I open the book and dive into a world that is my blood but which I never knew existed...
A many-times-great grandmother born in about 1694. Lived till nearly a hundred in that world long before penicillin or basic concepts of hygiene. Generation upon generation after her never leaving the borders of Northamptonshire in the English East Midlands.
Perhaps all the generations before her never leaving it either.
Reading and reading... I am reminded of tales like Wuthering Heights or Far from the Madding Crowd. Small, parochial worlds in the quiet English countryside, punctuated with eloping couples, deaths from vanished illnesses, and ever and always the fight for inheritances.
I get chills looking at the photographs.
One of a young lady in late 19th century clothing, sitting very formally. She's my great-grand mother.
But for the clothes and darker hair she's a replica of my sister. Down to my sister's habitual tilt of the head and facial expression.
Many of my father as a boy in wartime England.
Photos I think are of him as an older man, till I realise they are actually of his cousins who I have never known.
I remember my grandmother as stern, proper, old, extremely English, mind-bogglingly set in her ways, for whom everything was right in the world if we'd just sit and have a pot of tea... and there she is: circa 1953, wearing daringly short shorts, with a cheesy grin and leaning indecorously against a gate post.
And the stories...
A grandparent's half brother who was at Gallipoli and in British-occupied Palestine, having emigrated to Australia decades before anyone on my father's side that I had known about. He never married and "went bush", meaning he lived in no proper abode and just lived off the land he owned in the middle of what was then nowhere, till one of my grandfathers built him a house with his own hands and connected it to a generator.
"There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct -- not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration." - Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Does anything really change? Or do the seasons just come and go?
Looking into the past through genealogy is a blast, isn't it? I remember the battle of Gallipoli, it was a particularly brutal battle if I recall correctly.
ReplyDeleteThe Mormon Church is a huge purveyor of genealogy, the church members constantly pushed to perform their familial history. Of course the church had a motive – their belief in “baptism for the dead” in order to allow those who never had the “opportunity” to be baptized into the correct church. I always wondered if the baptized, having no choice in the matter, protested somewhere in the after-life.
Anyway, I read some of the work my “parents” did on their genealogy and I was thoroughly disgusted, not by the work or what I read, it was fascinating as hell, but my father was the king of jackasses and it appeared oh so well when all I could find was the lengthy family history on his side traced back to Cork County Ireland in the 18th century. It stopped cold at my mother on her side. All I know about her is that her maiden name was Murphy, likely traceable to Ireland as well.
I’ve been halfway considering taking up the task to give me something to do. There are some fairly extensive software packages available to assist and I’m not too far from the largest bank of genealogical history in the world – Salt Lake City. Might be kind of fun.
My uncle has certainly done his homework. What he's done here is amazing.
ReplyDeleteThis is not even his side of the family - he's my maternal uncle and until now I knew far more about my mother's side, which is Anglo-German. They were more of a did-things-and-went-places-bunch.
This uncle of mine also lived in Japan for a while.
How fascinating - you following in the footsteps of a realtive you never knew. Makes one wonder ohw much of an impact genes have on people's preferences and habits.
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