![]() A request has come from Ella May, wanting me to look into her ancestral line of Spurgeons of Lowestoft, within which she is keen to find a link to a famous preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. So I delved deeply into her Spurgeons, and yet even going back quite far didn't find this link, even though her family have told her this is a real connection. I do find tales of a fishing family by the sea, which I get absorbed in, but if there is a connection to the preacher then it is way further back. I found news about Ella May's Lowestoft ancestors saving lives at sea, one being a child, who though as if perished, was brought back to life by being laid down in bed with the warmth of a naked local lady, hero's all of them. And further back, one of her greats was prosecuted for what were called 'sodomitical practises' with another man, for which a prison sentence was in order. This was all on her mothers side. Her fathers side looks well dodgy, being prosecuted for this or that, or suing others. They were Barnsley farmers, ill treating their animals, adulterating the milk they sold, lying, stealing; quite a bunch. No matter what fines they kept paying, they accumulated quite some wealth. I discovered some interesting family for Ella May, her Steed's, who for a while were in Boulogne in France, after which came prison in London, the wife and children having to resort to the workhouse, after which one of the sons, Harry, became a theatrical agent, acting, singing, comedy and burlesque, running a theatre in Tottenham, and mentions in the papers for playing well the part of a pirate in Robinson Crusoe. Harry's wife, Josephine Minnie, was one of a bunch of women sentenced to a stint in prison for obscene language. One of their sons was given the middle name Shakespeare, having been born in Stratford on Avon to this acting family. Ella May had heard about them, though didn't know such detail. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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![]() One of my projects right now is a friend Debbie's genealogy, in which there is a sudden discovery of the early tragedies of her ancestral coal miners. Her ancestor Ralph Waggett perished with his grandsons in Wallsend Colliery, Northumberland, fourteen years after two of his nephews had died in the same pit, all explosions being from seeping gas, back in 1821 and 1835. So much detail is there in the newspapers, including of how the dead were laid in their homes with flowers and evergreens upon them. I researched so much about the Wallsend Colliery for Debbie's genealogy, still so interesting. There were many mining accidents, and other events, and as I had guessed this place having a name such as Wallsend, this was the place at which ended the ancient Hadrians Wall. One game of the feisty young coal miners, when they had to much drink in them, was Apple Snack, for which a group of men would fight one another with their hands tied behind their backs, biting at chins, lips, ears and noses and thereby causing such damage. One lady of this coal mining community was still going strong at the age of 104, all her faculties intact and being maintained by parish handouts. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() Genealogy, yes, I find a little other thing I'd not noticed before, the elusive 1871 census for my Bane's, still being in the army where they called themselves Bean's, there in the Shorncliffe army camp, there where is the terminus of the Channel Tunnel. I'd seen Hannah Bane and her daughter Alma there, and it was now in looking at a page or so back, that I saw, was also her husband Richard, the confusion being that he'd called himself Robert Bean. But, yes, it was him. Robert Bean, bombadier, born in Walsham. While he liked to confuse while he was in the army I don't know. Robert Bean was actually the name of Hannah's father, who though once a humble agricultural labourer, had found a good home in his later years at the Great Lodge in Castle Hedingham, his daughter Mary Ann having married into the family there. This would have been a good place for visits from Bane's, Bean's, and their children. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I I am related to Petrarch, the father of humanism and of the Renaissance. This I am told on an update of the Genographic Project. He and I are of the same mother lines. We share mothers way back somewhere. As I very much approve of humanism I rather like to hear that we are connected. He is of the tribe of my mothers, and though likely so very distant, he is family. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I can't resist it, to get stuck into some genealogy researching. I'm curious to see if I can find any more clues to some gypsy heritage. There are hints, but no certainties. I did a read up about gypsies, both Irish and swarthy easterners, but I'm none the wiser. Maxteds were many in Kent, and one I can see was a farmer, very much a settled profession. One Maxted stole from a Kingsnorth in Pluckley, the Kingsnorth's being the family of my friends Jeremy and Ian, for which he was sentenced to transportation to Australia. One of my great Aunts, Selina Maxted, eloped to America with a cousin, being pregnant by him and having two daughters out there before returning. She never married. I want to find out more on this story, but fail to find records so far. Selina's brother was my ancestor George, the one who died falling off a haybale, being pierced by a stick into his entrails. If I was a superstar on Who Do You Think You Are, they'd whip out the whole story, no problem, and for sure tell me if there was or was not gypsy blood. It's interesting that I do have Mediterranean DNA, for so do gypsy descendants, their Indian traces being oft watered down and out. It's also interesting that I can feel so at home in these warmer foreign lands. I am not such a stranger to these places after all. Back to researching, I found out more about my many times great Aunt Selina. Her cousin Edward was a bricklayer who died when they were back in London, after their few years in New York, maybe after a bankruptcy, after which Selina put an advert in the papers looking for a position caring in homes or offices. As revealed by the next census, she and her remaining daughter, the first also having died in London, both found work as family nurses. So, Selina, yes, she does sound interesting somehow, a single mother who had a stint in New York. And I was looking at my ancestress, Elizabeth Mugway of Stalisfield, who got into the papers as an old widow. By marriage she was Elizabeth Roberts. It was her husband, Charles Roberts, who is said to have been of a gypsy family, the Otterden gypsy Roberts. Elizabeth was in the papers for having been neighbour to a murder victim, Hannah Giles, killed by a man, Samuel Seager, who obsessively stalked Hannah while her husband was out rat catching with his dogs and ferrets. Elizabeth was well acquainted with both Hannah and her killer Samuel. Rumour was that this fellows obsession was borne from an affair which she had no wish to continue. That very morning Samuel had visited Elizabeth and she'd told him he was a 'queer fellow'. He warmed himself by her fire, while spying through the window on Hannah's house to be sure the husband had gone out. He then called on Hannah with the excuse he wanted her to stitch him some trousers. He was a shoemaker and sometimes she would bind his shoes for him. Having heard the rumours, Hannah's husband, Stephen Giles, had confronted Samuel and told him he was no longer welcome in the family home. Hannah made her sons stay by her whenever Samuel was around, but he got her alone when that evening she was off along the country road to babysit the children of a nearby farmer. He mercilessly slit her throat with a razor, shot her in the thighs and set her on fire. Such are the potential deeds of a stalker who who finds himself attracted yet thwarted by a lone vulnerable woman. Elizabeth and other neighbouring women sobbed their eyes swollen from distress at the killing of their friend and they robed themselves in black. The bakehouse they shared was where Hannah's body was lain, naked and burnt, all the locals and even strangers coming to view her. In one paper a map was drawn showing who lived in what cottage and the spot where Hannah had been found dead. Elizabeths cottage is marked, being the first homestead through a shared gate and across the gardens of the families. Hannahs house was the end one of a row of three, the bakehouse they shared being on the other end. As Elizabeth had been a frequent caller to Hannah's, she must have been party to Hannah's fears. And yet all else in the village had thought Samuel such a harmless man. After the killing Samuel went on the run, later to be found in another county, hungry and looking for work on the railroad, using another name, saying that he was of the Roberts family. He was recognised by a description in the papers, confessed, and was sentenced to execution. They'd 'had words' was the reason he gave for her death. Looking again at Maxteds, I found that Charles Maxteds marriage to Sarah Green, and I'd never noticed this before, though one just had to switch to the next page to see, a double marriage, the same time as his sister Sarah married her own amour. Sarah, the sister of Charles, had already had two illegitimate children, one while she herself was but a young teenager, and for respect of the second child, she had been in church about to marry, the record having begun to be written, only for it not to go ahead, not till these years later with another child now on the way. It sounds Eastenderish, dumped at the altar! Oh, the stories of the past, if we but knew them. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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