I awake to a whole new excitement. What has dawned on me is something more about this family mystery to do with my great grandfather D'Auvergne's unusual name. I'd thought him potentially a love child of his mothers with George Barnard of D'Auvergne ancestry. Now I consider that more likely he was born of Hannah's oldest daughter, Alma, and that the father would be George Barnard's oldest son, who actually was named D'Auvergne Barnard and who was a composer. At that time he would have been 18, when he was being trained for a music career. Alma was only 16. So here is my new theory. Some mothers even used to wear padding round their waists to pass off that an illegitimate grandchild was theirs. And it kind of makes sense. The families were friends, connected by George Barnard's partner, Charlotte, who was related to the Banes, and these families shared a colonial enthusiasm and pride. It was long before George Barnard got round to marrying Charlotte, who he kept as a mistress for many years. A repeat of this destiny for Alma, to be but a mistress, would not be acceptable. Hannah was 41, still of an age to pass off being a mother. This would answer how it was that D'Auvergne was always so close to his 'big sister' Alma, so much so that every year, even as a married family man, he would journey with his wife and children to visit her. Not because she was his favourite sister, but because she was his secret mother. The name D'Auvergne would have been chosen deliberately, for this truly having been the name of his father. Without losing my Bean/Bane ancestry, there would hithertoo be an unknown Barnard/D'Auvergne one. And how to prove or disprove this. But the theory appeals. If D'Auvergne Barnard had been a popular composer by then, one could have explained this as being due to an appreciation of his works. But no, this was prior to his days of greatness. For some reason George Barnard had put down his foot, or Richard Bane had, objecting to a marriage. Eventually both would marry other people. D'Auvergne, my great grandfather, totally adored Alma. He must have known and this is so thrilling to contemplate. Somehow it seems to add up. At one time D'Auvergne was engaged to marry a beautiful middle class girl, who he loved. If he had confessed to her his illegitimacy, this may have been enough for her to dump him. She chose another man, anyway, and broke his heart. He gave up his law studies and, in time, eloped with my great grandma who was of humble poor origin, Mary Seagrove. I need to see if I can find more clues to support such a theory. It does appear that I have cracked something here. Maybe. I looked into this potentially new side of the family, but finding their Indian records is not so easy. Some are there. The Barnard ancestry is military, working for the East India Company. The D'Auvergne name comes from a Mary D'Auvergne who married an army fellow, Henry Clapton Barnard, his own parents being John Barnard and Eleanor Clapton. It was Henry Clapton Barnard who went out to India where he met and married Mary of the D'Auvergne's. Her father, Philip D'Auvergne, was a brigadier in the Bengal Army. He had married a Mary Lowry, and how to find out more, all in India, India, India. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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Waking up, I'd been having some vision, which was that once, long, long ago, not in this lifetime, as a child, I was chained to a bear, in dirt and in fear, forced to be like that day and night. From this there is still in me a fear of bears. This was from the times of street performances with bears, when the owners roamed with them, making them dance to entertain villagers and townspeople. If this story really does reflect a past reality or is but a dream and a dream only, well, it's not that I even have any compulsion to believe in reincarnation, at least not in the ways it has so far been presented to us. As I lay in bed trying to understand the vision, a theory came to me. This theory makes some sense of my long interest in genealogy. The performing bear scenario may be, long, long ago, an experience of my own ancestors. But it would not even be a me and them separation going on, rather I am them, and they are me, eternal life being something that passes along families. The very life force I now experience is my gift from them and has its own individual expression. Each new person gets a blast of spirit identity in a totally fresh and unique way, other than which all that we have been is in there too. Eternal life is that which passes along families. When I envision an ancestral experience it is because this too was my life. From D'Auvergne Bane I have arty humanism. From beyond him maybe is a connection to India. In choir days I felt magic in the music of Georgia and the Caucasus long before I knew my female lineage was from there. Me, my forbears and my children have aligned familial journeys, in which our expressions will continue, even after my physical body has perished and my individual expression has evaporated. Acintya veda veda tattva in Hinduism expresses this, the one and the many. Really, all of us are family, for which we should respect all life. All comes from the essence. So I mull over these latest contemplations. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. On having watched some Jeremy Kyle clips, revealing cheating partners, by DNA tests men finding out the children they'd fathered were not always their's, or in mistrusting the others infidelity finding they actually were the dads, this inclined me to contemplate that in all my genealogy research I may sometimes fruitlessly be pursuing lines that I'm not even really genetically connected to. As I had recently discovered from the gossip of older members of the family, my Uncle Clive was not really after all my Pop's son, but was the result of a wartime romance. And I can't even be sure my Nanny's father, Percy Spencer, is really her dad after all. Her mother, Florence Maxted, was a Southampton seaport barmaid and she only married Percy three weeks before my nanny Eileen was born, in a registry office. On taking her home to his Dovercourt family, they certainly didn't trust this lady who appeared as if from nowhere, a red haired mother with a red haired daughter. I have originally researched rather a lot the Dovercourt lineage, but don't know, more and more, if I should pay any heed to it. We so could have done with DNA tests long, long back. And I do wonder about my ancestor D'Auvergne Bane even, like, why was he given this name of D'Auvergne which I know was the surname of an Anglo-Indian family? Could he also have been the result of an illicit affair? Could this have been with the billiards hall proprietor of that family who had come to London from India? This is not at all a name from our own family. So one does have to wonder. I would happily embrace a connection to the land of India. How would I know? Here is some of my theorising about a link between these families anyway. For Richard Bane and Hannah Bean, D'Auvergne's parents, to have met in London in the first place a key person may have been Charlotte Empson, the partner of George Barnard, a billiards hall proprietor of the D'Auvergne lineage, and this I deduce because all were connected to the same places in Norfolk and must have known one another. Richard grew up next door to her in North Walsham and she and Hannah were from the same village, quite possibly being related. Both families, the Banes and D'Auvergne-Barnard's with their colonial and military connections, I am sure, would have been warm friends. Both families gave the name of Alma to one of their daughters. They chose such a name because it reflected their colonial British pride. I can imagine the men playing billiards together, and George Barnard entertaining everyone with his tales of India. Charlotte stayed with him, bearing his children, even though for years he dilly-dallied about marrying her. He must have had quite some charm, which maybe worked some of it's charm on Hannah too. Naturally, this is but speculation, but Hannah did have a son and he was called D'Auvergne, a name from George's own family. George already had a teenage son called D'Auvergne, a name to honour the ancestors. That is not an easy name for an English society. George's son, D'Auvergne Barnard, turned out to be a famous composer, though not as yet, so no reason to copy his name out of admiration for his music. Really, why choose a name that one has no connection to, which is why I consider the name could be token to an affair. I discovered a first world war military photo of the composer D'Auvergne Barnard's son, Eric D'Auvergne Barnard. It's in a group and is not very clear, but he has a slender almost pretty elegance, which does bear a likeness to the look of D'Auvergne Bane and his own son, Richard. Eric D'Auvergne Barnard, I discover, died while still young of yellow fever. The D'Auvergne-Barnard family, living for generations in India, could then account for my own soul connection to that land. I too have an interest in India's British Raj, the old clubhouses with animal heads upon the walls, the spicy foods, the horror at the mutiny and its slaughter of genteel women and their children, sadness for the many young British ladies who from exotic diseases lost their lives so young, and the grand veranda's. George Barnard was from Jubblepore (Jabalpur), not only the home of billiards and snooker, but also being the place where thuggee was tackled by the Brits, this being another subject that has interested me. Hill stations, tea gardens and servants. I'd like to have a real family connection. This is likely fanciable, wishful thinking, but is not an impossibility either. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I had a genealogy day, always more research to do, never ending. Like why was my great grandfather given the name D'Auvergne. My granny Isabelle had talked of him being named after a composer D'Auvergne Barnard who was an in-law relative, by marriage, and now I found this individual, looked at his family history, saw it was his mother who had grown up on the same road as D'Auvergne's father; so some connection is surely there, even if it takes more time to unravel. This lady had married a billards table proprietor from Jabalpur in India, a colonial who had D'Auvergne as a surname in his ancestry. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. My friends Dale and Audrey had begun tracing their family trees, an idea seeded in them by occasional visits to their house of Mormon elders. Dale had sussed out he was from fishermen Topsoms in Devon. Looking in bookshops with them I got into reading a book myself about tracing the family tree. My lover, Andy, knew already that he was descended from George Washington and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. We all visited a Norwich graveyard so Dale could see his grandparents burial place. When my mum phoned she was telling me what she knew of the family history, of crofters from the Shetland island of Burra and of a London tailors son who ran off with the maid. Along with the Topsom's, I was off to London, arriving at St Catherine's house to delve into the past of our ancestors. This was not much help, as one only had access to the indexes and had to pay £5 for each of the certificates, along with correctly supplied information. Still I could suss out a bit, like that my nanny Eileen's parents had to get married, she having been born around the same time that they got married even!!! We looked through lots of books there till it was throwing out time. On visiting Harwich I visited my granny Isabelle and asker her lots of questions about herself and her parents for my family tree quest. At my parents some days later in Burnham Beeches my godparents Chris and Carol came to visit with Great Aunty Connie, my granny Isabelle's sister. Connie had a keen memory, so I questioned her all about her parents (my great grandparents) and their parents too, and got loads of useful information for my genealogy file. I spent the next morning writing up notes on the family history. Back in Dovercourt, I now grilled my nanny Eileen and pop George for information regarding their family trees. Somehow, through nan's partial reluctance, I got to feel her father was not really her father!!! But how to find out for sure!!! Back in London, Audrey and I spent another day in St Catherine's House, trying to suss out more about our family trees. Then we went to the Census House and I found the 1881 record of my great great grandparents house in Plumstead, Alma House as it was called, which told me that my ancestor Richard Bane had been born in Norfolk; how exciting, as it was in Norwich that I currently lived. Back in Norwich I visited the local studies department in the library to check out their genealogy stuff. They had the Mormon register from which I found out more about the Inksters in the Shetland Isles. Visiting my nanny again I got to look at old family photos and I took some to get copies of.
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