A Viking in the Family E-Book

Keith Gregson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Genealogist Keith Gregson takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of quirky family stories and strange ancestors rooted out by amateur and professional family historians. Each lively entry tells the story behind each discovery and then offers a brief insight into how the researcher found and then followed up their leads, revealing a range of chance encounters and the detective qualities required of a family historian. For example, one researcher discovered that his great-great-grandfather, as a child, was carried across the main street of West Hartlepool on the back of the famous tightrope walker Blondin. The Victorian newspaper report said that the rope had been tied between two chimney pots. Research into the author's own family revealed that one of his nineteenth-century ancestors lost his leg in a Midlands coal-mining accident, and that the amputated leg was buried in the local cemetery – to be joined by the rest of him on his final demise. A Viking in the Family is full of similar unexpected discoveries in the branches of family trees.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

Preface

Introduction

1 A 1718 Shopping List

2 The Lambourn Arsonist

3 A True Gentleman

4 Attending a Wedding from Beyond the Grave

5 The Voice of Mickey Mouse

6 Adultery, Incest and Subterfuge

7 A Telegram for Admiral Togo

8 An Obsession with Drink

9 Quite a Sailor

10A Jack the Ripper Suspect

11Trouble with Runaways

12A Hero at Britain’s Worst Rail Disaster

13DNA Tests Showing Viking Blood

14Buried with an Amputated Leg

15The Voice of an Island

16Nearly Shot by a Vicar

17A Secret Second Family in Australia

18How a Boer Sniper Just Missed

19Frozen to Death on the Northumbrian Moors, Part I

20Frozen to Death on the Northumbrian Moors, Part II

21Making Queen Victoria Laugh

22At Home in Trafalgar Square

23The Parliamentary Pension Con

24A Mare called Crow

25Mentioned in Michael Faraday’s Will

26A Father’s Old Clock

27The Napoleonic War Hero

28Drowned in the Hougli River

29Good Looks Down the Line

30The Great Grenadier

31A Nineteenth-Century Cyrano de Bergerac

32A Piano Player in the Family

33Fighting at the Battle of Trafalgar

34A Cottage for Life

35Hanged for Being a Quaker

36The Anchorman in a Human Pyramid

37An Honorary Freeman of London

38The Rag Sorter at a Welsh Paper Mill

39A Celebrity in Otago

40A Long Line of Cooks

41Removed Under the Laws of Settlement

42The Jumble Sale Journal Discoveries

43Census Fame

44Sleeping Through a Trench Raid

45A Coram Boy

46Present at Napoleon’s Death

47The Ancestral Recipe Book

How to Find Your Own Interesting Ancestors

Copyright

PREFACE

A few months before I began work on this book, I was helping my mother to clear out a garden shed. She was in her late 80s and I had just had my 60th birthday. At the back of the shed was a small two-handled tin tub full of old paintbrushes.

‘Do you want to keep this?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘That was your bath when you were a baby in London.’

I was stunned. When people enquire about my early life, I always tell them how difficult it was for my parents attempting to set up home in post-war London. Both were from outside the capital and had put their savings into a small house. The bathroom and kitchen were combined and with rationing still in force, people had to make do and mend. This bath, purchased at the corner hardware store, was part of that economy. It was either that or the kitchen sink. In all honesty, if I had been doing a more general clear-out without my mother present, the ‘bath’ would have gone. Now there is no chance. Too big to fit in the family scrapbook, perhaps, but indispensable nevertheless.

Soon after starting work on this book, I was helping her with another sort-out. This time we were looking through the bookshelves in her spare bedroom. Her eyes suddenly lit upon a battered old book entitled A Century of Creepy Stories.

‘That’s the book which brought your dad and I together,’ she said.

It is rather a large book and I realised that I had seen it lying around the house for years without having a clue as to its significance. Apparently my mother and father had been in the same friendship group prior to the Second World War and my father loaned my mother this book as he thought she might enjoy it. The war came and both went off to join the forces. When demobbed, they met by accident in 1946. After a brief conversation, mum remembered that she still had the borrowed book and they agreed to meet again so she could return it. So there is no way that A Century of Creepy Stories will find its way to a charity shop or, tattered as it is, into the dustbin.

Interesting family stories tend to reveal themselves gradually, often through a chance encounter or discovery. I was 60 when I discovered these two important pieces of information relative to our family.

This book brings together many similar cases of unexpected discoveries from family historians and from my own extended family. They show how evidence, whether written, pictorial or an unusual object, has been used to shape a family’s history. Each entry also tells the story behind the discovery, revealing a range of chance encounters and the detective qualities family historians display. These tales are the very essence of family history and I hope that, after reading what follows, you are inspired to delve further into the hidden corners of your family history. There is plenty of first-class material out there for the family historian and, with a little sleuthing and some luck, ancestral bones can be firmly fleshed out.

The book that brought the author’s parents together (both also pictured in wartime uniform). (Author’s collection)

INTRODUCTION

Family history has exploded in popularity in recent years. Where once gardening and fishing ruled the roost in terms of favourite hobbies, now genealogy or family history have taken over as the pastime of choice for young and old. To find proof, one has only to look at the crowds of family historians at their daily work in local study centres, or to reference the numerous popular monthly publications dedicated to the subject of family history.

The Gregson family, 1954. (Author’s collection)

The author’s father in the Western Desert. (Author’s collection)

Useful notes jotted down by the author’s father (now deceased). (Author’s collection)

One result of this boom in genealogical research has been an outpouring of family history-related books. This one, hopefully, is different. Its aims are twofold: to bring to light unusual family stories which were revealed often by accident, or after a new piece of evidence was found; and to be of assistance to family historians looking to make further progress. In an age where school history has become a subject dedicated as much to ‘detective work’ as rote learning, the art of spotting similarities and differences in historical research comes high up the agenda. This can be applied to family history, too – where family lines naturally differ from each other, yet at the same time produce similarities worthy of note. Understanding such similarities can be of considerable help to other researchers.

The author playing the whistle. (Author’s collection)

The entries in this book are deliberately ‘bite-sized’ and the book itself is one that can be picked up and put down with ease. Both the ‘tale behind the tale’ at the end of each entry and the ‘how to’ section at the back of this book aim to be thought-provoking and helpful.

Readers will meet all sorts of interesting personalities and be introduced to a range of fascinating source materials. Ranging from an eighteenth-century shopping note; through to a photograph of an event that never happened; to a family grave without a body in it. We will travel from a far-flung Shetland Isle down to the bottom of a Cornish copper mine, and across the vast margins of the former British colonies via the USA to Australia and New Zealand.

Time, then, for the journey to begin.

1

A 1718 SHOPPING LIST

by Keith Gregson

‘So what?’, you may justifiably observe. The diaries and journals of the good and great of our land may well record similar events; and there are instances of such records stretching back to Roman times and to places such as the vicus at Vindolanda, Hadrian’s Wall, in the far north of England. What makes this discovery special is that the ancestor was not one of the ‘good and great’ but an illiterate agricultural worker from Cornwall. This must make the survival of a record of his shopping trip all the more remarkable.

The ancestor was Laurence Hendy – my great-grandfather to the power of eleven. The family’s Cornish branch, a quarter of my personal bloodline, moved to Cumberland with the nineteenth-century decline of the metal mines in south-west England. Prior to this they had lived and worked in Devon and Cornwall since the commencement of the most commonly recognised genealogical records. There is a family Bible, details of which helped me to trace the Cornish branch back to the village of St Ewe near St Austell in the late eighteenth century. Civil and parish records confirm the accuracy of the family details written in the front of this Bible; and the excellent local registers of baptisms, marriages and burials further enable the line to be traced right back to the reign of Henry VIII. Laurence Hendy (married in 1692 and fathering children shortly thereafter) was one along this line.

Today, the village of St Ewe is famous for its ‘Lost’ Gardens of Heligan, developed in the Victorian period by the Tremayne family. The Tremaynes had been members of St Ewe’s squirearchy long before this time, and family records can be found in Truro Record Office. Particularly interesting is a long run of journals written by Squire Lewis Tremayne in the early part of the eighteenth century. These are not diaries dealing with life at the top table, but day-to-day jottings and accounts relating to the running of the estate – and, although a mere farm labourer, Laurence Hendy turns up in these on numerous occasions. Reading between the lines, these journals reveal he was a head labourer of sorts – a kind of trusty, or possibly an early example of what was later to become known as a farm bailiff.

As luck would have it, there was only one Laurence Hendy in the parish at that time, making certain that my ancestor was the one appearing regularly on the squire’s monthly lists. It is recorded that he was paid both in money and in kind (i.e. hay and wheat), and there are also references to rent paid by him to the squire for a cottage known as Spry’s House.

For those with ancestors labelled merely ‘farm labourer’ or ‘farm worker’ in parish records, extra details such as these may be considered a godsend – but the best was yet to come in tracing Hendy. Tremayne was an inveterate page marker and used any scrap of paper to hand to mark pages he considered relevant. As some of these scraps contained writing they were worth investigating further, and one dated 19 January 1718 really came up trumps:

Janauary [sic] the 19 sent by Larans Hendy for Esq Tremaine

2 loafs of suggar the best sort waid [sic] 7 pound wanting 2 ounces at 1-2 [?]

One lofe [sic] waide 4=10 at 10 [?] – The whole [?] Carry to [?] 8-11=0

Sent you formerly by your man one punchbowl – 0-2-0 [?]

Recd of Larnso Hendo in full of all all [sic] by me Walter Eva

Clearly Laurence Hendy (twice mentioned in the note) had been sent to the shop for some sugar, a loaf of bread and a punchbowl. The shopkeeper had merely noted the cost for the benefit of the squire who had sent him.

The shopping list from 1718. (Author’s collection)

Thanks to a happy accident, my family now know exactly what one particular, ordinary ancestor was doing on a certain day nearly 300 years ago – a knowledge to which few family historians are privilege.

The Tale behind the Tale

Although Laurence turns up in the family line a long way back, he appears to be the right man as a result of the happy coming together of information from a fairly run-of-the-mill set of genealogical written sources. The starting point was the family Bible cross-referenced into birth, death and marriage certificates; census returns; parish registers; and gravestones in the churchyard at St Ewe. As the parish was a small and tightly knit one, and Cornwall (almost notoriously) toed the line when it came to keeping parochial records, the line back from the Bible to Laurence is also likely to be accurate. (The first person mentioned in the family Bible was born around 1770.)

It is surprising how many journals, diaries and suchlike records have survived and can be discovered and consulted in archives around the country. This is especially true of English parishes and it makes the scouring of all records relating to ancestral parishes a worthwhile part of genealogical research – and not just the ‘traditional’ parish records alone. By chance, another direct male ancestor turned up in the journals, too – David Varcoe, the village carpenter. As overseer of the poor, ratepayer and churchwarden he was also mentioned in other parish records.

It is interesting to note how Latin was still an integral part of the English language in the early eighteenth century. In his note, the shopkeeper uses the Latin ablative term for Laurence’s name, Larnso Hendo, which means ‘by, with or from’ Laurence Hendy.

In the twenty-first century shopping trips may still necessitate handwritten shopping lists. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred these will end up in a waste bin. The same must have applied in the eighteenth century, making the survival of Squire Tremayne’s list a rarity to treasure.

2

THE LAMBOURN ARSONIST

by Dennis Knight

I am now 64 years old and when I was young my mother often spoke of a relative who was hanged for the crime of arson. As is often the case, I didn’t take the opportunity to question her about it, and it was only after her death that I discovered a postcard showing a photograph of the gravestone of one John Carter. This postcard is still in my possession and informs me that the gravestone is in the churchyard at Lambourn. The inscription on the stone was as follows:

Here lies the body of John Carter of this Parish, labourer, who in defiance of the laws of god and man wilfully and maliciously set fire in two places to the town of Lamborne on the 19th day of Nov. 1832 and was executed at Reading in the 30th year of his age on the 16th day of March 1833 having desired that his body might be interred here as a warning to his companions and others who may hereafter read this memorial of his untimely end. The wages of sin is death. Repent!

His crime was to set fire to a pub and other buildings in the centre of Lambourn. This resulted not only in the devastation of several buildings, but also in the death of horses in stables, which were burnt at the same time. He apparently did it for no other reason than excitement and was quoted, prior to the fire, as saying: ‘I don’t think there will be better times at Lambourn till there is a good fire.’

He had been married only a year and was father to two young children. Described as a poorly educated farm labourer, he is also reputed to have been the last man hanged for the crime of arson. Reports of the trial from the Reading Mercury and the Berkshire Chronicle are lengthy and detailed, with graphic descriptions of the sentence and Carter’s reaction to it. These papers also record his reliance on faith and repentance to sustain him, as well as his last meetings with his family. A crowd of 5,000 watched the hanging, which took place on top of the county gaol. Interestingly, one of the papers expressed disgust at the number of females present, which they estimated at two-thirds of the crowd.

The story also has another remarkable twist. Involved in John Carter’s crime were three other associates of his who had, in various ways, been complicit in the planning of the fires. Through various ruses, unlike Carter, they had managed to gain acquittals from all charges. However, on the day before the hanging, effigies of these men (Chivers, Winkworth and Rider) were tied to a horse-drawn cart with the driver dressed as ‘Jack Ketch’ (the notorious public hangman) and driven to the market place in the centre of Lambourn. Aggrieved villagers carried out a mock trial and found the three guilty alongside John Carter, and the effigies were ceremoniously hanged and burnt. The paper records that the market place was ‘crammed’ with people.

The Tale behind the Tale

Dennis Knight is a lucky man as it is fashionable to have black sheep in the family. Indeed, many are the members of the Anglo/Scottish border Armstrong and Elliott clans who claim proudly that a number of their ancestors were ‘hanged for cattle rustling’. (And then, in the Armstrongs’ case, claim that they also produced the first man to walk on the moon and, in George Armstrong Custer, one of the most headstrong daredevils in history.)

Dennis’ case study is a fascinating one. Clearly, like many of us, he wishes he had made more use of the memories of family when they were alive. He discovered that the case was a notable one by approaching the history expert at the Reading Local Studies Library. As a result, he was also pointed in the direction of the newspaper accounts of the trial and hanging, as well as details of the mock trial and ‘execution’ of the other three culprits. More was gleaned through approaching officials at Reading Gaol – a move through which Dennis became aware of a later John Carter and the possibility of yet another notorious criminal in the family. His original contribution goes into much more detail than we are able to publish here.

3

A TRUE GENTLEMAN

by Carol Appleyard

Gibson Kirk was my grandfather. I knew him as Granda Gib. He died a week before I was 10 and I still think of him often with a tear in my eye. He was kind, patient and funny and never had a bad word to say about anyone. He would sit with us on his knees telling stories and jokes, and playing games with us. Some, like ‘buzz – knack’, he invented for us himself. Here he would wave a brush over the back of our hands and make a buzzing sound. We had to guess when he would stop and get our hands out of the way before the brush hit our hands and ‘knacked’ – local parlance for ‘really hurt’! What I never realised was that my grandfather lived his life in constant pain.

Gibson and his twin sister, Sarah Jane, were born in 1902 – the youngest of nine children. He left school at the age of 14 to take up employment at Hylton Colliery close to the River Wear. At 21, he had to come up from the pit after developing an eye disease common to miners, called Nystagmus. This resulted in uncontrolled eye movements and intolerance to both extreme light and dark, and some colours. This was caused by prolonged work in the dark shafts of the pit.

His daughter Norma also told me that, as a child, he developed recurring pleurisy and was thus prone to problems with his chest. She remembered being asked to wake him up for work. He had a hacking cough and she would watch carefully to see if he was breathing. So severe was the cough that, to her young mind, it could have seen him off at any time. It took Granda two years to recover from the acute stage of this disease.

Eventually he was set to work looking after the bicycle sheds at the pit. Norma recalls taking his ‘bait’ (lunch box) to him. His little room by the shed was always a whirl of smoke and dust. The floor was layered with fine particles of coal and the big open fire spewed smoke into the air when the draught from the open half-door caught it. Gibson also liked a ‘tab’ (cigarette) and the combination of all three would make the air ‘so thick you could cut it with a knife’. Norma was sure that this contributed to his chest problems.

In time, Gibson was given the opportunity of moving to the pit’s medical room and, after training, spent the remainder of his working life as a medical attendant at the pit head. With deteriorating health came extremely painful legs, so much so that his wife Ruth made him light trousers out of sheeting as he couldn’t bear the weight of regular trousers on his legs. His colleague, Keith Hall, informed me that he would often go into the medical room to find Granda with his trousers around his ankles and saying: ‘Keith, I just canna bear the pain, lad.’ At home, according to family members, he would spend time sitting by his coal fire, spitting what came up into its flames.

Granda retired from the colliery in 1967 due to his failing health, and passed away at the local General Hospital in December 1969. His death certificate states that he died of bronchopneumonia and heart problems. As with others who had worked at the pits, no reference was made to his more long-term lung condition.

Keith Hall said he was ‘honoured’ to have been asked by the family to be a pall-bearer at his funeral, and gave me this description of Gibson that sums him up perfectly: ‘He was a true gentleman.’

As a young girl, I didn’t know about the pain he suffered in his legs, and as he sat with us on his knees telling stories and jokes, it must have been agony for him. I will always carry in memory his face surrounded by a shock of white hair and the sound of his gentle voice in my ears.

The Tale behind the Tale

Carol Appleyard’s sensitive memoir of her grandfather is a lovely piece of writing and something that her family should treasure and pass on. It points to the hardships and poor health resulting from inadequate working conditions. At the same time, she has the courage to add that smoking had not helped the cause and it is noteworthy that Granda Gib’s death occurred at a time when reports were starting to point out the dangers of tobacco. The use of the word ‘tab’ for a cigarette goes back to the early twentieth century and the introduction of a smaller, cheaper brand actually named ‘Tabs’.

4

ATTENDINGA WEDDINGFROM BEYONDTHE GRAVE

by Keith Gregson

A giant hand-coloured photograph was discovered at the back of my grandparents’ pantry when the house was being cleared after grandmother’s death in the 1970s. It was immediately recognised as being taken at great-grandfather’s wedding at Barrow in Furness (formerly Lancashire, now part of Cumbria) in the 1890s. ‘There’s something strange about it’, a family member noted at the time. It now hangs in the family home and the mystery has been solved – a mystery that tells us much about the way in which the Victorians looked at life and death.

There are six people in the photograph. The groom, George Gregson (b. 1870 in Preston, Lancashire), is the only one from his side of the family represented. His father had died not long before and his mother many years previously. He had then gone to lodge with the family of his bride, Ann, and was in fact her father’s apprentice in the boiler works at the local shipyard. The bride’s father is in the photograph, in addition to his other two daughters. The one sitting down was blind as the result of a childhood illness. The lady on the left, looking remarkably ancient for her forty-nine years on earth, is the girls’ mother: she had every right to look ill at ease as she had died six months prior to the wedding!