My family history
I reckon that researching your own family history is a bit like private detective work -- tracing various family lines back through the censuses, and birth, marriage and death records, and searching through other sources too. Family history is another of my nerdish interests, though as I may have said before, I’m not particularly interested in going back hundreds of years with my family lines. I think this is rather like train-spotting, and at times, I think it involves some guesswork working out who is related to whom.
I’m more interested in looking at the last 100 years or so, and finding out what sort of lives my ancestors led, and what happened to them – their social history. This is what fascinates me.
I’ve got a couple of cousins who have done mountains of research work on my father’s side of the family, but like a lot of family history work, they’d come up against a few brick walls where they’ve made no progress at all. When I retired over 5 years ago now, I volunteered to take on one of the brick walls.
So this is the story of my great uncle Harry, who was a bricklayer by trade, and who was regarded as the black sheep of the family. He was greatly admired by his brother, my grandfather Tom (who was the youngest in the family). They were great friends. In his school holidays, Tom used to help Harry on the building sites. One such site was the rebuilding of the Old Trafford Cricket Pavilion, in Manchester, which opened in about 1894.
Now according to family legend, Harry committed a misdemeanour, which we suspect was stealing building materials, and to avoid prosecution he fled to the US. He gave Tom an address where he was staying/going, and made Tom promise not to reveal this address to anyone. Anyway, their mother wheedled the information out of Tom and wrote a letter to Harry, whereupon Harry cut off all contact with his family for good. Nothing more was heard of him, until his daughter, Cora, came to visit an aunt and her family in Glossop, Derbyshire many years later. The aunt was one of Tom’s sisters. So that was all the information we had to go on.
My cousins had done many searches for Harry, but with no success. I too spent several months going through shipping passenger records (mainly to Ellis Island in NY), contacting relatives in Derbyshire, writing to people with the same surname in NY, and tagging the message boards of Rootsweb and Genealogy dot coms. Nothing.
And then I had three lucky breakthroughs. The first was the 1901 England and Wales Census (when it was first made public). It was there I found him living at home with his family of origin – a 22 year old unmarried bricklayer, living in the Manchester area. We thought he’d emigrated in the 1890s.
My next major find was in the 1930 US Census, which has been recently been published on Ancestry dot com. I found out that Harry was living in Lucas, a small town in Ohio, and that he was working as a foreman in a glass factory. He was married to Laura, and they had an unmarried 25 year old daughter, named Cora. They weren’t listed in any of the previous US Censuses, which fits in with the story that Harry wished to conceal where he was.
I had a hunch that Harry might have got married before he emigrated to the US. I went to the Notts Archives to look up the marriage indicies, found the marriage details, and sent off for the marriage certificate.
Harry and Laura married in July 1901, a few months after the 1901 Census was taken, at Eyam Church, in Derbyshire. Eyam was where Laura’s family was based, and is the famous plague village.
My cousins were as amazed as I was, when I told them the news about Harry and Laura’s marriage – it was a well-kept secret. The huge rift between Harry and his family must have occurred shortly before his marriage. And how long were the couple going out together, before they got married? Most couples had a long engagement in those days, unless it was a shotgun wedding.
There have been big rows and rifts in my family since then, on both my father’s and my mother’s side of the family. I’m interested to know why they occurred and why some of them were never resolved.
Why didn’t Harry ever get in touch with his mother or with Tom after so many years? Was Harry angry all of his life towards his mother and Tom? Was there in fact a blazing family row, whereupon Harry left? The misdemeanour story could have been a cover-up, to save face.
Such things have happened in my generation too -- rows, rifts and big secrets -- history has a habit of repeating itself.
I’m more interested in looking at the last 100 years or so, and finding out what sort of lives my ancestors led, and what happened to them – their social history. This is what fascinates me.
I’ve got a couple of cousins who have done mountains of research work on my father’s side of the family, but like a lot of family history work, they’d come up against a few brick walls where they’ve made no progress at all. When I retired over 5 years ago now, I volunteered to take on one of the brick walls.
So this is the story of my great uncle Harry, who was a bricklayer by trade, and who was regarded as the black sheep of the family. He was greatly admired by his brother, my grandfather Tom (who was the youngest in the family). They were great friends. In his school holidays, Tom used to help Harry on the building sites. One such site was the rebuilding of the Old Trafford Cricket Pavilion, in Manchester, which opened in about 1894.
Now according to family legend, Harry committed a misdemeanour, which we suspect was stealing building materials, and to avoid prosecution he fled to the US. He gave Tom an address where he was staying/going, and made Tom promise not to reveal this address to anyone. Anyway, their mother wheedled the information out of Tom and wrote a letter to Harry, whereupon Harry cut off all contact with his family for good. Nothing more was heard of him, until his daughter, Cora, came to visit an aunt and her family in Glossop, Derbyshire many years later. The aunt was one of Tom’s sisters. So that was all the information we had to go on.
My cousins had done many searches for Harry, but with no success. I too spent several months going through shipping passenger records (mainly to Ellis Island in NY), contacting relatives in Derbyshire, writing to people with the same surname in NY, and tagging the message boards of Rootsweb and Genealogy dot coms. Nothing.
And then I had three lucky breakthroughs. The first was the 1901 England and Wales Census (when it was first made public). It was there I found him living at home with his family of origin – a 22 year old unmarried bricklayer, living in the Manchester area. We thought he’d emigrated in the 1890s.
My next major find was in the 1930 US Census, which has been recently been published on Ancestry dot com. I found out that Harry was living in Lucas, a small town in Ohio, and that he was working as a foreman in a glass factory. He was married to Laura, and they had an unmarried 25 year old daughter, named Cora. They weren’t listed in any of the previous US Censuses, which fits in with the story that Harry wished to conceal where he was.
I had a hunch that Harry might have got married before he emigrated to the US. I went to the Notts Archives to look up the marriage indicies, found the marriage details, and sent off for the marriage certificate.
Harry and Laura married in July 1901, a few months after the 1901 Census was taken, at Eyam Church, in Derbyshire. Eyam was where Laura’s family was based, and is the famous plague village.
My cousins were as amazed as I was, when I told them the news about Harry and Laura’s marriage – it was a well-kept secret. The huge rift between Harry and his family must have occurred shortly before his marriage. And how long were the couple going out together, before they got married? Most couples had a long engagement in those days, unless it was a shotgun wedding.
There have been big rows and rifts in my family since then, on both my father’s and my mother’s side of the family. I’m interested to know why they occurred and why some of them were never resolved.
Why didn’t Harry ever get in touch with his mother or with Tom after so many years? Was Harry angry all of his life towards his mother and Tom? Was there in fact a blazing family row, whereupon Harry left? The misdemeanour story could have been a cover-up, to save face.
Such things have happened in my generation too -- rows, rifts and big secrets -- history has a habit of repeating itself.
posted by justin at 10:48 pm
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2 Comments:
Genealogical research is a bit of a 'family obsession', as I jokingly call it, here in New Zealand. Its primarily me mam and brother's interest, though I do mum's internet research, photo restoration, printing & coping. She corresponds quarterly with 4 researchers of our family name in the UK. Dorset OPC has been particularly useful, one of the best on-line parish resources available. Like you I find the associated stories more interesting than the pure family tree research. A few black sheep turn up in every family. A family lighthouse keeping journal, naval records from the 1840's and just recently information on the lives two mayors of Bridport around 1910 received from a family researcher in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have been most interesting. The current line of research is a family connection with Thomas Hardies 'Trumpet Major' set in Dorset.
Wow, Dorset OPC looks amazing, Edt. What a tremendous help the internet is for family history research. Mrs C has a relative in NZ who has done a lot of work on Mrs C's ancestors in the UK - without visiting the UK ever.
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