Are you still there? I hear you cry. Well, actually I don’t but yes, I am still here. There’s been a lot going on lately, of which more another time but for now, I thought I’d share some details of a few days we recently spent on the Yorkshire/Derbyshire borders.

We travelled via grandchild sitting to a quiet caravan site just outside Sheffield. This was in part to deliver a Christmas present in the shape of attendance at an André Rieu concert. Inevitably, this was accompanied by the usual angst – will we find the venue? Will we find the car park? Can I make the app work to display our tickets? Come back actual printed tickets, all is forgiven. It turns out that all the fears were unfounded and the concert was safely attended.

We also took the opportunity to meet up with family, which was lovely and do some touristy things. First stop Hardwick Hall, home of formidable Tudor woman Bess of Hardwick, familiar to me from the exam syllabus. Hardwick Hall was built in the sixteenth century to showcase the power and status that Bess accrued, largely due to four advantageous marriages. Our visit coincided with a parade by the parachute regiment, who were stationed at Hardwick during World War 2.

The Earl of Shrewsbury, one of Bess’ husbands, was responsible for Mary Queen of Scots during her house arrest and although Mary was never in residence at Hardwick there are artifacts that are believed to have belonged to her. The many tapestries are a feature of the house and adorn almost every wall. The gardens were lovely too.

Next stop Bolsover Castle, where I fell out with the audio guide, which kept defaulting to the introduction rather than the area we were in. Bolsover was the home of the Cavendish family and another symbol of wealth and power, this time of William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, grandson of Bess of Hardwick. The seventeenth century castle was built on the site of a Medieval fortress and has some impressive views.  The late C11th castle was owned by William Peveril and its ruins were the inspiration for Cavendish’s ‘Little Castle’, built in the early 1600s. Charles I and Henrietta Maria were entertained at the castle. The Cavendishs suffered for supporting the king during the Civil War but returned to the castle after the Restoration and commenced a programme of building and rebuilding. The riding house and stables are a reminder of Cavendish’s passion for equestrianism. There are some unusual wall and ceiling paintings that have been preserved. William met his wife Margaret whilst taking refuge in Europe; she was maid of honour to the exiled queen Henrietta Maria. Margaret was a prolific writer and philosopher who challenged the female stereotypes of her time. Her eccentricities meant that she was later known as ‘Mad Madge’ and described by Pepys as ‘mad, conceited and ridiculous’.

When the male line died out the castle became little more than a holiday home and gradually fell into disrepair. The opening of the nearby mines in 1889 were the death knell of the castle as it suffered from subsidence and the associated pollution. It was given to the nation in the mid-twentieth century and further decay has been prevented.

A few months ago, I was invited to give a talk to  London, Westminster and Middlesex Family History Society. They particularly wanted something with a London flavour. Nothing in my repertoire quite fitted the bill so I suggested, rashly, that I could put together something based on my Smith ancestors of London. These things always seem like a good idea from the safety of several months away. It should be easy. I’d already written the Smith family story. I even had a short power-point about them. I ‘just’ needed to pull together all the detail about the sources I’d used for the genealogy and the context and I’d be away. I set out to do ‘just’ that very thing. Perhaps, thought I, this would be a good opportunity to revisit that branch of my family, as I do periodically, in case anything new could be found. Forget rabbit holes. I descended into a pit roomy enough for a decent-sized elephant. It is one of those scenarios where the brick wall seems paper thin but is nonetheless impenetrable. Surely x must be the father of y but how do I confirm that, especially with a name like Smith in a highly populated area?

A saving grace for my Smith family is that they like marrying ladies from the Seear family. My three times great grandfather John Jeremiah Smith married Charlotte Seear, his son, my great great grandfather William Joseph Smith married his first cousin, Charlotte’s niece, Eliza Seear. Their son, Herbert Havet Smith, my great grandfather, married Eliza’s niece, Catherine Seear, who was simultaneously Herbert’s wife, his first cousin and his second cousin. I do hope that you are following this. You are probably thinking that it accounts for a great deal. It certainly makes DNA research on this branch ‘interesting’. You’d think Seear would be easy to research. I’ll own that it is an improvement on Smith but there a list of variants longer than several arms and once you stray into Hertfordshire/Buckinghamshire/Bedfordshire there are probably more of them than there are Smiths.

You are probably waiting for me to tell you that, as a result of taking another look at the family, there was a eureka moment and I added several generations to my family tree. Sadly, no but there are fewer bricks in the wall. I was looking for an example to use for the talk and decided to input Seear rather than Smith. This led me to a will that I hadn’t looked at before. A will that should crack my Seear brick wall but doesn’t, still, I now have the names of the siblings of my Seear brick wall ancestor and John Jeremiah Smith featured as a beneficiary. I also reread a will for a John Smith, someone I felt should be John Jeremiah’s father (I knew his father was John). I had previously dismissed it as there is no mention of John Jeremiah, or those I had identified as his likely siblings. Paring this will with marriage witnesses in the family, it now looks as if it is indeed the will of my 4x great grandfather and that the children he does mention are his oldest children, who I had not previously noted as potential siblings for John Jeremiah. I even have three teeny tiny DNA matches to descendants of one of these older children. Is this proof? Of course not but this John Smith of the will has moved from ‘probably not my ancestor’ to ‘almost certainly my ancestor.’ Will he ever be inked in as my 4x great grandfather, probably not but I can hope.

Oh and if anyone is reading this who is expecting me to give a talk on the Smiths in a few days’ time, never fear, I climbed out of the elephant pit eventually and there is a talk prepared.

My Smith Ancestors

‘What have you been up to lately?’, I hear you cry. Well, actually, I don’t but I’m going to tell you anyway.

I have been spending time with some drunken women, I should hasten to explain that this is in the historical, not actual, sense. Our Few Forgotten Women Team, aided by more than fifty helpers from all parts of the English-speaking world, have been tracing the stories of women found in two inebriate homes in the 1901 census. Their stories are mostly pretty tragic cycles of despair and degeneration but it is important that they are told. Photographs of many of the women survive in the online Habitual Criminals’ registers and they tell their own story. The stories of eighty six women are beginning to appear here.

There’s been a bit of a social media discussion lately about large online trees. Do people take large trees seriously? How large is too large? Here is my take on the issue. I was 100% against EVER putting my family tree online until I took an Ancestry DNA test about five years ago. I didn’t even have an Ancestry account at this point, being an inveterate FindmyPast fan (and I still am, finding their searching infinitely easier. Horses for course and familiarity is a great  thing, others will feel differently). Anyway, I took the test, the results came, I started looking for matches. Which were the matches I was prioritising? Those with online trees. Well, I thought, maybe I’d just add a very basic, private tree of my direct line. So I did. With all those thousands of DNA matches, in my case mostly very tiny, I found myself concentrating on those with public trees; so I went public. Of course, to link with DNA matches you need to be wide and deep, so I began, slowly to add all those individuals that lurk on my family tree, garnered over nearly fifty years of research. This I did cautiously and meticulously, one person at a time. One reason for not importing a tree wholesale was because I don’t have one single tree but about twenty different trees for different branches, as I prefer to work that way. Yes, I could have merged them and then uploaded in one go but I deliberately chose not to, using it as an opportunity to check what I’d done. Only one 9x great grandmother was felled from the tree as a result.

I wasn’t going to add sources because why would I? This was not my primary way of recording my tree, this was just for DNA. Then of course I realised that I was only taking online trees seriously if they were sourced, so sources were added. I included my children’s ancestors as well as my own and then, later, some of my grandchildren’s. I began by only adding individuals that I considered to be verified. Then, hesitantly, I have added a few individuals, clearly labelled ‘hypothesis’, in case the hypothesis is right and a DNA match could help to support it. Even with all this, as of today, my tree contains 3161 people. Maybe it isn’t larger because I never add information from other trees, although I do use them as clues to further research.

So what is wrong with larger trees? Do I dismiss them out of hand? Well no, that would be short-sighted but I must admit to a certain amount of scepticism as the numbers stretch beyond 5000. I find myself wondering if each one of those individuals really is carefully researched and verified using original sources. I’ve been at this for since 1977 and spend more time than I am going to admit on it. No way could I add upwards of 5000 people with any confidence. Of course, in some cases, these ultra large trees are well researched. Some are large because they are the result of one-name or one-place studies. It doesn’t take a great deal to gain an impression of the quality of the research on these mega trees and sort the good from the downright ridiculous. Is there a danger though that a large tree might give an impression of careless research? The jury is still out on that one but it is an interesting debate.

There’s been a lot more going on but this post is already too long so I’ll leave you with the tale of my mother’s day gifts. One daughter sent a package that included a mystery book (she chose the genre not the title) the title is ‘Family might be the death of you’, possibly not the most appropriate! A planted (I use the word advisedly) floral arrangement from other daughter was delivered to the neighbouring chapel porch, which shares my postcode. Fortunately, someone spotted it, retrieved it and handed it to me. It was also delivered by someone who had clearly ignored the ‘this way up’ notice and arrows. I seem to have successfully salvaged/replanted it and it is now flourishing but there was quite a bit of earth everywhere.