Monthly Archives: May 2021

Day 2 Coastal Walking or finding out that I am not as young and fit as I hoped I was

by thehistoryinterpreter

To continue the tale of our recent foray to South Devon. The second day started badly. We were driving to the starting point for our walk when I realised I had left no fewer than three things in the caravan. One of these was my fitness watch. No way was I going to not count today’s steps. We retraced our steps. I wish to put on record that my companion also forgot something but didn’t realise in time to collect it during our step-retracing mission.

The plan was to start at the end of our chosen stretch of coastal footpath in Coleton Fishacre, walk to KIngswear and retrace our steps to complete the leg in the correct order and also to end up back at the car. As one of us is a National Trust life member and the other a National Trust volunteer, we hoped we could park in the car park at Coleton Fishacre, which is a National Trust Property. We duly parked. I even worked out how to scan my membership card in order to obtain a ticket.  I had toyed with booking a visitors’ slot for entry to the property, which would have secured us the right to park but decided it was selfish to use up a place whilst entry is limited and we didn’t want to go further than the car park. Mission almost accomplished when the car park attendant loomed. It transpired that no, we couldn’t park there. The man was not open to persuasion, although my companion had a jolly good try. ‘There’s another car park just up the road’, we were told. We could not access the coastal path via Coleton Fishacre. This was all very well. The car park was indeed only about 500 yards away but this gave us access to a different point on the coastal path and with having to do it twice, would add another 1½ miles to a walk that was already at the limit of my likely unpracticed endurance.

Nonetheless, we set off with a spring in our step, enjoying the spectacular views. It is my habit, probably dating from my Girl Guiding days, to keep a note of the birds and wild flowers that I see en-route. My bird identification abilities are probably no better or worse than they ever were. Definitely above average but certainly not expert and I have never been able to recognise bird song. I realised though that my memory for flower names had become somewhat tarnished. When we were walking more regularly, I could identify many more. The flowers were at their best and this is my favourite time of year. Ox-eye daisies, scabious, foxgloves, thrift and ransomes and the last vestiges of bluebells in the small wooded section, which also yielded a jay and a thrush in the bird department. There were many more to add to my list and to begin with, the eight years since we last did a coastal path walk melted away. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t eight years since we have been for a walk but those walks have been elsewhere, including local stretches of the same path.

To the fitter of my friends, a 7½ mile walk may seem like a gentle stroll. If you’ve never walked the south-west coastal path, be aware, be very aware that, with very few exceptions, gentle stroll it is not. There are hills, lots of them and the path is anything but smooth. I learned two things on this walk. I am definitely not as fit as I used to be and when the guide book says ‘strenuous’ this is not to be taken lightly.

After the first hour, every step we took away from the car was a reminder that it would be a step further in the opposite direction. This stretch of path is blessed with many seats. I sat on most of them. This was ridiculous. We had only last month done several walks of about five miles and here I was three miles in and struggling. It was also the hottest day of the year so far and we were heading towards the heat of the day. We could see our destination in the distance. It seemed, dear reader, a very distant distance. I’d been worried about blisters, well that and the lack of toilets but I always worry about that. Neither of these issues became a problem but I was conscious that I was breathing increasingly heavily. A few years ago, I would probably and possibly foolishly, have carried on regardless. Quitting is not normally in my vocabulary. At the back of my mind though was the niggle that hidden in a place on my medical records that I mostly choose to ignore are the words ‘heart condition’. Was it really sensible to keep on keeping on? We might not yet be half way to Kingswear and then we had to do all this again in reverse. The map suggested that there was a way to come off the path and return to the car by a slightly shorter and certainly less strenuous route. Common sense prevailed and that’s what we did. Altogether we probably walked five miles, although most of it was far from easy walking, this did seem pathetic. I was very annoyed with myself. Then there was the problem of how to proceed. Up to now all our walks have been in the correct order and in the right direction. We could start at KIngswear next time and walk to where we gave up but then what? Could I bring myself to compromise and count this walk as part of the challenge, despite it being in the wrong order and wrong direction? Could I face doing it again the right way round, knowing what I know now about how hard it was? If we can only notch up four miles a time, the remaining 153 miles are going to take a very long time to accomplish and our fitness is hardly going to improve. Always end on a cliff hanger. Stand by for the next instalment to find out what we decided.

Some advice for would-be coastal path walkers. Unless you are super-fit types who think nothing of notching up twenty five miles a day laden with your tent, sleeping bag and all other requisites, don’t leave it until you are of mature years to try to walk 670+ miles round the south-west peninsula. It is so worth it though, the scenery is breath taking. Even if you only walk a small part of the route, everyone should give this a try. I’d also recommend reading Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path about her walk with her husband along the whole length of the path.

Heading South

by thehistoryinterpreter

A last minute change of plan meant that we were left with a few free days. I wonder what they are? The weather had finally decided that it was no longer winter, could we find the one caravan site in the country with vacancies? It turned out that we could, so we decided to head south to recommence our walk round the South West Coastal Path. We began this seventeen years ago when we were a lot younger and fitter. Even then, not for us the twenty-five mile a day stretches, complete with tents to our backs. No, this is supposed to be pleasure. Over the course of ten years, we completed the Somerset coast, north Devon, the whole of Cornwall and got as far as Dartmouth. It took us 73 walking sessions to cover 477½ (don’t forget the half) miles. Then the grandchildren arrived and we found better places to go when we have days to spare. We had also reached an off putting stretch where there is no public transport to get us back to the start. The options being, walk 10½ miles described as ‘strenuous’ and get an expensive taxi back. Or cover this in three sections walking about 3½ miles in both directions in order to get back to the car. It really is very dispiriting to have to walk twenty miles to end up only ten miles further on. If we were ever going to finish the remaining 153 miles however now was the time. 10½ ‘strenuous’ miles is probably just within our capabilities but given that I have spent a year barely walking further than the front gate, it didn’t seem sensible. So the bullet needed to be bitten, three lots of there and back it was to be.

Day 1 consisted of arriving at the caravan site and completing a warm up stroll round the beautiful neighbouring country park, when the wildlife actually played ball. There was also a lengthy conversation with the caravan site wifi help line. I wasn’t going to be caught in an internet black hole again. It turns out that it was a ‘no help at all’ line but I solved the problem by reregistering with another of my many email addresses. I just have to remember who they now think I am.

DNA Detective Work and the story of a secretive agent

by thehistoryinterpreter

I decided that it was high time that I looked at some of my closer DNA matches, where I am unable to identify a common ancestor. I should explain that ‘closer’ in my case means not very close at all. My lack of cousins means that I only have three matches above 70cM and one of those is my daughter. My attention turned to a 48cM match with no tree. From shared matches, I had placed this person on the Smith/Seear side of my family tree. The Smith/Seears are tricky DNA wise because three generations of Smiths marry Seears, so I am often related to people on this line more than once. This means that suggested relationships are distorted. Without my pedigree collapse, the amount of shared cM with the mystery match might suggest that the relationship was in the region of a 3rd or 4th cousin, maybe with a removed or two.

The profile indicated that the user had joined Ancestry in 2016 and hadn’t signed in for over a year. I don’t want to give the actual name for privacy reasons but the user name looked like it could be the first half of an unusual female christian name and a surname run into one. This isn’t it but think constabolt might be Constance Bolt. I guessed at the name, Googled it and up came an obituary for the husband of someone with that name. This indicated that the person I was searching for was born in a particular smallish town in the south of England. Further internet searches revealed a maiden name and a middle christian name. To make this story easier to follow, yet still anonymise it, I am going to tell it with a fictitious maiden name. Let us say it was ‘Forester’, which probably has a similar rarity value as the actual name. This with the other information was unusual enough for me to locate a birth entry and discover that the lady, if she was still alive, would be in her nineties. Better still, her mother’s maiden name was Seear. Not only did it look as if I was on the right track but a great advantage over Smith. Yay! Eureka and all that. Now all I had to do was find a marriage for a Seear and a ‘Forester’ and I was away. This was going to be easy. Err, no. Not a marriage in sight. I searched for any other ‘Forester’- Seear children. None. Given that the marriage was likely to be not long after the first world war, it seemed probable that Miss Seear had married x before she was married to Mr ‘Forester’.

The Seears’ normal stomping ground is east London. There couldn’t be many in this small southern English town could there? There weren’t. I tried the 1911 census and the 1939 register for that area. I found a family in 1911 with two daughters who were potential wives for Mr ‘Forester’. They both married other people and died with those surnames; no second marriages to Mr ‘Forester’. The 1911 census indicated that there were other children who were not in the household, maybe I could find another daughter. According to the census there had been nine children, three had died and three more needed to be found. The family was headed by a married Emily Seear, no husband in sight. I found her in 1901, still in London, still married and still no husband, this gave me three more children. The children had unusual christian names but I couldn’t identify birth registrations for them all. Checking the births I could find on the GRO site gave me Emily’s maiden name but searching with Seear and the maiden name did not reveal the missing children, nor were they registered under Emily’s maiden name. I had her year of marriage from the 1911 census. This meant that I could find her marriage entry and the name of Mr Seear, who was potentially the grandfather of my DNA match. It was a name I recognised and suggested that the match and I were third cousins once removed twice over. I will continue to refer to him as Mr Seear, although, from this point, I was searching under his full name.

I was left with a gap and some questions. Which daughter of Emily Seear was the mother of my match, why weren’t all the children registered and where the heck was Mr Seear, who died in the 1920s but is elusive between his marriage and that point? He was clearly around to father nine children on Emily, at least one of whom really was his biological child, or there would be no DNA match.

By diligent searching I found one of the daughters marrying under a variant of Seear and then a subsequent marriage, under the surname of her first husband, to Mr ‘Forester’, which proved my link to my DNA match.

I did find the baptism of one of the children whose birth wasn’t registered but I couldn’t find the three who had died by 1911; perhaps Emily was counting still-births. There are some large gaps in the children but given what appears to be a rather odd relationship between Emily and Mr Seear that isn’t surprising.

So what do we know about Mr Seear? Given that he is my first cousin three times removed and not a close relative, I hadn’t researched him beyond his name and appearance with his parents in the 1861 and 1871 censuses before. He married in his home area in East London in August 1881, claiming to be a banker’s clerk, yet he can’t be found in the 1881 census, despite my knowing his address just four months later. Seear is a bit of a nightmare to search. Apart from the variants (Seer, Sear, Seeare and many more), it is often mis-transcribed as Leear or Teear, or indeed it seems something else entirely.

I did find a listing for Mr Seear going to Baltimore in 1883. His occupation was ‘agent’. Much as I’d love to think this was some kind of secret agent, I am quite sure it was as the representative of a company or organisation. Perhaps this is why there is an apparent gap between the first child in 1882 and the second in 1886. I totally failed to find Emily or Mr Seear in the 1891 census. I know they were in east London when a child was born at the end of 1891. I tried every technique I know, including search for christian names and dates of birth, without a surname. I tried the 1890 US census in case they all went to America; they were not there either.

I can’t find any children born between 1886 and 1891 when suddenly there were three children born in as many years, perhaps the relationship was re-kindled. There is then another gap before the final child in 1899. I have a baptism for this child on which Mr Seear calls himself a Dining Room Proprietor.

So we reach 1901 and no surprise that Mr Seear is conspicuous by his absence. Sadly, he seems to have kept his name out of the newspapers as well. Emily, describing herself as a married coffee house keeper, is still in the London area, with six children, including the mother of my DNA match but who is using a different christian name (I suspect an enumerator copying error as the names, although very different, have the same number of letters and shape).

Fast forward to 1911 when Emily and three children are in the south of England. Lo and behold Mr Seear turns up, living in London with his brother, claiming to be unmarried and working as a caterer for a licensed victualler. Two final sad entries, which show that Mr Seear spent time in the workhouse before he died.

This has taken me all morning but I am pleased to be able to untangle the tale. Shame about the other 16,000 unidentified DNA matches!

Image copyright R B

Of Swing Riots, Slander and Seriously Neglected Family History

by thehistoryinterpreter

We are still, it seems, in the depths of winter here in darkest Devon. Time for some family history. That’s nonsense, it is always  time for some family history. I am now in my 44th year of research, so it isn’t always easy to find anything new but every now and again I get out a long untouched branch, dust it down, check that I am happy with the conclusions I drew when record access was poorer and see if anything can be added.

Recently, at the request of my descendants, it was the turn of the Few family, hence the jaunt to the Hampshire/Wiltshire/Berkshire borders. Two issues with this family. Firstly, it is always a nightmare tracing a surname that is also a word, especially when looking at things like newspaper archives. I once had to look for a teacher called Mr Head (I had no forename) up popped every Headteacher in the world but I digress. Secondly, the Fews lived at a point where very short distance moves took them to another country, or another other county, giving me three to consider.

I hadn’t done much on this family for a while (translated to ‘not touched it for decades’) so as I usually do in these cases, I pretended I was starting from scratch. This involves reviewing each generation in turn, writing down my evidence for linking to the next generation and deciding if I am satisfied that I have made a correct link. I don’t use a formal ‘method’ or genealogical proof standard, although what I do amounts to the same thing. I just call it good genealogy. Having reassured myself that what I did thirty plus years ago was sound and that I really couldn’t, with confidence, add a further generation, although others have done so, I looked at the collateral lines. Here there were new generations to add, always a pleasure having been searching for so long.

I have already mentioned the revealing of the prosaically named Fish Coppinger and the four sisters with ten illegitimate children between them ‘but wait’, as my friend would say, ‘there’s more’. I am currently feeding back on pieces sent to me by students on my Pharos online Writing and Telling your Family History course. As an aside, one of these mentioned someone from my one-name study but that’s another digression. Said students are encouraged to enliven the begats and begats with plenty of context. To be fair it is more a case of ‘do as I say’, rather than ‘do as I do’. My own ‘writing up’ is primarily a way of presenting my findings in a relatively (see what I did there?) coherent way. I certainly don’t claim that mine are beautifully crafted, riveting narratives but I do like to throw in a bit of context now and again. I also have students who are currently working on a course about agricultural labouring ancestors, so I thought I should utilise some of the techniques that I have been advocating for them too.

I set to work. Newspapers are always a great source of interesting snippets. I was excited to find that the agricultural labourers that I was researching were living in a parish where Swing Rioters were out in force in the 1830s. Add to the mix the ancestress who dropped dead walking home from working in the fields, the ancestor who narrowly escaped prosecution for slander and the one whose foot was run over by a wagon and I felt that I was starting to get to know these people who had previously just been names on a family tree. If you are very bored and want to see the fruits of my labours, the draft narrative is here. This has not yet been run through the eyes of my ace proof-reader. There will be typos!

In the course of this research, I came across a very sad newspaper account about a child whose name was shared by a family member but who was no connection that I can find. Apologies for the poor reproduction – that’s as god as it gets. Although typical of the time, the callous attitude of the reporter was shocking and I am now tempted down the rabbit hole that is shouting ‘research this child’.

Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser 27 June 1874

I did get as far as finding the child in 1881, listed as a scholar with no disability mentioned and there is a burial at age nineteen. Do I invest in the death certificate? They won’t be forgotten as I will be working this in to one or two of my talks.

I now have, by design, a two-week lull in talks, although I am podcasting (I think that’s the word) this afternoon. With ‘winter’ continuing I shall move to Worcestershire (in the virtual family history sense), to see what I can uncover about another long-neglected twig on the tree. See you on the other side.

The Expedition Continues

by thehistoryinterpreter

Two more days of shower dodging and ancestral parish visiting were planned. Firstly, I returned to the hotspot for the next deluge of emails. Ah the hotspot was no longer hot. I failed to connect to the internet. Fortunately, during the previous day’s foray online I thought I had better send the next  lesson to my online students whilst I could, even though it was a few days early. That would have worked well except I had inadvertently sent lesson five masquerading as lesson four. There was nothing for it but to try to do things on my fairly new to me phone, beyond making a phone call. This, dear reader, was a learning curve. I managed to use up my miniscule data allowance (miniscule because this is not how I normally use my phone) and work out how to access some of my emails. I even manage to send replies and an s.o.s to my boss who could send my poor students the correct lesson on my behalf. I tried again to book our National Trust tickets. Still no email confirmation but a booking number appears on the website so I was hopeful that that it was indicative of a booking.

The parish visiting took us through several picturesque villages on the Hampshire/Wiltshire borders and I discovered that, in the 1840s, the family lived on a farm that had been targeted by 300 Swing Rioters, ten years earlier. Driving from parish to parish, punctuated by shower-dodging photography, is not very conducive to accomplishing my three miles a day of walking, that I have managed to keep up all year so far. My solution at home is to jog up and down on the spot to make up the steps. My travelling companion doubts that the caravan floor will cope with this. Walking round the caravan site proved to be the only option. On day three the weather did not play fair and although I set off in the dry to complete an estimated ten circuits of the site, before I got to the end of circuit two, it began to rain. By circuit three it was torrential and as I was wearing wellies, I had developed blisters. Did I give up? Well it was very tempting, especially as I kept passing the warm and dry van but no, I soldiered on.

No family history for our last day. Instead a drive out past Stonehenge to Stourhead Gardens. These are beautifully landscaped grounds that were laid out in the eighteenth century, complete with numerous classical follies. It turns out that my initial booking had gone through, as had my attempt to book using the phone, so we could in theory have gone twice!

My only previous visit to Stourhead was forty years ago. We walked round the path that meanders round the lake, amongst mature trees and rhododenrons that were at their best. There were swans, coots, mallards and Canada geese on the lake. A double bonus. This was the best day weather-wise so we stayed dry and the designated, strictly one-way only, walk round the grounds was more than enough for my daily step-count, so no circulations of the campsite were required.

All in all this wasn’t quite the relaxing break we had planned but better luck next time. I am not looking forward to catching up with 600 or so emails on a borrowed computer. I am hoping that my own was curable and will be ready soon, although I am aware that I may have to bite the new machine bullet before too long.

A ‘Restful’ Break

by thehistoryinterpreter

Things started so well for our planned few days away. My second vaccination appointment was potentially due to coincide with the dates that we had chosen but fortuitously, the call came through for day 77 and not days 79-84. We even managed to finally get Chris’ second vaccination, which was nearly three weeks overdue, for the same day. Beyond that, matters began to go downhill a little. On the morning of departure, my laptop developed a probably terminal blue screen of death. Bother (or similar sentiment). I had things I needed to do both before leaving and while I was away. Frantic appeals went out for Chris to pack his, which uses different software making it less than ideal. I also looked out my ancient ‘on-its-last-legs’ net book, which has the right programmes but an irritatingly tiny typo-engendering keyboard. It also experiences periodic blue screen of deathness but fortunately it limps on.

Having left just a little later than planned in order to take the laptop to computer hospital we set off in torrential rain for the caravan site. On arrival, whilst enjoying a welcome cup of coffee, I struggled with the teeny tiny laptop and discovered, to my alarm, that I had booked a site that doesn’t have wifi. That’s not strictly true, wifi is advertised; it is just that to access it you have to stand on one leg under a tree in the rain by the car park. This means that all the map checking and itinerary planning I was intending to do on arrival had to be achieved by guesswork. We contented ourselves with a wander along a local footpath. The beech trees were sporting their new-minted leaves and there were bluebells, cowslips and wild strawberries in flower.

The next day dawned and the forecast rain was not in evidence. I investigated the hotspot from the safety of the car. This was not without its challenges. The worn out teeny tiny laptop has a battery life of several milliseconds, it also has a ‘battery-saving,’ almost unreadably dull, screen when not plugged in. Seventy odd emails, that had been sent in the preceding twenty four hours, came hurtling in. We attempted to book tickets to visit a National Trust property, which only became available today. Despite it appearing to be successful, no confirmatory email arrived.

Next, we set off to investigate some villages once inhabited by the Fews and associated families. A combination of pandemic restrictions and the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ nature of the places on the itinerary, meant that the duration of our explorations had to be directly related to bladder capacity. We were in the chalk vales of Wiltshire, a land of ancient earthworks and army camps. There were some very picturesque and probably incredibly expensive, houses, with many more retaining their thatched roofs than you find further west. There were also several thatched cob walls.

We took a look at the fields in the area, where an ancestress was working at harvest-time when she was taken ill and died, then moved on to the small village of Wootton Rivers. Next up was the Savernake Forest, allegedly a nature reserve with potential for a walk. We spectacularly failed to find any car park or way in that was not accompanied by signs reading ‘private’. We decided that we might try again another day. We drove through Marlborough. By co-incidence, I was there virtually just two days previously. Then a quick look at Devizes, a much larger settlement, before heading back to the van via the spread out village of Woodborough. Just time to stop off at Woodhenge as we passed by. Although this was once a prehistoric site, with large wooden uprights arranged in concentric circles, it is now concrete henge as the wood, unsurprisingly, does not survive, so short concrete bollards indicate where the pillars once stood.

Back at the van and footpath walk done, I returned on foot to the ‘hotspot’ to send the replies to the morning’s emails. Ironically, the sun put in a weak appearance at this point. Without the shelter of the car, the screen was completely illegible. My helpful companion suggested that I put my coat over my head and the computer. I will own that this did solve the problem but I looked like a total idiot in a public place. I was reassured that ‘there’s nobody about’ but the sound of footsteps belied this. I suppose at least hiding under my coat meant I was anonymous. For reasons that will become apparent, you will be reading this once I have returned to the comfort of my internet enabled home.

Freedom

by thehistoryinterpreter

As many will know, I have been content to stay at home over the past months, only passing through the front gate four or five times since October. In April, I decided that if I didn’t leave home soon it would become increasingly difficult. The sun was shining, I was getting fed up with trying to walk three miles a day (something I have kept up all year) in a tiny house so, dear reader, I WENT OUT. We had a few lovely walks along the coastal footpath, enjoying the beautiful scenery and getting the required step count up in a painless way.

Obviously seeing the family after six/seven months was a priority. Finding a gap in my ridiculous talk schedule and more to the point a caravan site with vacancies, was a problem. Eventually we managed to book into a site fifty miles from where we wanted to be and not on the ideal weekend. The plan was to see each of my descendants’ families in turn, as there are too many of us to meet altogether. We did the ‘risk assessment’. It seemed low risk, even to my ridiculously risk adverse brain. Virus rates were very low in the area we were coming from and those we were going to. All three bubbles had been minimising social contact. Three of the six adults had had a first vaccine. The news was saying ‘this may be as good as it gets for the foreseeable future’. If I was ever going to see my family in person again now was a good time. We took lateral flow tests – negative. We were socially distantish. With the sort of bad luck that explains why I am so risk adverse, one family member tested positive the day after we saw him. Not, I hasten to add, because he had been rashly heading maskless into crowded places but because he works in a school; the only contact he has had outside his own family. Ironically, his call to be vaccinated came on the same day as his confirmation of his positive status.

Chris and I broke our bubble in order to self-isolate apart, in case one of us had been infected and not the other but our ten days are now up, we’ve both tested negative and we can re-bubble. I have spent the past days cooking for myself. I am genetically programmed to be a non-cook. In my defence I have only burnt two saucepans this week, that’s probably a win with my level of ‘skill’. Who enjoys watching a saucepan to see if there is still water in it? Yes, I do I have a timer on the oven. I might even have been able to dig out the instructions in order to see if I could make it work but saucepans don’t always reach the point of no return at the same rate. I can do the science and realise that it will depend on the temperature on the dial and the amount of water – kind of makes the timer thing a bit hit and miss – in my case usually miss. I must admit that I did resort to salad yesterday – no danger of burning that. So un-carbonised proper cooked food tonight – hurrah!

I decided yesterday that I would resume the near impossible task of seeing what I could find out about the family of my mum’s world war 2 fiancé, an American airman who was killed in action. I have seen and can picture, a photograph of this man, although said photo is no longer in the family album. I have had some wonderful helpers from across the globe but no real results so far. I have very little to go on. He was known as Jimmy Kirby but Jimmy was probably short for James, which could have been his first name, a middle name or Jimmy might have been a nickname. He was likely to have been stationed in south-east England, possibly Warminster. He had an identical twin brother Curtis, or Curt and Jimmy was killed in I think 1944. You have no idea how many potential James Kirby’s there are to choose from. To say nothing of the Kirbys with J as a middle initial. One promising looking Curtis was identified, who had a younger brother James but a photograph of James was enough for me to know that this was not the one I wanted. If there is anyone out there that thinks this rings a bell please get in touch, stranger things have happened.

Mistress Agnes is off to entertain merchants next week, she needs to mind her manners. Guests are welcome if you want to learn about her times.

The great loft clearance has been on hold because crawling around lofts when you live alone and no one is likely to find you for a week if things go horribly wrong is not a great idea (risk adverse see) but it has reached the old toys stage. There are toys from the 1930s, the 1960s and the 1990s to be enjoyed. I may be some time.