George Harold Oliver

Another day, another fascinating discovery from my family tree!

Continuing with work on my descendancy of Joseph Bryan Geoghegan, I went back to the marriage of George Harold Oliver and Ellen Christina Bennett to see whether I could come up with any children. I had found them living in Derby in 1911, with George Oliver listed as a motor mechanic. There were no children given, but the couple will still very young and had only married the previous September so it wasn’t too surprising. Derby wasn’t a surprise either, as this was where the marriage record tells me George was living at the time of his marriage. However, he was apparently born in Pendleton, c. 1887.

I first went to the birth index to search for Oliver children with mother’s maiden name Bennett, but predictably there weren’t any strong leads. One possibility appeared for Derby, which I made a note of, but beyond that there were multiple options, including strong leads in Stoke-On-Trent, which left me wondering whether the family connection in the area had continued with the Olivers.

So, I decided I would Google Ellen and George, and see whether there was anything that might help me. The first thing that came up for George Harold Oliver was this Wikipedia entry. I clicked on it, not really expecting it to be remotely relevant. The first sentence reads:

George Harold Oliver QC (24 November 1888 – 22 September 1984) was a British engineer, barrister and politician who was for a longtime Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilkeston and served briefly as a junior government minister.

I thought, well the birth date is close, and Ilkeston is in Derbyshire. I read on.

Oliver was born in Bolton and educated at Holy Trinity School in the town. He became an engineer working as a gear cutter for Rolls Royce, and when the works were moved to Derby, he moved with them.

Bingo! It all made sense – age, occupation, move from Lancashire to Derby. I will need to verify the place of birth – Wikipedia says Bolton, while George himself says Pendelton on the census. I think he may well have grown up in Bolton, as did Ellen, but I’m more inclined to support his personal claim of a Pendleton birthplace than Wikipedia’s unsupported statement.

So, my great-great-grandmother Mabel’s cousin Ellen Christina Bennett married future Labour MP George Harold Oliver. They had perhaps met following the marriage of Ellen’s mother Annie Bennett née Birchall Geoghegan in 1903. They would have been around 15 years old at this time.

 His career was that of a moderately successful junior minister, and I enjoyed reading about some of the causes he supported, including a 1932 motion for a national minimum wage. He also initiated a debate on the development of civilian air transport, which perhaps contributed to me being able to fly off to sunnier climes for my holidays! He retrained as a Trade Union lawyer (hence the QC) in 1927. At the 1931 general election, he lost his seat by only two votes – the equal closest election result during universal franchise.

However, my favourite snippet was this:

In February 1952 he was chosen to be one of the members of the House of Commons to call on the Queen Mother to extend Parliament's condolences on the death of King George VI.

He met the Queen Mother – albeit under rather sad circumstances. It’s my first (and very distant) genealogical brush with royalty!

All of this seems to confirm that George and thus presumably Ellen stayed in the Derby area at least until around 1965, when George stood down from parliament. So, I conjecture that they only had the one child.  A scan of Ancestry’s suggested connections confirms this, and the most detailed tree appears to suggest that their child is still living, so I won’t go any further on that subject for now, though I’ll be tracing it as far as I can for my own purposes.

George Oliver lived to be 95, dying in 1984, just a year before I was born.

L x

Remember, remember...?

So, I was planning on making this, my 100th blog post, rather more reflective, but I will postpone that until next time in order to concentrate on some rather more timely subject matter – Bonfire Night.

The reason for this is that there is an old family rumour that one of my ancestors was in some way involved with the Gunpowder Plot. Exciting as this may seem, as yet I have found no evidence that it is actually true.

The rumour originates from my paternal family, but I haven’t been able to narrow it down much beyond that, which means 50% of my ancestral lines are currently implicated.  If I was ever to narrow this down – or even get that far back on most of these lines – I’d be very impressed, and I don’t hold much hope, to be honest. However, it is rather interesting to consider that if the rumour were true it would imply Catholic recusant ancestors, and the recusancy rolls are a potential source of information that I am aware of, many thanks to my degree, so you never know...

In an attempt to possibly suggest where the connection might be, I have looked in a little more detail at the plot and two potential connections immediately present themselves:

One possibility is the Wintour, or Winter,brothers, Robert and Thomas, who were among the key plotters. The name Winter occurs in my Father’s maternal line, which is where I sort of get the impression the story comes from (though I can’t be certain).

If it were on my father’s maternal line, the Winters would seem the most likely candidates. The Rayners came from Ireland in the early 1800s and so that’s half of my great-grandfather’s side accounted for. On my great-grandmother’s side, again we can discount the Geoghegan line, which also came from Ireland, and I have enough second-hand information on the Hall line back into the 1600s to suggest that they’re improbable. It really only leaves either the ancestors of Emma Winter (both of her parents were also Winters, quite probably related) on my great-grandfather’s line or the ancestors of William Kipping Hedgecock on my great-grandmother’s line.

The possible problems with the Winter connection are that Winter is a fairly common name, so alone it is hardly compelling evidence. This is further compounded by the fact that Wikipedia tells me that historian Antonia Fraser (for whom I have great respect) in her book about the Gunpowder Plot (which I may have to purchase) points out that the brothers never used the spelling Winter themselves; it is usually found spelt Wintour or Wyntour. Obviously, spelling was quite variable back then, and I suppose it was still relatively fluid by the time I encounter my Winters in the nineteenth century. However, my Winter ancestors are consistent in the spelling of their name, which doesn’t really help my case.

Further to this, the location is wrong – the Wintour brothers came from the West Midlands, whereas my Winters were based in Surrey. Again, though people did move around, the location evidence hardly helps any argument for this being the connection, so I have to concede it isn’t likely.

A stronger possibility, I have to concede, is on an entirely different branch of my family, which has strong roots in the right area. My Buswell line as far back as I’ve been able to trace it originates around Whichford in Warwickshire, before migrating southwards into Chipping Norton and Banbury. Whichford is roughly thirty miles from Coughton, the base of the Throckmorton family, to whom many of the Gunpowder Plotters were related or connected. Though it’s not particularly close, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine part of the family moving a relatively small thirty miles over a couple of hundred years, and/or being connected by marriage to a family within such an area.

The problem with this possibility is that the Buswells feed into my Thompson/Newby line, which is my paternal grandfather’s side, and as I say, if anything I had the impression that the connection was on my dad’s maternal line.

On his paternal line, I can discount the Thompsons, also Irish, and the other possibilities are the Newbys/Wallingers, about whom I know too little to guess either way.

What I can say without any hesitation is that nowhere in my family lines have I encountered anyone who can seriously be called a gentleman of the rank that the Gunpowder Plotters were (with the exception, perhaps, of William Kipping), so whichever branch it was, they must have had some financial problems somewhere along the line!

Just to be clear, this is all very much conjecture, just for the fun of it. I have absolutely no evidence that this particular rumour is even true, never mind the means to identify the ancestor! Indeed, many such rumours do turn out to me completely untrue, or at least exaggerated considerably. Given that my most famous real ancestor’s granddaughter ­– J. B. Geoghegan, grandaughter Mabel Hall – only died in the 1960s and yet the man was never mentioned, it would seem improbable that a true story so much older would survive!

I think the most likely explanation is that my ancestors may have ‘supported’ the plot – i.e. they were recusant Catholics, hoping to put a Catholic monarch on the throne ­– rather than being actively involved in it, and over time, this expression of support became exaggerated into something more sinister.

That said, I have no evidence whatsoever for any kind of recusancy or nonconformity in my family either. Almost all of my ancestors baptised their children, married and were buried in the Church of England (despite the fact that many of them lived in strongly Methodist areas). Beyond that, I have found no evidence of anyone actively involved in the church or showing any strong faith. As a fair complement of my ancestors was Irish, some of them may have had a catholic background, but that wouldn’t really tie in with the Gunpowder Plot in any case. The vast majority of them seem happy to tow the Anglican line, to be honest!

It just goes to show that there’s only so much that genealogy can uncover. The vast majority of our family history must remain unknown, and many of the myths must remain unresolved. It’s rather nice to have the possibility that I really do have such an exciting background, though, and with a bit of luck I might one day make the breakthrough that proves or disproves it!

L x

X is for illiteracy

Unsurprisingly, there are no surnames beginning with X in my tree! However, I came up with an ingenious solution: X is for illiteracy.

I can only imagine that pretty much every genealogist out there has come across the obligatory X in a parish record or on a certificate, often followed by ‘his mark’ or ‘her mark’. So I decided to do a little research on the history of illiteracy.

Studies carried out in 1961 (W. P. Baker) and 1973 (Schofield) based on parish marriage records have shown that male illiteracy was about 40% from the 1700s, and had declined to around 33% by the mid-1800s. By the 1900s it had all but disappeared. However, female illiteracy was around 60% in the 1700s, and had only declined to 50% by the 1840s. The decline in female illiteracy was much more gradual, but male and female rates were about level by the 1870s.

Of course, the problem is that parish marriage records don’t actually prove literacy, only whether or not you were able to sign your name. For that you wouldn’t technically need to be able to read or write any more than that! Generally, we assume that if you can write you can therefore read, so that these parish records studies might actually miss out those who can read but not write. But I also think lots of people might have been able to write their names and not much else. They only give us a very limited view, whereas in fact there would have been lots of degrees of literacy.

This useful Wiki from Leeds University, has the following to say:

“Reading was seen as a primarily passive skill and one which could be taught by more or less anyone who could themselves read, many children in the eighteenth and nineteenth century could read by the age of seven or eight. Writing, however, was seen as a vocational and primarily male skill usually taught by male tutors who also taught arithmetic and often other basic business or trade skills: throughout the 18th and much of the 19th centuries, very few children had learned to write by the age of seven or eight. Beyond that age access to education fell sharply for children of working parents as this was the age widely seen as the point at which a child's labour may be considered valuable enough to utilise. In 19th Century England, approximately 33% more children were able to read than to write.”

The gender bias here is interesting, and backs up roughly the figures from the parish registers. Boys were more likely to have been taught to write as a vocational skill. When it comes to couples where the man signs but the woman doesn’t, of which there are certainly examples in my tree, perhaps the women were not wholly uneducated, but simply could not write? I can’t think of an example in my own tree where the man can’t sign but the woman does. I’d be intrigued to see if anyone has?

The other thing that strikes me is the connection between literacy and work. Contrary to our modern society, where literacy is almost imperative to work, in the nineteenth century children were sent to work from a young age, at which point their meagre education, perhaps by one of their parents, seems to have stopped. Only those who were expected to go onto bigger and better things were taught to write, which effectively makes literacy a class barrier. Hardly surprising then that some middle- and upper-class people were against education for the poor, fearing that it would lead them to revolution!

The other side of the argument was usually from protestant groups, who felt that educating the masses gave them direct access to religious writings and therefore would increase morality, reducing crime and other social problems. And it would seem that most parents wanted to give their children some sort of education, but had to put the economic needs of the entire family first.

By the mid-nineteenth century the state was becoming more active on education, and others like immigration and health – it’s at this point that the state as we know it is born, I suppose, and ‘education education education’ quickly becomes a central tenet of its responsibilities. Between 1870 and 1880 legislation was passed that all children aged between five and ten must attend school. This date obviously ties in with the rise in literacy rates recorded from the parish registers , though obviously the children who began their compulsory education in the 1880s wouldn’t have married until around 1900 at the earliest (implying that in fact literacy began to improve of its own accord at an earlier point – perhaps public feeling led the policy rather than vice versa?) Presumably then it wasn’t until the early to mid-twentieth century that illiteracy declined to the 1% rate of today.

By chance my blog feed also brought up this post today, on the same subject, showing how reforms in education began at a local level at a much earlier date. I found this particularly interesting as my boyfriend actually went to Farmor’s School.

I can only say thank god I was born in this day and age really. I love reading, and can’t imagine not being educated, not being able to write this blog!

L x

On famous ‘cousins’

A nice bit of family history from BBC News here. I’m not sure I’ve quite grasped why the BBC thinks this is important, but it’s certainly very interesting.

My Lancashire songwriter ancestor Joseph Bryan Geoghegan wrote a song entitled Brigham Young (1875), so perhaps he was inspired by the events this article describes? I haven’t seen the lyrics, so I really don’t know!

Sadly I haven’t yet uncovered any famous cousins of my own, but  I do sometimes wonder, particularly about some with more unusual surnames that also appear in my tree. The example that instantly springs to mind is singer Ellie Goulding, as it’s quite an unusual surname. However, Wikipedia informs me that her family is Jewish, which doesn’t really fit! You’ve got to be wary about purposely trying to trace back a link, it’s all too easy to make an assumption and join up the wrong dots to make it ‘true’.

I suppose, given name-changes and marriages, the truth is you’re just as likely to be distantly related to someone with a surname you’ve never even heard of as someone with the same surname as you.

L x

On the Luddites

This week it is the 200th anniversary of one of the most destructive Luddite attacks in the history of the movement – and it took place in the village I grew up in.

The Luddite movement was primarily among textile workers, in revolt against the introduction of machinery that essentially replaced them, because it was able to do the same work more quickly and cheaply and required minimal manpower. The semi-organised movement was characterised by threatening behaviour, machine-wrecking and general disorder. It is generally considered to have begun in 1811 in Nottinghamshire, and by early 1812 had spread to West Yorkshire. The movement took its name from Ned Ludd, the ‘anonymous’ and semi-mythical leader of the movement.

Following a direct threat to Mr Joseph Foster, on the night of 9 April 1812, Foster’s Mill at Horbury Bridge came under attack from between 300 and 600 men. They had come from all over the surrounding area and were well organised. They were either masked or their faces were blackened, to protect their identities, and they carried weapons. They also surrounded the Fosters’ house. They forced the sons of the mill owner (who was not at home) to let them into the mill, and proceeded to wreck the place. They particularly focused on the shearing frames, but also on other modern machinery, as well as more traditional tools and even the cloth itself. They then set fire to the warehouse, and left two of the Foster boys tied up. The men got away over Grange Moor towards Huddersfield, or through Horbury itself and along Wakefield Road . On 14 April soldiers were sent to guard the other mills in and around Horbury,

Similar riots continued in the area throughout April. One attack left two of the Luddites fatally injured, following which the events became much more violent, and one mill owner was murdered. The Luddite movement continued, spreading into Lancashire. It finally came to an end in early 1813, following a mass trial at York Castle, which resulted in the execution of seventeen men, and the transportation of several others.  The machinery against which they had protested was here to stay, and the number of skilled croppers in the area decreased dramatically.

I have to say, I don’t know of a direct connection to my ancestors. However, what I do know is that they were definitely living in Horbury at the time, and so they would have been first-hand witnesses to the events, whether they were supporters of the Luddite cause or simply living in fear of the unruly mob that was roaming their streets. John Phillipson was born in Horbury just three years after the Luddite attacks and went on to be a woollen spinner. His father, also John, was a weaver, though whether he was originally from Horbury I don’t know. On the other hand James Wade, who was a stonemason and so not directly involved in events, and his wife Mary, were almost definitely living here at the time of the attack.

There is some debate about the Luddite movement. Is it a simple industrial dispute, albeit a very violent one, among a contained group of workers? Or, does it represent something more – an organised revolt against capitalism? An alternative political movement? These arguments are something that I am still considering, but I hope to write a blog post on them later in the week – partly as an exercise in constructing an historical essay, something which I haven’t really done since I left university nearly four years ago!

I remember learning about the Luddites at school. To be honest, at the time this sort of industrial history didn’t really grab me. I don’t remember ever being told that my own village was such an important part of that history, if we were told, I don’t believe that the teacher really took advantage of the fact in order to teach the history. Had she done so I think we might have been much more engaged by what we were learning.

I have been following the Luddite movement here. This blog posts relevant documents and some narrative of its own date-by-date, to show the progression of the Luddite movement as it happened 200 years ago – a brilliant idea that brings the history to life!

L x

On Yorkshire dialect

Every so often I’ll say something and everyone will either laugh or look baffled. Having grown up deep in Yorkshire my language is smattered with dialect words. At school it was never a problem because we all spoke the same, but as soon as I moved away for university it became apparent that I was speaking an alien tongue!

One of the first words that caused a problem was ‘mash’, meaning ‘to brew’. It can either be used as ‘the tea’s mashing’ i.e. it’s brewing, or ‘mash some tea’ – make some tea, literally ‘pour the water onto the teabag so it can brew’. The first time I said that at university, no one got it.

When I moved into my second year university house, I was giving my boyfriend directions and said ‘down the ginnel’ – he had no idea what I meant. A ginnel is an alleyway or passage, sometimes with a roof. The word comes from the French ‘venelle’, which itself must be a derivative of ‘venir’, the verb ‘to come’. Interestingly Durham, my university city, is full of vennels’, but it wasn’t until much later that I connected the two words.

Both of these were words that I’d never realised weren’t ‘real’ English. I thought everyone said them. Even now I’ll read somewhere that something is a dialect word, and I had no idea, to me it was just the name for something!

I know that once again I have gone slightly off topic, but I think my visit home at the weekend has given me the urge to celebrate my Yorkshire roots. I like the fact that I have this dialect (which is becoming increasingly rare), and that it connects me to my family history.

Language is connected to place of course , but it is also passed down through the family generations. After all, our first words are learnt from our parents, and their first words were learnt from their parents too. My very local dialect is a fitting reminder that I have 200+ years of family history in the same small area.  If you want to truly understand where your ancestors came from, most genealogists would probably agree that a visit is a good idea. Even though places change over time, they all retain some vestiges of their history and culture.  

This is why one of my next daytrips will be taking in the Forest of Dean, where many of my ‘Welsh’ grandfather’s family came from. It’s right on my doorstep here in Cheltenham, and it will give me a fantastic opportunity to get a feel for the history, culture and language of a branch of thr family that I know relatively little about.

So, for those of you with West Yorkshire ancestors, here’s a little taster of some local dialect. These are a few of my favourites, and ones that I would use without even stopping to think. I’ve essentially cobbled together the spelling based on my instincts, which probably gives you some idea of how I hear them:

‘Buffet’ (the t is pronounced) meaning a stool

‘Clap cold’ meaning gone completely cold, usually of food or drink

‘Frame yourself’ meaning ‘hurry up’ or ‘get on with it’

‘Gip’ meaning to retch

‘Lathered’ meaning hot, usually used as 'I'm lathered'

‘Morngy’ meaning sulky or whingeing, usually of a child

‘Parky’ meaning cold (of the weather)

‘Stalled’ meaning to be fed up or running out of patience – ‘I’m getting stalled’

L x

In memory of Horbury Methodist Church

Not strictly a genealogy post, but certainly of local and historical interest to me and my Yorkshire ancestors.

This weekend I ventured back to Horbury to visit the parents. Sadly, my hometown was not quite its usual self. Structural problems have resulted in the demolition of the Methodist church on the High Street, and so it now stands, a half-unbuilt pile of rubble, looking like a bomb went off.

I can only imagine what a gaping hole there will be when the whole structure is gone. The building was huge and sort of stately – grand and beautiful as a church should be, but also unassuming, as if it had always been there and always would be. I regret now that I never went inside it or even spent enough time studying it.

I haven’t been able to find out much about the building’s history. It wass Victorian certainly, built in the Gothic style. Apparently it housed a memorial to William Baines (1899–1922), the Horbury-born pianist and composer, whose musical father had been an organist in the Methodist church. This plaque will now be moved to the former Primitive Methodist church hall.

I’m not sure whether this refers to the church hall that is located behind the now-demolished Methodist church, or elsewhere, because, as Stan Barstow explains: “There were four Methodist chapels within a couple of hundred yards along Horbury High Street”

He goes on to say of Horbury:

[It was] a puritanical town, of course. What other could it have been under that great weight of Methodism? Drink was a blatant evil, sex a vast unmentionable mystery.

It hardly sounds like the Horbury I know – it has a lot of pubs for such a small place, for one thing! I trust his judgement though, as I’ve never read anything that evokes my home town more than his novels Joby and A Kind of Loving.

In any case, it is true that the Methodist church building will always be a part of Horbury to me; it won’t quite be the same with it gone. I remember going to birthday parties in the church hall when I was a little girl, and taking the little cut through from Queen Street via Ring O Bells Yard that brought you out behind the church – it wasn’t a route we took very often, so it was always a bit of an event if we did. I believe my auntie got married in the church, but I have no idea whether any of my more distant ancestors were of Methodist persuasion.

Lastly, I send my best wishes to the members of the Horbury Methodist congregation, and hope that they can soon raise the funds necessary to build us a beautiful new church to fill the void.

L x

I would like to add my thanks to Betty for allowing the use of this image - Copyright Betty Longbottom and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

On Shakespeare

This year’s Valentine’s Day surprise from my lovely boyfriend was a mystery daytrip – to Stratford upon Avon. He knows how to keep me happy! Despite the freezing wind, it was a really lovely day. The highlight for me was seeing Shakespeare’s grave and baptism and burial records in Holy Trinity church.

I always think that people seem much more real when I can see a grave. It’s as if they were just a paper trail before that, and then suddenly they leap out of the pages and become a physical being. It probably sounds odd to many of you, and even more so in reference to a legend like Shakespeare, whose works surely bring him to life anyway, but that’s just the way I react.

It costs £2 per adult to see the graves (of Shakespeare and his family), but the staff in the church were very friendly and they positively encourage you to take photographs, which is quite refreshing. And to be honest, if they hadn’t asked me to pay I would have made a donation anyway, being conscious of the need to preserve our historical buildings.

Shakespeare’s grave has obviously been touched so many times, before it was cordoned off, that the inscription has all but completely worn away, though there is a sign bearing the verse. He lies with his wife to his right and children and family members to his left. On the wall above is the bust of Shakespeare, one of the very few ‘portraits’ (two or three, I believe) we have of the playwright, although it is not known how accurate it is, particularly as it has been repainted in the intervening years. In a glass case nearby, the parish records are written in faded and barely legible Latin that I was quite impressed I could make out – clearly the years of squinting at censuses have paid off!

There were also some brilliant displays, which clearly explained the role of the church in Shakespeare’s life – baptism, marriage and death. These focused on what we know about Shakespeare’s connection with the church and the records, and what we can deduce from what we know about life at the time, and some useful comparisons with modern traditions. They were written so that they could be easily understood with people whose knowledge of this kind of history was basic – I imagine even older children or those who didn’t speak a lot of English could have grasped most of it. And yet, the information itself was interesting enough that I was able to take something away from it. Very impressive and well worth a visit in my opinion!

Of course, I bought a book; I always do on these visits – Michael Wood’s In Search of Shakespeare. I’ve only just got started and I’m already finding it fascinating, despite having read much on Shakespeare’s life before. I would particularly recommend Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: the world as a stage – if you’re at all familiar with Bryson’s writing I’m sure you can imagine what he brings to this topic!

The thing that always impresses me about Shakespeare research is in fact how much info there is out there about him; how detailed a picture the people who write these books are able to build up. He was born nearly 450 years ago. That they are able to tell us where and when he was born, the names of his parents and grandparents, and so much about his life, is quite impressive. We’re well beyond the 1837 pale here, after all!

I edited that last sentence – initially I went for ‘surprising’ rather than ‘impressive’ – because actually it doesn’t surprise me at all. Increasingly I understand the methodology used, and given how many others are digging around for info on him, is it any wonder there’s plenty uncovered? If only there were this many people around the world who wanted to help me find out about my ancestors!

In fact, I do have one particular ancestor who is quite well known in his field ­– more so than all the millhands and ag. labs, at any rate! The result: there is more material than there might otherwise be, and more people are interested in it. On the other hand, I wonder whether there isn’t this much info out there for all of our ancestors, if only we knew exactly what we were looking for and where to find it...

L x

On the news

Life kind of took over this week and I haven’t managed to post for a few days. To be honest, I’ve had a bit of ‘writer’s block’, plus I’ve been dedicating quite a bit of my time to some family history projects (which I will tell you about later).

But first: In search of inspiration, I turned to news, and found a few interesting articles to share – with just a brief comment on each.


First, the death at the age of 110 of Britain’s last First World War veteran.
What I liked about this story:

a) The fact that it was a female story of from the First World War, where we tend to get more 'male' accounts. I’m aware that I might be making myself sound a bit of a feminist, which I’m not really, but I do think that people in general people are drawn to stories that reflect their own gender experiences. I started my research with my female line and I have tended to lean towards the female stories rather than the male I think.  

b) That her contribution only came to light through someone’s research. It reflects on the people of that generation and on their times that she never ‘blew her own trumpet’. Whereas now we regard the actions of those involved in the war as heroic and admirable, Florence Green’s reticence reminds us that to them it was just their duty, their daily life, albeit in extraordinary circumstances. It also serves as a reminder that there are so many amazing stories waiting to be uncovered in the course of our research – it’s stories like this one that inspire and motivate me in my labours!


Next, the question: Were extreme suffragettes regarded as terrorists?

This story highlights the differences in perspective that occur over time, how views and standards have changed. I can’t imagine not having the right to vote, and yet when you think about the kinds of actions these women took, it is easy to see why they might have been considered terrorists – they were putting themselves and others in danger in a bid to overturn what was an established social and political order.  It reminds us that when we do think about social groups, whether class, gender or race, we have to be careful not to apply our own standards to the past.


I loved this article too: U.S. Government Still Pays Two Civil War Pensions.

I did the maths, and as far as I can tell, they must be well into their hundreds, and their fathers were likely to have been into their sixties when they fathered them. It’s almost unbelievable that there are people out there still alive who could have heard a first-hand account of a war that ended nearly 150 years ago! It reminds me that even though times have changed, this kind of history is still not all that long ago, and it makes my struggles with tracing as far back as the 1880s seem ridiculous really!


Last but not least: MI5 spied on Charlie Chaplin after FBI asked for help to banish him from US.

The interesting thing here isn’t that they thought he was a threat, but that the authorities found it impossible to find a registered birth for Chaplin – sound familiar anyone? And then there’s the family letter mentioned – if only I could find one of these for one of my unanswered questions!


So, that’s my little round up of pertinent news for the week. I’ll try to write something a little more substantial for you next weekend. Happy weekend all!

L x

On voices from the past

Another interesting news article.

I think it’s absolutely amazing that we have the voice of someone born in 1800 recorded.

As the article points out, how odd it is to think that our forebears lived in a world where recorded sound (and indeed pictures, moving or otherwise) didn’t exist? They’re so much the norm now that I can’t imagine not knowing what ‘VIPs’ look or sound like. It is such a shame that we’re not lucky enough to have the same recordings for our long-distant ancestors.

Many of my ancestors were musicians and actors – how wonderful it would have been to have recordings of them performing. The nearest I get is lyrics, sheet music and playbills. Quite recently I got most excited to discover a V&A collection of caricatures of performers at the Burslem Hippodrome during the time that my 4x great-grandfather, Matt Hall, was Theatre Manger. Alas neither he nor his performer children were among them.

The other thing is that it is a shame that the recording isn’t of an English person; there would be so much to glean from it about how people spoke. That said, across England the regional variation is so vast – and even more so in the nineteenth century, I’m sure. With most of my ancestors being working class Yorkshire folk, I doubt that some high-ranking general’s speech patterns would be that useful in any case!

But still, language and how we use it is a fascinating topic, and we’re very lucky to have found such a rare thing as this.

L x

Next time:  Time for something a little more practical...

On women’s football

A very quick post. I loved this article. I’d like to think some of my female ancestors had this much bravado – although if they did, I obviously haven’t inherited their sporting prowess!

 It’s unlikely I’ll ever know, unless they happen to have been particularly instrumental in their chosen activity, like Nettie Honeyball.

Genealogists will probably agree, finding out about your female ancestors can be much harder. They’re much less likely to have held the kinds of social positions men did. Their occupations are not always recorded, though I’m sure that, in working class families at least, many of them had to. In fact, as you get further back, even finding a surname can be hard in the parish records!

I wouldn’t consider myself a hardcore feminist, but it makes me so thankful for our relative freedom and equality in the 21^st century!

L x

Next time: why do we do family history?