I got into looking at the genealogy of Guillaume who had come to lodge at my home for a week or so. Guillaumes ancestors were farming folk of Quebec and Ontario. One census, not so easily legible but transcribed maybe or maybe not correctly, claimed an ancestor of his to have been 'black'. Genealogy was something Guillaume had wanted to look at, specifically back to the point of his people first arriving in Canada from France. I did indeed get back to various locations in France, particularly La Rochelle by the sea, one of the families he descended from having been Huguenots there. A couple of his ancestresses had gone to Canada as 'filles de roi', these being young ladies sent by King Louis XIV to boost the population of Canada for which they were given money and free passage and the direction to find themselves a husband there. Some of Guillaume's ancestors came as soldiers; others were in the fur trade, paddling canoes through the wilds to buy furs from indigenous peoples. He came from tough folk; this I could see.
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I took bread and kombucha as a gift to Mac and his son Elvis who were staying in a red van in the village parking. Mac told me one of his ancestors was a Red indian. Ah, a new genealogy project for me then. I did find the said ancestor, Mac's great grandfather Herbert Lee Thomas, of Barrington Passage in Canada. It did indeed say on his earliest census that he was adopted. Apparently Mac's mother and aunt had travelled to Canada to find out anything of this mysterious forebear. Not only did Mac busk Beatles songs, but he was a McCartney and my own son was a George Harrison. And yet, interestingly, from the first moment of working on Mac's genealogy I was not able to even find Mac's birth, let alone anyone else on his paternal line. The said Red Indian was on his mothers side, all standard enough to look into. This was rather strange, to put a known birth with location and name into a search engine and yet nothing coming up. This I resolved eventually by using only Mac's first names 'Derek Alan' minus a surname, but with the place, date and mothers maiden name 'Thomas' and what came up was not a McCartney at all but a Murphy! Mac, although not having confessed it to me, had at some point changed his surname, and I'd sussed this! As I saw his own father had died still a Murphy. This paternal side was Irish through and through, they being settlers in Cleator Moor's 'Little Ireland' in the Lake District, being refugees from the potato famine. So Mac was really a Derek Murphy! And he was so very Irish, regardless that he had a cultured English accent. There was one ancestor born in Bangalore in India, but into an Irish family, they having for long served in the British army. This particular ancestor, Robert Colclough, spoke fluent Hindustani and on settling in London became the keeper of the maze at Hampton Court. Roberts aunt, who had survived the Indian mutiny, was in London too, she being a member of staff in Queen Victoria's household. Robert Colclough had quite a reputation for his knowledge of Hindustani, he having conversed with ease with the Indian troops when they were stationed at Home Park during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and during the coronations of King Edward and King George. Roberts family had lent ten of it's members to the British army, spanning four generations and totalling a service of 167 years, the others being his grandfather, father, four brothers and three of his sons. One of the sons, James Colclough, was Mac's great grandfather, who was in Egypt as a drummer in the Dublin Fusiliers.
Me and Amanda had some interesting talk about gypsies, as maybe I was descended from them (maybe not), but as for Amanda it was said that her maternal grandfather, Thomas Shaw, had been a gypsy. He had sold newspapers on a street corner in Liverpool. When her granny, Ellen Spencer, had fallen for him she was forbidden to marry him, for which they had dated in secret for many years and on Ellen's fathers death they were at last able to marry. Amanda wanted that I would look more into this, but there were so many Thomas Shaw's in Liverpool at that time, for which I needed more clues. I did crack more of Amanda's vaster genealogy though, of her humble Scousers, one of whom had been a mariner from St John's Newfoundland, and there being generations of shoe makers and carters. The carters would generally have had a horse and cart by which to transfer produce from one location to another. I caught onto someone elses research from hereon, which led to a Welsh family, and yet I could see this shared information was incorrect. Although for sure there was Welsh blood and Irish too. Amanda, although it was not so clear to see, had red hair, which was from both sides of her family, her father having like mine been a redhead. Some days later I again looked to Amanda's genealogy, this time cracking her 'gypsy' Shaws. This was thanks to a phone call between Amanda and her mother which revealed the date of birth I'd needed to distinguish the one Shaw fellow from a host of others.
Thomas Shaw's mother, Gertrude, had not been favourably recalled for she had been a tough woman, all in black, who would threaten to set her dog on Amanda's mother when she'd been a little girl. So they were understood to be a bunch of gypsies, that family, although going back in time it could be seen that they were solid working class types. And further back there was an alderman and mayor of Chester. Amanda was relieved to at last find someone of success and repute. My friend Scottish Anne was talking with me about the genealogy her family has started discovering. So, I decided to update and elaborate on what I had also formerly found for her. Thus, I found for Anne an ancestress in the obscure Hearts Content in Newfoundland. And I found plenty of esteemed middle class ancestry for her. A thrilling find. Yes, I love genealogy research, always. Though having lived as a married woman in London, England, Anne's Newfoundland ancestress, Edith, returned to Canada at the age of 52 with her daughter Rose and sons Herbert and Philiip, and was not accompanied in this by her husband. Revealed information showed she had no occupation other than home duties. She was born in Newfoundland, of Irish race, her religion being Church of England, and her nationality British. She intended to settle down in Canada, staying there permanently. She had lived in Canada before, she being born there, though she left as a child. Her father was a government doctor, it seems to read, but he was no longer living. She left Canda before to get an education. The money in her possession was £200. She could read and had paid for her own travel. She was destined for Winnipeg, Manitoba, to a friend Miss Drury at 275 Mountain Avenue. Her nearest relative in England was her sister Mrs Hurst of Berwick Lodge, Victoria Road, Clevedon, Clevedon being where she bought the travelling tickets. Most interesting for me to hear of was the tales of Anne's childhood in Gambia. Till 11 years old she had lived there. One of her siblings was lost to malaria; they'd all caught it, though only one died. Her mother, Joan, ran a school for the Africans in her garage. Anne's father worked in exports and imports, and she remembers travelling in a van with him, giving locals tasters of tea to entice them to adopt it into their diets. No animals were allowed in the family home, so Anne had to wait for her parents to fall asleep before smuggling in for the night a wild cat she'd secretly adopted. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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