Update the first
Jun. 28th, 2010 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywela1. Since Wrangler are the only brand of shoe that has never, ever given me blisters (a reason I really hate feet), I think it is supremely unfair that they no longer sell outside of America. I am reduced to stocking up a few pairs via ebay and whatever online traders still have stock in my size. The bright side of this? New shoes!
2. Went for that ultrasound on Friday, which didn't show up anything abnormal, at least according to the technician, who narrated the entire thing in detail – for the benefit of a student, but it was useful for me, too. Of course, follow-up appointment aside, this leaves me right back at square one, with no explanation for what happened the other week, but then again, as long as it never happens again, I can live with that. Time will tell.
3. After the hospital, I hooked up with my mother for an excursion to the cemetery, which I appreciate might sound a little weird, but its all part of our ongoing genealogical research project. Among the papers that my aunt lent me to be scanned, there were a bunch of old funeral cards, which, among other details, listed the burial plots of those individuals. I got in touch with bereavement services and gave them the plot numbers, and they sent me a map of the cemetery (which is enormous) with the plots marked off on it. X marks the spot, and all that. So we went to take a look, to see what we could see.
The first graves we went to were the ones we already knew, as that seemed a reasonable spot from which to orient ourselves – a pair of family plots from my mother's side.
These are good graves of the kind that are useful to researchers, with nice and informative headstones, telling you exactly who is in these plots – which have certainly been well-used! So, in number one we have: baby Sidney, my grandmother's brother who died of pneumonia when he was three months old; my great-great-grandparents George and Georgina...and yes, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-ness of it kills me, that my family tree contains an actual Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina – here they are in 1949 with their first great-grandson, David
Also in this grave is baby Jason, my mother's half-brother who died at birth in 1972/3, and my great-granddad Arthur, who died when I was 9. This is him as a young man, holding his son George – in this picture my great-grandmother Clara is pregnant with baby Sidney who is in this grave
Grave number two contains: my grandmother, Betty, who died when Mum was 9; her baby son Simon, who she died giving birth to (my granddad paid to have a special coffin made, so that Betty could be buried with the baby in her arms, instead of tucked down by her feet as is the norm); and my grandfather, Reg. Here are Reg and Betty on their wedding day
And also my great-grandmother, Betty's mother, Clara (wife of Arthur from grave #1 - a shame she couldn't be in the same grave as her husband, but there were just too many unexpected early deaths for it to work out that way), pictured here on her own wedding day, way back in 1922
Good graves, with clearly marked headstones. If we didn't already know who was in those graves, we could just look at the stones and find out – just what every family tree researcher dreams of.
So, having touched base at the Ward family plots, we turned our attention to our map and started searching for the graves marked on it. First up was Thomas Stokes Salmon, my 3xgreat-grandfather on the paternal side. He died on Christmas Day 1919 at the age of 83 and is, according to bereavement services records, the only person buried in his grave (despite the fact that most plots can take four) – at least, no one else has used the grave since 1912, which is the point after which they have computerised records. Here's his funeral card.
The map proved easy to follow, illustrating that the grave was not, in fact, all that far from the Ward family plots…but when we got there, however, what we found was a patch of grass untouched in 90 years. Not only is Thomas Stokes Salmon completely alone in his grave – a rare feat in such a large family – but that grave is completely unmarked, not even so much as a disintegrating wooden cross to show that there is a grave there. It is surrounded by nicely labelled graves, marked by stone headstones or wooden crosses, but the one we were interested in? Zip, zilch, nada.
Strike one. And kinda puzzling, because with such a large family, which it was, you'd think they'd have made full use of the plot, at least, even if nobody ever got around to erecting any kind of headstone. Maybe they just forgot about it. I can't help wondering what the official policy is on such underused plots – how long do they wait before allowing it to be used by someone else. What if the family suddenly decided that we want to use it again now, after 91 years – would we be required to produce a receipt, or would proving direct line of descent be sufficient, since the plot was paid for at the time, and all? I'm guessing the former, but can't help but be morbidly intrigued.
We headed on to the second plot, a Browning family plot, directed via two funeral cards:
Number one, Joan, was my grandfather's baby sister, who died in 1926 when she was only a year old – my granddad would have been about 12 at the time, and was clearly affected by his sister's death, as he named his firstborn after her…and I, in turn, was named Joanna in honour of that second Joan, which makes me Joan III, I suppose! Funeral card number two is my little aunt Hazel, my dad's older sister, who died very suddenly of meningitis in 1942, when she was just three years old. Here she is just a couple of weeks before she died, pictured with her older sister, Joan (the one I was named after, who in turn was named after the baby Joan in the grave).
Also in this grave, according to bereavement services' records, are my great-grandparents Alf and Edith, the parents of baby Joan – pictured here in the late '30s with their ten surviving children, of whom my granddad was the oldest.
Now, for my mother's family, it was a point of honour to do right by the dead – even if you had to scrimp and save, you bought your plot and you paid for a headstone to mark it. However, my dad's family, it seems, prioritised rather differently. This is what the grave looks like:
Yeah, that used to be a wooden cross, but the crossbar has fallen off, and most of the lettering has come off…you can just about make out the year of baby Joan's death, and on the fallen crossbar you can play scrabble with the letters to make out fragments of the names it was supposed to bear… Mostly, though, it's just sad and uncared-for. I can understand no headstone for the two children – it was depression era for the first and wartime for the second, and both sets of parents had large families to keep. But by the time Alf and Edith died, they had large numbers of adult children and grandchildren who could have all chipped in to help pay for something. Nobody thought of it, though, it seems.
We moved on. The cemetery is actually two cemeteries, divided by a major road. Our first stop in the second half of the cemetery was another of Mum's family graves – a Melean family grave. This grave, according to the records, contains my great-great-grandfather, John Melean, who died of wounds in 1919 on his way home from World War I. He was 37 and left his widow, Madeline, with nine children to raise - their grandson, Reg, was my grandfather pictured above with the Wards. This is John in his army uniform, and his name on the war memorial in Grange Gardens (at the top)
Also in this grave, we know from bereavement services' records, are John's parents: Otto the Norwegian sailor and his Irish bride Honora, for whom he converted to Catholicism. However, when we got there, we found that the headstone – paid for by the army as it was – bears only one name, John's.
It kinda makes sense, I suppose – it's a war grave, and the army paid for the stone, so it only bears the name of the dead soldier. But it is also a family grave – Otto had been in it for four years by the time John joined him – so it's a shame that Otto and Honora can't have their names on the stone as well.
Onward and upward – grave number four was going to be a winner, right? This one we found via this funeral card:
Joseph Cooper, who died in 1931, was my great-great-grandfather. His wife, Penelope, who is also in this grave, was the daughter of Thomas Stokes Salmon…he of the unmarked grave we visited earlier. This is Penelope with her daughter Edith, my great-grandmother (pictured above with the Brownings), picture taken some time in the '20s - we don't know which year, exactly, but the roses, snapdragons and lupins in full bloom tell us it was June!
Bereavement services' records tell us that there are two people in the grave beside Joseph and Penelope, but they don't know who. This means that whoever they are, they were buried prior to 1912, since that's the year in which computerised records begin. That being the case, to find out who else is in that grave, we'd need to either pay for a manual search of the paper records, or read the names off the headstone…if there is one. Based on the fact that Penelope's father Thomas appears to have been pretty much forgotten the moment he was in the ground, we weren't holding out much hope.
Rightly so, it turns, out, because this is what the plot looks like:
Yeah. There are about six graves inside that thicket, six visible headstones, which means there's a chance that the Coopers actually do have a stone…there just isn't anyway of getting to it, not without a machete of some kind!
Another strike.
This left us with one last grave to find, a Ludlow family grave, again from my father's side. There's a rather ridiculous amount of documentary evidence for this grave, starting with this receipt, which tells us that the plot was bought in 1909 by my great-great-grandfather, Deveraux Ludlow.
In February 1931, Deveraux's daughter Blanche died – she was my great-grandmother, and left 12 children; my grandmother Vera was the 10th of those 12 children; she was 13 at the time and had to leave school to keep house for her father and siblings. This is Blanche (on the beach at Barry Island in the '20s, before the sea wall was built by the looks of it), her funeral card, and even the receipt paid for turfing fees for the funeral.
According to the records kept by bereavement services, one William Merrett Ludlow – Blanche's brother and Deveraux's son – was also buried in the grave, in 1917. Records indicate that there was already one other person in there at the time, which means that at some point between Deveraux buying the plot in 1909 and computerised records beginning in 1912, someone in the Ludlow family died and was buried in that plot. My money is on one of the other Ludlow children – either that or Deveraux's wife Maria, for whom we also have no death date. The grave would tell us, though, right? The Ludlows had money, the one branch of the family that did, so they'd almost certainly have invested in a headstone for the family grave, surely…
Yeah, it's possible. We can't know, though, because this is what the plot looks like:
Another thicket! Again, there are several headstones visible inside, but no way to get to them, short of returning with a machete and hacking away.
Deveraux himself isn't in the grave – the record says that there are just the three bodies in there: William, Blanche, and that unknown pre-1912 individual, and Deveraux didn't die till the '30s. So, if there is room in a family plot for four coffins, this one has an empty spot, and we have the receipt (dated 1909, sure, but still valid, right?)…does that mean I could go to bereavement services, flash the receipt at them and ask them to chop the thicket down so we can bury someone else in there? *G*
Overall, not the most successful expedition ever, although such setbacks and frustrations are pretty much par for the course with this kind of research. It was a lovely day for a walk through the park, though (if you can call a cemetery a park, that is - well, it's pretty and peaceful and has grass!).
So, that was my Friday. :)
2. Went for that ultrasound on Friday, which didn't show up anything abnormal, at least according to the technician, who narrated the entire thing in detail – for the benefit of a student, but it was useful for me, too. Of course, follow-up appointment aside, this leaves me right back at square one, with no explanation for what happened the other week, but then again, as long as it never happens again, I can live with that. Time will tell.
3. After the hospital, I hooked up with my mother for an excursion to the cemetery, which I appreciate might sound a little weird, but its all part of our ongoing genealogical research project. Among the papers that my aunt lent me to be scanned, there were a bunch of old funeral cards, which, among other details, listed the burial plots of those individuals. I got in touch with bereavement services and gave them the plot numbers, and they sent me a map of the cemetery (which is enormous) with the plots marked off on it. X marks the spot, and all that. So we went to take a look, to see what we could see.
The first graves we went to were the ones we already knew, as that seemed a reasonable spot from which to orient ourselves – a pair of family plots from my mother's side.
These are good graves of the kind that are useful to researchers, with nice and informative headstones, telling you exactly who is in these plots – which have certainly been well-used! So, in number one we have: baby Sidney, my grandmother's brother who died of pneumonia when he was three months old; my great-great-grandparents George and Georgina...and yes, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-ness of it kills me, that my family tree contains an actual Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina – here they are in 1949 with their first great-grandson, David
Also in this grave is baby Jason, my mother's half-brother who died at birth in 1972/3, and my great-granddad Arthur, who died when I was 9. This is him as a young man, holding his son George – in this picture my great-grandmother Clara is pregnant with baby Sidney who is in this grave
Grave number two contains: my grandmother, Betty, who died when Mum was 9; her baby son Simon, who she died giving birth to (my granddad paid to have a special coffin made, so that Betty could be buried with the baby in her arms, instead of tucked down by her feet as is the norm); and my grandfather, Reg. Here are Reg and Betty on their wedding day
And also my great-grandmother, Betty's mother, Clara (wife of Arthur from grave #1 - a shame she couldn't be in the same grave as her husband, but there were just too many unexpected early deaths for it to work out that way), pictured here on her own wedding day, way back in 1922
Good graves, with clearly marked headstones. If we didn't already know who was in those graves, we could just look at the stones and find out – just what every family tree researcher dreams of.
So, having touched base at the Ward family plots, we turned our attention to our map and started searching for the graves marked on it. First up was Thomas Stokes Salmon, my 3xgreat-grandfather on the paternal side. He died on Christmas Day 1919 at the age of 83 and is, according to bereavement services records, the only person buried in his grave (despite the fact that most plots can take four) – at least, no one else has used the grave since 1912, which is the point after which they have computerised records. Here's his funeral card.
The map proved easy to follow, illustrating that the grave was not, in fact, all that far from the Ward family plots…but when we got there, however, what we found was a patch of grass untouched in 90 years. Not only is Thomas Stokes Salmon completely alone in his grave – a rare feat in such a large family – but that grave is completely unmarked, not even so much as a disintegrating wooden cross to show that there is a grave there. It is surrounded by nicely labelled graves, marked by stone headstones or wooden crosses, but the one we were interested in? Zip, zilch, nada.
Strike one. And kinda puzzling, because with such a large family, which it was, you'd think they'd have made full use of the plot, at least, even if nobody ever got around to erecting any kind of headstone. Maybe they just forgot about it. I can't help wondering what the official policy is on such underused plots – how long do they wait before allowing it to be used by someone else. What if the family suddenly decided that we want to use it again now, after 91 years – would we be required to produce a receipt, or would proving direct line of descent be sufficient, since the plot was paid for at the time, and all? I'm guessing the former, but can't help but be morbidly intrigued.
We headed on to the second plot, a Browning family plot, directed via two funeral cards:
Number one, Joan, was my grandfather's baby sister, who died in 1926 when she was only a year old – my granddad would have been about 12 at the time, and was clearly affected by his sister's death, as he named his firstborn after her…and I, in turn, was named Joanna in honour of that second Joan, which makes me Joan III, I suppose! Funeral card number two is my little aunt Hazel, my dad's older sister, who died very suddenly of meningitis in 1942, when she was just three years old. Here she is just a couple of weeks before she died, pictured with her older sister, Joan (the one I was named after, who in turn was named after the baby Joan in the grave).
Also in this grave, according to bereavement services' records, are my great-grandparents Alf and Edith, the parents of baby Joan – pictured here in the late '30s with their ten surviving children, of whom my granddad was the oldest.
Now, for my mother's family, it was a point of honour to do right by the dead – even if you had to scrimp and save, you bought your plot and you paid for a headstone to mark it. However, my dad's family, it seems, prioritised rather differently. This is what the grave looks like:
Yeah, that used to be a wooden cross, but the crossbar has fallen off, and most of the lettering has come off…you can just about make out the year of baby Joan's death, and on the fallen crossbar you can play scrabble with the letters to make out fragments of the names it was supposed to bear… Mostly, though, it's just sad and uncared-for. I can understand no headstone for the two children – it was depression era for the first and wartime for the second, and both sets of parents had large families to keep. But by the time Alf and Edith died, they had large numbers of adult children and grandchildren who could have all chipped in to help pay for something. Nobody thought of it, though, it seems.
We moved on. The cemetery is actually two cemeteries, divided by a major road. Our first stop in the second half of the cemetery was another of Mum's family graves – a Melean family grave. This grave, according to the records, contains my great-great-grandfather, John Melean, who died of wounds in 1919 on his way home from World War I. He was 37 and left his widow, Madeline, with nine children to raise - their grandson, Reg, was my grandfather pictured above with the Wards. This is John in his army uniform, and his name on the war memorial in Grange Gardens (at the top)
Also in this grave, we know from bereavement services' records, are John's parents: Otto the Norwegian sailor and his Irish bride Honora, for whom he converted to Catholicism. However, when we got there, we found that the headstone – paid for by the army as it was – bears only one name, John's.
It kinda makes sense, I suppose – it's a war grave, and the army paid for the stone, so it only bears the name of the dead soldier. But it is also a family grave – Otto had been in it for four years by the time John joined him – so it's a shame that Otto and Honora can't have their names on the stone as well.
Onward and upward – grave number four was going to be a winner, right? This one we found via this funeral card:
Joseph Cooper, who died in 1931, was my great-great-grandfather. His wife, Penelope, who is also in this grave, was the daughter of Thomas Stokes Salmon…he of the unmarked grave we visited earlier. This is Penelope with her daughter Edith, my great-grandmother (pictured above with the Brownings), picture taken some time in the '20s - we don't know which year, exactly, but the roses, snapdragons and lupins in full bloom tell us it was June!
Bereavement services' records tell us that there are two people in the grave beside Joseph and Penelope, but they don't know who. This means that whoever they are, they were buried prior to 1912, since that's the year in which computerised records begin. That being the case, to find out who else is in that grave, we'd need to either pay for a manual search of the paper records, or read the names off the headstone…if there is one. Based on the fact that Penelope's father Thomas appears to have been pretty much forgotten the moment he was in the ground, we weren't holding out much hope.
Rightly so, it turns, out, because this is what the plot looks like:
Yeah. There are about six graves inside that thicket, six visible headstones, which means there's a chance that the Coopers actually do have a stone…there just isn't anyway of getting to it, not without a machete of some kind!
Another strike.
This left us with one last grave to find, a Ludlow family grave, again from my father's side. There's a rather ridiculous amount of documentary evidence for this grave, starting with this receipt, which tells us that the plot was bought in 1909 by my great-great-grandfather, Deveraux Ludlow.
In February 1931, Deveraux's daughter Blanche died – she was my great-grandmother, and left 12 children; my grandmother Vera was the 10th of those 12 children; she was 13 at the time and had to leave school to keep house for her father and siblings. This is Blanche (on the beach at Barry Island in the '20s, before the sea wall was built by the looks of it), her funeral card, and even the receipt paid for turfing fees for the funeral.
According to the records kept by bereavement services, one William Merrett Ludlow – Blanche's brother and Deveraux's son – was also buried in the grave, in 1917. Records indicate that there was already one other person in there at the time, which means that at some point between Deveraux buying the plot in 1909 and computerised records beginning in 1912, someone in the Ludlow family died and was buried in that plot. My money is on one of the other Ludlow children – either that or Deveraux's wife Maria, for whom we also have no death date. The grave would tell us, though, right? The Ludlows had money, the one branch of the family that did, so they'd almost certainly have invested in a headstone for the family grave, surely…
Yeah, it's possible. We can't know, though, because this is what the plot looks like:
Another thicket! Again, there are several headstones visible inside, but no way to get to them, short of returning with a machete and hacking away.
Deveraux himself isn't in the grave – the record says that there are just the three bodies in there: William, Blanche, and that unknown pre-1912 individual, and Deveraux didn't die till the '30s. So, if there is room in a family plot for four coffins, this one has an empty spot, and we have the receipt (dated 1909, sure, but still valid, right?)…does that mean I could go to bereavement services, flash the receipt at them and ask them to chop the thicket down so we can bury someone else in there? *G*
Overall, not the most successful expedition ever, although such setbacks and frustrations are pretty much par for the course with this kind of research. It was a lovely day for a walk through the park, though (if you can call a cemetery a park, that is - well, it's pretty and peaceful and has grass!).
So, that was my Friday. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 02:16 pm (UTC)I'd like to do this for my ancestors (I'd like to try to find some of my Moons) but we don't have any records so I've no idea how to go about it!
I'm glad you had a good day, even if you didn't find out all you'd have liked.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 02:42 pm (UTC)Or did you just mean tracing the graves? If you know names and dates of death but not where the graves are, if you at least know which cemetery they were most likely to have been buried in, you can usually contact whoever is in charge of that cemetery and ask them to pull up the records for you. In this case, because I knew the plot numbers and because the records were computerised, there was no charge. But they do offer a chargeable service for locating graves - I could give them names and dates of death, and they would search their records to find out where they were buried (something like £18 for 5 searches). We're thinking of doing it for some of the folk we don't have plot details for. It could be worth looking into for you, too.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 03:16 pm (UTC)Gorgeous pics, hon! :) And that was quite an interesting journey into the past.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 03:25 pm (UTC)Also, I still haven't got over the fact that my family tree contains a man named Deveraux. Who had siblings named Orlando, Alvin and Zana. And this was a Victorian family!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 04:55 pm (UTC)Was Deveraux named after his mother's maiden name perhaps? The other names are, it must be said, a little unexpected for the era.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 08:59 pm (UTC)Are you allowed to go and clear the graves? I don't see why not, and as you say it could provide some more clues.
Carol
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 02:44 pm (UTC)It's the social history that really appeals to me with this research - the fact that it is social history that is personal to me and feeds directly into the family that shaped me, that makes it more fascinating still. I feel really lucky to have access to old photographs and documents from even just a handful of the various branches of my family.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 10:03 pm (UTC)I've been lucky to have some family photos as well, and have made contacts via various websites with all sorts of branches of the families. I still find it amazing how many relatives you can have just a few generations back - and I come from quite a small starting point as both Mum & Dad were only children. Although the grandparents' generation makes up for that a bit, with at least 5 children per family (one had 12 siblings, although 3 died young).
Oh, it's fascinating stuff and once I get started... :)
Carol
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 10:06 pm (UTC)Carol
no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 10:16 am (UTC)And one day, according to family legend, all three William Henrys were caught poaching together. The fine upstanding member of local constabulary asked each of their names in turn - and was not amused to hear that they were all called William Henry Tarr!
Another family name is Otto Patrick, which stems back to the Norwegian sailor Otto whose grave is above and his Irish bride Honora. There was an Otto Patrick in every generation for the next several generations!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 10:11 am (UTC)And I totally understand - once I get started on some of the stories within my tree, there's no stopping me! And as mine is such a huge family, it all just goes on and on...
no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 09:26 pm (UTC)And fascinating research! I didn't read all of it, but how interesting to see the photos of the people and of their graves, right there, as well - the cycle of life, eh? I still want to get back to my family history research - as soon as it's rescued from my mate's roof, which isn't too far in the future, I suspect...
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-28 11:56 pm (UTC)Frustrating! Yet interesting all in one. That first gravestone certainly was filled! Great pictures too, hun. Have said it before but I'll say it again - you're so lucky to have all this info and photos kept. Must make researching your family easier.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 07:22 pm (UTC)Also, if you ever get really hard-up for Wranglers on your side of the pond, I'd be happy to order them here and ship 'em over to you. I know how important a pair of good shoes can be. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-29 07:39 pm (UTC)Aren't feet ridiculous?