I would like to thank all those who have now listened to my Really Useful Show presentation about making the family history world welcoming for all. There was a mammoth audience at the live presentation and plenty of people have tuned in since. I think you have one more day to catch the recording, if you have a Really Useful Show ticket. The opportunity for discussion afterwards was limited, so there will be an open forum on this topic on Saturday 27th November at 10.30am UK time. I know this isn’t great for those of you in North America but we didn’t want to leave this too long and I don’t have a single evening or weekend afternoon free until mid-December. I am in the midst of a presentations marathon, at one point I did four in twenty-six hours and I am currently running at twelve a week. I do also have other things in my diary! The good news is, that other ‘next generation’ debates are being held and I have been asked to give this presentation again on two futher occasions. Saturday will be about exchanging ideas, not about me talking. If you want to come along, just contact me via the box on the Home Page for the link. If you are not able to listen to the original presentation, then you might like to look at the handout instead.
Having thought that I had had a record audience for the Really Useful Show, I topped that this week when a Norfolk FHS meeting, at which I was speaking, also had Devon FHS attendees. A whopping 385 people Zoomed in!
This week also brought the demise of a memory stick. Even the magicians at my local computer shop have failed to extract data from it. Yes, it is backed up elsewhere but I was due to back up again, so there are recent files that will be lost and gone for ever. I do put some things in the cloud but not everything. Now I’m about to take a deep breath and see how much I can retrieve from elsewhere.
In other news, I am not sure if I should congratulate a large electrical store near pretty much everyone or not. After three years and eleven months and numerous letters, emails and social media rants, I have finally received a gift card with a refund to which I was entitled. Mind you, I haven’t tried to spend it yet (there may only be 2p on it) and actually I am pretty reluctant to darken their doors again but fingers crossed that this is finally resolved.
In other exciting news, I have been approached to write another family history text book. This won’t be happening until my course is over but hoping for a 2023 publication date.
And just because no pictures go with this post, here is a gratuitous sunrise for you.
As part of the Family History Federation’s Really Useful Show tonight, 12 November, I will be giving a talk on the crucial topic ‘Genealogy: the Next Generation’. This is a live only talk, which will take place at 7.30pm. I set out some of my thoughts on this topic in a previous post and I would encourage you to take a look at this. I had intended that today’s session would be a short presentation, followed by a discussion but unfortunately, the show platform does not lend itself to the level of discussion that this topic deserves. There is also a limited number of places, so some potential attendees may be disappointed. The Friday evening will offer some thoughts and suggestions on the topic, as well as providing some discussion points. The handout for the topic is here. To provide the opportunity for open discussion, there will be a Zoom meeting on this important topic, on Saturday 27th November at 10.30am GMT. This meeting will have the potential for 500 attendees; the discussion will be in small groups. To be sent the log in details for the 27th November meeting, please contact me using the contact box on the home page.
I know, I know, I’ve been worryingly silent lately. I think this is my longest ever gap between blogs. You only have to read my previous post to know that I haven’t been sitting around doing nothing. Firstly the family have been visiting. This involves excavating the house from under its protective layer of dust, although I suspect the visitors think I could have done a better job. It also means that I’ve been cautiously out and about digging sandcastles, blowing bubbles, reading stories and other fun things.
The family history continues of course. This month, I have managed to have items in both leading UK family history magazines. My discussion on why our ancestors might have been embarrassing is in the latest issue of Family Tree Magazine and there is a short item about agricultural labourers as part of a feature about genealogy education in Who Do You Think You Are?.
One Pharos course (In Sickness and in Death: researching the ill-health and death of your ancestors) draws to a close and another, First Steps to a One-place Study, begins. I am also checking through Are you Sitting Comfortably: writing and telling your family history ready for October and working on a beginners’ course for Devon Family HIstory Society. There are talks to three countries on the horizon, I’ve done some more brick wall demolition and chatted all thing one-place for an upcoming Family History Federation podcast.
I am still working with my lovely memories group, which is really just chatting with friends. I have got to the end of 1973 in my hugely embarrassing diary read. Another ten years and it might start to get better!
If you’ve been following my ramblings for a while you will know that I am passionate about involving young people in their history and heritage. It is something that I have written about and give talks on. Finally, in no small part due to the wonderful folk at Hidden Branch, there is a real enthusiasm for moving forward in this area. Family history societies need to embrace this if they are to have a future. Down here in Devon we are looking for someone (or several someones) with Devon heritage, or a Devon address, in the 18-25 age range to help us to take our society forward in this respect. If that’s you, or if you know someone, please get in touch. It is no good a load of old people trying to decide what they think younger people want.
Following on from the great loft sort out, I’ve embarked on a bit of a book cull. This may sound like sacrilege but when you have a house as small as mine, it is hard to justify keeping books that you haven’t opened since the 1970s. This week on Twitter someone pointed out that 1980 (which as we all know must be about ten years ago surely) is the same distance from 1939 as it is from 2021 – noooooooo.
We are off on another mini jaunt soon, this time heading east to Norfolk. Time of course to revisit the Norfolk ancestry so I can plan the obligatory churchyard tour. There are images of parish registers online now, which weren’t available last time I worked on this branch and ooh look there are a few new ancestors to be discovered. Currently, I am wrestling with some Norwich woolcombers and Great Yarmouth shopkeepers and trying to negotiate my way past an ancestor who was not baptised and came from a non-will writing family who never appear in the newspapers. The use of more unusual forenames means that I am pretty sure who his parents are but evidence, there’s another thing.
The excitement is building prior to the start of my postgraduate certificate course but I have decided to chart my progress through that in a series of separate posts, so watch this space.
I always say that I work 100 hours a week, or just spend my life enjoying myself. See what you think. This was a fairly typical week in the busyness stakes.
Wednesday
Most of the day was spent hosting ‘One Place Wednesday Online’. #OnePlaceWednesday takes place each week on Twitter, when those with one-place studies ‘chat’. This was an experiment to see if we could have conversations that were more than 280 characters long. And we could! Here are the topics we covered (I was going to list just some of them but I wanted you to get the full favour of the day):
Why settlements grew up where they did
Organising heritage walks
When does a scandalous story become interesting history? How recent is too recent for the story to be told?
Studying indigenous history in ‘colonial’ one-places
Dating vernacular housing
Mapping gravestones
Places and a sense of belonging
Doing a one-place study without spending money and not using Ancestry/FindmyPast etc
War Memorials
Covid in our places
Preserving the story of the present for the future
What makes a community? – geography, religious persuasion, shared experience?
Bottom up history or top down?
Making one-place studies, history and heritage relevant to all ages
Use of family trees for one-place studies
Rural places being swallowed up by towns
Archaeological surveys
Gravestone styles
Ebay purchases
Lockdown (impact on activities, health, different people/different attitudes, changes to the way we research and things like meeting)
Railway accidents
Availability of records in different places
Interviewing “reluctant” contributors and interview techniques
Australian records
Coincidence (or too much of a coincidence) in a name change mystery
Parliamentary Archives
What a good idea the One-place Wednesday online was
1910 valuation
Multiple births
Then, if that wasn’t enough, I had to accompany Mistress Agnes to her virtual talk on seventeenth century crime and punishment at The Merchant’s House. No idea why she can’t go on her own.
Thursday
I was working on a Brick Walls presentation for Devon Family History Society. Working on the walls is a team effort, then I put them together in a presentation. My lovely memories group met to chat about school days in the evening.
Friday
This was devoted to Devon Family History Society admin, followed by a virtual talk to a local U3A about Memories of 1946-1969 and how to write your own and putting the finishing touches to the Brick Walls session.
Saturday
I went through one of the lessons, ready for my online One-place Studies course that starts next month. (There were still a few spaces last time I looked.) Every time, things need updating and links need checking. Then it was virtually off to North-west Kent Family History Society to give a presentation about agricultural labourers. In the afternoon, it was time to deliver the Brick Walls session, tackling submitted family history problems. I think we have taught people how to circumnavigate their own brick walls too well, as this year’s walls were super-solid, so our success rate was lower than usual but we did give suggestions for further research for those we couldn’t solve and there were some very happy customers.
Sunday
I sent out the second lesson to my Pharos Sickness and Death course students. Then making a start on the second Brick Walls session for August but it was mostly too hot for working. People have weekends off right? Not sure I understand this concept.
Monday
An early meeting with Australia, preparing to assist with another Brick Walls session later in the week. Then I had fun recording a podcast about young people and family history for the Family History Federation. The internet connectivity gremlins (not mine) were out in force but it was a very interesting discussion. Another Brick Wall preparation meeting in the evening.
Tuesday
Some CPD training for the job I must not mention and then that very rare thing for someone who works in the family history field, some of my own family history, prompted by a DNA match. This on a Cornish branch that I haven’t worked on for so long that it has never made it from paper on to Family Tree Maker. Given that my first version of this software was on floppy discs, you can see how long it has been neglected. It is close to forty years since I last took a serious look. The Buckinghams are finally being computerised! Not exactly breaking down my own Buckingham brick wall but some suggestions and it does look likely that they came from Devon, rather than Cornwall. Plus the joy of discovering that my 5x great grandparents were in court for fornication. I so need to get a copy of this record. The day ended with an Education sub-committee meeting for Devon Family History Society.
Wednesday
I spent a long time proofreading my article that is due to appear in the next issue of Family Tree Magazine. I am really pleased with this one but it does contain a tricky, sensitive paragraph, which has been worked and re-worked numerous times. Then I attempted to write a section for a rural history book that my local history group are compiling. This was followed by a hybrid meeting of said group. We were proud to have members from three continents, both in the room and online. We still haven’t quite cracked the sound quality coming from the room but we have plans and the speaker was online, so it wasn’t critical.
I still have the Australian brick wall session, listening to a talk, hosting a talk, hosting a coffee morning, sending for the fornication court report, an online chat for Pharos students, a committee meeting, giving a talk, oh and cleaning the house before the family descend at the weekend.
If you think I need downtime, I have been walking on the beach most days. One disastrous evening walk involved encountering far too many people in order to get from the car to the sand. I must have been in sight of getting on for 500 people only two of whom were wearing masks (apart from me). I am not counting the two with masks on their chins. Ok so it was outside but it was very crowded and it was ‘Freedom Day’. I do understand why this is a good thing for many people but equally it is anything but for others. I have friends with health conditions that not only make them extremely vulnerable but also make the vaccine less effective. There are those who are far more COVID anxious than I. Monday was imprisonment day for them. Whilst many people are being personally responsible and are aware of taking care of others, many are not. There are those whose physical or mental health means that they cannot risk being round idiots who are acting like it is all over and who have zero respect for others. I also feel for the young people who may be vulnerable themselves, have vulnerable family members, or who are just anxious and want to wear masks. Now this is not essential, bullying for mask wearing will escalate and sadly not just amongst children. Whilst lockdown anxiety was a very real problem, freedom anxiety is equally so for others, spare a thought for them. Me, I am sticking to early morning beach walks.
The last word belongs to Edward who has been fund raising for a local (to me not him) charity that helps families like his feel at ease and provides exciting activities in a safe space. He has been walking every day, when even leaving the house can be difficult for him. If you want a heatwave, get Edward to do a charity walk. His efforts always coincide with extremely hot weather. He has also been delivering ‘happy post’ to lift people’s spirits. His fundraising page (in his dad’s name) is still open.
Finally, a recent conversation about university in Edward’s household, Edward (aged 7) tells it like it is.
Edward’s mum: Granny is starting a course on archaeology in September
What else do you do on a summer Saturday but excavate the historic doll/stuffed toy collection from under the dust of ages and I do mean ages. I am not sure that the stuffed toys have had the dust bashed out of them for decades.
Meet the motley crew, some of who are almost centenarians.
They were removed from their cupboard-top home, stripped naked, apart from the two that my mother appeared to have sewn into their clothes and readied for the major operation.
Next, to wash the clothes, some of which needed hand washing. It might be a while since they were last washed but I know from bitter experience these are old fabrics that are far from colour fast. Sadly, since they were last laundered, it seemed that the moth had made a meal of some of the woollen items, lovingly knitted by three generations.
The shoes were scrubbed and left to drain.
Then bath time. I don’t have a real bath (I have what is officially the smallest bathroom in the world – seventeenth century cottages not being too hot on bathrooms, so I replaced the bath with a shower). No bath means no bubble bath, so I substituted washing up liquid. It turned out that I also had to use a rather rough washing up sponge to scrap the dust from grubby limbs and faces – sorry dollies.
From the left: Christine, Jilly, Mary, Jane, Betty, Sally, Big Peter – you can pin point my generation just from the names.
As you will see, the baby bath has stood the test of time. I am wondering if this will be marked up as an inappropriate image.
Mary and Jilly
You have no idea how long it takes to peg umpteen small items on the washing line. Take it from me – a long time and it used up every inch of line and every peg I could find.
The dolls were left in the sun to dry. I did have to temporarily amputate a few limbs and even one head, in order to let the water drain out.
Big Peter and baby Peter (not a lot of imaginative naming on the part of my mother there), now in their late nineties, were spared total immersion, not least because baby Peter’s clothes don’t come off. In fact I fear for the stability of the wires attaching Big Peter’s limbs and heads, hence the warning notice.
Then it was time to bash the soft toys together and stand well back as the dust flew.
A quick bake in the sun followed. Today they will be redressed and replaced on top of the cupboard. It is a sobering thought that if they wait as long for their next washing as they did for this one, I may not be around to do it.
My lovely memories group ladies are writing about the toys and games of their childhood at the moment. I am fortunate to have many of mine still in my possession. The great loft sort has revealed a feast of goodies. They may just become the subject of a talk. In the meantime, whether you still have the contents of your toybox or not, I would encourage you to record the memories of your own particular treasures.
NB no dolls were permanently harmed in the creation of this blog – well, I am not sure I should have washed Jane’s hair (already her second lot of hair) but she will get over it.
Here I am, three decades after serving on the executive committee of the Family History Federation, having the honour of being voted in as its President. I am following some seriously big names in the genealogical community. To be considered some kind of elder stateswoman, is not only a humbling experience, it also makes me feel incredibly ancient. Perhaps I should point out that during my time on the executive I was the youngest ever serving member; though I think that record has since been passed to someone else. Family history societies are at a cross-roads. Many have seen slowly declining memberships and have struggled to fill committee and volunteer roles in recent years. Now is the time to reinvent ourselves and our function, or to fade into oblivion. We cannot keep repeating the pattern that has not been working well and expect it to suddenly become relevant and appealing. The pandemic has forced us to rethink the way in which we do many things. Societies can either put change in the ‘too hard’ basket or embrace it and perhaps use it as the first step to a resurgence. Societies can still be relevant in today’s genealogical landscape but it takes work and insight to make them so. For many years, I have come into contact with societies across the world as a member, a volunteer and a speaker. In the past year, my ‘catchment area’ has expanded exponentially and I am looking forward to ‘meeting’ many more family historians in the coming months. I am very mindful of the honour that has been entrusted to me in these challenging times.
On the family history front, I have been getting out my sledge hammer and attempting to crash through some family history brick walls for Devon researchers. Despite much of the sleuthing being done by my colleague, I ended up presenting the findings in a FindmyPast podcast, which you can view here. These may not be your personal brick walls but the techniques we used could be effective on your own problem ancestors.
I have also had what is probably classed as an old-age crisis. Before I wrote Barefoot on the Cobbles, I debated whether to write a novel or take a post-graduate course. On that occasion, the novel writing won. I am still playing with ideas for a possible third novel but nothing yet seems quite right, so I have returned to the post-graduate idea. I am excited to have been accepted by University College Dublin as a remote student on their certificate course in experimental archaeology and material culture. I am not quite sure what I have let myself in for but I am not going to be bored.
My ‘Discovering more about your Agricultural Labouring Ancestors’ online course is coming to an end and the students are now compiling case studies about their chosen farming ancestors. I have a few more submissions to read from my ‘Writing and Telling your Family History’ students, then thoughts will turn to next month’s course, ‘In Sickness and in Death – researching the ill-health and death of your ancestors’. As I said, no time to be bored.
For those of you waiting to hear about the end of our short trip to South Devon, watch this space.
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!
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.
Yes, it has been a bit quiet here lately. A whole nine days without giving a Zoom talk, although I have attended a few. I deliberately left a gap, thinking that family might be able to visit. Sadly not to be. I have had some family Zoom time including joining in with the construction of a mega Harry Potter Lego set, with the participants kindly holding up the board to the camera, so that I could witness every step. I have also forced myself off the laptop and have begun the mammoth task that is turning out the loft, of which more later as this is a family history story.
I had reached a bit of a halt whilst re-examining my children’s paternal line. This did include the excitement, mentioned previously, of discovering four sisters who had ten illegitimate children between them and also an ancestor who dropped dead on her way back from working in the fields but I digress. I felt that I was getting a little bogged down with this story so, prompted by the imminent visit of my daughter to Whitby, I turned to look again at her Mead ancestors who came from that area. This was a real case of restart, revisit, review, as all I had done on this line in the past twenty five years was to add on the 1901 and 1911 census entries. Almost all the research had been done pre-computer, using certificates, censuses and the IGI (the forerunner of family search). I had never had the opportunity to visit a Yorkshire record office.
So, with new eyes, access to images of original registers and online indexes, I was gratified to confirm my previous research, which stretched back to my children’s 4x great grandparents. Fairly swiftly, four further generations were added. These solidly respectable (glossing over a few very short pregnancies for eldest children) and comparatively prosperous Yorkshire yeoman farmers did lack imagination when it came to naming their children. Seven generations in the direct line and every blessed one was called John or Francis. All the Francises had brothers called John and you’ve guessed it, all the John’s have brothers called Francis. Ok, I’ll concede, one was called John Edward but really.
Then I started on the families of the brides. This is still ongoing but it is fascinating, well to me anyway. I am back to the seventeenth century here so the contextual social history is not a problem. Remember though that I am a soft southerner. One with strong emotional and familial links to Northumberland but definitely a southerner. I am now immersing myself in the local history, which is new territory for me. I skim read the relevant General View of Agriculture, being very grateful that I can still speed read as it is 392 pages. Now I am dredging the depths of my knowledge of sixteenth and seventeenth religious history and giving it a new application. I am currently embroiled in tales of priest’s holes and recusancy, as it turns out that one of the brides came from a staunchly Catholic parish and that her very unusual surname appears on lists of those whose estates were sequestered. It is also a surname that seems to now be extinct, just nine English/Welsh births (in all three spelling variants) and only one, a female, in the last ninety years, another fascination. Today I may be doing a mini-one name study of the name in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries. I am forcing myself to put this research aside in order to tick at least one thing off the to do list every day and also to incorporate some loft-sorting but I am enjoying this immensely. Just keeping everything crossed that the Borthwick Institute restart their coping service soon and there isn’t some massive backlog as almost every generation of Meads left a will. I have zero desire to rush to a hairdresser or a café when lockdown eases but I need those wills!!
And the loft-sorting you ask. That was going well. I was able to sort through my ‘souvenirs’. This was particularly helpful as, in company with the lovely ladies of my online memories group, I am filling in the gaps in my auto-biography. I have now opened the suitcase containing my diaries (daily entries since 1 January 1971 and a few isolated entries prior to that). It turns out that in 1968 (which I abandoned in September) I not only noted the weather but also all the books I read and more bizarrely what I wore, ‘wore school uniform, changed into kipper tie dress’ etc.. What with that and the Meads and associated families, I may be some time. Oh, I have twelve Zoom presentations to give this month, ah well, I foresee some early morning starts.
This week has seen me enter my 45th year of serious family history research, although I drew up my first family tree at the age my oldest grandchildren are now. It is the obsession (hobby really doesn’t cut it) that keeps on giving and I can still find something new. This last week or so it has been a potpourri of discoveries. An exciting new one-place source, of which more another time. The story of the interesting four Gilbert sisters who had ten illegitimate children between them, plus a niece with one and an aunt with three more. After that I thought I’d better stop looking. Filling in my census and trying not to die between the day I submitted it and actual census day and creating an account of my own census day memories. I have recorded a video of a family history story for my grandchildren, well I had fun with it anyway. I have half written one talk and recorded another, so a fair bit achieved this week.
A few weeks ago, I managed to be in two places at once. Now I have mastered the art of accomplishing tasks whilst sleeping. This is going to be sooo useful. I appeared as a speaker for theFamily History Down Under conference, which went live in Australian time. Hence, I was able to give a talk whilst I was asleep and wake up to a raft of lovely comments and questions. My final session on Embarrassing Ancestors is due to go live any minute and as it was a brand new talk, written with audience discussion in mind, I am keen to know what others think. You can still register for this conference and listen to all the sessions, or register for just one of four streams.
I have also made a possibly rash decision about how to spend my time over the next academic year and if am successful, stand by for accounts of my latest adventure. Only one life and all that. It might mean delaying novel number three, which wasn’t really happening anyway and I might start being a bit more hard hearted when asked to give talks; I have twelve booked for April and that pace really isn’t sustainable.
In non-historical matters, I was asked to complete a random Covid test, to assess levels of asymptomatic disease. Assembling the accompanying box to return the test was a challenge. The instructions were on the underside of the box I was trying to reconstruct. Do I hold it above my head? Do I try to assemble it upside down? Do I look, memorise and then assemble? Then there was the stick it down your throat and up your nose (ideally in that order) thing. The next challenge was putting the swab in the tiny transparent tube. This was a bit of a fail. Having taken my glasses off so I could see my tonsils in the mirror (my close sight is better without glasses), the tube was beyond my clear sight range and it took a few goes to get the stick in. I know, I know, I should have moved it closer. What a wonderful thing hindsight (or indeed just sight) is. Next step to put the test in the fridge and await to see if the courier who was, I was told, going to arrive between 15.03 and 17.03, could find my house. What’s with the .03 business? With a two hour window you’d think it would just be 15.00. Should I refuse him entry if he arrives at 15.02? Unsurprisingly, since apart from the empty next door chapel and the mobile post van fifty yards away, I have only left the house three times since October, it was negative. Or at least my hand which accidently touched the swab with all the getting it in the tube malarky is uninfected.
The excavation of the office continues. I have sorted out and sent three sacks full of paper to recycling. No, I really don’t need all the rough scribbles for my PhD. There are a few more files to cull and I have to decide if I am ever likely to read photocopies of umpteen academic articles. Oh and if anyone local wants a huge pile of House Beautiful Magazines dating back four years you are welcome. At least I can say they come from a Covid free home.
Spring is on the way and just to prove it here are some catkins from my newly pruned trees.
The History Interpreter - Janet Few 