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

My Genealogy Bucket List

Inspired by Jill Ball at Geniaus http://geniaus.blogspot.com.au/ I thought I would complete her GeneaMeme Bucket List. It goes something like this:

The Bucket List GeneaMeme

The list should be annotated in the following manner:
Things you would like to do or find: Bold Type
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments after each item

So here is my Bucket List:

1. The genealogy conference I would most like to attend is... WDYTYA Live

2. The genealogy speaker I would most like to hear and see is...

3. The geneablogger I would most like to meet in person is... Where do I start? There are many to be honest, most of whom reside in the UK

4. The genealogy writer I would most like to have dinner with is... Nick Barratt

5. The genealogy lecture I would most like to present is... I had an opportunity to do this a few years ago but I bottled out. It was on the watermen of the Thames

6. I would like to go on a genealogy cruise that visits...

7. The photo I would most like to find is... My great-grandfather, Percy Preston

8. The repository in a foreign land I would most like to visit is... LMA and Wellcome Library

9. The place of worship I would most like to visit is... Any in East Anglia

10. The cemetery I would most like to visit is... Horbury, Yorkshire & Holt, Norfolk

My favourite place in all the world

11. The ancestral town or village I would most like to visit is... There are too many to list here. I would love to see Horbury & Fakenham and also re-visit several towns around the UK

12. The brick wall I most want to smash is... Richard Humphries (see my post) and also trace further back than John Waters.

13. The piece of software I most want to buy is...

14. The tech toy I want to purchase next is...

15. The expensive book I would like to purchase is...

16. The library I would most like to visit is... British Library

17. The genealogy related book I would most like to write is... I have several individual Family History projects in the works but I would love to write House Histories

18. The genealogy blog I would most like to start would be about...

19. The journal article I would most like to write would be about... Richard Humphries

20. The ancestor I most want to meet in the afterlife would be... That Richard chap!!

Also I would love to meet Elizabeth Humphries, Eva Bowes, Sidney Preston & Joseph Powell.

Two 'Jolly' Ladies

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! :-)

Family Pets : Faithful Friends

Oliver 'Ollie' Twist

At this time of year I am reminded of my rescued pet, a cat I named Ollie, who came in to my life 16 years ago. It still chokes me up inside to think he came to me on the very same day I received the sad news of my grandmother Freda's passing. Still with us today, Ollie has been called all sorts of funny nicknames and every year he is given his very own Christmas stocking filled with new cat toys, an expensive cat food collection, and lots of  wrapping paper and plastic bags (Don't ask!). I couldn't imagine my life, my home, my family, without him in it.

The RSPCA annual reports show an alarming amount of pets, given as Christmas presents, abandoned in January each year. This number is on the rise, and the message still doesn't seem to get through. Please don't give pets as Christmas presents!! Ollie was a Christmas present for somebody who, in turn, left him abandoned in a cardboard box on a busy roadside. My friend at the time, was walking up this road to take her baby for a walk in the pram and heard meowling coming from the box. When she opened it, she found a under-fed flea-ridden kitten inside.

Pets have always played a key role in my life, since very early childhood. My first family pet was a Labrador called Sandy when I was a baby and my parents lived in Bungay. Then came a cat, another Labrador, another cat, a greyhound, two goldfish and two budgerigars, and yet another cat (but she was technically my mother's cat). I was given a kitten for my birthday one year. He was a fiesty black and white kitten I named Sebastian. Five years later, Ollie came into my life. I did have a Jack Russell terrier named Tsar but he proved to be too much of a handful so, eventually, he was adopted into a new home (with a more patient owner!).

Rover

My family have always been animal lovers and many photographs show a dog or cat sitting proudly on the lap, in the arms of, or by the side, of their proud owners. Growing up my father had a black cat, found amongst the dust at the Beccles Maltings which my grandfather brought home as a kitten and was subsequently named Dusty. My mother had a dog named Rover who was brought home from a nearby village after being mistreated by its original owner. My grandmother Lilian had a Jack Russell terrier (read my blog written exclusively about her. Lilian that is, not the dog!) she named Russ. My great-grandfather had a terrier which he took everywhere (including hunting) with him. My ancestors had dogs, cats, canaries, chickens, budgerigars and horses.

There is a great sense of pride attached to my family's ownership of pets and there are many stories (or should I say, tales!) which are still told amongst the family today which involve a dog or a cat. I even have a wedding party portrait from 1916 where one of my ancestors is holding a small dog (see below).

Greyfriars Bobby

I have long been fascinated by pet stories. Faithful companions who grieve when their owners die or disappear under mysterious circumstances. More recently, I have cried buckets over the Australian story of 'Red Dog' or John Grogan's famous newspaper column, turned novel and movie, about his clumsy, neurotic dog Marley. Then there are famous pets of the past, such as Dewey the library cat, Casper the commuting cat, Greyfriars Bobby, and come on, let's not forget Lassie. What has intrigued me is the large amount of notable rescue dogs and war dogs, in particular, those that are gifted with psychic abilities.

I read Michael Streeter's Psychic Pets with relish last year, during a period of research for my novel. I was struck by three accounts contained within Streeter's 2004 collection of true-life psychic pet stories. Bob, the collie dog, whose owner Roy was called up to fight for his country in World War One. Bob became increasingly morose in Roy's absence until one day he began howling and whining inconsolably. Four days later Roy's wife received the news that Roy had been killed in action.

A British Naval Officer (name unknown) had a pet Airedale dog who  always went to the quayside to say goodbye to the young officer who was, at the time, serving on board a minesweeper.  One day the Airedale became agitated and behaved strangely and the naval officer could not leave the quayside without having his uniform repeatedly grabbed by the dog. That same night, the Airedale suddenly began a piteous wailing and later, the officer's wife learned that the ship had been lost at sea that night.

Falconflight

The last story I want to share with you is about a grey tabby stray cat in Germany during World War Two who was befriended by a middle-aged German man who would pet the cat whenever he saw it near his workplace. One morning in 1944, the man was at home shaving when he heard loud meowing and opened the door to find the stray cat there. The cat would not stop meowing and scratching at the man's trousers until eventually, thinking the cat was trying to tell him something, they left the house together and walked the streets. After about a half mile the cat suddenly stopped walking and the now puzzled man, looked up to see RAF Lancaster bombers overhead. The man looked on in horror as the first of the bombs dropped, obliterating a row of houses, including his. The stray cat had saved his life.

W G Preston who is holding his dog for a
family wedding portrait!

My New Year Resolutions : Hopes for 2012

It is that time of year once again when we sit and reflect over the past twelve months of our genealogical life. We think about what we have found, finished and achieved. We think about those ancestors we are still yet to find, the brick walls we are still yet to bulldoze. We start to make plans anew with a fresh mind and tell ourselves we must get our research notes and papers in some kind of working order. We resolve to make purchases that may aid our quest and we excitedly visit all the stationery shops and departments to find a decent storage unit, box or filing system to accommodate our works. In the back of our mind we think “acid free, archive safe” like a guilt-induced mantra and pray we find something that doesn’t cost the earth or take up too much unnecessary space in our homes.

It is that time of year when we hope the new year ahead will lead us to find that special book, disc, document, certificate, record, register, photograph or heirloom which just may hold the key to all our genealogy mysteries, brick walls, unresolved searches, and “yet to be confirmed” anecdotes. I know I wish for this every year, without fail.

This year I decided to start a blog. I bit the bullet after many years of doubt thanks to some wonderful friends and encouragement from my family. It has been a long time wish of mine to write publicly in some capacity. Having kept private diaries and journals for most of my life and writing many short stories and family letters over the years, I have come to love (and rely on) the satisfaction writing brings me. In the New Year ahead, I hope to start a new historical novel, as well as write a history of my childhood home and also tie up some loose ends with a second edition family history book I began earlier this year. I also hope to share some of my work with a much wider audience, whoever and however that may come to be.

My Family Tree

I began my genealogical life in earnest eleven years ago. Before my daughter was born I merely dabbled in family history, relying mostly on what my grandmothers had shared with me, and a small family tree project I completed for an English assignment at college when I was twenty three years old. Over the past eleven years I have learnt a great deal about my family history, the lives they led, the places they lived and worked in, the families they raised and the circumstances in which they raised them. I have met many online people, related and not, who have shared a wealth of information with me and have kept in touch via email and with Christmas cards. I have enjoyed helping others wherever I could and even volunteered at a genealogy centre for a few years. I have come across countless people online who are more than happy to help me and share what they know, or are more than willing to try.

Nothing, apart from being a mother, has given me more self-satisfaction and self-motivation than researching my family history, and indeed history in general. I never dreamed that people such as Nicholas Crane, Alan Titchmarsh, Griff Rhys-Jones, Tony Robinson and Kevin McCloud could teach me so much about my heritage, my childhood roots, my homeland and my ancestry. I never dreamed that I would end up wanting to write so much about my heritage and share it with others. Once, many years ago now, I dreamed of writing romance novels but I have come a long way since those days!

My prayer for 2012 is to write. Simply that. Of course, I want to uncover that elusive fact, discover that elusive ancestor (see my blog on Richard Humphries) and tidy up my files, collect more old postcards, purchase more local history books...that goes without saying. In the bigger scheme of things I want to write until my hand falls off, my brain is fried, my arm aches and the dust in my house packs a suitcase from boredom.

I will continue to write blogs and keep journals and I will still find the time to jot a short story or three, but most of all I hope to write my second novel. Perhaps I may even share my first novel with the world! Eeeeek! :-)

Happy New Year readers. May you find what you have been looking for this year, last year, two years ago...you get the picture.

 

Story-tellers Through Time : A Griotte in the Making

When I was trying to come up with a theme for my next blog one thing stuck with me. The origins of storytelling and the many cultures around the world who use words (oral and written), paintings, ceremonies, music and dance, and, in the modern age, film to convey their family history and traditional beliefs.

Photo by Alastair McNaughton

When I came to Australia, on the verge of my teenage years, I was immediately effected by the Aboriginal culture and folklore. I was less interested in the history books about James Cook and White Settlement and more engrossed with the Aboriginal customs and, in particular, their Dreamtime.

The ways in which the Aborigines honour the land on which they live, their spiritual beliefs and their deep-rooted affinity with their people has continually effected me over the years. The family stories they tell, through the Dreamtime or Dreaming, has been altered dramatically with the coming of the White people and many tribes and families, and many traditional Aboriginal customs have been lost or systematically driven out of their daily lives. There are still those today who embrace their ancestral culture and who live day-by-day with their family stories because it is psychologically entrenched within them, and they cannot be expected to ignore what is rightfully theirs.

Madina (Griotte)

Whilst reading Cherry Gilchrist's book 'Growing Your Family Tree" recently, I became intrigued by a passage in the last chapter where she describes the African storytellers. Known as griots (male) and griottes (female), they traditionally sing their family stories and play an instrument known as the Kora. The griots are keepers of family stories, genealogy and histories. The female griotte is known more widely for sharing family stories through song and one well known musician is Madina N'Diaye (pictured right).

In Western societies our ancestors used tapestry, murals and paintings, and in medieval times there were minstrels and bards to tell our stories. Then came the age of stagecraft where men acted out stories in front of a paying audience. Newspapers and books, penny dreadfuls quickly followed and people all over the world began to express themselves through some form of the written word. However, print was not easily accessable or affordable to the working class and humble poor and so the centuries-old tradition of oral storytelling never lost its favour. Opportunities for embellishment meant that the line between fact and fiction were oftentimes blurred!

The family who sits around the fireside listening to and sharing family stories is easily conjured up in one's mind. One such special occasion for me, as a child, was Christmas time. When my grandmother's had enjoyed a nip or two of sherry with their Turkey dinner, their tongues were loosened and many stories were shared and regaled. I loved those times, and still today I try to continue their legacy of storytelling (and not just with the sherry to help me along!).

There are so many opportunities at Christmas to sit down with a loved one or favourite relative and ask them questions. I have bored my own long-suffering parents and aunts with questions about their own childhood memories, and I have notebooks filled with many lovely stories.

I will share one with you here. My mother remembers when her father would bring home the Christmas tree ( a real one of course) and the whole family would decorate it the day before Christmas. On the tree would be small bauble decorations and candles, and even sugar mice! On Christmas Eve the family would sit by the hearth and tell stories and my grandmother would light the candles on the tree.

I would like to close this blog with a message of love and hope for a very merry Christmas to all my faithful readers and all newcomers. Thank you for reading my blogs, and leaving such heart-warming comments. I would like to give my special thanks to my family and to also acknowledge and thank Jo W, Luke, Mike, Angela B, Ann, Lynn H, Emma, Suzie & Rosemary for encouraging me throughout the year to share my special family stories through this blog.