ancestry tales
Jun. 28th, 2012 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaMy Mum and Dad celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary this weekend. Not bad going! Looking through their wedding album last weekend with Mum got me thinking again about the many hundreds of old family photos I scanned for my digitisation project the other year, and about all the research Mum and I have done into the family tree, some of the stories we've verified or uncovered. At one point I was posting the odd picture and story, so I've decided to start doing that again and see how long I can keep it up this time - will keep it all behind a cut, though, for those who want to skip!
I suspect I may have told this story, or part of it, before, but I couldn't find it in my tags, so here 'tis again!
This is William W, youngest son of George and Dinah, photographed in 1902.
It isn't the oldest photo I've got, but it is the most distant ancestor I have an image of. William was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was born in Norfolk in 1837 and would have been 65 when this picture was taken. He lived in Norfolk all his life, working on the land. His wife Mary Ann was five years older than him and had an illegitimate son by another man before they married; her son George was raised by William, and he and Mary Ann went on to have eight children together: Clara, Lydia, Charlotte, Mary Ann (Polly), Thomas, Norah, Edith and Robert.
This is William again, this time in 1924, aged 87.
This picture here is of two of William's daughters, Aunts Polly and Edith, taken in the 1930s
William's oldest daughter, Clara, went into service as a teenager - there is no documentary evidence one way or another, but the story in the family has always been that she worked for a Jewish bootmaker. Clara fell pregnant at 17 - to the son of the house, so the story goes - and was promptly packed off home to her parents in disgrace. Her son George was born in 1876 - my great-great-grandfather. Another family legend says that George's father, the son of the Jewish bootmaker, worked with his father in the shop, eventually taking over from him, and every year Clara would take her son into that shop and sit him on the counter and demand a pair of boots for him. That yearly pair of boots was the only form of maintenance or acknowledgement he ever got from his father. Clara went on to marry a man named Thomas and had 11 more children: Bertie, Lily, Alfred, Ernest, Arthur, Robert, Edward, Walter, Gerty, Reginald and Norah.
This is Clara, my great-great-great-grandmother, photographed in 1902 when she would have been 43.
Clara's son George and his wife Georgina (yes, I know, very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) had just one child: my lovely great-granddad Arthur, who was born in 1899 and died in 1986 when I was 7 (that's him in my icon on his wedding day). George worked on the railways as a boiler maker and moved to South Wales around the time the First World War broke out - our family has lived in South Wales ever since. But the links with Norfolk remained strong for many decades - when Arthur grew up and had a family of his own, he took first his children and later his grandchildren back to Norfolk to visit the family there every summer, even as late as the 1960s when my Mum was a teenager. Many years later, when I was a teenager, Mum took us back to Norfolk to look up some of the old haunts she remembered from those summer holidays of her childhood.
Mum remembers that, as a child in the 1950s-60s, whenever she went on holiday to Norfolk with her grandparents she would be taken to visit William's daughter Norah, Mum's great-great-great-aunt, by then the last of that generation still living. Norah would have been in her 80s/90s by then, and lived in a tiny little cottage that had never been modernised. It was the children's job, when they were there, to go and collect water for her from a nearby spring! Norah's cottage was at the end of a tiny row of just 3/4 cottages, the rest of which had all been bought by a young couple, who knocked them through into one decent-sized house and installed mod cons like electricity, central heating and running water. They also bought Norah's cottage, with the agreement that she could remain there for the rest of her life, and were desperate to modernise it for her, since they would be doing it eventually anyway. But she wouldn't let them. She'd relied on oil lamps, open fires and water from the spring all her life and couldn't even contemplate changing her habits at her age!
This picture, taken in 1924, shows five generations of the family: there is old William, his daughter Clara, her son George, his son Arthur, and Arthur's oldest son, another George, my great-uncle, who'd have been a year old at the time. It was probably the last time George and Arthur visited the family in Norfolk before William's death in 1925.
Two last photos from this story: this is William's daughter Clara, my great-great-great-grandmother, pictured in 1934 with her husband Tom and with her great-granddaughter, my grandmother Betty, who'd have been 8 years old at the time
And that there was the story of the Norfolk branch of my ancestry!
I suspect I may have told this story, or part of it, before, but I couldn't find it in my tags, so here 'tis again!
This is William W, youngest son of George and Dinah, photographed in 1902.
It isn't the oldest photo I've got, but it is the most distant ancestor I have an image of. William was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was born in Norfolk in 1837 and would have been 65 when this picture was taken. He lived in Norfolk all his life, working on the land. His wife Mary Ann was five years older than him and had an illegitimate son by another man before they married; her son George was raised by William, and he and Mary Ann went on to have eight children together: Clara, Lydia, Charlotte, Mary Ann (Polly), Thomas, Norah, Edith and Robert.
This is William again, this time in 1924, aged 87.
This picture here is of two of William's daughters, Aunts Polly and Edith, taken in the 1930s
William's oldest daughter, Clara, went into service as a teenager - there is no documentary evidence one way or another, but the story in the family has always been that she worked for a Jewish bootmaker. Clara fell pregnant at 17 - to the son of the house, so the story goes - and was promptly packed off home to her parents in disgrace. Her son George was born in 1876 - my great-great-grandfather. Another family legend says that George's father, the son of the Jewish bootmaker, worked with his father in the shop, eventually taking over from him, and every year Clara would take her son into that shop and sit him on the counter and demand a pair of boots for him. That yearly pair of boots was the only form of maintenance or acknowledgement he ever got from his father. Clara went on to marry a man named Thomas and had 11 more children: Bertie, Lily, Alfred, Ernest, Arthur, Robert, Edward, Walter, Gerty, Reginald and Norah.
This is Clara, my great-great-great-grandmother, photographed in 1902 when she would have been 43.
Clara's son George and his wife Georgina (yes, I know, very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) had just one child: my lovely great-granddad Arthur, who was born in 1899 and died in 1986 when I was 7 (that's him in my icon on his wedding day). George worked on the railways as a boiler maker and moved to South Wales around the time the First World War broke out - our family has lived in South Wales ever since. But the links with Norfolk remained strong for many decades - when Arthur grew up and had a family of his own, he took first his children and later his grandchildren back to Norfolk to visit the family there every summer, even as late as the 1960s when my Mum was a teenager. Many years later, when I was a teenager, Mum took us back to Norfolk to look up some of the old haunts she remembered from those summer holidays of her childhood.
Mum remembers that, as a child in the 1950s-60s, whenever she went on holiday to Norfolk with her grandparents she would be taken to visit William's daughter Norah, Mum's great-great-great-aunt, by then the last of that generation still living. Norah would have been in her 80s/90s by then, and lived in a tiny little cottage that had never been modernised. It was the children's job, when they were there, to go and collect water for her from a nearby spring! Norah's cottage was at the end of a tiny row of just 3/4 cottages, the rest of which had all been bought by a young couple, who knocked them through into one decent-sized house and installed mod cons like electricity, central heating and running water. They also bought Norah's cottage, with the agreement that she could remain there for the rest of her life, and were desperate to modernise it for her, since they would be doing it eventually anyway. But she wouldn't let them. She'd relied on oil lamps, open fires and water from the spring all her life and couldn't even contemplate changing her habits at her age!
This picture, taken in 1924, shows five generations of the family: there is old William, his daughter Clara, her son George, his son Arthur, and Arthur's oldest son, another George, my great-uncle, who'd have been a year old at the time. It was probably the last time George and Arthur visited the family in Norfolk before William's death in 1925.
Two last photos from this story: this is William's daughter Clara, my great-great-great-grandmother, pictured in 1934 with her husband Tom and with her great-granddaughter, my grandmother Betty, who'd have been 8 years old at the time
And that there was the story of the Norfolk branch of my ancestry!
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-28 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-28 02:12 pm (UTC)My Mum does a wicked impression of her granddad Arthur's Norfolk accent - he never lost it, despite moving to Cardiff as a teen!
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Date: 2012-06-28 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-28 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-30 07:31 am (UTC)Anyway, i really enjoyed seeing these - thanks! :-)