I looked at the astrology for my ancestress, Eleanor Barton, born 10th October 1833 in Greenwich, raised in an orphanage in Whitechapel, and died as a young mother of tuberculosis. As a Libran, she would have had a love for that which is beautiful and aesthetic. Moon conjunct Mars - she would have been strong willed, not one to give up easily and having abundant energy. Sun conjunct Mercury - a good mind, one to enjoy conversations, talented in handiwork. Sun opposite Pluto - she could get into conflicts and enjoy a good battle. Sun square Neptune - self deprecating and vulnerable health. Sun trine Uranus - fond of the new, for that which is exciting and presents variety, tolerant of those different from herself and even attracted to them as she would have liked exposure to different ways of life. Moon in Virgo - cheerful but serious, when something needs doing she gets it done and takes care it is done properly. She likes neatness and order, is health conscious and is a good worker. She likes to help others, although some shyness if there. Moon conjunct Venus - enjoying of comfort and pleasure, affectionate, liking to acquire beautiful things, such as nice clothes which she will work for to get. She would have been much into her beauty. Moon trine Jupiter - this is one of the pleasantest of aspects, by which she would have had no fear to truly be herself, being outgoing, generous to others, taking care of both people and animals, helping whosoever is in trouble and protecting the weak. She was one to respect honour and honesty and would have been religious, although not in a puritannical way, but in kindness and helpfulness. Mercury in Libra - moderate, not one to go to extremes. Mercury conjunct Mars - thinks for herself and will argue her point, she knows how she feels and cares not if others agree, she is true to herself and stands up for what she believes. Her tongue can be sharp. mercury opposite Pluto - others would disagree with her and would put her ideas down. Mercury square Neptune - pursuit of fantasies which are unreal to others so that they don't understand her. But she is one to have a creative and beautiful mind. Putting all that into words is not easy. She is one who needs peace and serenity around her, to keep away anxiety. Mercury trine Uranus - very creative and a quick mind to understand new ways of thinking. Intuition is good so that understanding comes as if from nowhere, which would confuse others, and yet in time people would observe her insights to be true. Mars Libra - a strong sense of fairness and justice, hating to see anyne treated unjustly. Mars opposite Jupiter - Positive energy and optimism which is attractive to others. A competetiveness which is spirited and not abrasive. A need for freedom and dislike for restrictions. She is one who needs her space. Mars square Neptune - she can get discouraged, when all seemingly defeats her, which she then sees as due to her unworthiness. In such times religion provides for her an escape. Susceptibilty to infections and illness. Mars trine uranus - very independant, she knows that with freedom she has control of her own destiny, she knows she has to be herself and go her own way. Saturn Libra - she takes time to make up her mind. At first she has reserve with someone, but once committed she stays and is loyal. She respects duty and keeps her agreements. Saturn opposite Pluto - life challenges come along, whether by lifes restrictions or others expectations. Saturn trine Neptune - ideals as well as realism, as she is disciplined, hard working, religious, and is prepared to make sacrifices for the greater good. Jupiter Taurus - She aims to find stability and security on her lifes journey. She needs hugs and a show of love, being herself a warm person who gives to others. Jupiter square Neptune - a dreamy sort who prefers to see the best in people and to ignore the bad, even when it hurts. She is non-judgemental and accepts people with their flaws. Her ideals are high and for this the world can be a disappointment. Yes, the astrology of the ancestors is one of my interests. I'm not sure if anyone else has explored into this as yet. For doing this astrology reading I have come to know all the more my ancestress Eleanor Barton. The orphanage she grew up in happens to have been in Whitechapel, where my daughter also named Eleanor now lives, their homes but a short stroll away from one another.
Two Eleanors of Whitehchapel. I see now that Eleanor Barton would have been inspired by Christian principles throughout her life, she having done Bible studies while growing up in the orphanage. Her husband, John Harrison, would so have treasured her, for she was pretty and educated, principaled and tidy, nicely spoken, kind, and able to overlook his foibles. For losing her to tuberculosis, yes, that's maybe how it is that he came to lose his mind. I've seen that just two years after her death there was a John Harrison in the Greenwich workhouse who was attacked by one of the other inmates for being crazy. This could have been our John. Eleanor was his everything and without her he was lost.
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![]() I have discovered a new record, a register from 1939 for all English and Welsh households, compiled to gain information for future war purposes, for the likes of giving out war passes, and later, ration books. Some names are for now blacked out, so not everyone can be found. Using this register I have found my father as a baby in the Welsh mountains with his mother, my nanny Eileen, being with her husband Pop's family, minus Pop himself who was back in Dovercourt with Eileen's family. A kind of swapping of family situations was going on there. I do remember my nanny Eileen saying she'd had to be sent to the healthy air of the Welsh mountains due to a tuberculosis shadow having shown up in her lungs. It was fun updating all the relatives and ancestors with new information from the 1939 register. The 1921 census was destroyed by fire and a 1941 census hadn't even been taken, so the register fills in a much needed gap. Not that any census's beyond 2011 are permitted to be looked at as yet anyway. Through this register I have learnt that the ship our Percy Spencer was a chef on was called the Malinas, making trips regularly between Harwich and Antwerp, and the ships bombing during the war, which had put him off working on the sea evermore, was when the navy had adopted it as a convoy escort vessel and Germans had torpedoed it near Port Said in Egypt. So that's where our Percy had got to then. As for my Pop, George Harrison, he is written of as having been part of the personnel at HMS Ganges across the river at Shotley Gate, there where he had remained till it had closed down in 1976, after many years of travelling to and from work on a ferry boat across the estuary. The HMS Ganges with its Indian prince figurehead was a naval training facility and Pop was part of the maintenance team. The Trog was the name of the boat especially laid on for the HMS Ganges workers. Using the 1939 register I am now working on updating all my accumulated friends genealogies. AuthorAuthor Susie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. On having a visit from two Jehovahs Witnesses, Ian and Brian, I got them talking about one of my favourite subjects, genealogy and I even said I would have a go at tracing their family trees for them. This didn't turn out to be so easy, with the too little family memories they had shared, but I did crack Ian's 'Muggeridge's' to way back, to as far as a French fellow, Louis Maugirard. Like me, Ian also had an ancestress who had died young of tuberculosis. And he'd had family embracing different alternatives to the mainstream Christianity, just like he does now, Quakers, Wesleyans, and a chapel called the Salem Independent. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I have been absorbed in writing info in my genealogy website for my ancestor, George Harrison the original, the miller of Llanthony, which I work at till half past three in the morning. I still feel I need to weave something magical through his story before I can conclude. The only glimpse I get into his personality is him exposing himself in Abergavenny, and I'm not sure what that says! As for his last days, they were in the workhouse. The seeds began in those workhouse days for our present day norm of institutionalising the old, with strangers caring for them rather than ones family. In reading of Wales I wanted to be there, which is the same when I focus on Shetland for those islands, and regarding Kerry in Ireland for my Irish. That night I didn't sleep easily, and when I did I dreamt that my ancient Scottish home was Rio Dolmen. I do look this up the next morning and such a place does not exist. Suspending Welsh genealogy for now, I write up about my ancestress Eleanor Caroline Barton, a line I am far more attuned to, studying her childhood orphanage days. The Queen herself was patroness of Eleanor's orphanage. and gave donations. The orphan girls would sing to audiences to gain more donations. They were lovely, well looked after and easy to adore. Society ladies would choose from among them their future servants. Eleanor learnt to read and write while there. But, also, she encountered for the first time there dreaded tuberculosis, one of the girls having died from it. It could be that in those times the disease seeded in her, latent, waiting to overcome her in young adulthood. I rewrote my Welsh genealogy of George Harrison the miller of Llanthony and this time was happier with the outcome. For the first time I realise that he absolutely must have had more children, their being such gaps, and I look to find out who they may be, but these Welsh records are not easy, almost as hopeless as Irish ones. And I work on Eleanor Caroline Barton's London orphanage days, quite interesting, finding reports of the orphanage fund raising meetings and the songs the girls sang, and a picture of the banqueting hall with raised gallery upon which they sang with all their scrubbed clean and cute appeal. My Eleanor Caroline was there, in that gallery, singing. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() Having returned to France, I check out the info presented in the new certificates, learning of the overcrowded Roman Catholic chapel in Clarkes Buildings, Greenwich, used by my Irish Sugrue's, the illnesses they died from, Bartholomew vomiting up blood as a consequence of having tuberculosis, and his wife Catherine suffering a stroke while working as a servant in a Deptford lodging house, for which she was paralysed through half her body. So it is that I learn of their final struggles. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() Along the 'lanes' of Dovercourt, glimpsing the football match, my mum showed us the old door where she used to sneak for free into the football. The Harwich and Parkeston football team was known as the Shrimpers, and when my mum was young they got to the final of the FA amateur cup. They played Pegasus at Wembley and the family went along, two trains and coaches having been put on, so that almost the whole town went, all knitting scarves and hats in black and white stripes, and losing 6-0. Back home my mum talked of her memories of her grandparents for my genealogy projects. Rosina sent me info from some certificates that had arrived in France, like Bartholomew Sugrue having died in Greenwich of tuberculosis, and his first wife having died from Asiatic cholera. Bartholomew's fathers name was Thomas, also a labourer, back in Ireland. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() I have another genealogical breakthrough, hurray, this being finding out why my ancestor, John William Harrison, was put in prison for half a year back in 1871. Oh, how so long to find this. But there it was. Being a waterman/bargeman John had crossed the Thames from Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs, whereon he began loading his barge with iron from the Samuda wharf at Blackwall. Half a ton he got into his barge when he was spotted by a man who he then set to wrestling with. As it is said, he tried to throw the fellow in the water and would have succeeded if not for another person spotting the fracas. He was given six months hard labour in prison, hence his daughter, my great great grandmother Maria, having to go into the workhouse at the age of 11, her mother already having died from tuberculosis. And for Maria's deceased mother, Eleanor Caroline Barton, who'd been raised in an orphanage, I found newspaper clips about the Sailors Female Orphan Home where she grew up, of her singing along with the other girls for the public 'Oh Where is the Guide of my Infant Years'. Even back then, when Eleanor was 7, it was reported that one of the other girls of the orphanage had died of consumption (tuberculosis). I researched more, looking at where in London my people lived and what those areas were like. When my ancestors lived at Cock Lane, beside St Sepulchre church, I do think that unlike now this was a colourful and stimulating place to be. St 'Pulchre, as it was known, was right by a prison, the Old Bailey, and the cells of those condemned to die. It was inseparable from those surrounds, tolling the bells and praying for the souls of all those condemned ones who would stop there on the way to the gallows, having a gift of flowers presented to them. But a walk away from there were other homes for my family, in more notorious areas, Field Lane with its plethora of resold stolen handkerchiefs, Plum Tree Court which was an escape route for thieves, and its neighbouring Shoe Lane, being by St Andrews Church, where priests needed bodyguards for this being such a rough place. My ancestress Sarah Bunney died in the workhouse just by there, though of a good old age. She was a survivor, and her daughter Hannah Bunney had by now long gone to Greenwich. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. There was a letter waiting for me in the post office, I discovered. It was my great great great grandmother Eleanor Caroline Harrison nee Barton's death certificate. And so I came to gaze on this death certificate and it was so sad. The cause of death, it said, was phthysis. I googled that and found it was an earlier name for tuberculosis. For nine months Eleanor had suffered it, as she wasted away. This was the Great White Plague. It took peoples lives away when they were in the flower of their youth. Eleanor was 33. There I lay, incidentally ill myself, kind of in shock for what had been her fate. Huge numbers of people died from tuberculosis in those days. There was no cure. So my Eleanor had been but one of those tragic stories. I felt the trauma of this too. I felt such love for Eleanor. I know I don't know her as such, but she is of my family, my matriarchal lineage, and I feel for her. Eleanor has the same name which I have given to one of my children and I feel a connection. She grew up in an orphanage and then had died so young of this terrible ailment. This is so very sad. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() On visiting my mothers home, I got into doing some of her partner Brian's genealogy, with him, and we actually found out that the parents of his half brother did not marry till quite some years after he was born. Brian was both chuffed and surprised to discover this. Family photos, I was finding for him too. Still researching Brian's tree, I discovered as a child, one of his uncles, Reginald Russell, had been in a Henley on Thames sanitorium, struck with tb. He survived it, thankfully, though many, like one of my nanny Eileen's sisters, did not. Tuberculosis was once rife, and as nanny and Brian did say, as soon as a law was passed forbidding spitting in public tb lost its deadly power over the people. Which makes sense, with tb being so prevalent in India where people spit everywhere. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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