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.

Belfast burial records

It is really good to find official records being made available for free on the internet.  Belfast City Council now make the burial records for a number of cemeteries in the Belfast area easily available on their site

http://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/burialrecords/

They can be searched by name and give details of the person, date, age and last residence, along with the location of the grave.  An excellent example of good practice – and one which should be followed by all councils.  Graves are one of the core resources for family and local history.  Any source for Ireland is of especial value because the damage to the census records in the Troubles of the 1920s made family history research very difficult.

Hogarths

I have had a few queries about Hugh Hogarth and the Hogarth family, so I have added some material and revised my page on him.  In all families there are ‘characters’ who stay in the family memory and Hugh Hogarth is a good example.  He seems to be the stuff that legends are made of – he married ‘up’ into the Bryces, a wealthy Glasgow merchant family;  he traveled to New Zealand and lived in Auckland; he fought (maybe) in the Maori Wars and he probably was a violent drunk.  But one little detail appears to have been neglected – throughout he was a draper, something that is a bit at odds with the story!

Synchronity

Now here is a strange coincidence – and most family historians probably have these slightly odd experiences.

My sister and I were looking in my parents’ loft late one evening a few weeks back, and in a pile of framed prints I found an original drawing by the local artist Mercy Hunter.  It was a name that I knew, because she had been a notable character in the ‘boho’ Botanic area of Belfast when I was a student; she could often be seen walking an ancient afghan dog.  My sister took a fancy to the drawing, and I did a bit of research on the artist, finding a site run by one of her extended family.  My sister emailed him a scan of the picture and I emailed him because my husband’s aunt had been an art teacher in Belfast at about the same time as Mercy Hunter.  And got an email back with a photograph of my husband’s aunt in the 1960s!  How strange!  The dead speak to us.  It is as if by focusing on it we call up the past and awaken it.  I know that Carl Jung wrote about this type of experience; as  a librarian I became used to strange coincidences as I researched things.

Nuremberg Rally

Sorting through some old papers belonging to my father I came across this postcard

It is addressed to my father, then living in Kent and signed by his school penfriend, Hans Meyer.  The message in English reads

I am here with the Hitler Youth in Nuremberg in the form of the ‘Reichspartietag.’  It is very grandiose.

It feels slightly shocking to read such a message about an event that had such ominous implications.  I wonder what happened to Hans in the years that followed?

Grand father’s diary

Among some family papers in my parents’ house I find the little pocket diary of my grandfather, Frank Birks.  It gives a brief description of his daily activities -Went into town alone; made three pounds of blackberry jelly; posted parcel to Belfast. That parcel was to his daughter and his grand-daughters who had moved to Belfast in 1959 when his son-in-law got a job there; it was a move that took a part of his family a long way away and probably made him unhappy.  At that time it was a considerable journey, often by overnight ferry.  He had only been retired for a couple of years having worked until 70 as a Cost Accountant in Rolls Royce (a job that I rather suspect he did not like very much).  There is a sense of his aloneness, he often notes going shopping by himself.  The last entry is for 23rd December when he goes into town and later his son and grand-daughter come for tea.  There are no more entries. On 25th December he died of a heart attack, he was 73.