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

I feel terrible. I am sorely late with this weeks alphabet challenge blog post. My excuse is that I have been working solidly on indexing and editing a family history book. I have been so tired these past few days, I have barely been able to concentrate.

So, here we are at the letter E:

Two of my great-grandmothers had names starting with the letter E so it makes sense to write about them, right? That would be reasonable but, to be honest, I hardly know anything about either of them to do them proper justice here. Both of them died before I was born, one just months before.

Elizabeth was my mother's maternal grandmother. She was born in Putney, county Surrey in 1884. The daughter of a long line of gardeners, Elizabeth was the sixth child of eight born to Richard and Louisa Dare. My mother never met her grandmother Elizabeth, but had just one photograph of her which was inside her mother Lilian's photo album.

Elizabeth Dare
"Fondest Love, Mother"

Elizabeth was particularly fond of the cinema and she would do just about anything to go. In the early twentieth century, before the advent of television, this was her only outlet from a tumultuous home life. Some family members have said she would usually take her coat to the pawnbrokers, or sometimes clothes belonging to her husband and children. This may sound cruel to some but I actually feel quite sorry for her. Being a wife and mother in Elizabeth's time would have been extremely hard. Before the age of welfare and women's rights, women like Elizabeth had to find respite wherever they could. Elizabeth's respite was the cinema.

Elizabeth's love of cinema extended to her daughter (my grandmother Lilian) and to me. One of her favourite actors was Laurence Olivier and a favourite film was Rebecca. I may not know who Elizabeth revered most in the cinema but I can well imagine her sitting in her favourite spot each week, anxiously awaiting the black screen flicker into light and sound, eager to escape into a world of imagination and fairytale.

Eva was my father's maternal grandmother. She was born in Loddon, county Norfolk in 1887. The daughter of a Painter & Glazier, Eva was the eldest child of three born to Robert and Mary Bowes. Eva was the only one of those three to marry and have children. Her brother Fred and sister Winnie lived together in Beccles. My father dearly loved his grandmother Eva, and always talks of her very fondly. She died two months before I was born.

Eva (second from left with her daughters)

Eva was very fond of writing and in her life she wrote many letters to all of her family and also wrote articles for the Beccles Methodist Church parish magazine, of which she was a staunch member alongside her husband who was a Verger (my great-grandfather).

My grandmother Freda always believed I was an exceptional letter writer, and would constantly tell me that I took after her mother Eva. Freda always knew I would be a writer one day, bless her. When I began writing articles for a genealogy society and I told my father about it, he wistfully assured me I was following in Eva's footsteps. I did not know (or had likely forgotten) that she wrote articles for magazines. This made me feel so good inside, I can't begin to articulate what significance that has to me.

Last, but not least, my letter E blog must make mention of Emails. Without the ability to email people I would quite possibly not effectively communicate with half the people I do. All thanks to message boards, genealogy websites, or my website, I know the very lovely June, Angela, Jim, and Terry, today.

Of course, emails don't quite mean the same as a carefully handwritten letter, folded and posted and delivered to your mailbox. That is one of the many things I miss about my grandmothers. Both were keen letter writers, especially Freda. The reality is though, we live in the technological age where everything is faster, speedier and accessible on the internet. Emails are the quickest (and sometimes, only) way to communicate and "keep in touch". Without emails, I would not have half the amount of family photographs in my photo collection or have been able to share and compare the family history information that I have researched. So, thank you Emails.

 

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

Posting a blog on the letter B really is a no-brainer for me because my hometown is Beccles and my mother comes from Bungay; both are Suffolk market towns and both are very dear to my heart. A cousin of mine joked that my letter B post should be called, "Beccles, Bungay and Best Cousin". ;-)

For the purposes of this blog post I have decided to focus on Bungay and incorporate the letters B and C in my Family History Alphabet Blog Challenge because one particular street in Bungay, which is dearest to my mother's family story, is Cross Street.

Bungay is steeped in history, though if you passed through it not knowing anything about its story, you will not find it at all obvious. Bungay has never been one to boast so I will happily boast on its behalf. It has a Castle, a Printing Works (Clays, who were responsible for the printing of Harry Potter books), a theatre,  a web of hidden and blocked-in tunnels which once linked Church to Castle, the infamous legend of the Black Dog (or Shuck as it also known by), a headless horseman ghost, as well as famous people such as Elizabeth Bonhote (nee Mapes) who was the 18th Century author of the gothic novel, Bungay Castle and author Chateaubriand who sought refuge in Bungay during the French Revolution in 1757 (which brings to my mind another, more recent "refugee" in Julian Assange who also stayed in Bungay). Yet another famous author and one-time Chairman of the Bungay Petty Sessions, was Henry Rider Haggard.

Bigod Castle Bungay
Taken by MJ Preston

Bungay has two parishes (St Mary's and Holy Trinity) and upon researching my family tree, I discovered that some of my ancestors were baptised, married and buried in either the St Mary's parish or the Holy Trinity parish. Searching the census returns of 1841-1911 there are clear indications which parish the people of Bungay lived and worked in.

My first known ancestor from Bungay was my five times great-grandfather, Henry Ward. I am yet to find where he was baptised but one avenue I have investigated hinted that he may have come from nearby Flixton. Henry married Rosamund Curtis in 1771 in Bungay St Mary. They had five known children, four boys and one girl. I am descended from the only girl; Mary Ward. She never married but she did have six children. Her eldest, Henry (Harry) Ward was my three times great-grandfather.

Around the year 1830 another of my ancestral lines - Jolly - came to Bungay from Laxfield. My three times great-grandfather Josiah Jolly moved with his wife Susan and their first-born, Mary. Finances were at the bare minimum though for Josiah, who got his living as an Agricultural Labourer and Farmer, and on the birth of their second child Josiah junior in 1830, was recorded as seeking Relief at the Shipmeadow Workhouse.

It was not until the middle 1890s that my ancestral line - Preston - came to Bungay from Norwich in county Norfolk. Here, my great-grandfather Percy Preston, the tenth child of eleven, married a Jolly girl who was also the tenth child of eleven! They had three children, including my maternal grandfather, Percy junior.

Postcard Image of Bungay, circa 1905

What I love most about Bungay is its wealth of local history authors, past and present. One family that immediately springs to mind are the Reeve family - Chris, Terry and their late grandmother Iris. Others are Ethel Mann, Frank Honeywood (the Town Recorder), Malcolm Bedingfield and Charles Patrick. I must single out Frank Honeywood here as he went one step further than merely writing about Bungay. He went out and took copious amounts of photographs of the town, and some of these can be found in published works, as well as at the Bungay Museum in Broad Street or, I would imagine, at the Lowestoft Record Office.

St Mary's Church
Taken by Debs_Dwelling

Holy Trinity Church
Taken by MJ Preston

The Old Pump Site, Looking Towards Bridge Street
Taken by Debs_Dwelling

Earsham House, Grade II Listed Building
One-time Home of Ethel Mann
Taken by Debs_Dwelling

If you are interested in the history of Bungay, please check out these wonderful websites:

http://www.bungay-suffolk.co.uk

Packed with local history and information on Bungay today

http://www.fishertheatre.org/

Make sure you check out the 'Theatre History' link

Next week, Cross Street...

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

Thanks to the wonderful, creative team at Gould Genealogy I am stepping up and taking part in their History Through the Alphabet Challenge. Starting today I will be cracking the whip on myself, blogging something about my family history each week. This is a great challenge for me because I really do need a kick in the pants...I mean, I really do need motivation (cough).

I will start the letter "A" with my Aunts. I have many aunties, past and present, both here in Australia and in England. Through my teenage years my Auntie Sandy was there for me in many ways and I will be forever thankful that she was. She is great because she usually manages to keep her cool, even when I ask her the weirdest or most awkward questions, or interrogate her for any stories about the family. She always has a smile for everyone, she has a fantastic laugh and best of all, she is a great listener (even when she really doesn't have the time). Today she is working in Byron Bay, on the east coast of Australia. I miss her a lot but we still keep in touch.

My Auntie Sandy c. 1964

When I was younger, two aunties that I also remember most fondly were my Auntie Rita and my Auntie Muriel. My Auntie Rita was my father's sister-in-law. I remember when I was little, she and my Uncle ran a shop in Hungate Street, in Beccles. My sisters and I used to love visiting their shop and we would always beg and plead for a bag of sweets. Auntie Rita usually always obliged, letting us try out the new flavours and varieties, unless my father had pre-warned her that we had been naughty!

My Auntie Rita, 2008

Muriel was my Great-aunt; she was the older sister of my paternal grandmother Freda. Muriel and Freda were extremely close and they spent a lot of time together so I got to know Muriel very well, as she lived on the same street as Freda for some time. When I made a return visit to Beccles in 1988, I went to visit my Auntie Muriel who was then living in Ravensmere. We had a lovely chat and after many cups of tea she took me into her bedroom and she showed me her jewellery box. As she lovingly showed me each brooch and necklace she told me who gave it to her and where it came from. She pulled out a lovely brass patterned bracelet, and passed it to me to try on. As I sat twirling it around and around on my wrist, she sat down and whispered to me, "I want you to have it so that whenever you wear it, think of me." I still have it, and I still think of her whether or not I wear her bracelet.

My Great-Auntie Muriel c. 1925

A is also for Ancestry. I first started using this website several years ago, when my local genealogical society subscribed to the library edition. Members were allowed one hour at a time, which you had to book time for in a register, and that hour always passed by so fast. It quickly became my bible, and I utilised it a lot. Sometimes I even found myself helping others who were less familiar with the website, giving them a crash course on how best to search for records of their ancestors. I received many hugs and a lot of wide smiles from grateful genealogists!

I love Ancestry, mostly because I have discovered so many of my ancestors (both direct and indirect) through the census returns, probate, baptisms, marriages and burial records, War records, school admissions, and most importantly, through making contact with distant cousins. There is an absolute wealth of information which I am still yet to tap into, and I have been using Ancestry intensively for more than six years now.

Finally, A is for my Ancestors. Without them, I would not be here. Without them I would have no stories to tell, and this blog would not exist. They each lived a life before me; they laughed and they cried. They flourished and they struggled through a vast array of difficulties and challenges; they built the foundations of the world we live in today. They fought for our countries, they sacrificed their lives, and they made the best from what little they had. They flourished in business; they were regarded and remembered; they left their mark. I will finish this post with some names of my ancestors that start with the letter "A":

Abraham

Arthur

Albert

Alfred

Adam

Alice

Anne/Ann/Annie

Amelia

Alpha

Agnes

Andrea

Ada

Angela

 

What's in a Name : Part Two

Last time, I mentioned there was a family name which was deserving of its own separate post. That is because it is a story worth telling in its own right; a World War One story with a bittersweet ending. A story of a HMS Cressy-Class naval ship in the North Sea. The year: 1914.

My great-grandfather had served with the Royal Navy from 1899 through to 1907. He later served with the Royal Fleet Reserve from 1907 to 1912, and again from 1912 to 1917. When World War One broke out in August 1914 he was posted to HMS Hogue.

HMS Hogue was a Cressy-class armoured cruiser built by Vickers Ltd., in Barrow-in-Furness, England in 1902. At the beginning of WWI she was assigned to the Grand Fleet's Third Cruiser Squadron. Along with two other cruiser warships - RMS Aboukir and RMS Cressy - HMS Hogue patrolled the Broad Fourteens off the Dutch coast about twenty miles north of the Hook of Holland. They were dubbed the "Live Bait Squadron" because of their vulnerability to German attack.

Although the patrols were supposed to maintain 12-13 knots and zig-zag, the old cruisers were unable to maintain that speed and the zigzagging order was widely ignored as there had not yet been any submarines sighted in the area. Much discussion at the time centred around the inclement weather conditions coupled with the widely-felt opinion that there were insufficient modern light cruisers available for the task.

At around 0625 hours on the 22nd of September 1914 a German U9 (Unterseeboot) fired a single torpedo at HMS Aboukir which struck her on her port side. Captain Drummond ordered her to be abandoned and she sank within half an hour of being hit. The U9 fired two torpedoes at HMS Hogue, who had stopped to pick up rescuers, that hit her midships and rapidly flooded her engine room. RMS Cressy had also stopped the ship to lower boats to rescue the crew of Aboukir. The U9 attacked Hogue from a range of only 300 yards and it only took ten minutes to sink as U9 headed for HMS Cressy. At about 0720 hours however, the U9 fired two torpedoes, one of the which hit Cressy on her starboard side. The damage to Cressy was not fatal but U9 turned around and fired her last torpedo which hit Cressy sinking her within a quarter of an hour. Survivors were picked up by several nearby merchant ships and a Lowestoft trawler.

Source: Collier’s Photographic History of the European war. New York, 1916
Sketch by US Navy artist, Henry Reuterdahl

According to one website I researched, Kapitanleutnant Otto Weddigen of U9 was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class and every member of his crew got the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Back in Kiel, U9 was sent on a lap of honour around the entire German High Seas Fleet. But what of the crew of the three RFR warships he sunk? More than 1400 men were lost in an hour, many of which were reservists or cadets. About 837 men were rescued, including my Great-Grandfather. He was helped to safety by his Commander, Reginald Arthur Norton.

And it's here we come to the family name. In November 1914, less than two months following the U9 disaster, my Great-Uncle was born. He was named Reginald Norton Humphries. I did not know anything about the namesake or why the Norton name held such significance until I made email contact with my second cousin in 2003. He is my Great-Uncle Reginald's grandson, and like his grandfather and father before him, he also carries the Norton name.

My Great-Uncle, Reginald Norton Humphries 1915

There are countless websites which are dedicated to the demise of the "Live Bait Squadron" and also, the Admiralty reports. The report of Commander Reginald A Norton, late of HMS Hogue, can be found at www.firstworldwar.com/source/cressycommander.htm  and www.worldwar1.co.uk/despatches/hogue.html

Part of Commander Norton's report here follows:

"After ordering the men to provide themselves with wood, hammocks, etc., and to get into the boats on the booms and take off their clothes, I went, by Capt, Nicholson's direction, to ascertain the damage done in the engine room...While endeavouring to return to the bridge the water burst open the starboard entry port doors and ship heeled rapidly. I told the men in the port battery to jump overboard, as the launch was close alongside, and soon afterward the ship lurched heavily to starboard. I clung to a ringbolt for some time, but eventually was dropped on to the deck, and a huge wave washed me away...I was picked up by a cutter from the Hogue..."

Norton's report in its entirety makes for very interesting reading, as does all reports made by others such as Commander Bertram Nicholson, late of HMS Cressy, and the fascinating volume Source Records of the Great War.

What's in a Name : Part One

The more I delved into my family tree, the more names I uncovered. These names swim around in my head constantly and I love boggling my family with lines like, "You know, Thomas. He was the son of William who was the son of Joseph; son of Thomas, son of Thomas..." You get the picture. Rifling through parish registers and civil registration I have spent countless hours eagerly looking up and discovering a myriad of names; some common and some not-so-common. Back in the heyday of baptising children with the names William, George, Thomas, Henry, John and Robert there were some ancestors who were keen to stand out and be different. They chose names like Josiah, Percy, Zachariah, Horace, and Barney. Or how about Japhet or Bussey for something even more original? My ancestry has those names too. Were they the historical equivalent of the twenty first century's Blue, Suri, Apple and Sunday?

Three names in my ancestry have struck me as particularly unique, and this blog (in two parts) is about those names. These are not just unique christian names, these are surnames given as middle names. I have uncovered each of their origins except for one: Goodall. This surname appears to be a more common surname in the county of Yorkshire. This ties all too perfectly with the fact that this particular ancestor was actually born in Yorkshire, as were both of his parents. But why he was given this name as a middle name has not yet been determined.

Then we come to the two surnames in my ancestry, given as middle names, which I have researched successfully. There is a fascinating World War One story behind one name, and it is rather powerfully detailed, so I have decided to honour it with a separate post. Part one therefore is for the name: Gowen.

In 1990 I remember visiting with my Mum who had just received her grandfather's birth certificate in the post. The middle name of the father was given as Gowing. We thought this name was very peculiar, but there it was on paper and in records so it had to be correct, right? Then my Mum ordered the marriage certificate of her grandparents and discovered that the groom's father's middle name was Goarne. We tried our best to pronounce it correctly but in the end we were convinced it had to be misspelt. Nobody would have the name: Goarne. Would they? It was shortly after this time that my Mum took an early retirement from genealogy and I was busy conquering the world of working, marriage, and paying off a mortgage.

When I came to my senses and matured rather more significantly, I took up my Mum's family tree challenge and I haven't looked back since (Ironic to say that really, considering that looking back is exactly what genealogy entails!). Subsequently, the names Gowing & Goarne challenged me, daring me to solve its indecipherable mystery. I looked up a marriage entry in the GRO indexes and found this time that it was spelt Gowen. I was so confused! His birth certificate proved the same: Gowen again! Okay, I said, where on earth does that name hail from?

As I progressed with genealogy and discovering all sorts of anecdotal titbits I found out that, among many other curious "habits", giving the mother's maiden name as the first-born child's middle name was quite a popular thing to do in Victorian times. So now all you genealogists out there are thinking that Gowen was this chap's mother's maiden name? Well, no it wasn't. Sorry, you're all wrong. It wasn't until many headaches later, when researching his mother's paternal side of the family in the census returns and parish registers that the name Gowen stared out at me from a dimly lit computer screen. There it was; the mother's paternal aunt! She had married a chap by the name of John Gowen.

Abit of mindless, trivial history for you: John Gowen was born in Yarmouth in the county of Norfolk (I have just looked up his baptism; he was baptised 240 years ago on January 10, 1772). In 1796 John Gowen married Sarah Bunnett and they lived in Holt, not far from Sarah's sister Eliza and family. John Gowen was a Bricklayer and Plasterer by trade and you can find his name listed in many Directories such as Pigot's & Kelly's.

The name Gowen has been passed down from my g/g/g-grandfather William Gowen Preston to his first-born son. This son died in infancy and so his second-born son was also named William Gowen Preston (a photograph of him is at the bottom of my previous post). This son grew up and named his first-born son William Gowen Preston...and so on, down the line.

Coming soon to a blog near you: part two of my mysterious middle name hunt...

Incidentally, John Gowen's father's name was William Gowen! :-)