Tag Archives: Family History

Crannogs, Longhouses and other Scottish Things

by thehistoryinterpreter

Time to move sites again and head north-westward into the Trossachs for a few days in Killin. The weather began fine but in typical Scottish fashion, rapidly turned to rain, nonetheless it was a pleasant drive with lovely views. We wanted to arrive at Killin promptly when it opened for new arrivals at 1pm because we planned to visit Moirlanich Longhouse, which is close to the site and which has very restricted opening hours.

We’d passed the longhouse several times on previous visits but had never been able to go inside before. It is in the care of the Scottish National Trust, so we were able to take advantage of the reciprocal arrangements with the English version. The house is a great illustration of how people would have lived in the past. This particular house was built in 1809 for tenant farmers. It is a cruck-framed house, built in a style that had probably been used for centuries. This was the time when many labourers were turned off the land and moved away but the Robertson family were granted the tenancy of Moirlanich and farmed the surrounding thirty acres, trying cattle, then sheep, before changes to growing oats. The once thatched roof was covered with corrugated tin in the 1930s.  The last member of the family left in 1968 and the house remained empty until 1992, when the trust took over.

Various items were found in the house, including ragged and probably discarded clothing, which appeared to have been used to insulate the chimney. There were multiple layers of paper on the walls. Considering there were only three rooms, plus the byre at the end, it is strange that one room was largely reserved for ‘best’, such as entertaining the minister. The room did contained two box beds that were in regular use.

The next day was beautifully sunny, just right for a drive along several miles of the banks of Loch Tay towards Aberfeldy, in the centre of Scotland. We were paying a return visit to the Crannog Centre, or in this case the Crannogless Centre. We visited the earlier version of this Iron Age living history experience on a previous trip to Scotland but a couple of years ago, a fire destroyed the crannog. A crannog is a dwelling that was constructed on stilts over the water and evidence of nearly six hundred have been found across Scotland, which is probably only a tiny fraction of the number that would have been built. Several of these were on the edge of Loch Tay. Building across water is much more difficult than building on land and was done to reserve the land for food production and possibly also as a sign of status and method of protection.

Following the fire and some serious fund raising, the centre moved to its current site, which they were able to purchase for just £1. They reopened in April and have built several roundhouses using different techniques. Erecting the crannog will be a more complex task and building was due to begin the day after our visit. We arrived just in time for a tour and John showed us the museum exhibits, as well as giving us some background history.

Our first presentation was about Iron Age food. Archaeological finds provide evidence of the ingredients but how they were used is largely speculation. We were treated to flat breads made from the ancient cereals, emma and spelt. These were topped with garlic and honey cheese and optional trout. I passed on the added trout but it was very tasty. Emma no longer grows in Scotland, as the climatic conditions have changed since the Iron Age. We saw a saddle quern and it was explained how arduous and time consuming grinding flour would have been.

Next was the blacksmithy and then the woodworking presentation, some of the turning on the pole lathe was highly skilled. The textile demonstration was particularly interesting, with information about dyes, weaving and spinning. I hadn’t realised that woad required soaking in warm urine for a couple of weeks before it was an effective dye. Who first realised that this was the thing to do? It takes 7,000 metres of spun wool to weave a long sleeved tunic. Lastly, we went in the final round house, which had a basket-like woven framework, covered by stone walls and thatch on the roof. Despite the sun, it was still a little chilly and the restaurant was full with a party so we had our carrot cake and drink outside, where it was perhaps a few degrees colder than ideal. Overall, it was a fascinating trip and highly recommended.

and Back in Northumberland

by thehistoryinterpreter

This is now nearly a month ago but here is what happened next.

It was lovely and sunny but a with a bitingly cold wind as we revisited Great Bavington Presbyterian Chapel then a detour via Hallington and on to one of my favourite places in the world, Thockrington, subject of one of my One-Place Studies and home of the Hogg family who I am ‘that’ close to ‘inking in’ as my ancestors. I haven’t done so because I am super cautious and am hoping for just one more piece of supporting evidence that probably doesn’t exist. Next to Chollerton and then, a new destination for us, Simonburn. I am busy trying to reach many parishes that ‘probably’ have ancestral connections so that, by the time I decide they are definitely ‘mine’ (if I ever do), I am prepared with photographs and impressions of the area,

We stopped off at Wallington, a National Trust property that we’ve visited before, the former home of the Trevelyan family. This was just a brief visit to avail ourselves of the café and facilities.

We did have a quick look at the house, which the guide described as having a Cluedo board layout.  It was good to see that sensory bags were available. My favourite finds were a Meissen tea set depicting insects, a dolls’ house display and several photographs of the servants. Around the central courtyard, which now has a roof, are impressive murals depicting scenes from Northumbrian history, famous local people and flowers found in the area.  Given the artic wind (that refers to the weather not the state of our digestion) and my companion’s delicate state we gave the gardens a miss.

As said companion’s ailments didn’t seem to be improving it seemed prudent to seek medical advice, This was to be more complicated than you’d think. First stop at 10am the not so local pharmacy. He needs anti-biotics but they can’t prescribe, he’ll need to phone 111 or his own doctor. He opts for 111. ‘What is the postcode of where you are now?’ Errr no clue. The 111 person speaks to the pharmacist. Still no one is keen to do anything, they will ring back. Five hours later they haven’t, so he tries his own surgery, who will ring back. The signal is dodgy here so they text. They won’t prescribe without seeing him. We find details of the nearest surgery (twelve miles from where we are staying). We ring. He will have to go to the pharmacy. Oh wait, we’ve been there. Doctor’s receptionist expresses amazement that the pharmacy was no help. He will have to wait for a call from their doctor. We explain the lack of signal issues and reluctantly they agree we can come in and he can register as a temporary resident. We arrive at just after 3pm. We see just one other person in the waiting room the whole time we are there. We are told we will definitely have to wait until after 5pm, possibly until 6.30pm. We wait and wait some more in the now deserted waiting room. To be fair, perhaps the doctor was dealing with telephone appointments. At 4.45pm my ailing companion was summoned. Turns out he has pneumonia and the vital anti-biotics are issued. The patient insists that he doesn’t want to abandon our trip and to be honest, he is more likely to rest here than at home, so we will be taking it easy. [Progress report, once home a second dose of, stronger, antibiotics was prescribed and seem to be helping].

The next day, first some taking it easy for the patient this morning. We were due to move to another site just thirty miles away and couldn’t arrive before 1pm so an ideal opportunity to do not a lot before we moved on.

We arrived in Berwick on Tweed, overlooking the river. The patient decided he was up for a drive round. This was not a spectacular success as I usually head for a church but any kind of church was conspicuous by its absence. As we left Powburn, I had been informed that we had sufficient fuel for 250 miles. We got to the middle of nowhere, having travelled about fifty miles and it appeared that fuel was low, so finding a garage became a priority. Fortunately, one was located with the bonus of the cheapest diesel that we’d seen since we left home. We drove through Kelso and Jedburgh. The latter looked interesting but we didn’t have much time and in any case it probably wasn’t a good idea for the invalid to walk round in what was still a very cold wind. This time last year we were in Ireland where the temperature was over thirty degrees. Here there was frost forecast overnight.

We did manage to locate Oxnam Kirk, a low-lying seventeenth century building with an unusual T-shaped footprint. Outside is a miniature stell (circular, stone sheep enclosure), erected to remember the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak. The centre stone came from the farm with the greatest losses and twenty six surrounding coping stones represent all the local farms where a total of 4,732 cattle and 21,319 sheep were slaughtered. In this way, the epidemic was contained within the parish and did not spread to surrounding farms.

Back to the van via the supermarket for more convalescing.

Wallington

A Diversion to the Home Counties

by thehistoryinterpreter

I know, I know, I was last seen in the wilds of the Northumbrian-Scottish borders and the stories of those adventures will be back but while it is almost current news, I thought I’d divert to last weekend’s foray to the Home Counties instead.

Having barely recovered from the holiday we spent a weekend staying on the Buckinghamshire-Oxfordshire borders. When I say ‘barely recovered’ on the health front my coughing companion was coughing a good deal less but I, recovering from a summer cold, was carrying the vestiges of an ‘interesting’ voice and the occasional coughing fit. Just what was needed to do two talks in two days.

There were ancestral parishes from two branches of the family within reach, so having set up the van on a farm site, we popped to Ambrosden, home of the Verney family, distant ancestors of my paternal grandmother. The church was interesting but unfortunately locked and much of the areas was built close on 300 years after my ancestors set their feet on Ambrosden soil. The soft yellow Cotswold stone is characteristic of the area and only goes to underline how different vernacular architecture is in different parts of the country.

On Friday, I was due to attend day one of the Families in British India Society conference. Having organised several residential conferences, I know how difficult this can be and the organisers had done a very good job. In the morning, I was one of several designated ‘experts’. I fielded some interesting enquires that ranged from what to do with a cache of nineteenth century letters, written from India, to the son of a circus acrobat, whose circus appeared to have been sent to India in the 1880s to entertain the expats. The afternoon brought my talk on Writing your Family History, which is an exercise in trying to get about five hours’ worth of material into a very short talk but it seemed to be very well received. I then listened to Else Churchill talk about sources for British India at the Society of Genealogists’ Library.

It had been raining a great deal in this area and I do mean a great deal, with more than a month’s rain falling in twenty four hours and this on already saturated ground. On our way back to the van, on the only road to the site there is a strategically placed ‘road closed’ sign. We pause. We have no idea how to circumvent this, if indeed we can. A helpful local coming from the allegedly closed road, slowed and asked where we needed to get to. On hearing the answer, he appraises the car and judges that we will be ok if we keep to the right. Fortunately, this proved to be true as the farm entrance was in a dip and there was flood water either side of the only access. Thank goodness for a large car. I suppose the fact that the adjacent village is called Water Stratford, should have rung alarm bells.

With no rain overnight, we were fortunately not stranded on our campsite, so were able to travel to Northamptonshire Family History Society’s conference. We were meeting at the beautiful Delapre Abbey, originally a nunnery, then a stately home and for decades after the Second World War the County Record Office. It then fell into disrepair and was eventually saved from demolition and restored to create an events centre. This first session was from the local archivist, about family history resources in the archives. I don’t know about you but I usually find this kind of talk pretty dull, especially when I have zero family interest in the county concerned. Boy, was this different. Definitely the best talk of its kind I’ve heard for decades. It was delivered with re-enacted incidents from various parish chest documents and an unbounded enthusiasm that would surely send anyone rushing to the archives. Next up was Dave Annal whose talks are always good. This one was called Lying B*st*rds and was about the impact of illegitimacy. It was lovely to catch up with long-standing family history friends over lunch. I was up next and managed to get through my Marginalised Ancestors talk without coughing. This is another exercise in getting several quarts into a pint pot. Colin Chapman, on ‘Sin, Sex and Probate’, provided the end to a day of talks that dovetailed beautifully together.

We decided to stay in the area for an additional day to do more ancestral parish visiting; as if we hadn’t had enough of this on our Northumbrian/Scottish adventures. This part of the family are ancestors of my maternal grandfather and Oxfordshire arrives in my ancestry in the shape of three x great grandmother (twice over – best not to ask) Ann Lamaball. I have written previously about the ridiculous number of Josiah Lamballs dotted around, so the plan was to visit as many home parishes of Josiah Lamballs as possible, pending my working out which the heck is the one I want. I have a theory but in the absence of a baptism record, or indeed any other helpful documentation, I am not sure I will ever be able to satisfactorily confirm the link.

We began the day with a walk round the gardens at what is now Stowe School. The current house at Stowe was built by Viscount Cobham in 1717 but we decided not to tour the house as well. The Georgian landscape gardens were the work of Charles Bridgeman and Sir John Vanbrugh and are pretty hot on vistas and follies. ‘Pretty hot’ did not describe the weather, so we didn’t linger too long. Then the game of hunt the church, six out of seven wasn’t a bad haul, although the tour was enlivened by the additional activity known as ‘dodge the flood’. It is so important to get a real ‘on the ground’ feel for areas where your ancestors lived.

A dry day, so the flood at the site entrance had subsided. The caravan is on grass, so I had some concerns about it getting stuck in the mud but we judiciously parked at the top of the hill and my companion who has been getting caravans out of tricky situations for nearly fifty years was confident. Rain overnight made me wonder if we would be marooned but I needn’t have worried and I am now trying to play catch up with all kinds of things that have been neglected whilst I’ve been gadding about. Not least of these is listening to All About That Place talks by friends, colleagues and others. My own two contributions are due for transmission today and you can listen for free.

Ancestral Ramblings in Northumberland

by thehistoryinterpreter

With visibility as bad as ever, this time accompanied by rain, it was a day to choose a largely indoor activity. We opted for a return visit to nearby Cragside, so my still ailing travelling companion didn’t have far to drive. Little did he suspect that I was softening him up for tours of ancestral parishes, which often involve traversing routes that many might consider do not rate the status of a road. Miraculously, the rain had stopped by the time we arrived so we had a quick look at the Pinetum and a scramble through the perilously steep rock garden. Probably not recommended after rain and when wearing varifocals, so you can’t focus on which slippery rock you are placing your feet.

Cragside was built in 1863 by arms manufacturer William Armstrong and it became known for its many innovative feats of engineering; it was the first house in the country to be lit by hydro-electricity. Other attractions for Victorian and Edwardian visitors included central heating, a hydraulic lift and a water-powered roasting spit. I quite liked the heated seats in the billiard room. When Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were due to visit, an impressive extension was built, complete with a massive marble fireplace that stretched from floor to ceiling. Some of the rock face had to be blasted away to make space for the additional rooms. William Watson Armstrong, great nephew of the original William Armstrong, lived in the house in the 1890s and conducted all kinds of experiments with electricity.

It was refreshing to see that there was a quiet room set aside for those who were finding the visit overwhelming.

We opted for honeycomb ice-cream as our midday treat, then set off round the six mile carriage drive. This is at its best when the many rhododendrons are out but was still a diversion on a wet afternoon. We did make the obligatory trip to the antiques centre near to the site before calling it a day.

Finally, a day when there was some visibility, so we set off to visit some ancestral parishes. The issue with ancestral parish visiting, particularly in what is officially the middle of nowhere, is the potential lack of toilet facilities. Undaunted, away we went. First on the list was Alwinton, home of ‘almost certainly my ancestors’ the Newlands and Corbitt families. We were fortunate to be able to actually see the spectacular scenery on the way. On to nearby Elsdon, where the village hall open up to provide toilet facilities, tick. On through Rochester to the little chapel at Byrness. I’ve been here before and was hoping that my some miracle a gravestone that was illegible in vital places four years ago, would now magically be readable.

First problem find the gravestone. The churchyard is on a steep slope and had been ‘rewilded’ with wet grass higher than the gravestones. Unsurprisingly, I failed to find the stone. I looked inside the chapel and discovered a grave plan and gravestone inscriptions that were done more than fifty years ago! Result. Gravestone found and a little more that was readable when the transcription was done in 1973 suggests the ‘almost certainly my ancestor’ must have had an additional marriage. Annoyingly the absence of online registers, or indeed I think any surviving registers, means I am none the wiser. His previous wife certainly isn’t the one eleventy billion people on Ancestry claim as his. At least unless he was a bigamist. The eleventy billion conveniently kill off the ‘almost certainly my ancestress’ in order to make sense of these two marriages. Here is her gravestone, she had several children after this so called second marriages. In any case, this gravestone suggests that he had children before he married my potential ancestress. Did he come from Jedburgh as some evidence suggests, or had the family lived in this area for generation but no records have survived?

Not my ancestor’s gravestone

Family History Round-up

by thehistoryinterpreter

I have been hidden down so many rabbit warrens with family history research this week that I may have grown long ears and a fluffy tail. I’m definitely in full on family history mode. I’ve attacked three major brick walls with a wrecking ball but still they stand, although in one case, I am tempted to climb over the rubble and add the ‘almost certainly my 3x great grandfather’ to my tree.

Problem one, Josiah Lamball, great unusual name you’d think wouldn’t you but no. Every last cousin for generations in and around Bampton, Oxfordshire called their child Josiah. Forget being called Lamball, let’s just throw in a Lambert or Lambeth for good measure. Definitely let’s ignore eleventy billion online trees who are convinced my Josiah descended from another specific Josiah. He didn’t. Look at the original records guys. This Josiah witnesses his father’s will with a totally different signature to the one on my Josiah’s marriage. I am pretty sure I know who his grandfather was and teeny tiny DNA matches agree but as they are all related anyway ………..

Leaving Oxfordshire (virtually) I travel to Northumberland, where I will shortly be literally, hence revisiting these branches now in case I want to add any places to my must visit list. Here, I am still frantically trying confirm my hypotheses that will take me back to my first non-English ancestor. The Elliotts first, who, lovely people, help by leaving wills. Sadly though, these rule out the strongest candidate for the father of Mary Elliott of Chollerton. I am now pinning my hopes on two wills that are not online via the wonderful North East Inheritance Database. I have taken out a second mortgage to order these from the Borthwick.

Don’t get me started on John Newlands who married Ann (Nanny) Corbit in Alwinton. Helpfully, this marriage is also recorded in the register for Oxnam in Roxburghshire, where it seems banns were called. Mortgage for Scotland’s People alert. I’ll give you that this entry says he married Bettie Corbit (Ann’s mother’s name) but it also gives the name of the farm where she lived in Alwinton, so it is the same couple. No burial record for John but I do have a photograph that I took of his gravestone. It has his age and date of death but despite all the photo manipulation in the world I can’t read it. Can I hope that it will have miraculously become legible five years further down the line when I visit? There’s even a highly likely looking baptism, naming a patterns fit etc. etc.. Those eleventy billion people with online trees of epic proportions would agree that this is the one. Except, there’s a much more plausible marriage for this John Newlands. No problem, say the eleventy billion, we will kill off wife number one so he can marry twice. Except, she is still alive, well and bearing children for the next ten years. There are no alternative likely baptisms. Could he have been ‘married’ to two women, one either side of the border at the same time? I suppose so but pretty unlikely. Firmly stuck here.

Aside from all this, I’ve been giving my ‘Researching your British Ancestors and their Communities in the early Twentieth Century’ online course a revamp ready for its next presentation. Unlike Paddy McGuinness in this week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? I expect you know the names of your grandparents but how much do you actually know about their lives and the communities in which they grew up? This course is a great springboard for telling the stories of those ancestors. Yes, I know my granny’s biography has been stuck in 1939 for far too long. It is on the to do list I promise. Read the story so far here. Why not join me on the course and find out more about your own grandparents? It is also a great chance for all those One-place studiers out there to focus on their places in the years 1900-1945.

Then I’ve been working on the background to Homes for ‘Fallen Women’ for A Few Forgotten Women, who will be looking at this in November. Next Friday, we are researching pupils from schools for the deaf but that’s another story. Anyway, fallen women. I was seeking a suitable case study, whose story I could record for International Day of the Girl in October. I spent literally a whole day false starting numerous girls before I found one that involves accusations of murder and four generations of illegitimacy. She’s the one!

The All About That Place excitement is hotting up and they now have a website. I have a list as long as my to do list of talks I want to listen to. Many are by friends, others will be new to me speakers with fascinating topics. My own two contributions are an Introduction to the General View of Agriculture, which I try to drag into every talk I give and Over One Under Two – the story of my straw plaiting great great grandmother Anne Stratford from Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire. She is always up there among my favourite ancestors since I discovered that she grew up in the road where I lived for three years, although I didn’t know I had any connections to Buckinghamshire at the time. This was over forty years ago, I was still being fooled by my uncle saying they were from Cumberland! Ann will also get a mention in the online talk I am giving Women’s Lives on the Farm which is part of the Society of Genealogists ‘Was your Ancestor an Agricultural Labourer? Day There’s still time to sign up for that one.

In other matters. I now almost have shelves so I can unpack the last two post move boxes (not counting the things that live in boxes). I don’t know who needs to know this but if you move a heavy dresser there’s the likelihood that the doors won’t shut when you move it back. I have been risking fingers trying to shove bits of cardboard under one corner whilst the trusty assistant manfully lifts one corner. Dear reader, my fingers survived.

Fun and Games with Family History: encouraging young family historians

by thehistoryinterpreter

On Saturday, I am due to give an online talk to the Society of Genealogists. The brief was to provide family history related ideas, suggestions and activities for young people, with the rapidly approaching school holidays in mind. This is something that I always enjoy and it is vital if we want to encourage the next generation to engage with their history and heritage. ‘Young’ is a bit of a moveable feast in a family history context. If you look at the stereotypical demographic amongst genealogists, ‘young’ could mean anyone under retirement age. For the purposes of my talk, I am aiming slightly lower, at 0-16 year olds, though some of the activities will be fun for adults too. This might also be an opportunity for Family History Societies interested in involving younger people to gather a few ideas.

These days, history is hanging on to its place in the school curriculum by its fingernails. You only have to watch general knowledge quiz shows to realise how woeful the general public’s knowledge of history is and it seems that the reduction of time devoted to history in schools means that the younger people are the worse this gets. Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware how over-full school timetables are and that other subjects, some of which didn’t exist forty years ago, are equally important. It does mean however that history doesn’t get much of a look in and we can be starting with a pretty low knowledge base in some cases.

This has a knock-on effect for older family historians too. I loved history at school but many more senior family historians I talk to did not. In addition, the kind of school history that was taught in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was rarely the sort that was the most relevant for us as family historians seeking context for our ancestors’ lives. This means that the dedicated family historian who seeks to extend their genealogical education needs to acquire not just knowledge of research techniques and sources but broader history, most notably social history, as well.

So my talk will be about things that are fun, things that are, for the most part, nothing like school but activities that will encourage a curiosity about the past, remembering of course that, in this context, the past could be the 2010s! Having said ‘nothing like school’, I spent seven years teaching in a school that was not hampered by the National Curriculum and my lessons were often ‘nothing like school’ either!

There is still some space to book on the talk and it will be recorded for watching later if you aren’t free to join the live broadcast. You can book here.

If you are interested in books, videos and games for children relating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (as well as resources for adults) you can find some lists on my Swords and Spindles site. There is also a list of Children’s Historical fiction, across all time periods and age ranges, on the Braund Society website.

I can’t leave the subject of young people without putting in a word for the Next GENeration online Family History Conference on 5 October. This showcases younger speakers and it would be great to show them some support, as well as being informed and entertained. This is a ‘pay what you can afford’ event, so please do just that. You can book here.

Some Cornish Family History

by thehistoryinterpreter

I’ve just come back from a foray into a small part of my Cornish family history. This involved a visit to the newish Cornwall Archives at Redruth. All very posh and multi-purpose, with very helpful staff but like many similar ventures, fewer actual research facilities. ‘Have you been here before?’ I was asked and could reply confidently that indeed I had. In fact, Cornwall was my first ever archive visit way back in 1978. I did then have to admit that my last visit was in 1983. I think the premises have moved three times since then!

I had ordered a pile of documents in advance and set forth photographing them. Several of these were leases, so had to be captured in multiple images and will take me a lifetime to transcribe but hey ho. I also arrived armed with an extensive list of parish register entries, that I had written out by hand from the original registers on my previous visits over forty years ago. I was hoping to get images for my files. Sadly the two microfiche readers that allow you to download images directly to a memory stick were booked when I rang to reserved my documents but my luck was in as one became free when I was there. It should have been straightforward, as I knew exactly what I was looking for. Using the reader was definitely not intuitive, want it to go right, push it left, want it to go up, pull it down. I never was very good at patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time. Add to this the fact that I was mostly after seventeenth and eighteenth century entries, in registers where baptisms, marriages and burials might all be mixed together, or basically just written on any old spare page and finding the entries that I wanted took forever. I managed to knock about a third off my list but have since added more from another Cornish branch of the family. I might be forced not to leave it another forty years to return.

The gems amongst the documents included two instances of my ancestors coming before the courts for what was categorised at the time as fornication. I couldn’t help feeling a tad sorry for Philip and Elizabeth Buckingham, who married in February 1759. Their oldest child was baptised three months later. Getting married was not sufficient to satisfy the powers that be and despite being married, they were hauled up in front of the Archdeaconry Court. This however didn’t happen until eighteen months later. Was there a backlog? Was this normal? Was it eighteen months before anyone decided to complain? In any case, they had to perform a public penance in front of the congregation, admit their fault, promise to mend their ways and ask the parishioners to pray for them.

At the end of 1725, or in the early years of 1726, another ancestor, Frances Geach, gave birth to a daughter who she named Mary Roberts Geach. The baptism register records that Spry Roberts was the reputed father. In the July, Spry was also ordered to do penance; there is no record of Frances being summonsed as well. The scene of his public penance was St Stephen’s, Saltash, shown in the photograph above. The requirements were similar to the Buckinghams’ case but Spry was instructed to have his head uncovered, be bare-footed and bare-legged, to put a white sheet round his shoulders and carry a white rod in his hand. Despite this public humiliation, within a year, Frances was once again pregnant with one of Spry’s children.

It is documents like this that really bring our ancestors’ stories to life; yet another reminder that not everything is available online.

April Ancestral Adventures

by thehistoryinterpreter

Apologies for the recent lack of blogs. After four months, the overwhelming waves of post-Covid exhaustion are, I hope, finally abating but I still seem to be working at half speed. Apart from the gardening, of which more another time and some lovely beach-side walks, now it has, at last, decided to stop raining, there have been some family history forays.

In no particular order: I have been working on finishing off another book. This won’t see the light of day until well into next year, so I don’t want to say too much but I needed to find a case study of a Victorian midwife. This will be similar to the case studies in my Marginalised Ancestors book. Usually, you have to false start several possibilities before finding one that goes somewhere but this time I found a brilliant one first time. To be fair, I did put ‘midwife AND murder’ into the newspaper search but what a story. This lady claims to have been born in three different countries in the census returns and gave birth in a fourth country. She is also vague about her age and doesn’t always use the same forename. To add to the complications, there is another midwife, with the same, not very usual, name, well the same as one version of her name, who has a husband of the same name to boot. Once I’d realised that these were two different people I was away.

We’ve had another Forgotten Women Friday, which saw me tracing a staff member from the Fleming Children’s Hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I’ve helped a member of my no longer quite so local, local history group take a dive into his ancestry and am hoping to find his ancestor’s parentage, despite the lack of a baptism.

Next, a brick wall to solve ahead of the August Devon Family History Society brick walls session. I only started this yesterday but I think I may have cracked it. It relies on signatures in marriages registers. Hopefully I can tie that one up today. Also yesterday, a history group outing to Coldridge; just possibly the resting place of Edward V aka the elder of the princes in the tower. Assuming, of course, that the ‘murdered by Richard III’, or even ‘murdered by Henry VII to discredit Richard III’ narratives are not true. The food provided by the local village ladies’ pop-up café was excellent, the company was good and the presentation in the church was thought provoking. I remain to be wholly convinced by the ‘evidence’, which is of the circumstantial variety but there are certainly several factors to consider. An interesting story if you are prepared to take it with a healthy dose of scepticism but also an open mind.

What else? I’ve led another cohort of Pharos online students through my ‘Writing up your Family History’ course. I’ve given several online talks, including the one about the Smith family of London. Excitingly, a DNA link, made just the day before, allowed another Smith descendant to attend. Mistress Agnes has chatted to a WI group meeting about her herb garden, with the bonus of being treated to an Elizabethan style meal. I’ve talked about Uproar and Disorder and Marginalised Ancestors and this weekend it is In-migration, with a dash of illegitimacy and Insanity on the horizon.

I’ve been creating a new presentation about surviving the sixteenth century, which will also be adapted to become surviving the seventeenth century. This is going to be an interactive experience. No spoilers but the audience probably won’t survive. Conversations such as, ‘bother I have six people left ……… not to worry they can get syphilis’, have been heard. Just a shame that I don’t think this one will work other than in person.

Sometimes people think speakers charge a lot for ‘one hour’s work’. Quite apart from researching and writing the talk in the first place, which will probably take several days, any speaker worth their salt will run through and tweak before every performance, checking slides, handouts and links. With this in mind, I’ve adapted my heirlooms presentation and also worked on one for the 50th anniversary of the Family History Federation, to deliver in person at their AGM. I wasn’t quite in at the beginning but I was at the 10th anniversary, having already been involved in family history for seven years. How to make yourself feel old in one easy lesson.

I’ve had committee meetings, met up with friends and tried to learn Cornish (even after eighteen months I am still at the lots of words not many sentences stage – I did say that languages were not my forte). I’ve also had a visit from one half of my descendants, which involved extremely windy beach visits, guarding coats while they behave like ninjas (best not to ask) and building Lego, including the Lego family tree that was their birthday gift.

I guess, put like this, I’ve had a productive month but I am haunted by the twenty-five things still on the April to do list. I guess there’s always May, except I have a very full May diary (currently stands at one free evening), including a family reunion weekend and hopefully a trip to Kresen Kernow (Cornwall’s Archives), which means I need to prepare for said archive visit and then there’s the job we must not mention looming, a journal and newsletter to edit aka write much of and …. and ….. and…….   Good to keep busy I guess.

Reading the Signs – a family history story

by thehistoryinterpreter

This story relates to my 4x great grandfather William Seear. Marriage of cousins in two successive generations not only accounts for a great deal and makes DNA research ‘interesting’, it also means that William is my 4x great grandfather three times over. He is also an insurmountable brick wall and has been since I first discovered him more than forty years ago.

So what do I know? Ten children were baptised to William and his wife Mary between 1782 and 1797, nine in Stoke Newington, London and one middle child in neighbouring Hackney. Two of these children are my 3x great grandparents (one of them twice over). Some of the baptism records tell me that William was a shoemaker. I have William’s burial in 1821. He was buried in Stoke Newington but ‘of Hackney’ and his age at burial suggests that he was born about 1753.

There are issues with researching the Seear surname as there are so many variations. Firstly, there are the spelling variants, Sear, Seer, Seare, Seere, Seeare and all those with an ‘s’ on the end. William though rarely uses anything other than Seear. Then there are the mistranscriptions and mis-indexing errors result from reading a capital S as an L or T, giving us Leear, Teear etc. etc.. Then there are the ‘e’s that turn into ‘c’s and the ‘ee’s or ‘ea’s that become ‘u’s, so we get Scurr, Secar and other delights.

So could I find William’s marriage? The earliest baptism for one of his children, was Sarah, on 11 August 1782. There was however a burial in 1784 for a Sarah Seer, daughter of William, a shoemaker and Mary his wife, which stated that the child was seven years and ten months old, meaning that she would have been born in July 1776. Did this push the likely date of marriage for William and Mary back a few years, or did Sarah’s late baptism suggest that her parents weren’t married at the time of her birth? With Sarah’s birth established as being in 1776, there was a large gap between Sarah and the next eldest child in 1783. There was however a Thomas Seear who had been born in Stoke Newington about 1780, for whom no baptism has been found. I had long suspected that Thomas was another of William and Mary’s children and he would certainly help to fill that gap.

There is other evidence that Thomas belongs to this family, as a Thomas Seear is the witness to the marriages of two children of William and Mary, Thomas’ probable siblings. This signature is very similar to that of Thomas of Stoke Newington when he married in 1806.

According to a family bible, that is not in my possession, a T Seear was godparent to the children of another of William and Mary’s children. I also have DNA matches to Thomas’ descendants, so I am happy that Thomas is an elventh child of the family.

Back to the search for William’s marriage. The world and a large number of wives are convinced that William married Mary Stone in Aldgate in September 1776, which would be after Sarah’s birth and explain the late baptism. He didn’t. I don’t know who William’s wife was but I am as certain as I can be that she wasn’t Mary Stone.

The marriage record for William Sears and Mary Stone reveals a confident signature for William Sears.

William the Stoke Newington shoemaker witnessed the marriages of several of his children. Even allowing for the passage of years, the signatures are very different to that on the marriage to Mary Stone.

Note that no child of William and Mary, whose baptism has been found, was called William, so this is not a brother, unless there’s a missing baptism between Sarah’s birth in 1776 and Thomas’ in 1780 and I don’t believe this is the case, as there is no other evidence of a William who could be a twelfth sibling.

So no marriage for William and Mary, what about William’s origins. There are clues. One of William’s daughters marries a Seear who descends from the Seear/Sear family of St. Albans in Hertfordshire; surely there is a connection. There are several shoemakers in the St. Albans/Hemel Hempstead branch.

The Seears intermarry with the Smith family in three successive generations. The early Smiths were watermen in Ham, in Kingston, Surrey, before moving to Hackney. When searching for the Smiths, I came across the will of a Joseph Seear, a grocer of Ham, who mentions his niece and housekeeper, Charlotte Seear, his brother William Seear of Stoke Newington and a Jeremiah Smith, a waterman. Charlotte and (John) Jeremiah Smith, a waterman, are my 3x great grandparents. Another sibling mentioned in the will is a John Seear, who was a ropemaker of South Mimms. Even with three siblings to search, I am unable to find convincing parents for William. The will also refers to a brother and sister, whose surname was Steel. I feel these must be a brother-in-law and sister-in-law but I can find no marriage for Joseph to a Steel. His wife could of course have been a widow and married under another name but still there is nothing obvious in the records.

No great breakthrough in this story I’m afraid but it does illustrate that, if you have ancestors who could sign their names, looking at the signatures in marriage registers, of both the couple and the witnesses, can help to rule out the wrong entries, even if it doesn’t reveal the right ones. If anyone can find the right William Seear marriage, or the baptisms of brothers William c. 1753, Joseph c.1743 and John c. 1762, I’d be very grateful.

Commemorating the Marginalised

by thehistoryinterpreter

Rootstech is round the corner and with it the option to see if I am related to any of the many lovely fellow-attendee family historians that I have got to know over the decades, both in person and online. Along with thousands of others, I am attending the mega international conference virtually, from the comfort of home and I’m looking forward to learning new things. As well as the ‘Relatives at Rootstech’ fun, there are options to see if you are related to famous people. Allegedly I have connections to a few. Most of these relationships are based on some seriously speculative genealogy. So, although I probably am Winston Churchill’s tenth cousin three times removed, I have serious doubts that the late queen is my 14th cousin, at least not in the way that is suggested. I suppose it would be mildly interesting to find that ‘Gateway Ancestor’ that leads back into royalty but even though I am about to enter my 48th year of serious research I have never found that connection. Do I care? Not in the slightest. My interest is in all those ordinary ancestors whose stories will never be told unless I tell them.

I find marginalised ancestors the most fascinating of all. What circumstances led them to become stigmatised, or to find themselves on society’s fringes? Was this down to their own actions, or society’s attitudes? I love to find the lawbreakers, the sick, the poverty stricken and the ostracised on my family tree. Not in the slightest because I want to reveal their stories in some kind of version of the sensationalist press but because their lives are so caught up in the social history and mores of their times. They become much more ‘real’ as their lives are revealed and of course they may leave traces in the documentary record.

It was this interest in those that history forgets that led me to give talks on the subject and my Rootstech presentation this year is about just that. Entitled ‘Tracing your Marginalised Ancestors in Britain’, I will be delivering this remotely but live at 8.30pm GMT (London Time) on Friday 1 March. If you register you can listen for free from anywhere in the world. I believe the session may be available afterwards too but that is still to be confirmed.

A couple of years ago, as a result of a magazine article I wrote on the subject, I was delighted to be approached by Pen and Sword to write a book to help others trace their own marginalised family members. It seems like forever since I finished writing it last March but it now exists as an actual book and those who ordered pre-publication copies should be receiving them any day now. If you have ordered a copy, please do post a photo on social media when it arrives, as I love to see where in the world my books end up. I am supposed to take a photo of me with the book for publicity purposes. This endeavour is hampered by the fact that I am the least photogenic person in the world. To detract from unphotogenic me, I decided it would be a good idea to utilise some of the spectacular landscape that is on my doorstep. This of course means it needs to be dry and ideally sunny. The first attempt was Monday. Bright, rather than sunny but unfortunately also windy. My fine, baby soft hair looks windswept when the Beaufort Scale is at zero. Let’s just say this photo shoot was not a success. It may have to be the ubiquitous, in front of the library shelves shot. You can order copies directly from Pen and Sword.

On the upside though, I have just signed a contract to write another book that may be out next year, or the one after; the writing is well underway.

The study of the marginalised ties in very well with my work with the A Few Forgotten Women Team and I am looking forward to talking about Forgotten Women, in person this time, at the Alfred Gillette Trust in Street, Somerset, to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March. A Few Forgotten Women will also have a small exhibition, tickets are available here.