Family History Through The Alphabet Challenge : W is for...

I remember when I first dabbled in the land of Wills and Probate, Letters of Administration and Codicils. I was really nervous about delving into my ancestor's private (and sometimes, quirky) bequests and personal estate details. Even though they are long dead, it still made me feel like a right nosey parker. That was until I received my first very will in the post. Five pages later, I was hooked (and slightly dumbfounded).

It's fair to say that since those early days I have overcome my fear of being nosey. Mild curiosity has given way to blatant detective work. Thanks to some Wills I've received I have been able to uncover previously unknown siblings, offspring, even grandchildren and neighbours. Some Wills, if they are detailed enough, offer a tiny insight into their individual character.

For example, one will I received was quite specific (and lengthy) about who was bequeathed what, with individual persons stated in bequests with the term, "in the event of their death, it shall be passed to (----------) and not (----------). Lots of words like executors, messuages, trustees, exonerate, hereditaments, had me in a five-page tailspin. My 3 x great-grandfather was either very meticulous or just plain paranoid. It took almost 3 weeks transcribe it.

Image courtesy of National Archives

Another example, from a 3 x great-grandfather on my father's side:
"To the said (---------) my large Bible, To my son (-------) the case of Stuffed Birds and the bed bedding and furniture in the large bedroom To my said son (-------) the two pictures "Daniel" and "Jeremias" the oak chest in the living room the large chest of drawers now standing in the parlour and all the beds and bedding not hereinbefore bequeathed..."

Or this one from a 4 x great-grand uncle:
"I give and bequeath all my ready money, money in the Bank monies --- interest securities for money and all other monies whatsoever which may be due or become due to me at my decease together with all my household goods and furniture plate linen and china whatsoever and whensoever situate unto (--------)..."

The Will of my first cousin 3 x removed is rather concise but all the same, to me it is rather poignant. He was killed in action in 1918:
"I (---------) at present a Captain in His Majesty's Essex Regiment hereby declare this to be my last Will I give devise and bequeath all and singular the real and personal property of which I shall be possessed unto and to the use of my wife (--------)..."

Family History Through The Alphabet Challenge : S is for...

For this week's Alphabet Challenge blog post I have chosen a topic which is close to my heart - Scrapbooking. Besides genealogy, reading and writing historical fiction, and collecting old postcards I love to play with photographs and create layouts in a scrapbook album.

 

 

 

For those who may not know, scrapbooking is a method for preserving personal and family history in the form of a scrapbook. Scrapbook albums usually contain memorabilia such as photographs, postcards, poems, letters, cards, recipes, and artwork. The first scrapbooks appeared as far back as the 15th century when it became popular in England to keep "commonplace books". I often wonder whether any of my ancestors kept scrapbooks and what happened to them. Did anybody keep them, pass them on, or were they destroyed by disinterested parties. My great-grandmother Nellie kept her precious memorabilia in an old biscuit tin and both of my grandmother's had an assortment of albums and leather-bound satchels for their photographs.

 

I began scrapbooking in earnest back in 2001 after I attend a Babies & Children's Expo. I still remember the "Creative Memories" display like it was yesterday. Layed out on tressel tables were rows of scrapbooks of all colours and sizes and the ideas flooded in my over-active mind. I wanted to create something unique and special for my then unborn child and in that moment, I was determined to ensure that all of my photographs would be lovingly displayed and preserved. Thus, my love of scrapbooking was born (pardon the pun).

 

Three generations of photograph albums
My grandmother Lilian's, My mother's and mine

To date I have made nine scrapbook albums. I would really like to say I have made ten if it included my intended heritage scrapbook but that is still on my "to-do" list. Why haven't I made it yet, I hear you ask? Simple, it's one word: fear. I confess that I am a perfectionist (eat your heart out Jim Cameron) and more especially when it comes to creating scrapbooks. I have all the necessary implements, papers (acid free, of course) and tons of photographs but I just cannot bring myself to sit down and actually do it. I am terrified of mucking the whole thing up. Crazy, I know.

 

I can proudly say that I have accumulated a lot of favourite scrapbook "how-to" books and these are a few of my absolute favourites, which I return to again and again:

 

The Complete Guide to Creating Heritage Scrapbooks (Memory Makers)
Scrapbook Journaling Made Simple (Memory Makers)

Scrapbooking Your Family History (Maureen A. Taylor)

Uncovering Your Ancestry Through Family Photographs (Maureen A. Taylor)

Scrapbooking Your Family History (Laura Best)

Scrapbooking Family in Historical Events (Laura Best)
'Good Housekeeping' Wartime Scrapbook (Barbara Dixon)

The Altered Book Scrapbook (Susan Ure)

A sample of some of my personal scrapbooks

My personal tips for scrapbooking: Don't ever use your original photographs. Always use copies; that way if you make a mistake during the cropping process you can always print off another. Always ensure that you use acid-free papers and scrapbooking materials. If you don't feel confident when it comes to journaling, practise on a separate sheet of paper and use the photograph as a narrative guide. Remember, every photograph tells a story.

 

Lastly, I picked up this invaluable tip and I want to pass it on to you. When you create a scrapbook or photograph/memorabilia album, include an "About the Author" and paste it on the inside front page and remember to include a small photograph of yourself. Write a brief introduction: tell the person who will be looking at your album who you are, why you made the album, what your hobbies are, what date it was when you made the album and where you were living at the time. Below is an example, taken from one of my personal scrapbooks that I made in 2003. Please, try not to laugh at my photo (it was the 1980s, come on!).

 

"About The Author"
Fom my personally made childhood scrapbook

My favourite websites to order my scrapbooking supplies from:

http://www.creativememories.com.au/ (Companies in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Canada, USA, Japan)

http://www.familytreefolk.co.uk/ (UK based, but overseas orders welcome)

http://www.gould.com.au/ (Australia based, but overseas orders welcome)

 



Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge : G is for...

This week I am dedicating my Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge to my grandmother's gloves. That's a strange topic, you might say, but read on. There is a story to everything if you look closely enough.

  

My grandmother Lilian spent most of her life in poor health. As a young child she contracted tuberculosis, while bronchitis and asthma plagued her adulthood. Despite this, Lilian had a glamorous spirit and this is my fondest memory of her. She had style and she carried herself as though she possessed tons of it. Some may argue that she was above her station in life but I always liked that about her. She rose above her illness.

Lilian always wore gloves. She also smoked cigarettes from a black holder (which I tried to emulate once and only ended up looking like a right fool). She may not have been Audrey Hepburn either but, to me, she was pretty darn close to it. Every photograph I have of Lilian, taken at a family wedding, she is wearing gloves.

Lilian (left) and my Mother at a Family Wedding

She had many pairs in all lengths, styles and colours. When she passed away I was given a pair of her gloves and I still treasure them to this day. They are ruched at the wrist which is my favourite style of vintage gloves. I used to wear them in my younger years but nowadays they are kept in my treasure box for safe-keeping. Even my mother wore gloves well into her thirties. I remember she had a short navy blue pair which she always wore in the winter months when driving.

  

Lilian (right) with my Great-Grandmother
at a Family Wedding

The History of Gloves

While gloves have always had a practical nature they also began to develop symbolic meanings. It was good social etiquette when approaching a person of high authority to remove the right hand glove as a mark of respect. The same was also true for approaching an altar. A lady could show her affection or favouritism to a man by taking off her glove and offering her hand to him.

In Freemasonry the glove plays an important symbolic role. Freemasons believe that the glove alludes to the purification of life. They quote Psalm 24:4 from the Bible "He who has clean hands and a pure heart"

The tradition of wearing gloves for Holy Sacrament by Roman Catholic Bishops became a religious ritual and as early as the 10th century, to keep their hands clean, Popes, Cardinals and Bishops wore gloves. Kings began to wear gloves as part of their ceremonial duties and later as more of a fashionable accessory to display their position.

Copyright: © 2011 (Go Planet Gloves)

http://www.goleathergloves.com/history-of-gloves.htm 

My grandmother's gloves hold a very special meaning in my heart because my grandmother was special, and because I associate vintage gloves with her. Whenever I go to a vintage clothes market I feel as though I am stepping back in time and seeing my grandmother's world as she would have known and loved it. Gloves, hats, handbags, scarves, brooches, feathers, and long coats. Even through the London Blitz, my grandmother still held her head high. She really did "Keep Calm and Carry On".

  

My Grandmother's Gloves
Photography by Jeff Watkins
http://www.facebook.com/LabrugImages

Finding Traces of Your Ancestors Lives in Unexpected Places

We are all familiar with the buzz you get from making contact with a distant cousin who just happens to have a wealth of family photographs that they are happy to share. I know I do, and thanks to some very special people I have come to know over the years (June, Angie, Jim), I have looked into the faces of my great-grandparents, some for the very first time.

This past month or so I have investigated different avenues of research into my family history, largely using archive newspapers (http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/) and local history society transcriptions. These websites have proven to be invaluable resources into the lives of my ancestors, from discovering advertisements to Quarter Sessions reports. This past week alone I have found two ancestors from the same family line (uncle & nephew) in newspaper reports, sixty years apart. In 1882 one of my great-grand uncles, then aged thirteen, was charged with stealing fruit from a garden, and later the following year, he was charged for stealing a purse from a six-year-old boy. Subsequently, he was sent to Buxton Reformatory for five years. This news was equally disturbing and surprising, but in the end I had to concede that I have discovered a truly valuable addition to my family story.

Sixty years on, one of his nephews (my maternal grandfather), was in the newspaper for an entirely different reason. In 1943 he was repatriated home to England from Germany, where he had spent three years in a Prisoner of War Camp after being captured in Dunkirk in June 1940. His return home made local news and he even managed to get his mug shot on the front page!

The first paragraph brought unexpected tears to my eyes

Then there is one of my favourite resources for local history: eBay. That's right, I did say eBay. An unexpected source I grant you, but one that I have come to value almost as much as postcard fairs and emails from distant cousins. A few years ago, whilst conducting a google image search for one of my favourite childhood locations there were several links to the eBay website. At first I ignored them all because I didn't believe it would be relevant to my search. Then I relented, and I haven't looked back since. Not only have I found postcards of my own home town in Suffolk but several of those of my ancestors; a variety of towns, villages, and locations in Norfolk, Suffolk, London, Surrey, and Yorkshire.

I found one faded black & white or sepia toned postcard image of an ancestral town or picnic spot or a street, which turned into another find, and yet another and another. Sometimes I win the bid, sometimes I miss out. It has become my one weakness (thank you Dorcas Lane). One postcard that stands out in my memory from last year was an image of Holt Lodge in Norfolk. This building was not particularly relevant to my ancestry but the seller had also uploaded the back of the postcard which had been written on. It was from my 2 x great-grand uncle (in Norfolk) to his nephew (in Hampstead). I missed out on the item, but I did manage to keep a copy.

The back of a Postcard sent by my 2 x great-grand Uncle to his Nephew

Last week I bid on a postcard from Holt. It was a fairly ordinary image (a pond!), quite faded with the heavy-handed postmark stamp creating a nice little crater on the top left corner. I never expected to have it arrive on my doorstep and find it was written to my first cousin, three times removed. My initial findings had me thinking it was written by my 2 x great-grand uncle - the same one as described above - but further investigations and cross-referencing of the handwriting, proved that it was written by an unknown person. Even so, it was definitely addressed to my cousin who was then living in Richmond, county Surrey. Four years after the postcard was sent, she was married and living in Richmond with her widowed husband and step-daughter.

Postcard sent to my distant Cousin in 1904

The moral of this post is, leave no stone unturned. Investigate every possible avenue, and when you think it couldn't be likely, it really could be likely. If you don't ask, you won't find out. I took the chance on my grandfather's newspaper report. I already had several sources of information into his repatriation and I had found a link to a local newspaper report but until I approached the local Record Office, not only did I gain a personal account of his return from my great-grandmother (who had obviously been interviewed for the story) but I also gained a new photograph, albeit grainy.



My Grandfather in the Local Newspaper



And as far as eBay is concerned: it is game of chance. It is pot-luck. Sometimes I have found some treasures, and sometimes I have missed out. Sometimes I have paid pittance and sometimes I have paid exorbitant amounts. What I have discovered and gained from it all though, is absolutely priceless.

This post is dedicated to my Uncle who is currently recovering from a recent hospital stay following an operation and intensive health issues. Get Well Soon M xxx

xxxxxxx