In genealogy I was back to looking at the 1921 censuses, seeing as I had Findmypast membership which had a monopoly on this, focusing on my Maxteds and their extended family members. And why did William Maxted's Irish wife Mary Dolan, on the 1921 census, say she was born in Cork, rather than Westmeath? Those parts of Ireland were so far apart. Notes online about this giving of different birthplaces suggest that this information gets more accurate as one gets older. Had Mary sought to hide her origins? Skeletons in the cupboard? Could there have been a single mother born babe at a convent, she being either the mother of the babe? This remained a mystery. But, yes, babes out of wedlock were there in her family, with her granddaughters Norah and seemingly my nanny Eileen. So this looking at various 1921 census for Maxted descendants was my own personal detective challenge of the moment. My Maxteds had originated in the apparently haunted Kent village of Pluckley, at some point relocating into London, and then ending up in the Hampshire town of Eastleigh. That was where William Maxted and his Irish wife Mary Dolan were living in 1921, where William worked as a boiler maker for the railway. The families married daughter who lived on the same road, Market Street, Mary Green, had begun by 1921 naming all her daughters after flowers. Another married daughter, Florence, my own ancestress, was far away in Parkestone, Essex, at 2 Bridge Cottages, for which I found a picture and recalled in this even having been there as a child when my nanny friend Nina (?) lived there, a time I'd been made to sing for everyone, where pigeons were kept at the end of the garden and all manner of home made wines were being created from fruits, barks and flowers. For all such censuses I thereafter tracked down I sourced if possible accompanying pictures of where these families had lived or pictures connected to their occupations. Some of the Maxted family had remained in London, such as William Maxteds brother and sister, Matilda and Henry, still in Nine Elms where they'd all been born. Henry worked there as a crane attendant for the railway. Other family members had moved to Brighton, Luton, Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, one of Williams brothers Frederick Maxted being an armourer of rifles, pistols and machine guns at the Admiralty supply depot in Plymouth. Back in London, at Islington, two of William's cousins, the Arnell sisters Molly and Minnie, who never married, worked worked for the animal food business of Joseph Thorley Limited at Kings Cross, specifically for the cattle foods department. And two brothers John and William Maxted, who were nephews of our own William Maxted, being sons of his deceased brother John, worked in Fulham, London, for the biscuit manufacturer Marfalane as dispatcher and packer. Of those who had moved to Luton, one cousin, Henry Pratt, the grandson of William's deceased sister Sarah, worked as a painter of the cars of the famed Vauxhall Motors long situated there.
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From just one ancestral picture I generated avatars of my Irish great grandmother Mary Dolan, and it was so that most were repetitive, but still some I liked manifested. Somehow, at least in some pictures, the AI picked Mary out to be a black woman, looking rather Afro-American.
I decided it was my great grandma Florence Maxted's turn for the avatar and time travel experience, luckily having a few photos of her to work from, and now gaining so many delights. So happy I am for this. Florence was half Irish through her mother Mary née Dolan. I see from a photo of her mother that they have the same eyes, which my father also had; Irish eyes. Florence's fathers family came from Pluckley, the most haunted village in England. I looked back at some of my genealogy research and amazingly found out something new about my great great grandmother Mary Dolan of Westmeath, like her origins I try to find still and cannot.
But what I did find was that before she married her husband William Maxted in 1887 in St Peter's church, Hammersmith, aged 27, which was rather late for a lady to get married in those days, she had years previously been engaged to another, back when she was 19, a soldier of 22 years of age called Henry Black Douglas McLaren, and they even went through three weeks of banns at the same St Peter's church, but the very wedding the following day never happened. Oh why? Rather the following year Henry married another girl, Alice Wright, and by 1891 at the age of just 29 he was dead, by which time Mary had married William Maxted and was up in Sunderland. It was on clearing in the house that I found some family tree certificates and in looking at them once more, and reading of my great great grandparents, William and Mary Maxted's daughters death, of young Sarah, aged 13, from heart failure, that I saw something I'd not taken note of before, which was that the address had been given as Nazareth House in Isleworth, not their home at all. On looking up this place, I saw that it was and industrial school for Roman Catholic girls. Two considerations now came to me, one naturally being why was Sarah even there, as such schools were in general for children who had fallen into trouble and who had been sent there by the courts, and maybe to her detriment considering that she had died there. And secondly, I had seen from baptisms already, that although William Maxted was and English fellow and not at all Roman Catholic, he had nevertheless honoured his Irish wifes wishes by allowing her the grace to raise their children in her own religion, and maybe Sarah's death at an institution run by nuns ended all that. 'No more' I could imagine him saying. On looking up about Nazareth House it appeared to be a fine estate in London, with gardens and an educational curriculum teaching all the skills a girl back then was thought to be good for them, such as cooking, laundry, needlework and housmaid service, as well as musical drills to keep them fit, and access to a toy cupboard and library. And yet Sarah's health had deteriorated there. Hammersmith in London, where my family lived, was where the original Poor Sisters Of Nazareth first set up, their mission being to take care of both young and old. From there the houses had spread out into the rest of Britain. I saw an address I could write to, by snail mail, to ask for any relevant information to this situation, from the nuns archives; so I promptly wrote a letter, hoping for something, anything, in response. And it was then that I saw negative looking links about these very Sisters of Nazareth, in which abuses were insinuated. Nazareth Houses were dotted around England, to be found in various cities, and specific writings about them had disturbing titles, such as 'Suffer The Little Children - The True Story Of An Abused Covent Upbringing', Guradian articles such as 'Nuns Abused Hundreds Of Children', 'Sisters Of No Mercy' and 'SIsters Of Nazareth Become Second Catholic Order To Admit Child Abuse'. I guess the first would be the Magdalene nuns who had been outed for abusing pregnant girls. I was shocked. Like, Hello, are you the representatives of God and of Jesus? Devoting your lives to a holy path and yet abusing and traumatising those given unto your care. I now sensed my own ancestors pains and trials tied up in this story. To trust in the church and yet be let down by them. One Guardian article was even titled 'Children At Derry Care Homes Were Made To Eat Vomit, Inquiry Told'. I did hope the actual Isleworth home had decent friendly nuns in it. Anyway, from Amazon I ordered one of the books, the 'Suffer The Little Children' one by Frances Reilly, who a a girl had been abandoned by her mother, along with her sisters, outside a Nazareth House convent in Belfast. She had suffered there from brutal beatings, was abused, molested and worked as a slave. In later life Frances prosecuted the nuns and in this she was successful. In another account about an abusive Nazareth House, by a man, Fred Atkins, who had regularly been beaten up by the nuns from the age of six, he even in old age was still haunted by the noise of children banging their heads against the walls of the dormitories. Night time sleeping would be interrupted by the nuns checking for bed wetting, for which beatings would follow, one bed wetter being held out of the window by her ankles as a punishment. Nuns had leather straps dangling from their waists next to their rosary beads. Another lad had named this institution the 'House Of Hell'. When I at last heard back from the nuns of Nazareth House. Their achivist, Christine H, had not found anything in regard to my Sarah, but she did invite me to provide more information by email, which I promptly did.
This extra information resulted in a reply of a little more substance than previously. Sarah Kathleen Maxted had indeed been a child in the care of the nuns, number 49 on the Isleworth Children's Register. She had been sent to the convent by a magistrate, Mr Rose, for which one had to conclude really that she had been sent there for some mischief, not that any note had been made of why. Christine noted that even prior to Sarah being sent to Nazareth House she'd had an ongoing religious connection with the place, having had certain Christian moments there, of confirmation, first confession and holy communion. Christine had not found any such moments for Sarah's siblings or her Irish mother.* It had certainly been a contemplation of mine that Sarah may have had downs syndrome, hence why she would have spent so much time with the nuns and would then explain why she had a weak heart and had died at only 13 years of age. I had often wondered what it would have been like for such children in olden days, in times before this was even recognised as a specific condition.
My daughter Eleanor presented to me a goddess card on this day of Mother Mary, saying to expect miracles, and one came to me indeed, this being the accessing of deep notalgia animation of ones ancestors, via their old photos. The 'miracle' in this, although really but science, was that one's still photos of the ancestors were as if brought to life, moving their eyes and faces and looking around, rather reminding one of Harry Potter's moving paintings. I actually discovered this on tiktok, and saw that it was a new app exclusive to MyHeritage.
I began experimenting with these animations for myself, seeing my ancestors as if coming to life before my very eyes, which was utterly magical for me. I wept an ocean of tears again and again, for these were my dearly beloved ancestors, whom I'd spent so much of my adult life researching, right there looking at me and all around, as if reborn. Not all the photos worked so well with this, but many did, even an indistinct very old one of my Irish great grandmother Mary Dolan, her eyes coming alive, strong eyes, shared with her daughter Florence. Mary Dolan's photo had always looked so severe and unrelateable, up until now. I reanimated all my grandparents and I animated my Shetland island great grandparents. All was incredible. And from those anmations I made a tiktok, set to the music of Edgar's 'Salut D'Amour'. This was so incredible to me that I watched it again and again. Ah, my beautiful grandma's; how I loved them. ![]() I've been considering the x's, the passing on of the feminine, into both men and women, having been talking rather interestingly of this with my friend Liz at a ladies luncheon, interestingly on World Ladies Day. The subject relates to a realisation I've just had, on contemplating the strong connection I feel to my deceased nanny Eileen, even though she is not of my matriarchal line, like my granny Isabelle, rather being my fathers mother. So why do I feel her so present? My realisation is that it is down to the X. I have two x's, as science has shown us ladies, men having one X and one Y. One of my x's logically comes from my father, naturally having been passed to him by his mother, my nanny Eileen, as from his father had come only the Y. So my x from my father makes sense suddenly of how it is that I feel the strong presence of my nanny Eileen. And as for the X she had passed to my father, thereafter coming to me, this could have had one of three origins, so I ponder. She'd had two X's to select from, one being from the mystery unknown (as is my theory) father, which in turn comes his own mother, a mystery grandmother. The other X would be from Eileen's half Irish mother Florence Maxted, and that in itself would either have come from her own Irish mother Mary Dolan of Westmeath, or from her father William Maxted's mother, the maybe gypsy Sarah Green. Wow, what new world of contemplation does this now open up, the journeying of the X's. Like, what then are the sources of my own two X's? My own four children wouldn't necessarily get passed down the same one, they getting either the one passed from my nanny Eileen or the X from my own mother. This is suddenly fascinating, not something I'd considered before. Distant cousin DNA matches sometimes have an X marked by them, and what the hell was that about, my poor unmathematical brain so far dismissing even trying to understand that. But now I start to see. Matching to those distant cousin x's, theoretically, one can come to know the source of one's own. Like the X I've got from my mother, which may or may not be the same as my sister got, has to be again of one of three routes, either of my mothers paternal grandmother, Shetlander Helen Inkster, or of a direct matriarchal line from half Irish Mary Ann Seagrove, or from her patriarchal grandfather D'Auvergne's mother Hannah Bean (the latter also being a questionable potentially illegitimate lineage). A new angle for me then, and most interesting. 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. Categories
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