Tag Archives: Family History

Now We Are 40: family history reflections

by thehistoryinterpreter

Cargreen shop old postcardBefore anyone suggests that I am not wearing well, or wishes me Many Happy Returns (do people still say that?), I am, sadly, not celebrating my 40th birthday. This week I enter my fifth decade of serious family history research. It was March 1977 when I took myself off, alone, to Cornwall to visit my father’s ancestral village for the first time. I arrived by public transport at a B & B some six miles away. All I can remember about this was that the proprietor chatted incessantly about her late husband’s role with the electricity board. The next day was Sunday. Said small ancestral village not being overly well blessed with Sunday public transport links (there weren’t any) I decided I would walk. I am still of the opinion that Cornish miles are longer than those elsewhere. I plucked up courage to enter the local pub (think lone female, 1977, rural pub) and ask if there was anyone of my surname living locally. It turned out that half the village were related and I was ‘adopted’ by members of the family instantly. They even had a car to take me back to the B & B.

Forty years on and the family history world has changed beyond recognition, not always for the better. The hobby/obsession has shaped my leisure time, my friendships, my working and academic life. I am still of the opinion that an understanding of history is crucial to our well-being, both personally and as a nation, as a world. Only this week a ‘think tank’ (who no doubt were paid a small fortune to work this out) suggested that schools should teach children to recognise fake news. Schools have been doing this for centuries. The subject dear think tank is called history. It teaches the ability to evaluate sources, to recognise the role of propaganda, to think critically – or at least it should. The very personal brand of history that is family or community history, gives us a sense of self, a sense of place. ‘Lone Tester’ has just posted a very interesting blog entitled ‘Are you a Genealogist or a Family Historian?’ I have long-since realised that ‘genealogist’ and ‘family historian’ have different meanings in different parts of the globe and perhaps the way in which the terms are understood also varies according to how long an individual has been researching. To me, genealogy is the basic family tree and family history is the wonderful contextual background, setting those individuals on that family tree into their time and place.

Whilst on the subject of putting our ancestors in their place, I was pleased to see what a great job Family Tree Magazine made of my article on One-Place Studies in their latest issue – than you Family Tree Magazine.

…. and the latest in the ‘what does Janet not have wrong with her?’ saga – having been x-rayed last week, still no idea. Am I alone in thinking it ironic that I was greeted by the radiographer with ‘Hello, are you all right?’ I was tempted to reply ‘Yes, I’m in full health, I am just sitting around waiting to get zapped with radiation for the fun of the thing’.

Who I Really Am – More Adventures with #DNA

by thehistoryinterpreter

The further back we delve into our family’s history, the greater the chance that there has been a ‘non-paternity’ event somewhere in our chain of great great grandparents and that one of our ancestors, child of Mrs X, was not the genetic offspring of Mr X, despite what the baptism register would have us believe. In fact, historically, the child of a married woman was always considered to be the progeny of her husband, however compelling the evidence to the contrary. I have heard of baptism entries reading along the lines of ‘…. son of William and Mary X, the husband was transported two years ago.’

I am a great believer in tracing not just blood parents but also those who have taken on parental responsibilities, such as adoptive or step-parents. These people’s values and attitudes will be passed on every bit as much as genes, so they are important. Nonetheless, most family historians do have a particular interest in their genetic line. How ever much we look like other members of our family, there is always that niggling doubt that one of our great great grandmothers may have strayed and we may not be who we think we are.

Next month marks the 40th anniversary of my first forays into real genealogical research, as opposed to just absorbing what my family members already knew. I was interested in all my blood lines but my direct paternal line fascinated me the most, mainly because I knew so little. I visited what was then the Public Record Office (PRO). I looked at the 1871 census returns (the most recent then available) on microfilm at Portugal Street (remember that?). I purchased my first certificates, for I believe £4.50. This confirmed that my family did indeed originate from a small Cornish village on the banks of the River Tamar, as I had been told.

cargreen-shop-old-postcardAt the age of twenty one I took a solo trip and visited Cornwall for the first time. I arrived at the nearest railway station on a Saturday evening. I stayed in a lovely B & B, which sticks in my memory because the proprietor was obsessed with recounting how her late husband had worked for the electricity board. On the Sunday, I obviously wanted to go ‘home’. The village was seven miles away and there was no public transport. Undaunted, I set off to walk. Since then I have firmly held the belief that Cornish miles are longer than those elsewhere. The local shop, which bore the family surname, was shut. I eventually wandered in to the local pub, not the easiest thing for a lone female in the rural Cornwall of 1977. I asked for relatives and met several fourth cousins. For the first time I saw someone of my own generation from my father’s side of the family. Despite being a clone of my mother and maternal grandmother, others perceived a physical resemblance. I was, naturally, very excited.

Although I research all branches of my ancestry, I suppose I have most emotional investment in my Braund line because it has been the subject of one-name research since 1982. We hold extended family reunions every year, I belong. What if I wasn’t really a Braund? I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter, that I have borne the name and I am a Braund in all that counts. Despite having encouraged others who have taken DNA tests and received the results that do not match, with those words, ‘it does not matter’, I had a horrible feeling that I might be devastated if it turned out that my genetic roots lay elsewhere.

Someone from my branch of the family had already had a non-matching Y DNA test result but that was done because there were doubts about parentage in that line. So far, I didn’t match other Braunds who had done autosomal DNA tests but I had been convincing myself that that was ok because the paper trail showed that any connection would be very remote and date back to the seventeenth century or earlier. Within my first year of research I had traced back to my 6 x great grandfather Samuel Braund, thirty seven years later I added another generation but were these Braund ancestors really mine? Could DNA prove my genetic line? Apart from the lack of matches with other Braunds so far, my 3 x great grandfather was born out of wedlock to a Mary Jeffery. Ok, so he was named James Braund Jeffery, later took the surname Braund and appears to have been brought up by the Braund family but there were a few misgivings regarding how honest Miss Jeffery may have been.

If you have been following along with my weird and wonderful life you will know that I recently took an autosomal DNA test. My closest matches were in the 2nd-4th cousin range and one of these had a surname that I recognised as marrying in to the Braund family in my 4 x great grandfather’s generation. This person had the largest segment of common DNA of any of my matches. I emailed a tentative enquiry. The response confirmed that we were fourth cousins twice removed. My 5 x great grandparents were his 3 x great grandparents, thus confirming the genetic pedigree back to a couple who married in 1766. So I am sorry I cast aspersions on poor Mary Jeffery. I don’t even know what happened to her. I believe that she may have died in childbirth. Maybe one day I will find an autosomal match with a member of the Jeffery family. For now, I am relived that the DNA match has confirmed the pedigree that was crafted from 40 years’ of documentary research.

Things that go Bump …. in my world of spinning historical stories

by thehistoryinterpreter

Yesterday was a first for me. I attended two workshop for writers of historical fiction, led by Vanni Cook, who is a reviewer for The Historical Novel Society. This was an excellent and thought provoking day, run by the Way of the Wharves project and we were taking the eastern bank of The Torridge at Bideford as our inspiration. The area breathes history and there was plenty to stimulate discussion, from a variety of eras. We were meeting in the beautiful Kingsley Room, with its unique snake bedecked ceiling, overlooked by a portrait that was allegedly of Francis Drake. We were sceptical about this identification; sorry Royal Hotel if this sells rooms but Francis Drake this was not. Our suggestions were Richard Grenville or John Davie, the tobacco merchant who was probably responsible for the seventeenth century building. We were using Grenville as a possible character inspiration and one of our group was reading biographical information about him when a wine glass, thoughtfully provide for water, sudden moved from well away from the table edge and any people to the floor, where it lay in two pieces…… The next sentence of the contemporary description of Grenville that was being read was……. “He would carouse three or four glasses of wine, and in a bravery take the glasses between his teeth and crash them in pieces and swallow them down.” Well there’s an inspiration for a story then.

#Daisy is making gradual progress; this week’s investigations centre round bankruptcy proceedings, hiring domestic servants and walks from Horns Cross to Bideford. Oh, and more on writing, my house is now part of the publicity material for the eagerly awaited Postman Poet  novel by Liz Shakespeare and accompanying CD by Becki Driscoll and Nick Wyke, which also has a contribution from the fisherman of my acquaintance.

For those of you who are following the story of the five lockets, we have now located a third. Strangely, this one has the initials of the first christian name and surname of its original owner (although she had a middle name), whereas the others use the first and second christian name initials. The only possible explanation that I have for this is that the first name/surname one, which belonged to the oldest daughter, in shades of Pride and Prejudice, was a reflection of the etiquette of the time. Suggestions on a postcard, well in a blog comment box at any rate.

gwen-and-dep-c-1933I have also submitted some pre 1939 photographs of my family’s pets, in order to assist in a research project. Pets are an often forgotten aspect of our family story, do submit your own if you have any.

Finally, in an interesting blog post Jane Roberts asks if Family History is ‘proper’ history. My response: To me (an academic historian and a family historian) the answer is, ‘it depends’. For some, who take their research seriously, investigate context and immerse themselves in primary sources, then the answer has to be yes. They are a valuable part of the historical debate and this intensely personal brand of history is a wonderful way of encouraging people (who might otherwise be disinterested) to engage with history and heritage. There are also pedigree hunters who leap from branch to branch of the family trees of others in pursuit of the shaky leaf. I am not saying this is wrong (ok, deep down it really irritates me but it is none of my business what people do with their leisure time) but it is not history.

Counting Cousins and Descendants and Looking for Lockets

by thehistoryinterpreter

Warning – this post contains something resembling maths but does include jewellery if you persevere. As regular readers will know, I have recently been following the documentary evidence and seeking out my third cousins, in the wake of receiving my autosomal DNA results. This was thrown into particular focus last week when I met with my full complement of second cousins (6) for the first time in seventeen years. Although, inevitably, we were meeting for a sad occasion, a funeral, this was exciting for me as these are my only relatives in my own generation. But back to the third cousins (people with whom you share a great great grandparent).

I was surprised to find that 7 of my 8 sets of great great grandparents married within a thirteen year window 1852-1864; the final set married a little earlier in 1841. Ok, I’ll be honest, one set don’t seem to have married at all but I can estimate a ‘marriage’ date as falling between gg granny having a child by someone else and having a child by gg grandad. What I therefore wanted to know was how many, on average, great great grandchildren might a couple who married in the UK in the mid nineteenth century be expected to have.

I had already found that wiser folk than I estimate that the ‘average’ person has 175 third cousins (people with whom you share a great great grandparent) but nowhere amongst my Googling (other search engines are available) can I find data about the likely numbers of great great grandchildren. We are obviously dealing in averages here and clearly there will be wide deviations from the average; different cultures will have very different experiences. Maybe this is why this is a discussion that does not seem to have been aired very often in family history circles but it is interesting nonetheless. Yes, our families will not be ‘average’ but you would think that, if we look at all eight sets of our great great grandparents, prolific families would be counterbalanced by those with few children and things would even themselves out.

If I am expected to have 175 third cousins, on average, each pair of great great grandparents will have produced roughly 22 of them and me of course. If you have complete data for descendants of any of your great great grandparents I would be really interested to know how many people there are in your own generation, alive and dead, (not the total number of descendants) who are the great great grandchildren of one couple, especially if they married in the mid-nineteenth century. How close is it to 22? Do we have a vaguely accurate figure for first world countries here? How much difference does it make if you are a different generation to me, so your great great grandparents married in the 1820s or the 1890s?

I am confident that I have identified all the descendants of three of my eight sets of great great grandparents. My results for the number of people in my own generation (remembering to include myself in each case) are 5, 7 and 10, far short of the figure I have come up with of 22. So, how do you compare?

caroline-jessie-leighton-1874-1965

Caroline Jessie Leighton 1874-1965

Now the pretty jewellery bit, which also involves cousins. My grandmother had five cousins on her father’s side, sisters whose father was a silversmith. Each girl was given a heavy silver locket that their father made, which was inscribed with their initials. Only one of the girls married and she had no children. The family story was that the five lockets passed to the five girls in the next generation (my mother and her four cousins). The tale of who was given which locket has proved to be incorrect but as a result of last week’s funeral, we are currently investigating where the lockets are now. Two down, three to go! This is important to me. The original recipients have all been dead for fifty years or so. They have no one but us to keep their memories alive. So here is Caroline Jessie and here is her locket. Now you can get back to counting cousins.

dscf3604

Twentieth Century Family History

by thehistoryinterpreter

105372A copy of Karen Bali’s Tracing your Twentieth Century Ancestors (Pen and Sword 2016) has just arrived on my door mat for review. In the light of my recent blog post for the In-Depth Genealogist and as my ‘Discovering your British Family and the Local Community in the early C20th’ course for Pharos has just commenced, this was very timely. As someone who not only teaches courses that focus on the recent past but also as the author of a book on C20th social history [Remember Then: women’s memories of 1946-1969 and how to write your own] Karen’s book was bound to appeal. Like me, she stresses the importance of capturing our own personal history and memories; these are part of our family’s history.

Chapter one looks briefly at the social history of the twentieth century, providing a springboard for discovering the context for the lives of our nearest ancestors. The next five chapters describe different types of record that can be used in the process of C20th research: civil records, censuses, directories, wills and newspapers. The latter chapter also covers photographs and film. These are clear accounts of the sources and their use, helpful for those who are just starting on their family history journey and for more experienced researchers who have decided that now is the time to re-examine the generations closest to them. Family history is a fast-changing world, so although this book was only published in 2016, the scope for C20th research has expanded since then. This means, for example, that the very useful C20th source, the 1939 Register, which was newly released at the time the book was written, is covered only briefly.

Chapter 7 examines the theme of conflict and defence, considering sources that will help with discovering more about those who fought in wars from the Boer War to the Kosovo War and all the conflicts that occurred between these two wars that provide bookends for the C20th. A variety of trades and occupations form the content of Chapter 8 including: railwaymen, policemen, merchant seamen and publicans. In another important chapter, Karen encourages us to research the homes and communities in which our ancestors lived; something that I would certainly advocate. Here you will find information about one of my all time favourite sources, the Valuation Office records, as well as school records. It was a shame that one of my other favourites, the National Farm Survey was not covered. Karen then moves on to helping the reader through the maze of records that have resulted from the wave of C20th emigrations, primarily to the colonies. There is also an emphasis on tracing living relatives, a topic on which the author has written in greater depth elsewhere [New Cousins: How to Trace the Living Descendants of your Ancestors (Family History Partnership 2nd edition 2012) and The People Finder: reuniting relatives, finding friends (Nicholas Brealey 2007)]. Always a key part of family history research, this aspect has assumed a new significance as genealogists seek to establish how they are related to potential DNA matches.

Case studies, which are scattered throughout the book, help the reader to see how the information given could be applied. There is a handy chart that helps to sort third cousins once removed, from second cousins twice removed. The book finishes with suggestions of ways of preserving family printed and photographic ephemera. All in all this is an excellent book, which encourages researchers to examine a period in their family’s past that is often neglected. Even better, it is currently being offered at 20% off the cover price.

And in an Historical Household this Week….

by thehistoryinterpreter

Just to prove that my family have been busy training up the next generation and putting my booklet Harnessing the Facebook Generation: ideas for involving young people in family history and heritage into practice, Edward, aged nearly 3, has been investigating social history. He told his mother very seriously, ‘In the olden days they ate porridge.’ In the world according to Edward we now live in ‘newen days’ – got to love the logic.

I spent a lovely morning with my authors’ group, chatting about choosing titles and other book related gossip. We hope that we will soon be able to announce an exciting ‘writers in residence’ event for our group, in a stunning and inspirational location. All we can say at present is, if you would like to come and chat to us about our work, keep part of 29 April – 1 May free. Edward again, ‘Where have you been Granny?’. Me: ‘I’ve been talking to my friends who write books’. ‘I’d reeeely reeeely like to read those Granny’! That’s my boy! His cousins are just as keen on books, although, to be fair, the youngest tends to regard them as a dietary supplement.

#Daisy is actually making progress. You have no idea how long it takes to work out the state of the tide in relation to a newspaper account of a shipwreck. You’ve no idea but I can tell you that the answer is all afternoon, even with the expertise of a fisherman of my acquaintance. At 4.30am one morning inspiration struck and the blurb for #Daisy popped into my head almost fully formed. Even I am not up at 4.30am so I scrabbled for something upon which to write these beautifully crafted sentences before they slipped into oblivion. It is surprising how much you can scribble in the margins of a TV paper. As a bonus I could even read most of it afterwards, no mean feat with my handwriting.

ivy-and-gwenFamily history has led to fun tracing World War 1 Red Cross volunteers, oh and spending a small fortune on an online auction site acquiring a related medal. I’ve also enjoyed immersing myself in plague and pestilence, partly to revamp our Swords and Spindles history of medicine revision session and also to work on my new Pharos course In Sickness and in Death: researching the ill-health and deaths of our ancestors. I am looking forward to the start of Discovering your British Family and Local Community in the Early Twentieth Century on Tuesday – still time to sign up if you are interested. It is an online course so no excuses. In celebration this post includes one of my favourite family photos from the time.

The weather is taking a chilly turn so the garden bird feeding regime has been stepped up a notch. I am also still ploughing my way through the post-Christmas visitor laundry pile. My only method of drying laundry is to hang it on a washing line outside. Well fed birds and a line full of washing are not the greatest combination methinks, as I scrub away at the after effects of a very large flock of starlings.

New Year, New Discoveries, New DNA Results

by thehistoryinterpreter

Well, here we are, 2017. Who knows what the year will bring? This time last year I am sure few could have predicted the seriously scary political machinations and plethora of celebrity deaths that accompanied 2016. So far this year I have learned that it is possible for a memory stick to survive being vacuumed up along with Christmas tree prickles.

I would also like to share an incident from the lacuna that is that gap between Christmas and New Year during which the descendants descend. The phone rings at 7am. A phone call at this time of day normally means bad news – or that your daughter has arranged for T****s to deliver food to your house later in the day. I am a T****s delivery virgin; I know not how these things work. Having the food delivered was deemed easier than having my personal shopper struggling to identify various ‘modern’ ingredients on the list. We do not know our humus from our quinoa sadly – even spell checker doesn’t recognise quinoa, so we are not alone. The main challenge for the T****s delivery driver will be finding the house. If he uses his satnav he is doomed. It turns out, for some reason that he tried to justify, he was expecting to be delivering to a building site. The justification involved my house name – any suggestions anyone? He had a list of what had been ordered. What would a building site do with several dozen nappies of a suitable size for a two year old?

The DNA results arrived sneakily early, before I had finished restoring the house to a semblance of normality and before I had made any discernable impression in the mountainous pile of post-Christmas laundry. This means that I still haven’t completed my documentary trail hunt for third cousins, so more on that when I get the chance. What have I learned from my results? To be honest, not a lot. Sadly, no previously unknown half-siblings have climbed out of the woodwork. I have 788 matches. Big deal, or not, actually. Eleven people are predicted to be related in the range 2nd-4th cousins. Sorry FTDNA, unlikely I think. I know these people are not my second cousins (or second cousins with a few removes). I think it is very unlikely that they are my third cousins, so that leaves fourth cousins. Three of these matchees (it’s ok, I just invented that word) do not provide any surnames apart from the one they now carry. To be honest I don’t blame them. It was a bit of a learning curve working out how to add these. I have included the surnames of all my great great grandparents and will be adding those for the previous generation when I get a minute (like in about 2031).

As expected, most of the testees have families trees that seem to still be rooted in the US and the only surname that is common with any of my ancestors is Smith and I really don’t think this is the same Smith. What is slightly worrying is that there appears to be no commonality with members of the Braund family who have done this test, although, to be fair, our likely relationship is more distant than 5th cousins. This didn’t stop me from hoping for a remote cousin match. Two of the eleven 2nd-4th cousin matches have uploaded a family tree. I guess that this is the next challenge for me to tackle. No areas of commonality here either. There is one match that looks possible, although it wouldn’t be at 4th cousin level. He does at least have Cornish ancestry and a surname that appears on my family tree, although not amongst my direct ancestors. I know I am supposed to do something with my centimorgans. Maybe we don’t share enough of them. I will await instruction. I had a play with the chromosome browser. The most likely match and I share seven segments. I am not sure why therefore they are identified as a closer relative than someone with whom I share 18. I clearly need someone to explain the significance of this in words of half a syllable.

What other fun can I have with these results? I am 99% European, no surprises there then. This is allegedly Britain, Scandinavia and Western Europe, although not Iberia. As regards my ancient origins, I am 10% a Metal Age Invader. What does that even mean? I am 40% Farmer, which seems to mean I may have origins in Aleppo. Excuse me, I’m just off for a bit of hunter gathering, in line with 50% of my ancient origins.

C20th Research, Third Cousins, DNA and another Writer

by thehistoryinterpreter

Well, today has been exhausting. Slightly delayed start (still in my pyjamas at 9.30am) because I got carried away with the hunt for third cousins. The more I do of this the more I am convinced that anyone who takes an autosomal (family finder) DNA test should be doing the same. Without verifying our documented trees down to at least our own generation, what use are all those suggested cousins going to be? I should make it clear I am being pretty thorough (ok, so I am a perfectionist – very thorough) about this and adopting the sorts of techniques used by probate researchers/heir hunters to trace living people. Actually, that is not quite true as I am doing it on a zero budget, so can’t order eleventy million certificates to prove or disprove theories. Apparently Ancestry estimate that the average person has 175 third cousins (Thanks to Debbie Kennett for that information). Obviously there are huge variations either side of that number and it looks like I am going to be at an extreme end of the scale. It was probably fitting that real ‘work’, when I got round to it, was finally finishing off the course that I’ve been preparing about C20th family and local history. I am now going to market it to anyone who has taken an autosomal DNA test!

common-people-book-cover-usa1Now for the advent calendar. This is a book I haven’t actually read yet but it looks so good that I am going to include it – shamelessly relying heavily on the blurb and other people’s reviews. It isn’t actually a novel either but the story of a family. The author has done exceptionally well to find a publisher for her family’s story in the days of the hobby’s boom. I remember when I first started, reading Marjorie Reeves Sheepbell and Plougshare – don’t read that unless you want to be seriously envious about the amount of family documents and memorabilia that she inherited. Others from that era were John Peters’ A Family from Flanders. Must also mention John Titford’s Come Wind, Come Weather but all these date from the 1970s and 1980s. Now the world and his wife are writing up their family stories getting one commercially published is next to impossible, which is why I think Alison Light’s Common People: the history of an English family is going to be something special. As the title suggests, Alison has woven and interesting story around the lives of ordinary people.

It is an opportunity to find out more about Victorian England in the throes of its industrial heyday and it is by setting her own family’s experiences into the broader context of their time that Alison has produced such a successful book. Now all I need is time to read it. I shall be recommending it to students on my Writing and Telling Your Family Story course – advert alert – you can register now for this – it starts at the end of February and it is online, so no excuses for those of you overseas.

And in my Life this Week…… history and other weirdness

by thehistoryinterpreter

This week I had an early doctor’s appointment. Early is easy, I can do early, especially now I have rediscovered my lost-for-months pocket alarm clock that has been sneakily hiding in a rarely used bag. Appointment was 7.40am. Doctors is a 20 minute drive away. I wake up before 6am as usual and turn off the alarm (set for 6.15am – who needs it). I start my day (aka check emails and social media). There’s a handy little clock in the corner of my computer screen. I really should learn to look at it more often. Suddenly it is 7.06am. I am still in bed – arrrrrggh. Undaunted, I am out of the house by 7.15am. Then I realise that although I know where I live (fortunately) and where the doctors is, I go so rarely that there is a piece missing in the map in my head that should tell me how to get from one to the other. Luckily automatic pilot works and I arrive in time.

‘Early appointments’, I’ve been warned, mean that the doors are locked and I have to be ‘buzzed in’. I fail to grasp the logic of this. Are mad receptionist threatening maniacs only abroad before the hour of 8am (after which time the doors are unlocked)? And if I were said mad receptionist threatening manic would I announce myself as such on the intercom? And another of life’s mysteries, how can the doctor be running twenty five minutes late when I can be no more than appointment three?

Returning from the doctors, I decided that today was the day for making the Christmas cakes; running a bit late with this this year. As regular readers (amazingly there are some) will know, cooking is not high on my list of enjoyable activities, or indeed my abilities. I do however ‘do’ Christmas cake, usually several Christmas cakes. This year I have managed to convince myself that I really don’t need four but two will be sufficient. Cakes happily in the oven I get on with my day. After the required time, I check the cakes and decide that one could do with a little longer to cook thoroughly. I leave it in the Rayburn which is on tick-over (for non Rayburn/Aga users this means it isn’t actually turned on but is still warm). I return to the fascinations of my real life. The next morning I come downstairs to get breakfast and spot a Christmas cake on the kitchen table where I had left it to cool. That’s funny, I think (turns out it is hilarious), where is the other Christmas cake? Realisation dawns. It is still in the Rayburn. The well cooked cake is quite dark and I think ‘solid’ would be a good description. Even my usual remedy (disguising the burned bits by turning it upside down) will be inadequate. Helpful Facebook friends make suggestions as to what to do with this creation, most of which involve copious amounts of alcohol – not sure if that is for me or the cake. I will be making another cake but I have found a volunteer to consume the middle if I cut the edges off.

It has been another week of dealing with incompetents. Just one of several examples:
Me to prospective venue on the telephone: ‘We would like to book your venue for 21 November 2017’
Venue: ‘We will email you’
Venue (by email): ‘Here are the dates we have available in February.’
The months have been changed to protect the guilty.

Last weekend was a rare occurrence. I went to a concert. The performers were Chris Conway and Dan Britton and I had been invited on two counts. Dan’s family were involved in the 1838 Clovelly fishing disaster, that I had researched in 2013 and some of the songs were related to the incident. I was also attending with fellow author Liz Shakespeare, in order to sell books. What a great evening.

Writing tasks this week have included finishing off lessons for my forthcoming online course about twentieth century family and local history research – don’t neglect more recent decades folks, you could even do a course ……… I have also written a guest blog, ready for my appearance on Jenny Kane’s website on 9 December, so look out for that one. Two of my blog posts (here and here) have now appeared on the In-Depth Genealogist’s website and I am writing the next in my series of articles about women’s work for their magazine. I’ve met with our lovely authors’ group again. That’s work right? Surely drinking coffee and eating cake is work.

booksNext week I am being interviewed for Tiverton Radio. So, amidst the pre-Christmas busyness and posting out books for discerning Christmas shoppers, it is all go. On the subject of books, a well known online book retailer has my books at ridiculously high prices at the moment. Don’t let this deter you. Buy from the publisher, even better buy from me but please don’t pay above the cover prices that are listed here.

Serendipity or ……….?

by thehistoryinterpreter

You know those weird ‘meant to be’ moments when a facet of your family history falls in to place and it seems to be more than just co-incidence? There are even suggestions from the scientific community that memories can be passed on through our DNA. Genetic memory or not, there are certainly some inexplicable twists of fate that lurk within the stories of some people’s family history research trails. Often we find that our skills, abilities and interests reflect those of our ancestors. To be honest, we’ve an awful lot of ancestors out there; it probably isn’t too difficult to find someone who shares your musical ability or your love of dressmaking. I feel drawn to certain landscapes and parts of the country. Many of these have ancestral connections but my ancestry spreads over most of the counties of southern England, with a few rogues from the north, so again not much of a co-incidence.

Serendipity then. Here is my hairs standing up on the back of the neck tale. I spent most of my adult life living on the Isle of Wight. I chose to live there and have an affinity to the island but as yet, no ancestral connections, although my parents went there on honeymoon (no I wasn’t conceived there!). Although both my children were born on the island, neither was christened there. The elder was baptised in a Buckinghamshire village during a brief, work related, three years that we spent living in that county. The younger was christened, far from home, at the annual church service arranged by our one-name society.

ann-howe-nee-stratford

Great great grandmother Anne Howe née Stratford

Several years after we returned to the island from Buckinghamshire I took another look at my paternal grandmother’s side of the family. This was decades before online research made life easier. My uncle, by then deceased, as was everyone on this side of the family, had been adamant that his grandmother came from Cumberland. It made some sort of sense, her husband was from Northumberland. After diligent searching I found her, not in Cumberland but in Buckinghamshire. At the time I was living there I had no knowledge of any ancestral links to the county. She was born fairly close to where I had been living. In those days, the only way to see the census returns was to travel to London, so it was some months before I could take this any further back and reach the next generation, my great-great grandmother, who, the census revealed, had lived in not just the same county, not just in the same village but in the same road that I had inhabited for three years.

 

We so nearly didn’t live there. At the time neither I nor my husband drove. The houses we had been looking at were all in the town where he was to be working. Typically, in the days before online house-hunting, the estate agent had also sent details of properties that did not meet our spec, one of them was this village property about five miles out of town. A colleague offered to drive us out for a viewing and we were hooked. Thus my elder daughter was baptised in the same church as her 3 times great grandmother, although we did not know it at the time.

Even my current home has a family history connection. I had decided to downsize and relocate to North Devon but had not yet started to search seriously for a new home. We were visiting Devon and taking someone round parishes that had connections to their ancestry. We drew up near the churchyard. This was churchyard number seven. It was, inevitably, pouring with rain. By this time I was losing the will and in need of drying my socks on the car radiator so I remained in  the car whilst my companions plunged knee deep in wet graveyard. I looked up and saw a For Sale sign. After six months and various trials and tribulations, that are an almost essential concomitant of UK house buying, I moved in. Do I have any ancestral connections to my current home? Well – and there will be questions on this later – my 4 times great grandfather’s, sister’s, husband’s father was baptised here – I’m not sure that counts!