Setting up a new project, my 'genealogy passion' website, my first mission was to document interviews with older family members, though as yet I could only find a few I had done, a good long interview with my Great Aunty Connie, a couple with my granny Isabelle Bane, and just a smithereen of interviewing my nanny Eileen Spencer. Somewhere there is more, unless the fire and flood disasters had got to them. And I began to write about the life of my great grandfather, D'Auvergne Bane, not for the first time but always improving the account, and I have discovered he truly was a cousin of D'Auvergne Barnard who he was named after. D'Auvergne Barnard was the composer of our family. The correction I had to make here was that my D'Auvergne's granny was not a Bird, but an Empson, and it was she who was sister to the composers mother, Charlotte Empson. My fanciful imagination of my D'Auvergne having been a secret love child to an Ango-Indian family, I have to drop really, not that it's impossible, but seeing a dear close family connection now, that really is enough. I found from rummaging in the garage more interviews with members of the family. The only one I hadn't found now was my Shetland grandfather talking of Shetland and Scotland. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
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![]() Updating my genealogy, I became most captivated by what I found. One of my relatives, a Bean cousin of great grandfather D'Auvergne Bane, was on the Titanic when it so famously crashed into an iceberg on it's way to America. Edward Beane, he is my first cousin thrice removed. He was on his honeymoon voyage with his sweetheart Ethel, they having just married in Norwich. They now become my Jack and Rose, but with a better ending, for remarkably they both survived, and were the only ones out of 12 honeymooning couples not to have been separated for ever by the tragedy. Women and children first, that was the noble British way, with the men kept back at gun point. Ethel was put into a lifeboat, which though only half full was set away in the sea, and Edward on noting this, took his chances, jumping into the freezing waters and swimming in the darkness, it being midnight, until he could be with her. One recount says he got to her boat and she lifted him in with her own arms. Another version is that a different rowboat picked him up and not until arrival in New York did each know the other had survived. Safe on the boat, united, if this is indeed how it was, they distantly saw the final plunging downwards of the great ship, hearing not only that band still playing, but the mass wail of the remaining stranded people in the moment of their perishing, a haunting sound Ethel could not free her mind of for many years. Edward was of the family of D'Auvergne's mother, Hannah Bean, being one of her nephews. It is also in looking more at Hannah's parents, Robert and Mary Ann Beane, that I discover what is the connection to Castle Hedingham, made mention of once by my granny Isabelle. For all my fanciful contemplations of was D'Auvergne a love child, was he really descended from the D'Auvergne family, this less and less seems a possibility, even though I had noted that there was a D'Auvergne- Barnard family link to this area. Well, actually, as I now discovered, Robert Beane spent his last years in Castle Hedingham at the Great Lodge Farm, one of his daughters, Mary Ann, having married the farmer there. When his daughter and then her husband eventually died, both having left wills, and not having had any children to inherit from them, D'Auvergne and other family members may have from past assurances reckoned they were in for some of that inheritance, which would explain why D'Auvergne had to go to Castle Hedingham when Isabelle was a young girl. And his upset on returning, would be that regardless of their great wealth, he had not been left anything. It's a less fanciable story, but it would make sense. It was another Beane who inherited greatly from them, a George who worked on the railways. But not our D'Auvergne. And Robert Beane's wife, Mary Ann, who long back I had thought to be a Bird, was actually an Empson. And it was Mary Ann's sister, or was it her aunt, can't recall which, who had married the composer D'Auvergne Barnard's father. So there is a certain link now. 'An aunt' as granny Isabelle had always said, only she'd thought the aunt had married the composer rather than his father. This does after all then make me related by blood to the composer. And so I frequently brush up on my genealogy and sometimes discover the new and interesting. Much of the following day I did my research, particularly being interested in the Titanic story. My friend, Ian, who came over to visit, and who believes in conspiracy theories, told me the Titanic sinking was contrived by the Jewish Rockefeller's, as he would say indeed. Looking more at the Titanic story, at videos of those who survived and those who did not, I got weepy about it all. One lady could have survived, but would not, because she was not allowed to take her dog with her, and she refused to be separated from him. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I watched 'Who Do You Think You Ares' and researched into this D'Auvergne family whose surname had been given as a first name to my great great grandfather D'Auvergne Bane. It appears that there were originally the Jersey branch of what had further back been an aristocratic line. The Jersey D'Auvergnes moved to London, via Great Hallingbury in Essex, where an Edward D'Auvergne lived with his wife Susan, working as a clerk. At the same time, it seems, as a cousin or uncle of the same name, who was a chapel man to the king. His son was a mariner, off to India; his son was a grocer; his son was back off to India, in the military, finally at Bundelkhand where he became sickly, being sent to recuperate in Calcutta only to die there. This later D'Auvergne was buried in the same South Park Cemetery I had roamed around one time with my children. It was his daughter, Mary D'Auvergne, who married into the Barnard's. It is one of these Barnards, the composer D'Auvergne Barnard, who my granny Isabelle has said is a cousin to my great great grandfather D'Auvergne Bane. If there is truly a biological connection between my D'Auvergne and this family after all, I couldn't know this for sure unless I found an authentic descendant of the D'Auvergne family to do DNA comparison with. Only DNA can be the great decider in such matters.
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. ![]() 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. |
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