32 Ancestors Challenge - Week 25 - Broken Branch

 

My interpretation of this week’s theme of ‘Broken Branch’ is that of losing contact with relatives over time which can of course be for a myriad or reasons.  People move away from the hub of the family for work or for the hope of a better life, in the same country or to Australia, Canada or the United States, or to Africa, India or the East.  Family members can lose touch through family circumstances like divorce, bereavement or a ‘falling out’. In my own family it is noticeable that once the older generation of grandparents, aunts and uncles have passed on the ‘glue’ in a family weakens and it becomes more difficult to keep in regular contact with cousins, especially when they are a lot older than you with their own families.  Today I keep in touch with my cousins and their children at Christmas via a card, by occasional emails and via social media such as Facebook.  Of course, there are the occasional family gatherings for weddings or increasingly funerals, as my cousins are starting to pass away.

A ‘big birthday’ was the catalyst for one of the Tunesi family to organise a ‘family reunion’ to coincide with her father’s 90^th birthday.  Members of the family met up, some for the first time, at the party.  We had done some work on the family tree, which was displayed on the wall, with another relation bringing in a framed photograph of the Patriarch, Felippo.   Just about everyone with the Tunesi surname in the UK is descended from Felippo.  The tree was a talking point and a conversation starter where relations pointed to themselves on the tree and then tried to work out how they were related to the person they were talking to.  With 16 children, most of whom had children, the family is huge and sprawling with the epicentre in London UK and branches in Lancashire and Kent and further afield.  We have a One-Name Study for the name – we know the UK family from research and are actively in touch with others bearing the same last name in Switzerland, France, Argentina and of course Northern Italy where Felippo came from.  He first appears in London in the 1861 census.   My husband was brought up with his cousins, they are all of a similar age, but over the years, with job moves, he’d lost touch with two of them, but at the party he met up with them again, as well as his Uncles and Aunt, and lots of more distant relations.  Who’s got Felippo’s nose?  Ooh, you look alike!  Where do you fit in?  Overall everyone got on well, brought together by the birthday boy’s daughter.  We still keep in touch with most of the new-found relations, although it is usually by social media!

In my husband’s family a family tragedy made it difficult and upsetting to keep in touch with his mother’s family in Scotland.  When his mother died from leukaemia when he was under a year old it hit his dad hard – he never really got over the loss.  Contact with her siblings was kept up for some years but the constant reminders of what could have been were too much, and the contact was gradually stopped, apart from the occasional letter, and an annual arrangement for roses to be placed on the grave in the local kirkyard where she is buried.  When my husband’s father died, we decided, after a lot of thought, that now was the time to try and build bridges.  We decided to place a notice in the local newspaper that covered the area where his mother came from, with contact details in case any of the family wished to contact him.  The usual day of delivery of the newspaper, a Thursday, dawned and we did wonder if we would hear from anyone.  In the afternoon the phone rang - it was my husband’s Uncle John.  Later on, the same day, a phone call from his Aunt Margaret.   Although sad to hear the news of the death of his father, they were overjoyed to hear from their ‘lost nephew’.   With the help of the Scottish family arrangements were made to bury Dad’s ashes in the grave with his wife, a grave that had been maintained and kept tidy by the family for nearly 40 years.   

With a bit of trepidation it must be acknowledged, we made the trip by plane to Edinburgh, with Dad’s ashes in hand luggage, and hired a car to drive to the southwest of Scotland.  My husband could not remember going to the village, but he had as a small baby.  We had postcards of the village in the family collection, and we did wonder if it would have changed at all.  As we arrived over the crest of a hill, we saw the sea, and arrived in the Square.  It hadn’t changed at all!  We parked up in front of the hotel where we were staying and got out of the car to be hailed by a chap, about my husband’s age, who introduced himself as his cousin Shaun.  We had a lovely welcome from the family, there are a lot of them!  My husband met again, or for the first time, his uncles and aunts, cousins and mother’s cousins who lived in the village on the first evening and we met up at their homes whilst we were there and looked at family photographs.  At the wake following the committal in the kirkyard there was a gathering of the wider family at the hotel.  We spent several holidays in the village, researching the Scottish side of the family, visiting the sites where they lived in SW Scotland.  In many cases the houses and farms where the ancestors lived still survive and there are multi-generational family graves at Stoneykirk and Kirkmadrine ¹.  And meeting yet more members of the extended family!

                                 Kirkmadrine - the tallest stone in the photo is a family grave

Villagers also had valuable memories of my husband’s mother that they were keen to share with him and one lady remembered holding him as a small baby on his mother’s last visit home.  Valuable memories of a lovely lady my husband has no memory of and of whom his dad found it too painful to talk much about until his later years.   A contingent from Scotland came down for our wedding, with two of my husband’s cousin’s daughters being amongst our bridesmaids.  We had a houseful!  Two aunties, two cousins, two bridesmaids and his mother’s cousin all staying with us over the wedding weekend.  Our house has never been so full!  A lovely memory.  We haven’t been to Scotland for a few years, but we keep in touch at Christmas. 

Although traditional ways of keeping in touch with relatives has changed from the physical visit and regular letters to the more modern email, genealogy websites or social media, with the occasional physical meet up for family events.  With family history research, the advances in DNA have opened doors to what once would have remained a mystery, or conjecture. 

Can such sites a www.genesreunited.co.uk and DNA test results reunite long lost relations, or can it open a ‘can of worms’?  We have been lucky in our reunions, we have hit it off with our wider family, but this is not always the case.

Notes

1.     Dumfries & Galloway Family History Society  Stoneykirk and Kirkmadrine Memorial Inscriptions.  Dumfries & Galloway Family History Society, 2001.  ISBN 1 873977 73 5

32 Ancestors Challenge - Week 24 - Popular Name

My family do not, as a rule, follow ‘fashion’ when it comes to naming their children.  Occasionally, this unwritten rule is bent a little, for example, I did have a cousin called Shirley who was born at the time when Shirley Temple was a film star.  Otherwise, they tend to stick to the traditional or biblical names.

I therefore have parents called Arthur Edward and Eva Joan (named after two of her cousins), grandparents called Alfred Charles, Alice Matilda, William Henry and Sarah, Great Grandparents called Alfred John, Elizabeth, Henry Alfred, Jane Matilda, Harry, Emma, Arthur, and Kate, with Gt-Gt Grandparents called Charles, Betsey, James, Elizabeth, Henry, Eliza, Henry, Jane, George, Fanny, George, Emma, William Samuel, Mary Ann, George and Sarah.  All very standard.

With the larger families of the Victorian era, most just had single names, although by my Gt Grandfather’s generation one branch did tend to use two names, sometimes very usefully including a maiden name of a wife or grandmother, or if the child was illegitimate the father’s surname as a middle name.  With such large families, I dare say families ran out of ‘family’ names and chose a ‘different’ name which may have been topical or was found in literature.  Sometimes a name is avoided if a child died young, for example little Charlotte Nickels died at only a few months old.  Never again did the family use this name for a child.  Sometimes you may find a string of John’s or George’s born (and died) until a child survived.  Some may be named for personalities or occasions, such as my husband’s ancestor Nelson Wild, or little Kate Jubilee Taylor who was born and died in 1897.

The choice of a particular unusual first name can prove crucial in family history research.  With my own paternal research, the first name Lionel proved very useful in tracing the family line further back in time.  When searching the census returns in the UK an unusual name for a child can narrow down possibilities of finding the right family, especially if there are a lot of ‘John & Mary’s’ with the same surname having children at the same time.

In Scotland, where my husband’s mother’s family come from, they still adhere to the Scottish naming pattern of the following:

·         1st son named after father's father.

·         2nd son named after mother's father.

·         3rd son named after father.

·         1st daughter named after mother's mother.

·         2nd daughter named after father's mother.

·         3rd daughter named after mother.

 

Therefore, my husband has three first cousins called Robert Dodds – very confusing!

My parents decided that I was not going to be named after anyone - or so they thought!  Research into the family tree indicated that I was given the same names as two of my paternal Gt Grandparents – Jane and Elizabeth. 

I can’t say that there are any ‘popular’ names in my family, most children we named for parents’ grandparents or other relatives.  One of my Gt Grandfathers sisters was called Rosetta, which was the name of her eldest brother’s new wife.  This being child No 12, the parents had probably run out of ideas – Ann, William, John, James, Samuel, Mary Ann, Daniel, George, Frederick, Charles, Elizabeth, Rosetta, and Arthur.   We have a spattering of George’s Joseph’s, Robert’s, William’s, James’s and for the ladies, Elizabeth, Ann, Eliza, Mary, Emma, and Sarah, all very ‘normal’.

My Gt Gt Grandfather George married twice; his second wife was his first wife’s sister.  He had 10 children – Mary, George, Ellen, Annie, Emma, Elizabeth, Harry, Frederick, Fanny Amelia and Arthur, and also a stepdaughter, the illegitimate daughter of his second wife.  My other Gt Gt Grandfather also had a big family – Eliza, Sarah, Susan, Hannah, Ann, Fanny, George, Thomas William, Emma, John, Charles, Ernest Frederick, and James.

Huge families, with a narrow choice of names. 

Sometimes a name is chosen for a reason, the prospect of inheritance, by naming a child after a richer relation, for a godparent or for a family friend. 

My Uncle’s family had a tradition that the eldest son should always be called John.  Uncle was called Albert Reginald John, his two sons, Reginald Keith, and John Peter.  Further back in the ancestry, Uncle’s Dad and Grandfathers were all called John.  The tradition continues, we have a Peter John, whose son is called Adam John, with his son called Evan (the Welsh form of John).

In the late 1800’s and early 1900s floral names were popular for girls.  I had two Auntie Vi’s, so we added their hometown to differentiate them, and my dad had an Auntie Rose and an Auntie Daisy.  There were also several ‘Daisy Tunesi’s’ born in my husband’s family in the early 1900s.  My Aunts and Uncles had traditional names, although most were not known by those names in the family!  Occasionally there is a ‘strange’ choice, such as Edgar or Benjamin and in our family, Thomas is not that popular as a first name.  Some names of ancestors are just not used by any descendants – I often wonder why?  We have no further Rachel’s or Alice’s in the family, or Matilda’s!    In later generations, the popular names from films and TV programmes have been used, but overall, we’re a traditional lot. I shall never forget my dad’s reaction when one of his Gt Niece’s called her son Damien.

32 Ancestors Challenge - Week 23 - Mistake

 

With any genealogical research it is easy to make a mistake, especially when you are beginning your family research. 

Its easy to assume you have the right person if you find a person of the right name in the right place and the right time.  It is not always the case. 

Another common mistake is to believe that all online family trees are correct.  Some are, and have been compiled after many years of meticulous research, other are not, do not contain references to where the ‘facts’ have come from, attach chunks of other unproved pedigrees to their tree and so on.

In order to prove that your descent is as correct as can be ascertained by documentary proofs, each person on a family tree should be verified by at least three pieces of documentary proof. These proofs being evidence such as civil registration certificates of birth, marriage and death, wills, and census returns.  To this can be added parish register entries of baptism, marriage and burial, monumental inscriptions (if you are lucky), and other secondary sources. 

Each documentary source needs to be scrutinised  and the details from each compared to an extent that you are satisfied that you have discovered the right relation.   If there are several people in a parish with the same name, evidence of occupation, and family members from census returns can narrow down the possible outcomes, or indeed some can be discarded, at that point, if they are found to have died young.

Research methods and access to digitised records have revolutionised how and where we do our research.  Much initial research can  now be done via the internet at home, but, eventually most people will need to visit record offices and archives as not everything is online.

Easy mistakes to make are:

Picking the wrong ‘John Smith’ as your ancestor and therefore tracing the wrong family.

Right name, right wife, right date – but – wrong occupation?  You would need to look at a combination of birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns and parish registers to pinpoint the right person.  A census is a snapshot of a family at ten yearly intervals and a lot can change in the intervening years, there may be second or even third marriages, children are born and sometimes die young, people move for work.  

Right name, wrong location – Men sometimes had to move away from their birthplace to find work, or to pursue a career in the military, church or professional occupations.   You can also look in the parishes next to the one you think the family lived in – in my experience there are often marriages with brides from parishes surrounding the main parish of residence, and therefore sometimes children are baptised in ancestral or maternal parishes.

I can’t find any baptisms, but I know they lived there - Perhaps the family were nonconformist so did not worship in the Anglican church.  In England we have Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers and many other smaller sects.  In my own family. Mum’s family were all nonconformist way back to the late 1700s.  Sometimes attendance at a different church was due to the vicar and his sermons, good or bad.

It's not spelt right, so he’s not mine – Spellings vary and up to quite late in the 20^th century there was no real standardisation of spelling of surnames.  As I have mentioned in a previous blog article, phonetic spelling was the norm as you delve further into your family.

I made a few mistakes when I was starting out in my research.  During lockdown I decided to revisit some of my collateral lines to see if I could make any more progress, with the advances in genealogical datasets and digitised records.  Way back in the 1980s we did have the IGI so to some extent one could find entries in parish registers which might be useful, but, to be sure you do need to see the original record, which in many cases today have been digitised.

For Hertfordshire research FindMyPast have digitised some of the parish registers, which have proved useful to me in my search for the true origins of my Mole ancestors, coupled with the census returns and other record sets available via Ancestry.com.

In the earlier 1980s research on the Mole / Moles / Moules family I compiled a huge Moles family tree, based on entries from the IGI, from the North Hertfordshire area, which in hindsight may not be as accurate as it could be.  Impressive it might have been going back to the 1600s, but could I tie my own family conclusively to those earlier people.  Top of the tree was a George Mole, a licenced Hawker from Baldock.   The names of Thomas, William and George were popular in all the family lines I traced.

My great grandmother, Emma, was baptised in Willian, Hertfordshire on 15 December 1868.  The baptismal record from All Saints, Willian states that she was born on 10 July 1868 and that she was privately baptised.  A private baptism was usually usually done because the child was sickly, sometimes by the midwife.  Luckily for Emma, there is also a note that she was received into the Church on July 28,so she must have flourished.  Emma’s father, George Moles was a labourer.  Emma’s mother was called Emma too.

In the 1861 Census of Willian, George and his family are living in a cottage in Willian

George Moles   Head     Mar        30           Farmer’s Shepherd          Herts     Willian

Emma Moles    Wife      Mar        24                                                    Beds      Biggleswade

Eliza Moles        Dau                      3                                                    Herts     Willian

Sarah Moles       Dau                      2                                                     Beds      Biggleswade

Susan Moles       Dau                      6ms                                                Herts     Willian

 

It is clear from this that the family were moving between Willian and Biggleswade, about 20 miles away in the first few years of their marriage.

George and Emma were married at Willian in 1857.  George’s father was stated as being a William Mole, whilst Emma’s father was called Thomas Rook.  Both fathers were Labourers.  George and Emma made their mark in the registers, as they were illiterate, with the witnesses being a Thomas Mole and a Mary Giles who could both sign their names.

You will notice the Moles / Mole spelling difference, whereas my Gt-Grandmother was married as a Moules.

From Quarter Sessions records indexes I discovered that a George Mole was charged with assaulting his Aunt, the publican of the Three Horse Shoes in Willian, knocking her down and giving her a blackeye, all over a disputed sum of money he owed her and she wanted repaid.   Is this the same George Mole as my ancestor? There is no other of this name of the right age in Willian at the time. A bit of a 'rough 'un' as they say, or was he desperate? 

It is clear from the census and parish register entries that my family were not very well off, with a large family to support, so it could be our George.   Whether the landlady was a maternal or paternal aunt I have still to discover.

From searching the Willian census returns 1841 and 1851 a clearer picture emerged of the parents of our George.

1841

Thomas Moles                   60           Ag Lab                   No (not born in Herts)

Thomas Moles Jnr            13           Ag Lab                    Yes

Mary Ann Moles               59                                           No

Eliza Moles                       15                                           Yes

Wm Moles                         35           Labr                       No

George Moles                    10           Labr                       Yes

Eliza Moles                        8                                            Yes

Thomas Moles                   3                                             Yes

Hanah Moles                     35                                           Yes

Maria Moles                       13                                           Yes

 

1851

Thomas Moles                   Head     69           Ag Lab                   Beds      Stotfold

Mary Ann Moles               Wife      67           letter woman     Devon, St Sidwell. Exeter

 

And further along the street

William Moles                   Head     47           Ag Lab                   Beds      Stotfold

Hanah Moles                     Wife      46           Platting                 Herts     Willian

Eliza Moles                         Dau        18                                                           “

Betsey Moles                     Dau        9                                                              “

Hannah Moles                   Dau        2                                                              “

Thomas Moles                   Son        12                                                          “                                             

 

From the Willian parish registers I discovered that a William Mole and a Hannah Pratt were married on 20 May 1827 at Willian, so this tallies with the knowledge we have so far.

Interestingly, there seem to be family ties with Stotfold in Bedfordshire, about 5 miles from Willian.

I then searched, via an Ancestry dataset, for a baptism of a Thomas Moles in Stotfold about 1800 and found a likely candidate, based on the approx. age stated in the census.

1804 May 20  William, the son of Thomas and Mary Moles baptised

Thomas Moles senior also stated that he was born in Stotfold, with an approx. date of birth of 1782.

A further search for Moles in Stotfold found another possible baptism

1781 April 13      Thomas, son of Thomas and Mary Moul baptised.

A marriage of a Thomas Moules and a Mary Langham was also found in Stotfold on 19 November 1778, so this could be the parents of the Thomas baptised in 1781.

Whether my original IGI based tree, and my ‘real’ tree will ever tie up I am not sure yet, but you never know.  The families all seem to come from the Willian, Norton, Baldock, Stotfold area, with a slight detour north to Biggleswade. 

If you look at the sketch map below, all the parishes are more or less in a straight line and straddle the Great North Road which is roughly where the A1 motorway is now, a trade and transport route for a very long time.  My Great Grandmother's family and their descendants mostly lived in the Hitchin, Norton and Baldock area, apart from the siblings who went north to Keighley in Yorkshire for work, but that is a story for another time.

52 Ancestors Challenge - Week 22 - Conflict

For the theme of ‘Conflict’ I have chosen to look at what my Dad and his siblings did during the second world war (1939-1945).  My Dad had seven full and half-siblings.

Dad’s eldest brother, Alf, was killed in a motorbike accident in 1926 at the age of 24.  This was huge shock for all the family and for my Dad, who looked up to his big brother, there was a lifelong hatred of motorbikes.  But that story is for another time.

In the 1930s the family lived in Letchworth in Hertfordshire, apart from eldest daughter Vi, who was married and lived in Newhaven in Sussex with her husband and two children.

Jim was married and had two young daughters.   Dick was also married and also had two young daughters. It's a funny thing with our family that the boys always seem to have lots of girls and few boys, whilst it is the other way around with the girls, who seem to have a higher number of boys!  Dad and his younger half-brother, Basil, were unmarried, and both still living at home with their widowed father in Shott Lane.  Middle sister Nellie was married and living in Letchworth with her husband and two small boys.  With youngest half-sister Bella working as an usherette at the Broadway Cinema.

In the 1939 Register:

Jim does not appear in the 1939 register at all, but his wife Amy and 2 children do, living in their home in Green Lane, Letchworth.  

Dick, a plumber, is living at his home in Archers Way, Letchworth with his wife Lucy, and 2 children.

Dad and Basil are living with their Dad in Shott Lane.  Grandad is described as a Foreman Plumber Journeyman, Dad as a Toolmaker and Basil a Gas fitter maintenance.

Bella is living with Nellie and her husband, Reg, described as a Dairyman, and their two small boys.  Bella is described as a cinema usherette.

Down in Newhaven, Vi’s husband, Bill,  an electrical fitter, was living in King’s Avenue with Vi and their son and daughter.   

With the declaration of War, peoples lives changed.

Jim and Dick served in the army in France and Germany.  Basil served in Ireland and eventually Burma (Myanmar), towards the end of the war. 

Uncle Jim and Grandad 

Uncle Basil

 

Nick, Basil and Dick, just after the war

Nellie’s husband, Reg, joined the Royal Air Force Police, the ‘Snowdrops’ so called because of their white hat.  He served in Belgium and also at RAF Tempsford in Bedfordshire, forever associated with the SOE agents, so Nellie was left to run the Dairy on her own.   

Vi’s husband was busy in Newhaven with war work so Vi and her children came up to Letchworth to help Nellie with the dairy whilst Bella went to work at the Spirella in Letchworth.

Vi with the Glebe Dairy handcart

But what of my Dad, Nick?

Dad went to join up in Cambridge but was told that he was an engineer by trade his was a ‘reserved occupation’ and so couldn’t join up!  Dad however did his bit and joined the Home Guard, the real life ‘Dad’s Army’.  He still did his ‘day job’ maintaining the machines as Addis in Hertford and other businesses in Letchworth and additionally Home Guard duties in Letchworth

Here are his reminiscences of the Home Guard in Letchworth which was published a few years ago in Hertfordshire People, the journal of the Hertfordshire Family History Society (1).  

All the boys, and the girls' husbands, returned from the war.  Bella married soon after the war, with her husband having served in the army in the war.

As a footnote, we did some research and discovered that Dad was entitled to the Defence Medal for serving with the Home Guard and a couple of years before he passed away I applied for the medal for him.  He was overjoyed to receive full size and miniature medals amongst his Christmas presents.  We treasure them.  We also assisted my Aunt Nellie in getting Reg's medals and also Uncle Basil's for him. For the second world war, medals had to be applied for, which was different from the first world war, where medals were sent out to the recipients, or next of kin.  

Notes

1. 'The Homeguard in Letchworth' from Hertfordshire People, No 106, September 2008, pp14-15