In my genealogy I focused on doing a presentation for my Welsh great grandparents John and Emma Harrison. I found footage on YouTube of Pwlldu, the hamlet high on the Blorenge mountain where John Harrison had lived in as a little boy, filmed in the 50's by the BBC before the place was bulldozed to the ground. Such a film could be interestingly modernised with music and all, but for there being a big symbol splashed across it to prevent copying. On a Pwlldu Facebook group I found photos of the two rows of houses once there, which my Harrison's had dwelt in, pretty rough pictures really, but I jazzed them up and was so happy for that.
There's a lot to be discovered about John and Emma's lives and the people that surrounded them. For instance, that they had lived a while in Bargoed during their early marriage I'd not known, but now could see from their daughters school registration details. My Welsh family, upon leaving Pwlldu, settled in Varteg and Garndiffaith, they being John's Welsh Harrisons and Emma's Forest of Dean Hawkins's. The Forest of Dean people never would say that they were from Gloucestershire; it was always the more exciting sounding Forest of Dean. One uncovers many stories, like of bully neighbours (I know that well). Jane Hawkins, Emma's mother, had been harassed most threateningly by a neighbour, John Jones who was a blacksmith. Jones's existed in every corner of Wales and I myself have Jones's ancestors, John's granny being a Margaret Jones from Llangattock.
Emma's sister, Amelia, had a daughter called Blodwyn (I love those old Welsh names), and another daughter who like herself was called Amelia. This young girl, Amelia Self, went as a teenager to work in service at a grand house in Swansea, only to be dead within three days of arriving there. She'd eaten a hearty meal of steak, potatoes and beans, thereon retreating unwell to the outside privy, where she had a fit, By the time the locked door was forced open she was almost dead and could not be revived. One may suspect poisoning for this, but she'd been one for headaches and had even had a previous fit some years before.
John Harrison had a cousin in Brynmawr and later Blaina called Margaret Morgan, née Watkins, who while still single had to make out a bastardy order against one George Holly for him having got her with child and yet not having taken responsibility for this. George was a friend of one of her brothers and they were later in the Boer War together where they managed to survive a dreadful massacre.
A lovely clip I found on YouTube of Welsh miners returning from the pit singing 'Bread of heaven', which brought tears to my eyes, as did other clips of the Welsh men singing, all being from a film 'How Green Was My Valley', in turn inspired by a book, reflecting the South Wales mining communities at the turn of the century.
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I was now focusing on my project about the world of Caucasus white slave girls who at one time graced the harems of the wealthy. It was very much the way of affluent Persians that upon marriage the bridegroom would at the same time establish his own private harem, full of Georgian and Circassian slaves (all from the Caucasus mountains), having negotiated with the brides family how to go about this. And so it was, throughout the Near East, from Constantinople to Mecca, that those girls considered to be the most beautiful of the whole of humanity, were sold to a lusty mans pleasure. This was the last remaining slavery, long after the West Indies black slave trade was done away with, for it was something the Ottoman Empire especially, and the Arabic colonised Mohammedan world in general was lax to give up, slavery being upheld within the Koran. Those slaves who were from Nubia, African black women, were used as domestic servants, and the women of the Caucasus, prized for their beauty, were sex slaves to enjoy in ones harem, so expensive that they could only be bought by the trés riche, and who would be showered in luxury and even end up as the wives and mothers of sultans and pasha's. On the one hand it was said those girls families wanted their daughters to enjoy such wealth and opportunity, and on the other we see examples of the girls being capture and stolen away by marauders. Slavery was quite the way for most ancient peoples. Going to war against neighbouring territories was not just about acquiring land and plunder, but was about profiting from slavery. Any European was vulnerable to being stolen away, white women always the ones most highly desired by other ethnicities. Naturally I have considered this as a way my own distant ancestresses from the Caucasus would have ended up far from home. The ideal of the perfectly beautiful Caucasian woman long captured the imagination of the masses, although in our multi-cultural sensitive times I doubt this is what modern people would indulge their thoughts on; the persecutions of certain others, yes, of Africans, of the Irish famine victims, of feminist causes, of witches of old, but never do they seem to acknowledge that Europeans in their masses have suffered too. And yet our ancestors suffered immeasurably along the path towards civilisation and human rights. My impoverished Londoners lived through horrendous situations, and those are but our people of more recent history, which we may identify and find records about; what to speak of those whose stories are ever lost to us. When I look at slavery I know not in what ways this personally affected my ancestors, other than that this would have been a reality among which they lived. Interestingly I have seen a theory, now presented, that Leonardo Da Vinci's own mother was a Circassian slave, Catherina, whom his father, as a lawyer, managed to gain freedom for. To our ancestors such women were the most beautiful of creation, which in itself presents another challenge to modern peoples, that women of fair features and pale skin may have been regarded to have in some way attained aesthetic superiority. And yet our ancestors had no qualms with that. It was just so, whether this came from the perspective of Europeans or darker ethnicities. In 1819 when the Persian ambassador came to London, he did so with the companionship of his most prized Circassian slave woman, and with a carriage of black slave eunuchs to guard her. So much did the Londoners wish to set eyes upon her beauty that in great numbers they would stand outside the ambassadors house in Berkeley Square, but she was well hidden, her rooms constantly guarded by two of the black eunuchs with sabres in their hands. She became an invisible celebrity, said to be musically adept and to have a cultivated mind. Esteemed gentlemen guests to the home never hd the opportunity themselves to see her. But as for some of the women of high society, they were made allowance of, and one of those ladies sketched a picture of her, full length and in traditional dress, which she gifted to the lady proprietor of the house, who in turn sold it to the Lady's Magazine, who printed this, at a cost, for their readership. What a scoop they had, the face that so many had wished to set eyes upon. In 1841, when an Austrian man, Baron Welzlar, converted in Constantinople to Islam, his sponsor there gifted him a beautiful Circassian slave. This was the stuff of dreams and fantasies. In 1856 the sultan of Constantinople gifted 75 Circassian female slaves to an old man of Mecca. Both the Russians and the British tried to stop this white slave trade, but for long it continued, and yet who knows of such history, not so many really.
I've learnt how to do cropped screenshots on my new MacBook, which is so cool for newspaper excerpts on my current projects, which right now were about witchcraft and the slave girls of the Caucasus, in the same manner as I had done for the gypsies. Basically I was making a presentation on my genealogy website, looking deeply into these matters, in accordance with surviving newspaper articles which I'd earlier made note of, while adding more of current research. This began with a paper from back in 1679 relating to the witches of Bo'ness, or Barrowstones as it was written back then. They were a bunch of widows, in the main, who were accused of consorting with the devil. As it was written on the official paper, the crime of witchcraft is declared to be a horrid abomination, capital crime, punishable with the pains of death. Annabel Thomson, one of the witches, was said to have encountered a black man on more than one occasion while out and about, and it was he who was said to be the devil. The first time she'd met him, he'd expressed empathy for her struggles in life, promising her that if she followed him her life would be so much better. She didn't take him up on his proposal, not until coming across him again five weeks later. I do wonder if this romance she then found herself in was indeed with a man of colour, and maybe even a man of the gypsy travelling community, who were indeed known for their magical powers. At the time of their second encounter she'd been on her way to the coal hill, early in the morning, and upon her accepting that this time she would follow him he threw her to the ground and they had 'carnal copulation'. From then on, he and another man friend, William Craw, would meet her in the nights, with other ladies too, to party and dance and drink ale, the 'black man' playing a pipe to provide the music. It was in her final meeting with him, when she was on her way to the Grange coal hill, that he invited her to drink ale with him in the salt pans. Another woman, Margaret Pringle, also had carnal copulation with this black man. They'd held hands together, after which for eight days her hand was in pain. Another widow, Margaret Hamilton, had been lovers with this man for 8 or 9 years. They'd first met at the town well, where they had got into conversation. She took him back to her home where they drank ale and got intimate, for which in gratitude he'd given her a gift of gold. Another woman, also with the name Margaret Hamilton, had known this man for the longest. She recalled experiencing him as a black man in copulation, and yet upon his leaving he having the appearance of a black dog. Although the sentence for such consorting was to be burnt at the stake, the witches were first to be 'wirried', that is they were estranged by wire, their bodies thereafter being burnt to ashes. Some of the newspaper articles after that time referenced the Auto de Fé's of Spain and Portugal, in which the monks of the inquisition regularly made victims of not only witches, but also polygamists and converso's, who had in the past converted from Judaism to christianity, but who were observed to be lapsing back into their old ways. I'd seen of this before in regard to Goa in India, where Portuguese settlers who were too much familiarising themselves with the ways of Hinduism themselves became victims to the Inquisitors. Sometimes those accused of being witches were simply healers who had cured people of that considered to be incurable. This included a man who was a surgeon and had merely been too good at his job. In 1726, at the village of Burnt Pelham (now known as Brent Pelham), near St Albans, an old lady was brought to trial as a suspected witch, only for the judge to on but a glance dismiss her, as he could not take seriously that such a homely old woman would be involved in witchcraft. And this was even though it had always been the old women who were more largely the ones being prosecuted. In consequence of the judges words it was after reported that by current opinion of the learned, none but the young and beautiful were truly the witches. This created a panic among the beautiful young ladies of the area, serval of whom absconded for fear of being targeted as witches, for all the men about who were charmed by them. In Hungary, at Segedin, witches continued to be burnt alive, as was recorded in the British newspapers in 1728. One of the victims there was an 82 year old man, who'd been a former judge of the town, said to have practised the dark arts for 50 years. Another was a midwife who'd baptised 200 children in the name of the devil. Meanwhile in England attitudes to witchcraft were changing, the intellectual classes generally dropping such superstitions, while country folk themselves clung longer onto such beliefs. This meant that although the authorities no longer took such accusations seriously, the general poor were still blaming local calamities upon old widows, and sometimes without any authority would take such matters into their own hands. One example, in 1731, occurred at Frome in Somerset. A child of the Wheeler family, who live in the forest, had taken ill with 'extraordinary fits', for which it was assumed that she had been bewitched. The culprit was assumed to be an old lady known as Goody Richards, who lived at nearby Witham Friary. And so this old lady was dragged out of her home by a mob, and was taken two miles on horseback to a millpond where she was stripped of her upper clothes, her legs tied together and a rope around her waist, and she was thrown into the water. 200 spectators were there making noise and abetting the riot. She swam like a cork, even though they plunged her several times. Whenever dunked she consumed plenty of water, for which she was pulled out almost dead. Brandy was poured into her mouth to revive her, she was dragged into a horse stable and there thrown into the sewage, still in her wet clothes. In but an hour she was dead. 40 people had directly taken part in plunging her, and masses of witnesses had been there, but all remained silent when the authorities did their utmost afterwards to find out who had been the ringleaders of this affair. The locals remained satisfied that the old witch, as they called her, had been destroyed, and for the 'fine sport' they'd had in 'swimming her'. By 1735 the statute against witchcraft was repealed and those who continued to duck witches would now themselves be guilty of crime. And yet still the lynchings continued. In that same year, at Nantby, a poor shoemaker, John Kinsman, was suspected to be a wizard who had conspired with the devil, and all because the 'lazy' dairymaid seemed no more able to make good butter and cheese. John was taken by the mob to be ducked at a pond in Kelmarsh, whereon another younger and stronger man, named Barwick, intent on saving his life, offered to be ducked in his place. He survived those waters, whereas the shoemaker likely would have not. And so these stories continued. And the question arises, why were suspected witches dunked in water and if floating considered guilty, and the answer is that the witch would have renounced her baptism by water, for which the water now would not receive her. At another ducking, at Oakley, in Bedfordshire, a visiting gentleman who was a bystander to such an event ultimately stepped in to save the life of the targeted woman. In Bedfordshire, in that area, so prevalent was the belief in witches that, as the gentleman said, 'One would think oneself in Lapland were you to hear their ridiculous stories'. It was a 50 years old lady at that time being ducked, which she was in agreement to, to save hers and her children's reputations. What is more the parish authorities had offered her a guinea if she should sink. The appointed place was at the river Ouse, by a mill, and there were 500 spectators. At eleven in the morning she arrived and was tied into a sheet, but for her face and hands showing, her thumbs tied together, and likewise her big toes, and her hands being tied to the small of her legs. A rope was fastened around her waist and into the water she was thrown. Unhappily for her she didn't sink, even though for as long as a minute and a half her head was under water. She was taken out, half dead, and when she'd managed to take a breath the experiment was repeated. Each time she floated, for which the crowd were shouting 'A witch, a witch, drown her'. The poor lady was lain once more down upon the grass, unable to speak and almost dead, as people threw insults at her, not any pity nor compassion, but for the visiting gentleman who now took it upon himself to protect her. He cut the strings which bound her and carried her to safety in the mill, and he reasoned with the people, at risk to himself, near to being mobbed by the crowd. He appealed to them that this was an unreliable experiment, as any woman of her age tied up in a sheet would float. In Portugal, the Auto de Fé's continued, there always being Jews in trouble for not being authentic converted christians, all of whom were burnt, and there even being a nun accused of being a sorceress. It's so that Joan of Arc had been regarded by the English to be a witch, an article in 1748 looking back on this. The English soldiers so believed her to have been sent by the devil that her very presence terrified them. At length, she was convicted of witchcraft and burnt, that it may be fulfilled, which was spoken of by the prophet, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'. In 1749, a ship off the Capes of Virginia, being blown far off course by a rough storm, led to an elderly woman on board, suspected of being a witch causing all of this, being thrown overboard. All such perpetrators would in turn be punished, and yet people kept upholding the need for such actions to be taken against witches, supported by the mobs around them. I still see this in people today, just as deluded, ignorant and aggressive, lacking in intellectual reason, those who make up part of our democratic evolved lands, who get included in all our devision making, so that as with friends I know even, sickness is not something natural, but is to be blamed on chemtrails, evil plots and the depopulation agenda of those who govern us, and rogue tyrants who gain power and create havoc are portrayed as saviours, and even terrorists gain worldwide support from those whom they would in turn destroy. Such low consciousness in people is potentially brutal and dangerous, as can be seen with the witch hunts of the past, but such people never seem to have the ability to see all this themselves. This has always been one of humanities struggles, with at least some of the elements within society pursuing ignorant causes, whether those in leadership, or the general people, or both. Witchcraft persecutions are the craziest example of this. All our ancestors lived in such a climate, whether victims themselves, astounded bystanders, or perpetrators and their collaborators. Until there came the Age of Enlightenment, looking to scientific and logical explanations for what happens in the world, rather than aligning with sinister and harmful superstitions. I always said it, that the people of my own village would have had me done for a witch years ago. there's a reason why scapegoating others is still called making a witch hunt. To survive in those olden times one needed to be humdrum and the same as most others, and in no way exceptional, unless one had the privilege of wealth and nobility, and even then at times one may have become a victim. The freedom we now have, to be as we are by nature, so long as it harms no other, is as precious as a jewel and should never be taken for granted. Again, in 1751, there was a mob action against suspected witches, for which the ringleader of the attack, Thomas Colley, was later executed. The victims that time were an elderly couple, the Osborne's of Tring. It was announced in three separate markets that they were to be ducked, for which 10,000 people came to witness and take part in their demise. The mob pulled down a portion of the workhouse where the couple stayed, and set fire to the rest, only to discover the couple were actually taking shelter in the church vestry. The mob broke in there, tied the old couple together by their thumbs and big toes, and carried them to the water for their ducking, during which the old lady, Ruth Osborne, perished, and Thomas Colley had to take account before the law for what he had done. Even into the 1800's such incidents continued, so stubborn that the people were about not giving up their old ways. In a Biblical context these actions were sanctioned by Scripture, touted confidently by the witch hunters, for the line 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'. Therefore in seizing and burning witches these people were carrying out the word and command of God. In such a way the Bible was turned from being a helper of humanity to a hinderer of progress, which should serve as a warning to people that just because a church or any religion teaches something or other does not mean that thing is true. It was back in 1848 that the Pope had first ordered the inquisitors to hunt out and put to death all practisers of the diabolic art, after which the Reformation changed little in this regard, protestants being just as eager to condemn any woman suspected of selling her soul to the devil. The old Biblical reaction against witches is still believed in by born again Christian types, like one ex new ager lady I know, who online sensationalises the witchery issue and goes on and on about it, gaining fame in such circles for herself for being an 'ex witch', now repentant and exposing all, although she was never truly an old style sorceress but merely someone who'd been exploring the divine feminine, now sharing regularly former stunning photos of herself when she'd been doing the devils work, along with artful videos, aesthetic and compelling to see, but still damning, the modern PR of demonising those who explore their spirituality in any way other than evangelical Christianity. She's a beauty and content in her world, but does no favour to women and their natural explorations into the world of goddesses and the divine feminine. Even herbal healing she dismisses and demeans as demonic, like the inquisitors of old who had turned on healers and midwives. In this she never relents, feeding unnecessary ignorance into her small minded American based community. In olden times the witch would not have been suffered to live. She is an enabler and a driving force for where all this is at in current times, within that very specific sect of western christianity. It's bizarre. Like one wanders here who really got into the clutches of the demonic, the free spirited one or the accuser whose weapon as always is their favourite scripture.
My mum phoned me, saying she and her partner Brian wished me to do some genealogy research for them. Brian's half sister, Doris, had just died from vascular dementia, and for her son, who knew so little, they wanted to find out where Doris was born and what was the name of her own mother, as even that much was unknown. This mysterious mother, she'd barely married Brian's father, Ernest Russell, when she died of lukemia. So this little challenge I focused on for some time, eventually phoning back with the results. Doris Evelyn Russell, her birthplace then, that was Bromley, born there in 1934, and as for her mothers name, she was Edith May Neller, born in Poplar, in 1905. As an extra, Edith May Neller and Ernest Russell had married in 1932, in Plaistow. So, yes, I answered the posed challenge and a little more besides, like finding newspaper articles for both mother and daughters marriages, and I found Edith May, aged 15, in the census of 1921, living with her family at 84 Holly Bush Street, Plaistow, her own mother, Mary Ann Neller being by this time a widow, Edith's father, Harry Neller, having been a gas works stoker. For this I earned my mums praise, she thanking me for 'hard work and information found'.
Lately, a message came to me on FindMyPast from a young lady called Amy, who was a descendant of Lillian Norah Maxted, the sister of my great granny Florence. Only after some years of research had she discovered that their mother was Irish Mary Dolan. As I had a photo of Mary Dolan, she wished to know if this was authentic, and yes was my answer. Amy was in contact with another lady of our family, Jill, descended like her from Lillian Norah, and it so happened I was already friends with Jill on Facebook, since mine and her sons dna results had linked us as cousins. Amy went quiet after this tiny exchange, but Jill herself was now sharing information about our family with me. which she in turn had been hearing from her Aunty Doreen, Amy's granny, who was a surviving daughter of Lilian Norah Maxted and her husband William Garwood. This Aunty Doreen, who still, like the others lived in Eastleigh, was rather old, aged 91, and yet was 'as sharp as a button'. How cool it was that she was still going strong at such a great age. Lilian Norah's husband, William Garwood, was mustard gassed in World War 1, from which he never properly recovered, life always being a struggle, inhibiting their raising of a family and finding work. William was hunch backed, had many health issues, and ended up living in a home, where he died at the age of 36. As for Lillian Norah, she had a personal tragedy herself, an awful mishap befalling her when she was aged 40. She was at that time out, walking with her baby, Pat, in his pram, when a roof time fell onto of her from the Co-op building in Eastleigh. This knocked her unconscious, and soon after that episode she had a massive stroke, the consequence of which she went blind.
These ladies were all my Eastleigh relatives, descended from the Maxteds of Nine Elms, and they had photos to share, but none with any descriptions on the back, for which it was not much known who was who. One lovely photo of a young lady, she was said to be of the Maxted family, but not who she actually was, so that for now she would have to stay a mystery person. |
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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