Fathers Family Found
Fathers Family Found
If you have never felt like you had lost something in the first place then it is all the more surprising to find out you had one all along. A family tree is all the more surprising to find out you have one when you were sure that certain members, of what is called your family, never seemed to have any idea of who or where they came from. I never heard my Grandparents ever talk about growing up in someplace with other people. I presumed there was no record of my last name beyond my fathers’ own father, who I knew to have held that surname.
Not having a family tree or family line is nothing particular in our day and age. It is different for my wife for example, she is, well she could have been a Baroness. This would have meant that would have had to married at the very least a Baron and anything upwards from there, Counts, Dukes, Archdukes, Princes and such like. But she married me, which affectively removed any chance of her ever holding the title Baroness. Although her father is a Baron and her mother a Baroness, even her brother and his wife are entitled to hold the title, as do both their sons. It is not something one talks about in Sweden. But one does get a family tree to show just how each particular branch comes tumbling down from the original Baron title bestowed on the family. In Sweden this was usually given to wealthy men for services rendered to the King sometime in the 16 hundreds. I can’t remember why my wife’s family became Barons just for the moment, but what I’ll do is have a look in their family book. My wife’s father was one of the co-authors of the Family book; he spent time revising the older family book that had several generations missing. The new family book was printed some three years ago now so it is almost up to date.
My own lost and now apparently found family has no blue blood in it whatsoever. All the early information is mainly taken from church records dating back to 1717. Andrew and Mary had a son on the 1 st April 1717, All Fools Day, in the Parish of St Alphege, in Greenwich, London. From this point our family story begins. Because from this point certain times and events have been registered in the local Church parish book; births, deaths and marriages. These three vital pieces of information help you trace the path of your DNA backwards in time. Due to the patriarchal system we have been subjected to during the last two and half thousand years, we can only really follow the male line, because the female is forced to take her husbands name, in practice deleting their own information and renaming it, so as the female family parts of the family break away by getting new surnames.
Our first man out onto the field of play in “Our Family Name” is Christopher, Andrew and Mary’s only child. He was born in Greenwich, London in 1717; at that time Greenwich was a very busy sea cargo port. The really big ships would sail into Greenwich and then unload their goods and cargo on to smaller and better vessels for the rest of the trip up the River Thames to the docks and warehouses in town. It would have been a rough place with many men working in the docks for 16 hours a day. No easy life. The housing for the dockworkers would have been of sub standard quality yet their houses served as all the houses they ever needed, where you got born, you lived, you procreated and you died.
They would have used the water from the river for and all their needs, there would not have been running water in houses. Stone coal would have been burnt in the fireplaces and chimneys causing black smog to settle gently on all outside surfaces, turning them gray. Christopher married Ann Holloway when he was 22 years old; they had their first and only child Thomas when he was 33 years old. Ann must have died about seven years after their son was born, because at the age of 40 Christopher remarried a girl called Sarah in 1757, nothing more is known about her other than her first name. Christopher then died himself three years later 1760 at the age of 43, leaving Thomas in the care of Sarah. However old Sarah might have been at the time of Christopher’s death, (I would approximate 21 years old) she was now to be Thomas, 10-years-old, mother.
Thomas was born in 1750 and married Elizabeth Barlow, four years his younger, when he was 22 years old and she was 18. Elizabeth died at the age of 46 in September 1800, leaving two male children; one of them was called William. These two sons continued with the Cabinet making and furniture business that Thomas had started about 1780.
Thomas remarried in 1802, two years after the death of his first wife Elizabeth, to his second wife Elizabeth, Elizabeth Light (she was 28 years old and he was 52 years old when they got married). Elizabeth Light gave birth to George while she was at the age of 31 and her husband was 55 years old. When George was 14-years-old Thomas his father died.
Elizabeth was 45 at the time of her husband’s death. She lived another on another 18 years to be 63 years old, before her death passed into the family tree under the heading;
“dd. 27 Sep 1837, 5 Cavendish St, Hoxton New Town”.
What do you do with all this information? How do you get it to make sense in the world? You look at all these dates and names, all these lives mixed into a single pot of history that you decide to turn around like ice cream over warm pie.
What you get is this;
“dd. XX XXX 200X, 2 Sigfridsvägen, Stockholm, Sweden”.
This is where you pass the eye of the needle. This is where you get to work out how old you were when you got married, had kids and died. You can make a little matrix that works out the ages automatically. You just change the dates around and you get your own little story.
It is funny how things just pop up. I knew nothing of this story until one day a man named Barry asked me over the Internet, on my work mail address, weather I would give him the names of my parents and place of birth. Obviously I was a bit skeptical but the man did have my surname. I decided to answer briefly but refused to comment on any other information concerning my family. My mothers and father first names and St. John’s Wood, N.W.8 London is far from being a national secret. From this came small piece of information I received a flood of information about my fathers family name history. It was so odd to be in this situation.
I felt somehow obliged and compelled to be part of this cascade of information and I must admit I was rather overwhelmed by it at first. In a strange way I felt I was now part of something English for the first time in my life. Which was so new to me, because I’m now more or less Swedish and I have never been given any indication that I belong to any nation. The Englishness was like a bright new buttered scone that for the first time hit me with the full power of the Englishness inside. The cheddars, the creams, the pies, the jams, the teas and all the goodness that is inherent in the nostalgic English tradition. Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys.
To be given back something that you only realize was taken away when you get it back makes for a confusing state of emotional experiences all at the same time. I was both happy to have been given my Englishness back. But because I never thought I had ever missed it, I never longed for it until I had it back, the delightful Englishness of myself. It wasn’t experienced in a large way, but in small way that was just intense enough to be charming and not in least overpowering. So I had a minor moment of euphoria that was well balanced and British. I have been given a gift that I can dip into and pick out toffee apples and fudge. A certain Samuel that was playing in “our fathers family name” was tried at Wiltshire, Assizes in 1787 for highway robbery. I have been given a bag of full of the new and the old choices.
The End
If you have never felt like you had lost something in the first place then it is all the more surprising to find out you had one all along. A family tree is all the more surprising to find out you have one when you were sure that certain members, of what is called your family, never seemed to have any idea of who or where they came from. I never heard my Grandparents ever talk about growing up in someplace with other people. I presumed there was no record of my last name beyond my fathers’ own father, who I knew to have held that surname.
Not having a family tree or family line is nothing particular in our day and age. It is different for my wife for example, she is, well she could have been a Baroness. This would have meant that would have had to married at the very least a Baron and anything upwards from there, Counts, Dukes, Archdukes, Princes and such like. But she married me, which affectively removed any chance of her ever holding the title Baroness. Although her father is a Baron and her mother a Baroness, even her brother and his wife are entitled to hold the title, as do both their sons. It is not something one talks about in Sweden. But one does get a family tree to show just how each particular branch comes tumbling down from the original Baron title bestowed on the family. In Sweden this was usually given to wealthy men for services rendered to the King sometime in the 16 hundreds. I can’t remember why my wife’s family became Barons just for the moment, but what I’ll do is have a look in their family book. My wife’s father was one of the co-authors of the Family book; he spent time revising the older family book that had several generations missing. The new family book was printed some three years ago now so it is almost up to date.
My own lost and now apparently found family has no blue blood in it whatsoever. All the early information is mainly taken from church records dating back to 1717. Andrew and Mary had a son on the 1 st April 1717, All Fools Day, in the Parish of St Alphege, in Greenwich, London. From this point our family story begins. Because from this point certain times and events have been registered in the local Church parish book; births, deaths and marriages. These three vital pieces of information help you trace the path of your DNA backwards in time. Due to the patriarchal system we have been subjected to during the last two and half thousand years, we can only really follow the male line, because the female is forced to take her husbands name, in practice deleting their own information and renaming it, so as the female family parts of the family break away by getting new surnames.
Our first man out onto the field of play in “Our Family Name” is Christopher, Andrew and Mary’s only child. He was born in Greenwich, London in 1717; at that time Greenwich was a very busy sea cargo port. The really big ships would sail into Greenwich and then unload their goods and cargo on to smaller and better vessels for the rest of the trip up the River Thames to the docks and warehouses in town. It would have been a rough place with many men working in the docks for 16 hours a day. No easy life. The housing for the dockworkers would have been of sub standard quality yet their houses served as all the houses they ever needed, where you got born, you lived, you procreated and you died.
They would have used the water from the river for and all their needs, there would not have been running water in houses. Stone coal would have been burnt in the fireplaces and chimneys causing black smog to settle gently on all outside surfaces, turning them gray. Christopher married Ann Holloway when he was 22 years old; they had their first and only child Thomas when he was 33 years old. Ann must have died about seven years after their son was born, because at the age of 40 Christopher remarried a girl called Sarah in 1757, nothing more is known about her other than her first name. Christopher then died himself three years later 1760 at the age of 43, leaving Thomas in the care of Sarah. However old Sarah might have been at the time of Christopher’s death, (I would approximate 21 years old) she was now to be Thomas, 10-years-old, mother.
Thomas was born in 1750 and married Elizabeth Barlow, four years his younger, when he was 22 years old and she was 18. Elizabeth died at the age of 46 in September 1800, leaving two male children; one of them was called William. These two sons continued with the Cabinet making and furniture business that Thomas had started about 1780.
Thomas remarried in 1802, two years after the death of his first wife Elizabeth, to his second wife Elizabeth, Elizabeth Light (she was 28 years old and he was 52 years old when they got married). Elizabeth Light gave birth to George while she was at the age of 31 and her husband was 55 years old. When George was 14-years-old Thomas his father died.
Elizabeth was 45 at the time of her husband’s death. She lived another on another 18 years to be 63 years old, before her death passed into the family tree under the heading;
“dd. 27 Sep 1837, 5 Cavendish St, Hoxton New Town”.
What do you do with all this information? How do you get it to make sense in the world? You look at all these dates and names, all these lives mixed into a single pot of history that you decide to turn around like ice cream over warm pie.
What you get is this;
“dd. XX XXX 200X, 2 Sigfridsvägen, Stockholm, Sweden”.
This is where you pass the eye of the needle. This is where you get to work out how old you were when you got married, had kids and died. You can make a little matrix that works out the ages automatically. You just change the dates around and you get your own little story.
It is funny how things just pop up. I knew nothing of this story until one day a man named Barry asked me over the Internet, on my work mail address, weather I would give him the names of my parents and place of birth. Obviously I was a bit skeptical but the man did have my surname. I decided to answer briefly but refused to comment on any other information concerning my family. My mothers and father first names and St. John’s Wood, N.W.8 London is far from being a national secret. From this came small piece of information I received a flood of information about my fathers family name history. It was so odd to be in this situation.
I felt somehow obliged and compelled to be part of this cascade of information and I must admit I was rather overwhelmed by it at first. In a strange way I felt I was now part of something English for the first time in my life. Which was so new to me, because I’m now more or less Swedish and I have never been given any indication that I belong to any nation. The Englishness was like a bright new buttered scone that for the first time hit me with the full power of the Englishness inside. The cheddars, the creams, the pies, the jams, the teas and all the goodness that is inherent in the nostalgic English tradition. Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys.
To be given back something that you only realize was taken away when you get it back makes for a confusing state of emotional experiences all at the same time. I was both happy to have been given my Englishness back. But because I never thought I had ever missed it, I never longed for it until I had it back, the delightful Englishness of myself. It wasn’t experienced in a large way, but in small way that was just intense enough to be charming and not in least overpowering. So I had a minor moment of euphoria that was well balanced and British. I have been given a gift that I can dip into and pick out toffee apples and fudge. A certain Samuel that was playing in “our fathers family name” was tried at Wiltshire, Assizes in 1787 for highway robbery. I have been given a bag of full of the new and the old choices.
The End
posted by rob at 12:07 AM
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