sure that the tree we pay homage to is actually the one that Martha and I planted in 2008; we are both convinced it was a different variety, to the extent that I purchased one of the same type for my garden.

We tour Cothele house, which belonged to the Edgecumbe family. Most of the present building is Tudor but the interior is largely seventeenth century in style. It is one of my favourite National Trust properties and always seems very homely. Surprising then to discover that the family only lived there full time during Civil War. Somehow this had escaped me on previous visits. Not bad for a holiday home. They used it as a showcase for their various collectables. To this end, bizarrely, they have a china closet in the bedroom, presumably so guest can admire the cups and saucers at night. This showcasing lark is not always successful as various tapestries have had bits hacked off them in order to fit the rooms. We manage to miss being in the right place to hear the iconic clock strike twelve. We walk down to the quay before deciding that it really is too hot to be outside and returning to our van.

All in all, it was a gentle sort of holiday and because we are not far from home and have been many times before and hopefully can again, there was no pressure to rush round places thinking this will be our only opportunity. Nothing beats glorious landscapes, the sea, sunshine and the chance to immerse yourself in heritage, both personal and more general.