I focused once more on my genealogy, for my Forest of Dean people, the presentation I'd already worked on for them delighting me. The Forest calls to me, to see the places I never went to previously, like the red ochre caves of Clearwell, mined by the ancients of the Forest and associated with my own ancestors. Despite the locals having been treated as 'squatters', frequently being evicted from the Forest, I just know they were anciently of the land, because my archeogenetic dna has considerable tribalism connected to this area. So what more was I finding out about my Forest of Dean ancestors. Specifically I focused on my Foxes, Aston's and Dobbs. John Aston, one of my ancestors, was a 'squarrer', and I know not what that was, and as was indicated in the 1851 census he was also blind, and it was by looking in old newspapers for any information about him that I found out why. Back in 1830, on a summers day in July, John and a work colleague, Thomas Phipps, were preparing to blast part of a rock near Coleford. Thomas was holding a bag of gunpowder for the job, equalling 3lbs of the explosive, while smoking on his pipe, oh dear, and a spark from that pipe fell among the powder, which exploded, throwing the men to a distance of several yards. Naturally they were severely injured and although they recovered well they were left blind. Not John's error then, but rather the carelessness of his friend. As for John's wife, Elizabeth Smith, I'd not sussed her ancestors before, but now was discovering them, three generations of Henry Smith's of Newland, with their wives Jane Evans, Susannah and Anna. Continuing with this genealogy a day or so later, I was looking at the plague, which my ancestor Benjamin Aston died from back in 1613. Plagues, they were many since the 1300's, and were far more deadly than our covid pandemic, for which many of our ancestors would have sickened from this. Obviously some were survivors, for which we are thankfully here now. Recent research has shown that a genetic mutation helped our people to survive, one for which we'd since had to cope with autoimmune diseases or at the very least over-active immune systems. Likely this mutation helped with covid too, but anyway could also explain why I have so many sensitivities to foods and smells; at last something to make sense of it all; my wonderful plague survivors. Benjamin, born in 1563, and his father John Aston, his sister and brothers, lived at Whitecliff, and its interesting that the surname Aston was given to people who lived at rocks or by ash trees, as Whitecliff was indeed a place of a rock cliff. In my imagination I see them even further back as cave dwellers; that does appeal to me. Far enough back it is so that we were all cave dwellers. Back to my genealogy, I was marking on a map areas of the Forest of Dean associated with my ancestors. And as for those Smiths I was descended from, in accordance with such a surname they were likely of the original metal working communities thereabouts. One such ancient blacksmith community even got a mention from the Romans, being at Ariconium and many coins and fibula brooches, which they likely fashioned, were still being found by treasure seekers, as well as a dancing goddess figurine made from brass and found in one of the old cinder piles. One of Britains oldest fibula brooches found as yet came from a ditch near Cirencester, upon which was a snake design, a face and those spirals I love. Again I absorbed myself in my Forest of Dean genealogy, finding some remarriages I'd not noted before and finding out that these ancestors of mine were freeminers, that is locals, born of the Forest, being aged over 21, and having worked a year and a day already in the forest mines; now by rights (from time immemorial) permitted to dig anywhere their own 'gales' by which to mine for coal, iron and rocks. I worked on a write-up on my site about my Aston's, Dobb's and Foxes of the Forest of Dean, my people of the forests, which started off quite patchy, as I researched more and more, but slowly began to flow and become an interesting read. In 1846, just as in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, and indeed in much of Northern Europe, the potato crops failed, the people having forsaken their traditional diversity of foods for the foreign potatoes that used less land while feeding more people. For such reliance on one food the blight upon the potatoes was disastrous. And yet the foresters coped well at such a time, because they were capable foragers of all that the forest naturally yielded, such as chestnuts, crab apples and blackberries, a tradition my family continued with and which still I did to this day, all those chestnuts we'd roasted and the gathering of blackberries for bramble jelly. Even as a child I remember collecting winberries in the Welsh hills. Always testing times would now and again arise, like in 1814, in the Forest, when there was a plague of mice. All attempts to eradicate the mice, with cats, traps and poisons, made little impact, until one of the freeminers, named Simmons, pointed out that the mice died when they fell into the wells and pits, for not being able to get back out again. Hence, now, many holes, two feet deep, were dug, and the mice fell into them in great numbers. Simmons and the other men were paid for the amount of 'tails' they brought from those pits, amounting in all to 100,000 perished mice. In 1795 the Foresters rioted, women and children joining in, in what were known as the Bread Riots. There had always been an honourable exchange between foresters and farmers of the surrounding pastures, fuel from the forest in return for flour for bread. This was disrupted when Britain, as a nation, engaged in wars against revolutionary France, with our government redirecting that corn into feeding the army and navy. For which, in consequence, the foresters, in need of their daily bread, took to raiding passing carts of corn, forcefully taking the food to be divided among their own people. The authorities sent in the calvary to stop their interests being sabotaged. And again, when boats were transporting corn along the river Severn, the locals raided them too, and again the calvary was sent in and the ringleaders caught and executed. It was thereafter, at last, taken heed of by the authorities that they had put these people into a state of famine and that they must therefore help them, for which the Crown acquiesced and distributed £1,000 worth of grain to the poor distressed locals.
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Myheritage sent me a new ethnic DNA update, which at first looked to me the same as before. I made a little video talking of this, very short; and it was only later in the day that it dawned on me that the sub-categories under the listing of Irish, Scottish and Welsh were not just generalised but were specific to me. This was most curious because my Scandanavian Viking at 64.3%, which I had always presumed to relate to my granddad Lyall Inkster who had Shetland Island blood, would only have then in part come from him, because one of thise sub-groups in the Celtic-Pictish category specifically specified the 'Shetland Islands'. Of course, Shetland Islands as a sub category was too obscure to relate to everyone. This update had for the first time localised my my Celtic Pictish Scottish to the distant northern Shetland Islands. At the same time this revealed that those islands were not just a Viking conquered land but was made up still of the original maybe Pictish settlers; my people. My share of Viking blood was still a lot, but was not just from my mothers father I now realised but was from my own father too. And some of my fathers ancestry would always remain a mystery to me.
So the other sub-categories of the Celtic type were of two different Irish types, being from my grannies, and the other was 'southern Wales and southern and western England', this relating to my paternal grandfather, Pop, who was Welsh mixed with the Forest of Dean. Specifically that Welsh was southern Welsh which did reflect my research of his people. The Irish had accorded to it the numbers 12 and 8. These I looked up but myheritage had not as yet identify them with any known Irish groups. Presumably they reflected where my grannies ancestors were known to have come from, Westmeath and County Kerry.
My Greek with southern Italian remained at 4%. This was said to centre around the Aegean and Ionian Seas, reaching to Cyprus, the Caucasus, southern Russia and the Mezzigiorno region of southern Italy; south Italy being 'the first region settled by ancient Greeks outside of their Greek peninsula, going right back to the 8th century before Christ'.
The Spanish was 3.5%, pretty mareh for a minimal DNA to; these people descending from 'ancient Iberian tribes', also extending to the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. And not only southern Italian, but I had Italian in general at 2.7%. And what of the Finnish; just a little, at 1%; this category includes some of western Russia, being associated with Nordic and Slavic cultures.
Ok, so I next looked at my mums Myheritage update. My mum not only had the Shetland Islands also specified as a key group but an Irish location was given (though with no number accorded), this being 'Cork, Kerry and Limerick'. Wow, distinct places being mentioned and yes that was right on, as her Irish ancestors whom I had researched did indeed come from County Kerry. My mother had only 3% more Viking than I did and as I had observed before she had a 7%English which I had not inherited. Her Spanish was marginally tinier than mine at 3.2% and her Italian was 2.8%, just a fraction more than mine. She had no Greek, this naturally being my inheritance from my father.
My Aunty Lollies update, she being all I have had to represent my deceased father, wasn't now showing up any Greek DNA. My dad and she would not have inherited the same shares of DNA. By deduction I understood him to have had at least the same amount of Greek DNA as me.
And now, this was interesting, not only did her Celtic data specify 'southern Welsh', this being from Pop, her father, but also that her Irish was of the numbers 12 and 8! What!! This showed that the Irish showing up in me was essentially from my dads side, both those numbers relating to my great great grandmother Mary Dolan from Westmeath. Had I not even inherited my mothers County Kerry quota, let alone her English. How curious! Aunty Lolly had English DNA at 12.9%, again not passed on to me, this specifically being eastern and central UK. It could be that my own sister did get English and County Kerry, but as she had passed away long long ago this I could not know. Aunty Lolly had a high Viking percentage at 25.5%, so indeed my own Viking came from both my parents. And there was another group Aunty Lolly had, but not me, which was 9.1% northern and western European, this being associated with Holland, France and Germany. I didn't have it! It was so curious that largish sections of DNA, although of lesser than 10%, may not be handed on to a descendant, and yet that something more ancient, such as presumably the Greek, had come down to me. And I so could have been 'English' but by fate was not. The strong Irish in me did then appear to be from my father. I'd guess that was what this data was saying.
Looking at my daughter Rosina's update, she had got so much of my Viking at 38% and less of my Celtic at 13.7%, with the special grouping of Shetland Islands in there. She'd not got my Greek or Spanish, but she'd got some Italian at 1.9%. The tiy amount of Finnish I had passed onto her too. Overall she was a Viking Indian. Her Indian DNA at 44.8% was of the Indo-Aryan ancient tribes.
And looking at my son George's update, he had inherited from his Italian father some exotic ethnicities, such as Middle Eastern and West Asian. And, oh, I then saw it, as an additional specific genetic type there was mentioned not only the Shetland Islands but also Bari in Italy. If I'd needed any more proof that Francesco was his father and not Dutch Allard then there it was. Francesco's people were from the village of Turi near to Bari.
George's general Italian was 33.6% and his Greek & Southern Italian was 19%. He had Spanish at 4%, Balkan at 7.4%, Middle Eastern at 1.8% and West Asian at 0.8%. Some of that Mediterranean in him was not just from his dad but from me too. Unlike Rosina, he got very little of my Viking at only 2.4%, compared to her huge 38.6%, but he got more of my Celtic and Pictish at 31%, compared to her 13.7%. Hence Rosina was more of a Viking and George was more of a Celt. It would be interesting to see my other childrens DNA one day, to know what percentages they themselves inherited. George's Middle Eastern was of the Levant, this being the 'cradle of civilisation' which had been inhabited for thousands of years. His West Asian aligned to Turkey and Iran, being of ancient Persians and the Turk nomadic tribes. I do know I have tiny amounts of these types of DNA too from the testing I've done with other companies. I had again been looking at my Forest of Dean ancestors who long lived on a hill called the Lonk between Joyford and Berry Hill just a little north of the market town of Coleford, at a time when little children too often burnt to death, having been left unguarded in their homes, and girls got gang raped in the forest byeways, and petty criminals roamed about with notorious reputations and fearsome sobriquets such as The Rough, The Giant, and The Lion. Many catastrophes befell the minors who worked underground. And all such things I was discovering from trawling through old newspapers. In 1836, at the Bennets coal mine, six men were ascending from the depths, in a lift known as a skip, when the rope pulling this upwards broke and the skip went hurtling down. Two Harold brothers and two Blanche brothers died on the spot, their corpses mangled in a shocking manner. For several years afterwards this incident aroused pain in the people of the Forest. Many more incidents would follow, generally of massive rocks falling upon the miners and crushing them, and one man even being scalped by the sharp edges of one such rock. Of girls being gang raped, concern was expressed in the Gloucestershire Chronicle, that 'we sincerely trust' the rapists 'will be made an example of and this species of offence, so rife in the Forest, will recieve so wholesome a check that innocent females may once again walk forth on the highways of her majesty in their accustomed safety and confidence in the proper feeling of the locality and the protection of the laws of our happy constitution and country.' And of little children catching fire: 'Such frequent repetitions of melancholy accidents of of this nature show the necessity of extreme vigilance on the part of those who have the care of children.'
![]() I watched some documentaries about gypsy peoples, always fascinating, of Bulgarians, Russians, and Romanians, their child marriages, barefoot dancing, and of girls staying home. When I see such old style traditionalism something there has an appeal. Its that bohemian kind of freedom, of no school and nomadism, of ethnic long skirts, and yes, bare feet. Its a kind of hippy style I myself have had. It is interesting that my mother has this 2% eastern European and myself 1%. I have already considered that the Mediterranean DNA I have may be gypsy. And now, on looking at an Irish gypsy documentary, I see a picture of old world traditional gypsies with the features of my County Kerry Irish. This is the first time I consider that my Sugrue/Sheehans may also have been gypsy. The gypsy theme in my families past is really but a fanciable one with no solid facts, but I do have some fascination about this. Modern gypsies don't have a good reputation for their feuding and crimes and for the dominance of their men over the women. But I do see that there were certain qualities further back, in regard to their closeness to nature, their love of music, the closeness of families that help one another in life's journeying, and their living separate from societies overbearing demands and rules and regulations, posings and limitations. I watched more gypsy documentaries, one being a tragic perspective, and one a so interesting historical account. On a visit round to Jeremy's I talked with him about gypsies, this being topical now, and on account of realisations I'm now having that a real reason why I find myself unacceptable in the eyes of some people, how I get judged and have even had social services bloody turned onto me, basically being disregarded, is because I have 'the gypsy' in me. So does Jeremy and he also is easily dismissed. I have at least, potentially that is, 11% of me being gypsy and that is just of the Mediterranean type, as whatever else in me is of gypsy derivation would up that number to an unknown amount. Those Irish travellers I may be linked to, it may be that they are descended from the original nomads of Ireland, before all other invaders came and took over their lands. Either way, eastern or western, these gypsies have kept themselves freer from societies neurotic imposed standards and hoity-toity impositions. I am free too in this regard. My kids may get dirty in their play, so what. I know how to rough it and don't mind clutter and chaos in my life. I don't poof up in general my appearance. I don't insist my kids go to school or do homework. I prefer them to be free, to just be natural. I accept handouts if need is there without getting hung up or guilty. I stole as a child. I can't be done with small talk. And I don't know how to deal with authorities and even avoid all that. And right now I feel that all this is because of the gypsy in me, that 11% plus. I get this from both my parents. And then there's Jeremy, with plenty of money and yet he chooses to scavenge food in bins. Its not that we are 'low class' as lower classes don't accept us either. And middle classes exceptionally judge. Higher classes, rather curiously, can actually accept because they have no need to prove themselves and appreciate individuality, that old British eccentricity. Both Jeremy and I have gypsy in us, as far as I can work out, and not from modern times, but further back. And I have so been attracted to India where the gypsies originated. My Irish Sugrues were dysfunctional, this I have discovered, and this has kind of helped me to understand more my own dysfunctionalism. And to comprehend all now within the greater context of gypsyness makes more sense and has more impact. Because this is as if a whole family clan which was lost is now refound. And for this I have attained some identification along with group pride, and this sense that all the hoity-toity judges do just that because they sift through those around them marking out who is of worth and who is of them, their type, their people, and all this even though their people have enslaved, attacked and persecuted others. This is why I refer to their ill placed hoity-toity superiority complex. So I would sum up one trouble stirring critic from my village with her 'oh you come to the pub and lay your sleeping child on a bench while partying' (horror of horrors) - not worthy of being a mother then, this being what is in her head. Yes, well, I breastfed my children, I carried them around, and slept with them. I stayed with them, rather than going off chasing money and a career, rather than leaving them with a child minder. I took them along with me on all my travel adventures. I have a nomadic soul. I am free and you are not. But its your society, your rules, and you can just phone anonymously child protection services and get my darlings taken away from me. Because the way you and others think life should be lived is so limiting and all not in your box is condemned. So long I thought others picked on me because I am gentle and not assertive. How could I have any satisfaction in this matter, that being pleasant makes me inadequate. With new understanding, that it is my gypsyness attracting hostility, then its not so personal and against my own lack. It is rather a war on my tribe. And now I have a people to align with and I would rather feel I am with them than your uptight communities in which I never belonged. I have always been an outcaste, an outsider. My standards are different to yours, more relaxed. You are the lines on the pavement and I am the spaces between and beyond. My mother has 7% English in her, unlike me, and its that Anglo-Saxon in her that despises all that is not of civilisation and posturing. I don't have that same brake on me, of what has been more free flowing in our ancient peoples and their ways of relating to the world. This is how I can attune more to more natural elements in my being. So it is, that of such things I talked to Jeremy, though not in such detail. And people nowadays call the travellers Romanys, not gypsies, or at least some people assert this. But either way such names reflect places long lived in since leaving India, whether Romania or Egypt. The gypsy word gets labelled as fake and erroneous along with the statement that never really had travellers come from there. And yet the brilliant documentary I'd watched revealed that the gypsies did go to Egypt and still are there, and even by that north African route had travelled to the south of Spain. Around Granada they lived in cave houses and spoke of coming from Africa, and this is even though others of their people crossed Europe and came down into Spain from other directions. Even in Egypt, some family stories talk of having been in Hungary before going down to Africa. Although associated with musicians historically gifted to Persia, gypsies also have plenty of military words in their vocabulary hinting that they had also been employed as warriors, maybe against the Islamic colonisations of the near East. In Egypt, although it has put them in danger, there are still gypsies who have kept apart from Islam. Either way, in Egypt they have lived on the peripheries, surviving through their music, by their dancing girls, even prostitution, whatever must be done to survive. The Egyptian gypsies admit that crime has also been a part of their overland journey. Although long in Persia, Islam drove them out from there into Turkey which was then safely still part of the Byzantine Empire. With ottoman conquerings they had to travel on yet again, into eastern Europe. There they were legally forced by the civilisation around them into slavery. This brutal history of imposed slavery could go a long way to explaining the modern degradation still affecting these people, their impoverishment, drug and alcohol addictions, family neglect, and unsafe settlements. For they had been broken. Hitler had rounded up so many of them for his death camps. But some escaped all that, having instead gone down to Egypt and all the way round to southern Spain. Their music and songs are also their healing, from all past inflicted sufferings, emotional turmoils channeled into creative sustenance. That passionate music has anciently the quality of depth still found in Indian bhajans. And they never lost their goddess Kali, transforming her at the very least into the Christian Sara Kali in the Carmargue of France. Those gypsies that crossed Europe, I am both of them and the southern Spanish. And it appears that the gypsies soon enough both encountered and interbred with the nomadic Irish. When I see in my DNA that I am Anatolian, middle eastern, eastern European, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and have some French too, well, this is all the journey they took. More and more, then, I make sense of this Mediterranean Europeanness I have as being, at least in part, of gypsy derivation. Anciently gypsies had a sense of their own nobility as a people and when they first came to Britain were even seen as such. But attitudes changed and they had to adapt or disguise who they were or else soldier on regardless. I can't even express just how much happiness I have knowing my roots all the more and how much that means to me. And others will say that the past is irrelevant, but such words are of no consequence to me, because for me our family roots are part of our divinity even. And by this we find our vital historical place amongst the teeming masses of faceless people who have no stories. Not at all is the past an irrelevance and I have long known this. I have travailed so hard over the years to uncover such forgotten history, that which was reduced to but mysteries and disregarded shadows, while yet being essentially part of who we are, unknown and yet vital. I know that new age spiritually motivated people, of whom I have often situated myself, want to escape the body and the material, into a void, and I had originally accepted something of this dismissiveness, but not anymore. Because it is the totality that is relevant, being part of the miracle of evolving life, being precious, divine, and deserving to be honoured. All my research now leads somewhere and it feels so good. I am gypsy; it is the only way to make sense of the diverse patch-work of association with so many countries, places they travelled through and dwelt in. I'm happy to know. I'm gypsy and viking and Irish and Welsh. My dad disliked his Welshness and my mum her Irishness, but I love it all. And my squatters of the Forest of Dean, who were people outside of any parish, they were travellers too! Red haired, natural, rebelling against any imposed authority, they had no home but the forest, where they made their huts and repeatedly saw them destroyed, and then built more. Evicting them was a nonsense as they were homeless and belonged nowhere. There was nowhere else for them to go. They were extraneous to the system. All lands beyond the forest had been enclosed, partitioned and claimed, everywhere divided into parishes where people belonged, but not them. And what kind of travellers they themselves were, who knows. But I am so happy. I have made sense of a past that otherwise would not have been known. And I knew of Shetland Vikings and Welsh and Irish and Forest of dean, but I never knew of gypsies. If some of the elders of our family knew of this they preferred it forgotten. But I have discovered it anyway. It wakens a whole part of me, reinvigorates what was lost and yet was always there. And that feels so good. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees.
I created a filmlet on the subject of my Welsh Harrison ancestors, from my grandfather George Harrison of Varteg back to George Harrison of Llanthony. I worked so hard to create this again and again, the windows movie maker repeatedly declaring it to be an 'incorrect format' or 'corrupted' and refusing to open up. I kept on slogging and eventually was successful in my endeavour.
Quite a genealogical day really - in the morning my long awaited certificates of family births and marriages turned up, and after I'd played around with my family tree folder for a while, I went to the Mormon church for a genealogy gathering. I was the only one who turned up, so I got all the attention of Jennifer, the middle aged Mormon lady who had done so much work on her own family tree, of which she showed me a lot. We watched a Mormon video about the building of their vaults in the granite hills around Salt Lake City, and all the work they were doing underground to collect data on people from all over the world, to make it safe and secure and available to those who wish to trace their ancestors, safe enough even to withstand a nuclear explosion.
To further my family tree research I wrote a couple of letters, one to my Aunt May in Cardiff, and one to a Mr Inkster in the Shetland Isles who's traced his own family tree and is probably somewhere back related to me. Last Saturday, my mother had gone to a holiday exhibition in London and had got talking to his friend who was working on the Shetland stand. There's two types of Inksters up there, one lots from Burra Isle and the others at Scalloway. We come from the Burra Isle stock. On travelling up to london, I got to spend a day in the Census house, researching more my family tree. That was an absorbing day. I discovered I had links far back with Norfolk through the Bane's who came from the North Walsham area. I spent one more day in the Census house while in London, from which I found out quite a bit more of interest, like that some of my Welsh relatives actually came to Wales from the Forest of Dean. A big envelope arrived from the Shetland Isles, from ALan Inkster, who had lots of information about our Inkster ancestors. He said he was obsessed with finding out all about the Inksters and he is hoping in the future to form a worldwide Inkster organisation. |
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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