More ancestors

I’ve spent many hours over the last ten days with the dead rather than the living, obsessively chasing my ancestors. It is a grand pastime - and possibly a gross waste of time, but doesn't cost nearly as much as a similar obsession would have done even twenty years ago, when journeys around graveyards, churches and Records Offices across much of England would probably have been necessary, and plenty of letter-writing to boot. Now, with so much interest in ancestry, the available sites have packed in the data. Thanks to outriders on the same family tree as me I have been able to discover so much in such a short amount of time it staggers me. One twig of my mother’s line has taken me back to 1536. It’s sad not to be able to put flesh on their bones. I imagine them as folk who didn’t move much from the village or hamlet of their birth, who kept their heads down tilling the soil, but all around them times were a’changing. Henry VIII was in full Reformation mode, laying waste to monasteries, and generally getting up the Pope’s nose. 1536 was the year of the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ one of the largest uprising against him.

Some disappointments have occurred: I haven’t a single drop of Welsh blood in me. The paternal line started in Hampshire and Wiltshire, moving into Wales only two generations back, probably in pursuit of work. My grandfather and his two sons by a first marriage worked as colliers, (‘timberman, underground’ I read in the useful census - what’s the plural of census?) My maternal line could have populated Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire by itself. They were all good breeders, regularly producing eleven children, most of whom seemed to survive. On helpful seeker after the same ancestor added the note that Joseph C had a wife and eleven children all of whom he left behind when he emigrated to America. he evidently expected the sons at least to follow him to a better life and was disappointed when they didn’t. eventually he returned to the place of his birth and died there. I’m glad to learn that at least one set of genes includes a questing, ambitious visionary. For the most part they were farmers, millers and carters of some substance but didn’t travel far outside their parish. The wives, if they were left widowed, became dressmakers. One poor soul was a charwomen at 60 with a son of 6 years (though as she had an unmarried daughter living at home I suspect he was the daughter’s child!)

I’ve also ‘met’ a distant cousin (I’m useless at working out relationships. She is my paternal grandfather’s sisters grandchild!) her father loved Scotland and wanted to live up here but his wife didn’t. They compromised by spending lots of holidays here and he died in Rosemarkie on the Black Isle where his ashes were duly scattered. It’s just over an hour’s drive from here so I shall make a pilgrimage to locate his spirit.

Now what do I do with all this arcane knowledge? If I were Chillsider I would sew a huge collage to hang at the back of my bed where there is a space just waiting for such an interesting, potentially beautiful, item, but I have neither the skill nor the patience. I suppose I could use glue.