![]() 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.
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Jeremy wanted me to look at the genealogy of his Midgelys, which is his connection that moved to South Africa. In looking back at his tree I realised I'd made a boo-boo. Its easily done, which is why one has to double check and triple check research, finding back up evidences, especially when like with me all is done on the cheap with no ordering of certificates. Assumptions made can be wrong. And so it was that the lineage of wealth I'd found for Jeremy, back to the sanitary pipe maker, whose son had killed himself with cyanide, is not Jeremys ancestor after all. My assumption, which led me astray, was that Polly was a nick name for Mary Ann, when really Polly was born a Polly. Not great extensive wealth in Jeremys family after all then. And the fallibility of my researches is exposed, and how many more false assumptions have I made? AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I looked at the point where friends Jeremy's and Ian's families converged, and that still amazes me, that they are cousins and would never have known but for me, and they wish they so did not know. And it's amazing how intellectual and refined some of Ian's ancestors were, in comparison to his present poverty and own non pursuit of higher education. From Cambridge educated to trouble maker at a comprehensive. This merging of Jeremy and Ian's family histories is all in the area around Pluckley, which I loved to visit not so long back and would like to visit again, as that is where I too have ancestors. So, I'm still in the compulsive world of genealogy research. Jeremy's family have a story about one ancestress having been a gypsy baby who was sold on the door step. She was dark so it made sense. But, I'm not sure. The spacing of the children's births in that family she well fitted into. So I have another possible angle, that really there was already darker ancestry in that family which they wished to distance themselves from, but those darker genes had come back up in her, for which the story had been created. I began looking into this family, the Washford's, from which she came. Humble railway workers, living in a railway cottage... Researching more Jeremy's genealogy, looking at his Washford line and those other families marrying into them, they being a big Wesleyan bunch centered around Shadoxhurst village. A few Jeremiahs were in there, this being what I sometimes like to call Jeremy. One of the Jeremiah's, who was Jeremy's many times great uncles, was victim to a highway hold-up, robbed at gunpoint, for which his assailants were hung. It had been a violent attack, in which he'd been shot many times in the mouth by a group of men known as the Tenterden Gang who had been terrorising the area. As they met their fate, hanging from the gallows, local women who had tumours came to touch their hands, the belief of old being this would cure their ailment. And another find of interest, those Washford's were friends of a clergyman writer, Richard Harris Barham, who published a book of passed down old Kent stories, the Ingoldsby Legends, at one time widely popular in Britain. One of the stories was inspired by an ancestor of the Washford's, Joseph Washford, who was a humble good fellow, a gardener of Appeldore, close to Shadoxhurst, who gardened for a lawyer Jerry Jarvis. To cover Joseph's bald head Jerry gave him a wig which he no longer had use of. But the wig was evil and transformed Joseph into a baddy, first with him lying, then stealing, and ultimately murdering, his victim being none other than Jerry Jarvis, and for this he was hung. 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. ![]() In my genealogical research I looked at improving a friend Mary's tree and worked out that she was a second cousin to Bamber Gascoyne, the compere of University Challenge. I messaged her the discovery and she knew it anyway. They meet up a lot and their families are close. This is a grand ancestry, back to Crisp Gascoyne, mayor of London. And then there are the Munro's. Interestingly, Ian also has Monro's who had a mansion, Druids Stone, where really was located a druids stone. Wouldn't that be a hoot if Ian was not only a distant cousin of Jeremy's but of Mary too, as if Ian is somehow the keystone connecting us all, in ways we can barely imagine. What an amusing concept. I looked up any substance for this new connection, but records further back are too lacking. I had a good try at finding something. And Ian's tree is rather fascinating. His Munro's married more than once into Jamaican colonial families. So interesting are Ian and Mary's family histories. And how would you know this of Ian who has not a drop of grandeur in him. Here I am, pursuing my paupers in and out of the workhouse, while a bunch of others around me are of esquires and famous families. I've also looked more at Jeremy's 'Oliver Beckerlegge' of the United Free Methodist Church, taking care of peoples souls, and interestingly getting into trouble again and again for refusing to vaccinate his firstborn. Mary's family tried to keep slavery legal, strongly opposing its abolition. The slaves of Jamaica, whose labours fed Ian's family fortunes in the sugar trade, rebelled and even sacrificed one of their white captives. There is so much of interest, the deeper one looks. Mary's Munro's are most esteemed, her grandmother, Eva Munro, being the head of the entire clan of Munro's, which then passed down to Mary's uncle Patrick, who though a Gascoigne by his mothers marriage, kept his mothers maiden name in order to be rightful chief of the Munro's. Ian's Munro's have to fit in somewhere with that great tribe, but I can't work out how. Did not Mary have the most glorious genealogy of us all, and had she not hippied it all away for a rock star. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() Setting off homewards bound, I en route planned to visit the most haunted village in Kent, called Pluckley, which had been the home of my Maxted ancestors. At last I got to see this quaint village and I loved it, enough even that I would live there. We first looked around the churchyard, the church of St Nicholas being where my great great great grandfather, George Maxted, had married his beloved, Elizabeth Roberts. Pluckley was home to the Maxted's, and not only to them but also to my friends, Ian and Jeremy's 'Kingsnorth's'. The nearest to a ghost we saw was a dog statue guarding a grave, its shadow from a distance looking real, and yet never moving. One small part of the churchyard felt gunky, not a place to dwell long in, but the rest was pleasant. This was a lovely place. We walked a labyrinth mown into the grass and ate luscious blackberries there, such a treat. On some lovely strolling in the fields around, I met a mother and her child. Never had this lady seen a local ghost, although living in an old house quite capable of being the haunt of one. The village pub, the Black Horse, is apparently haunted, as is the church, the church having a white lady and a red lady, and the pub having a poltergeist. I carried on to neighbouring Hothfield, where my Maxted's had also lived, maybe when they were selling provisions. The church there, of St Margaret, felt more of a candidate for ghosts, being in an enclave outside of the village. You could almost feel it's mysteries and flitting spirits. Like at Pluckley, one corner felt gunky, and all was interesting and maybe a little scary. The church was locked up and peering through the windows we saw a priests vestments and ancient decorated knightly tomb. We checked out one more churchyard, burial place of many Kingsnorth's. Quite the place to return to with Jeremy and Ian. AuthorSusie 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. Being an enthusiastic genealogist, I was taking on just about all my friends family trees and having great fun with the detective work of it all, in just the same way as another would enjoy doing the Times crossword. And just the most surprising thing, as I was updating some genealogies of friends, which was that I discovered two of them, Ian Napp and Jeremy Kingsnorth, who suffered very little affection for one another, were distant cousins. They shared a great great great great grandfather, John Kingsnorth, who had lived in Bethersden in Kent. Their exact relationship was fifth cousins. Jeremy was descended from John's son, John junior, and Ian was descended from John's daughter, Betsy.
How crazy was that! This was like wow!!! It would explain how these friends, living in the very same obscure area of France as me somenehow got drawn together, even sharing an allotment, and yet would also squabble all the time. |
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