Frolic!

Back in 1987 when I first walked into Weston Longville churchyard with my Dad and saw a row of gravestones carved with the name Bates - and one with Robert Bates etched into it - I had no idea what an influence that day, that place would have on my life.

Last weekend I organised the Annual Frolic for The Parson Woodforde Society, a jolly jaunt that including joining the congregation for a Harvest Thanksgiving service and lunch at the Weston pub that carries the Parson's name. 

Standing there in Weston churchyard, giving Society members a 'guided tour' of who was who in Woodforde's day was a rather surreal experience. Since 1987 I have come to be a bit of an expert on, er, those buried in the ground in Norfolk!

Slightly more cheery is another consequence of my passion for family tree: meeting long lost or rather never-known cousins.

I was delighted that my Dad attended the Frolic with me this year so that he could meet another new cousin - Midge - and once again catch up with Linda, whom we met in April. Dad and I went to see the lovely Derek and were joined by Midge and Linda - as well as Derek's two daughters, granddaughter and great grandson! 

I have no idea whether, given how distantly related we are, there is even any DNA that we share. What I do know is that these are wonderful people that I would never have met or known without Parson Woodforde and his Diary. And that is worth celebrating with a Frolic!

Stop press: another new cousin revealed - this one in France! 

Under the Parson's Nose...a Bates Family (Re)Union

One of the many joys of family history is connecting with like-minded people, drawing together strands of the family tree that have not been in contact for years, sometimes for generations. And meeting these people in real life.

Last weekend I brought together three branches of my Bates family tree in Weston Longville, the village in which we can all claim to have strong roots.

Sunday lunch in the Parson Woodforde pub - formerly the Five Ringers and the home in which my grandfather's aunt Emily lived as a young woman - was the perfect way for us all to get to know each other, share our own stories and look through old photographs.

Being Norfolk, there were - of course - many connections between us all, beyond our blood ties! It is, even in the 21st century, a small world.

Saluting the Parson, whose diaries were the catalyst for my genealogy hobby, I led the group across the lane to All Saints churchyard and gave a guided tour of the Bates, Gray and Dunnell gravestones to show how we were all related to each other.

We then headed to the site of Bates Farm - long since gone - and where a couple is building their dream home. As we stood at the gate taking photos, the couple approached and asked what we were doing: very swiftly we were all invited on to their property and given a guided tour. A real highlight for all of us.

Above: the Bates family - and supportive spouses - at All Saints, Weston Longville. The plaque on the church porch is Henry Duning, our ancestor. I wonder what he would of make of it all...

New discoveries close to home: three 'new' great aunts

'What can you possibly discover after researching your tree for so long?' asked a friend the other day. Quite a lot, it seems. And quite momentous things at that. Such as three 'new' great aunts.

My Scottish granddad's family was complicated: his mother had four sons by three men between 1912 and 1932 -  and she used several different forms of her name. To my grandma, my mum and me she was always known - in stories, as she died in 1941 - as Jeanie Miller.

I only spoke with Bob, my granddad's older half-brother, only once. I plucked his number from the phone book in 1992 and called him. During the conversation he described his childhood, his mother, his home - he said he was very fond of Archie, his younger brother (my granddad) even though they hadn't seen each other since the 1960s.

One comment stayed with me for years afterwards. Bob claimed he had a younger sister, Mary, and that 'she went bad'. I enquired with my granddad's younger half-brother Joe (with whom Bob had no relationship) and he denied outright any knowledge of any girls in the family, or any rumours of any girls.

This week I discovered that Mary existed. And that she wasn't the only girl in the family. Suddenly, my granddad had three sisters - and I had three 'new' great aunts.

Thanks to the records offered by ScotlandsPeople I managed to trace three daughters of my great grandmother Jeanie Miller and her partner, Frederick Daly. The first two - Mary and Helen, twins - were born in 1925 and died in 1926. Mary came along in 1927. All three bore the middle name Miller and the surname Daly. Their birth certificates bear the signature of Jeanie Miller and F Daly.

My granddad would have been 4 years old when the twins arrived and just over 6 when Mary was born. He must have remembered her. But, just like everything else in his childhood, he never talked about her.

So now that half of Bob's account has been proved true, I guess I have to try to find out what happened to Mary and what he meant by 'she went bad'...

My great great granny and the 'shocking' Italian

My granddad Archie never spoke to me about his family - although I did hear that he used to think his grandmother was French.

Only after years of research did I discover that Archie shared a home with his grandmother - Helen - until she died in 1939 when he was 19 years old. She went by the name of Helen Miller and was a nurse; however, she had once been married to and had a child by a man called Arnoldo Scossa.

He wasn't French - we believe he was Swiss, probably Italian Swiss.

If you've read previous posts you'll know that this chap deserted his wife and new baby in the mid 1880s for a new life in New South Wales, where he died alone some twenty years later. Helen described herself as a widow in census returns: either because she genuinely thought she was a widow, or to try and appear 'respectable'. She never remarried but did have my great grandmother, Jeanie, by a John McCaul.

Having coffee with an Italian pal today, our conversation turned to family trees and I mentioned the surname of that errant Italian (father of my great grandmother's brother Archimedes, after whom Archie was named....) and she laughed.

Apparently, Scossa means 'shock'. As in the sort of static electricity shock you get from someone who is wearing too much polyester! So, Helen Miller - you really were married to a shocking Italian!

Finally cracked it?

When I started looking into my family tree in 1986, I didn't even know where my grandfather Bates was born. Today I may have nailed it and found a link on my paternal side right back to the 1550s.

I've yet to check evidence such as Wills, Terriers etc but the Registers of Felthorpe, Swannington and Elsing in Norfolk (at FREEReg and FamilySearch websites) suggest that I can now trace my direct male line back to Thomas Betts and Katherine Candell who married in 1572 (at Elsing).

The line would be:
Thomas Betts & Katherine Candell; Thomas Betts & Cecilie; Thomas Betts & Ann; Joseph Bates & Mary Parker; Joseph Bates & Hannah Miller; John Bates & Mary Dunnell; Thomas Bates & Mary Buck; William Bates & Mary Gray; William Bates & Ann Sayer; John Bates & Mabel Hill - then my grandfather, father and me!

Time to visit Norfolk Records Office methinks!

Genealogy - what a load of pants!

What a load of pants! Well, trousers actually. And probably quite nice ones, for work. Once again, the British Newspaper Archives reveals more than you'd ever find from church or other records. Literally, that my ancestor William Bates (great x2 grandfather) had problems with getting his pants.

On August 18 1866 the Norfolk News carried a headline that read 'Delays are Dangerous'. The story concerned William Bates, a groom at Morton Hall, who in February 1866 placed an order worth £2 2s with local tailor Robert Spooner of neighbouring Great Witchingham. Spooner apparently promised to get Bates his pants made pronto but failed to deliver them until 11 May. Understandably, by then Bates had made other arrangements, and refused to pay Spooner a penny. Not happy, Spooner took the matter to Court in Aylsham but Bates prevailed with support from two witnesses (William Rushbrooke, a fellow servant from Morton Hall) and Frederick Hubbard.

So, Bates got his pants and won the case. Bravo Bates!

My Aunt May - Lenin's neighbour?

Living in London, I don't know my neighbours' names. In fact, given that there are five sets of neighbours (not counting opposite and behind) I probably wouldn't even recognise most of them if I passed them on the way back from the Tube. However, I'd like to think that in days of yore even Londoners were a little more acquainted with those living nearest to them, hence the potential link between Aunt May and V I Lenin.


Aunt May was my great grandfather's sister. She was born Marion Eleanor Bates in 1870 in the Norfolk village of Felthorpe, and moved to London after marrying a man from Kent called Charles Holder. Their first son, Percy, was born in Norwich in 1899; second son Albert was born in London in 1902; and daughter Florrie arrived in 1905. A daughter Emily was born in 1894 but died aged 3 years.

In 1911 the family is listed as living at 20 Holford Square, London. Charles is described as a bill poster, a worker 'outside', while "Marion" is noted as 'House Wife'. The three children are all attending school. Two other families shared the address: Frank Webb, a shop assistant, and his wife and toddler; and Harriet Grieves, aged 54 and noted as 'At Home' with her son Harry, a bath attendant, and a 22-year female boarder [given these three shared just two rooms, it must have been cosy].

I recall my Great Aunt Freda saying that her Aunt May had lost her Norfolk accent and sounded like a Cockney. Apparently, she dressed in a very old fashioned way (old fashioned to a woman born in 1909!) and her voluminous skirts would rustle as she walked along. In 1931 Aunt May attended Freda's wedding in Spalding with son Percy and daughter Florrie. More recently I was in contact with a long lost cousin who was Marion's granddaughter who told me that during WW2 her grandparents' house was destroyed in an air raid.

So I set about trying to trace Holford Square via Google. Pretty swiftly it became apparent that the area around Holford Square - just to the south east of Kings Cross - had been very badly hit during WW2 bombing raids. Holford Square was almost completely flattened during a raid in May 1941 and my Aunt May made homeless aged 70. There is plenty of online documentation (thanks to a marvellous website called LocalLocalHistory.co.uk) that describes how the area was rebuilt after the War, including a War Damage Map that pinpoints exactly where 20 Holford Square once stood and that its state was described as in 'total destruction' after the raid.

So what about Lenin?

Well, isn't Google a marvellous thing? Type in Holford Square and it is revealed as the former home of one rather well known Russian called Vladimir Lenin and his wife between 1902-1903. Sources suggest that their behaviour raised a few eyebrows: according to Sarah Young, lecturer at UCL Mr and Mrs Lenin disturbed their landlady, a Mrs Yeo, by 'hanging curtains on a Sunday'. A small misdemeanour given the upsets to follow.

Lenin and his wife lived at 30 Holford Square, while Aunt May - the same age as the Russian revolutionary - lived at number 20. Whether Aunt May was at that address in 1902-1903 is yet to be confirmed (Albert Holder's birth certificate would prove it), but the Holder family lived in the square for several decades until it was bombed in 1941.

Aunt May died in 1966 over in Hounslow, west London. She would have known about the Lenin link as a memorial was unveiled to honour him in the bombed out Holford Square in 1942. Pathe News recorded the auspicious occasion - the severity of the bomb damage is very much visible - watch it here.

Maybe it always pays to know your neighbours!

*My thanks to those individuals and organisations whose material is referenced here.

Edmund Bambridge - missing man

I recently subscribed to the fantastic online resource that is The British Newspaper Archive. It's very straightforward: search by name, event, date, locality or topic among old newspapers dating back centuries.

Firstly, I searched the Norfolk papers for mentions of my Bates and Dunnell ancestors. Not much there it seems, probably because they were law abiding folk!

Then I searched for Bambridge, one of the unusual names in my tree. And I found a very interesting article from 16 May 1795 edition of The Norfolk Chronicle.

"Absconded from his wife and family, Edmund Bambridge of the Parish of Stody, by trade a Bricklayer, about 45 years of age, five feet six or seven inches high, grey eyes, brown hair, bald upon the forehead, had on when he went away a blue coat and fustian jacket. Whoever will give information about the said E. Bambridge to the Overseers of the said Parish, shall be rewarded for their trouble. N.B. If he shall return he shall be received without punishment. Dated 13 May 1795, Stody"

A shiver went down my spine upon reading this for the first time. Edmund was my direct ancestor and when he went missing his wife would have had 5 or 6 small children at home, the others having already left home and got married.

I checked my family tree and confirmed that Edmund Bambridge was buried in Stody (see church below) in 1815 aged 65 years. So he must have returned at some point to his native village.

Thanks to the British Newspaper Archive I have an intriguing story about a direct ancestor. And I now know what he looked like, what he did for a living and that he suffered from male pattern baldness! It seems he was also loved, or at least that is what I summise from the comment about returning home without punishment.

Bates

Most people know at least one person with my surname - in my life, I've gone to school with, lived next door to and worked with people called Bates. Movie stars and authors boast the name. At least two of my close friends have Bates ancestors (I've done their trees). But none of us is related.

I know this because I have traced my Bates line back nine generations to Joseph Bates who lived in Great Witchingham, Norfolk. To find a possible link to any other living Bates* I have to go back five generations: my great x 3 grandfather William had two older brothers, and the male offspring of the elder brother were producing male Bateses into the 20th century.

Since I started researching my family history way back in 1987, it was clear that Joseph Bates was at the top of the tree - in 24 years I've not been able to establish where he came from. Until today! I need to check the registers as the information has been gleaned from Archdeacons Transcripts (ATs) available free online at FamilySearch.org but the information makes sense...

Tree-topping 'Joseph Beates' married Hannah Miller at a central Norwich church in 1736, both parties noted as 'of Great Witchingham', and their only child John Bates was baptised in Great Witchingham in 1738. Hannah died when her son was very small as Joseph took a second wife, Sarah Fuller, at Great Witchingham in 1739, going on to have eight children with her. Joseph died in 1766, Sarah in 1769.

It appears that the tree-topper was baptised at Felthorpe, Norfolk on 10 January 1707/08, the son of Joseph and Mary Bates. Felthorpe is close to Great Witchingham and the age would fit. Also, John (born 1738) is documented in various sources as owning property and land in Felthorpe, assets that he could have inherited (wills and court rolls need to be checked).

The ATs also reveal that Joseph's father was dead by the time he was born: Joseph Bates was buried on 28 August 1707 - four and a half months before his son's baptism.

Checking FreeREG, there is a possible marriage of Joseph's parents: Joseph Beates married Mary Parker of Swannington in 1705 at Wood Dalling. Both villages are neighbours of both Great Witchingham and Felthorpe. The Parkers of Swannington can be traced back to the 1640s.

So, I now have a different Joseph Bates atop my family tree!

*Strictly, there is one in addition to me and my dad: the unmarried granddaughter of my great grandfather's brother is called Bates and lives in Nova Scotia.

Wedding Wall

The whole country has gone mad for the latest Royal Wedding, between Prince William and Kate...sorry, Catherine Middleton (what would be wrong with Queen Kate? It's not exactly as if the previous Queen Catherines had a lot of fun!).


So here are some happy nuptials from my family tree, my own Wedding Wall.


First, the happy day in 1970 when my own wonderful parents tied the knot on a gusty August day in Blackburn. I have always marvelled that they married so young - my mother was 21.5 years old! Most of the people in the picture are now dead, the church is long gone and the town itself...well, if you've ever been to Blackburn no more needs to be said.

Back to Farnworth in 1920 and my great grandmother Bertha looks ever so slightly delirious with delight in her floppy hat and white dress. Great granddad Tommy Meehan had fought throughout WW1, ending up being rsponsible for the well-being of thousands of Chinese labourers brought over (enslaved) to dig trenches.


The others in the picture are two of his sisters, Polly Critchely and Rose Littler (left), and brother in law James Littler. Shortly after this, Rose emigrated to Canada while Tommy & Bertha named their first daughter (my grandma) after her.




Summer 1935 in Whaplode, Lincolnshire and the wedding day of my grandparents Geoff and Ruby. Gathered here we have a jolly little band of (left to right): Desmond, Tony & Richard Warner (my gran's half brothers); Denzyl Cartledge (my father's cousin) and Nancy Hewson (my gran's cousin).


The happy couple honeymooned in Wales and lived in Whaplode for a few years before moving to Spalding, where my dad came along. He stayed in contact with Nancy, and her daughter Diane can be seen on the church steps in the top photo.

Missing Thirtle

What is a Thirtle?

A Thirtle is one of, if not the most elusive of ancestors! Over two decades the Thirtle (first name Charlotte) has eluded me, foiling my quest to name all of my great grandmother Mabel's great grandparents' parents (I know, I should get out more).

So, Charlotte Thirtle (or Thurtle) - where are you? This is what I know about her.

Married on 17 October 1819 at Horsford in Norfolk to James Booty, Charlotte Thurtle was about twenty years old. A woman who would appear to be her sister, Susannah, witnessed the wedding along with the groom's brother, Thomas. Susannah had been baptised in Horsford in June 1798, as had her siblings William (bp1791), James (bp1794) and Elizabeth (bp1810) - children of James Thirtle and his wife Ann. No baptism for Charlotte, though.

Late 1821 brought Charlotte's first child, John Booty, and he was baptised privately* on Christmas Day. On 6 January 1823, Susannah Thirtle married Thomas Booty at Horsford - two sisters married to two brothers, all living in the same village. Cosy.

But then just weeks later tragedy struck the Booty family: James, aged just 24 years, died and was buried on 19 February 1823, leaving Charlotte a very young widow with a toddler. Charlotte carried on with life and on 2 August 1824 married her second husband, a man originally from outside the village called John Jarvis. He was from nearby Corpusty and was 21.

Their son, James William Jarvis, was baptised privately on 15 May 1825 - a cousin for Martha Booty (Susannah and Thomas's first daughter).

November 1826 was a momentus month. On 12 November, Susannah and Thomas had their second daughter Charlotte (after her aunt, I believe) privately baptised. The two sisters now had four children between them: Charlotte with two boys and Susannah with two girls. A week later at Horsford, on 19 November 1826, Susannah buried both her husband and her sister.

Thomas Booty had died in Horsford aged 31 years and his sister in law Charlotte Jarvis - who had moved to her husband's village of Corpusty - had died aged just 27 years. Poor Susannah must have been beside herself.

It appears that Charlotte's older son, John Booty, remained in Horsford and lived with his maternal grandparents James Thirtle (died 1832) and Ann (nee Woodcock, died 1843) - he was living with his widowed grandmother for the 1841 census. His half brother James William Jarvis was raised by his father John and stepmother: within three months of Charlotte's death John had foudn a new wife in Maria Wright alias Bird** whom he married at Corpusty on 4 February 1827. James William Jarvis grew up, married and had ten children; he died aged 87 years in March 1912. His father John and stepmother Maria died within days of each other in January 1863.

Widowed Susannah Booty remarried, on 28 December 1828, and by her second husband James Doughty had a son James (who died in infancy) and a daughter Elizabeth before she died, aged 34 years, in May 1833. James Doughty himself died aged 33 years in November 1834.

So the story of Charlotte Thirtle is one of tragically early demises. Having searched the registers of Horsford to no avail, I'll keep checking other parishes in the hope of finding her baptism and the proof that Charlotte was the sister of Susannah, and daughter of James and Ann.


*Private baptisms for the labouring classes occurred when the child was perhaps not expected to survive. The act was undertaken either at the child's home or that of the curate or Minister. The child had then to be received in church at some point - if it survived. If it didn't, it could be buried in consecrated ground.

** Maria Wright was the illegitimate daughter of Margaret Wright, baptised at Briston in 1805 (so aged 22 when she married Jarvis); Margaret married Thomas Bird in Corpusty in 1828 (register reference to 'Maria Wright alias Bird' predates Margaret's and Thomas's wedding).

The Hills are Alive! Well...

I made an old woman jump recently.

Picture the scene. An Archives search room, silent other than for the whirr of micro film readers and the occasional pencil sharpener.

Suddenly, the beardy and slightly youthful (compared to the other researchers, at least) amatuer family tree detective exclaims "YES!" followed by "Found you!". The little old lady fair jumped from her chair. Glares worthy of Paddington Bear over half moon specs ensued, although I'm sure I detected a knowing nod from one old chap who looked as if he was checking for his own baptism record from the mid-18th century.

Fellow geneal-addicts will recognise that this was a Eureka moment for me - I had found a long searched for lost ancestor. I found the lead in a Will and I wholeheartedly recommend researchers to check out Wills for information/confirmation of relationships and social status - even suggestions fo family feuds. Even if your own ancestors didn't write a Will (or have anything to leave!), do check out Wills from people in the same community as they may receive a legacy or be Executor/Executrix to an aunt - or a witness at the signing of a Will. Servants and friends are sometimes named.

Similarly, Terriers can provide great leads on where your ancestors' homes and lands were located.

My whoop of joy was caused by finding the Will of Francis Hill of Itteringham in Norfolk, dated 1689. He mentions his wife Barbary, five sons and several grandchildren. One of the grandsons is Henry Hill, who was at the very top of my family tree for over 20 years. So this single document has taken me back two generations (I think Francis Hill must have been born about 1620), provided a detailed overview of the wider family, where they lived and what they did - and also given me solid leads for tracing other Hill families in central Norfolk.

YES indeed!

Dead man walking?

My grandad Archie never spoke to me about his family. It was his death, only six months after that of one of my grandmothers, that first sparked my curiosity about where I came from. After all, his surname is my middle name.

Archie was born in 1920 in central Glasgow, in a tenement. Nearly 40 years later members of the extended family were still in the same tenement when my mother visited Scotland as a child.

Archie had an elder half brother, Robert, and two younger half brothers who had the same father, John and Joseph. Sadly, we don't know who Archie's father was.

Among his effects was a scrap of paper bearing the the address in Rutherglen of 'Mr and Mrs Miller'. Apparently, grandad had once told my grandma that this referred to his uncle. We knew absolutely nothing more.

Research I undertook several years ago revealed that Archie's mother, Jeanie, was herself illegitimate, born in 1895 to widow Helen Scossa (born Helen Miller). Helen died in 1939 and so my grandad Archie would have known and lived with her until he left Scotland to fight in WW2.

Scossa is a very unusual surname (certainly not Scottish!) and so it was straightforward to find Helen's wedding to Arnold Scossa on New Year's Eve 1884. The location - Plymouth - was somewhat of a surprise, given that Helen's family didn't seem to have ventured outside of the Glasgow area for decades! Arnold was a waiter and so perhaps Helen was also involved in hospitality.

Helen was six months pregnant and the child was born back in Scotland at the end of March 1885. His name was Archimede Scossa - who was known as Archie Miller (and after whom my grandad Archie was named), the 'Mr A Miller' on the paper among my grandad's belongings.

In April 1895 Helen had a daughter - my great grandmother, Jeanie - whose father was John McCaul. Jeanie's birth certificate records that her mother was the widow of Arnold Scossa who died in New South Wales in 1886.

I've just discovered that Arnold Scossa emigrated as an unassisted emigrant from Plymouth - describing himself as British and single - on 21 August 1885, arriving in Sydney on 5 October. And then an Arnold Scossa died in South Balmain district, New South Wales in 1905.

So, it seems that Helen was not widowed until 1905.

As with all genealogical answers, it throws up more questions! Why did Arnold leave England when his son was just 6 months old? Why did he describe himself as single? What sort of life did Arnold make for himself in Australia? And did my grandad's uncle know any of this - or did he believe that his father had died in 1886?

Other people's trees - interesting?

Are other people's family trees interesting? Or is the lure of family history the fact it all relates to 'me' - a real ego boost?

Over the past few days I have been researching the family tree of a work colleague - she wants to present an older relative with their genealogy as a birthday gift.

I've found the process as enthralling as doing my own tree - deciphering the family's journey from a rural life through the Industrial Revolution to Lancashire mill towns. And then bingo - they turn up in 1901 in the same street that my grandmother now lives on in Blackburn. I call my friend:

'The family home still stands...'
'Really?'

'Yes, every time I visit my grandma I pass it on the way to the corner shop - it's a two up, two down red brick terrace with a small flagged yard and a red door.'

I am not sure I can deliver such 'personal service' every time, but the precedent has been set!

And now I have got the decorator hooked: she's always wanted to know where her great grandparents came from before they emigrated to South Africa...another project!