![]() My friend Anna messaged me, wanting to know the names of her maternal grandparents, so I found those details for her, and for her grandfather Sydney Wentworth Carroll, who she hadn't even realised was born in Australia. It was he who was the son of 'Madame Midas'. Anna never was so interested in her family genealogy, before now, despite all I had researched. Suddenly, feeling pride in her grandfather, who had created the open air theatre in Regents Park, she wants to know more. She has seen that there is not even a Wikepedia article for him. "Then, let us create one", I have said. Sydney was a womaniser. I spent much of the day finding newspaper articles about him, from his entering into the theatre with his own play 'Big Fame', to becoming a theatre critic and producer of the plays of others. The association never seemed to be made publicly between him and his millionairess mother, his name change maybe hiding this fact. The next day I totally absorbed myself in Anna's Sydney Wentworth Carroll, there being endless newspaper articles about his theatre management days, and of his Shakespearean productions enacted at his very own open air theatre in Regents Park. His Aunt Kathleen, younger sister to 'Madame Midas', was known as the Silver Queen. She converted to Judaism at the age of 19 for the love of an older man, then cheated on him at plush hotels with a man more her own age, for which her Jewish husband divorced her. I so much studied Anna's family that I was even dreaming about them in the night. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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![]() Chatting with Mr Kinsey on Facebook, I offered to do his genealogy; well, that's the kind of thing I do. I've been keen to get stuck into a new challenge. Some family history he already knows, which his sister has looked at, though there are places where she'd got stuck. Like me, he has Shetlanders, who had moved to Scotland and then England. So, now I absorbed myself in his tree. He was so surprised that while we were still chatting, I could come up with his town of birth and his mothers middle name, in which I was blowing his mind, it being as if I had magic powers. Mr Kinsey was a Derbyshire lad, from Shardlow, 'of peasants' he says. The next day, and I'm blowing Mr Kinsey's mind yet again, as I had quickly discovered so much about his Scottish side, which the research of his family members had not. For his great great grandfather, Ninian Jamieson, there had been a terrible lime quarrying accident, from which he died, which was well recorded in the Scottish newspaper. His son Thomas, Mr Kinsey's great grandfather, was also in the accident but had survived. One of three explosives had not gone off and after it had been rained on, deeming it safer to approach, father and son were hacking at the explosive with metal tools, when by fluke a spark generated by the striking of the metal blasted the gunpowder. I carried on working out Mr Kinsey's genealogy and but a couple of days later had discovered, incredibly, yet another fatal lime-works accident in his family history, this time at Breedon on the Hill with his great great great grandfather Benjamin Hart, who along with three other men had been trying to unblock, with sticks, the contents of a lime kiln, when all fell upon them, a cloud of fire and sulphur, burning off their clothes and just about burning them alive. So, it is that both his paternal grandparents Benjamin Hart Kinsey and Mary Jamieson are descended from people who died in terrible lime works accidents. Mr Kinsey now reveals that he is an artist and would like to do a painting for me in gratitude for what I have done for him. On Saatchi Art are displayed great works of his, of urban, peeling posters, and portraits of blues singers. He'll be the first person whose tree I've done who has offered me something in return. He is inspired by the loneliness and isolation to be found within cities and some of his work is on permanent display in Paris, Marseilles, and Lyon. Researching more for Mr Kinsey, he who I now see has descended from people of fatal mining accidents, I find some story from olden days which is somewhat strange. The father of Ninian Jamieson, or rather the potential father, of right surname, time and place, in the hamlet of Craigie in Ayrshire, well, this Jamieson man, whose name was not specified, he had been paid to demolish an ancient cairn, known as the Witches Stone, and this having been as a sacrilege, the farmers wife who had demanded that this be done went blind, and Mr Jamieson himself had fallen into alcohol and ruin. How uncanny. The curse of the Witches Stone, so it may appear, had passed to his son, in that dreadful recorded quarrying accident. What coincidence. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I have recreated a lovely picture of my great grandfather D'Auvergne Bane from a tiny war pass photo that needed such repairing. He was so handsome, blonde haired and blue eyed, a dapper gentleman. Really so good looking, though when I showed my daughter she said his lips are too thin. Ok, true, but he is still so very handsome. Before I'd only had photos of him as a lad and as an old man, and this is so wonderful, to now have him also as a young man. The picture is, for me, divine. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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