New page

I have now added a page on my great-uncle, Richard Elliott Birks, who established himself in the USA.  He was a bright, enterprising man and Unitarianism was a thriving faith, especially in the East Coast areas around Boston.  His line of the Birks family stayed in America; his son. Alfred W, became a notable Unitarian Minister.

Names

As I work through various family trees somethings strikes me.  Throughout the 19th century names tend to be simple – Sarah, John, Martha, Frederick, george – all those basic English names.  Second names in working class people are not especially common – although combinations like Sarah Ann, John George and Martha Ann certainly occur.  Occasionally there will be a spate of Biblical names, often deeply obscure, Josiah, Obadiah and Kelita feature.  Middle class people often take a family name as their second name, maybe to ensure continuity within families.  However, around the turn of the century lots of ‘new’ fashionable names start to appear, Eveline,  Hubert, Bertram and Herbert become common.  Working class children get extra names, sometimes family names.  A new sense that names are identity, that creative approaches are needed to naming babies is clearly at work.

Growing my tree

With more of the 1911 census being available on Ancestry.Co I have been able to plot the children of Kelita Crossland, and their children, into the first decade of the 20th century.  Most of them are ‘accounted for’ and have stayed in the area where they were born.  Most have married and had children – not all their children have survived, but the majority have.  The average family size is shrinking from the eight or nine children that Kelita had to a more manageable three or four.  And the names are becoming more contemporary – with Stanley, Evelina and  Symons.  Walter, my great-grandfather, has moved to Norfolk and married a local girl, he is perhaps the most thriving of the family.  Maybe ‘taking the pledge’ was  mark of upward mobility (he certainly thought it was).  By this time all the children will have had some years of education – all will be literate and some are already in skilled trades.

My page on Kelita’s children and descendents gives the details.

Complexity

We often see the Victorians as moral, hard-working and responsible whatever their social class or station.  As I research my various family trees this is certainly not true.  Families show the range of  behaviours and problems that we see in out own society.  Women have children outside marriage, relationships break up although divorce is not accessible until the 20th century.  Crime, drunkenness and bad behaviour are common.  Relationships are complex, and surprisingly varied.  One of the really major issues is, as I have already noted, literacy – it is rare in the 21 century for someone to be unable even to sign their name.  We need to understand the past, not as a golden age, but as the same complicated, flawed world that we live in now.  To understand the past is a way of  dealing with the present.

Illiteracy

Working on the records of my great-grandfather’s siblings I discovered that at least two of his sisters could not write  – on marriage documents they ‘made their mark’.  These are marriages in the 1880s and 1890s, several decades after some level of compulsory education existed.  Maria Crossland, born in 1861, married in 1887 to a labourer called Joshua Hartley – neither could sign their names.  Her sister Sarah Crossland and Joah Micklethwaite (who would marry Sarah) were both witnesses and could sign with a good signature.

Earlier, in rural Norfolk Martha Gathercoole who married Robert Flatt, my grandfather’s great-grandfather, in 1851 was illiterate although he was not.  Born in 1823 and living to be over a hundred, he was proud of the education that he acquired.  But it seems less surprising that a woman, born illegitimately and into rural poverty was illiterate than women born decades later.

Midgleys – maybe

I have just put a page up on Ruth Newell (later Lucas).  She was the sister (well, the page will say more about her exact relationship) of Sarah Ann Midgley, my great great-grandmother.  There are a lot of things that are not known about Ruth, but she was a powerful influence on at least some family members.  She was also, as her marriage license shows, unable to sign her name – in 1868 that would not have been so unusual.  But as I read ‘her mark’ I was stunned to think that illiteracy was possible.  My thanks to various respondents on Curious Fox – a very helpful resource

www.curiousfox.org.uk/

Crossland siblings

I have just put up a brief page on Henry Crossland, the older brother of Kelita Crossland and will over the next few weeks add information on Kelita’s other siblings.  These were all living and working in the Middleton/Hunslet area for their entire lives.  Many of the family had inks, to coal mining – not surprising since mining lay at the heart of the Leeds economy for at least the early part of the 19th century.  All had large families – and all having descendents.