Christmas Memories

 My first Christmas memory is from when I was around 4 years old, we were living in Sutton Coldfield at the time and I think that there must have been a special  Christmas service at a local church for John and Denise's school. I remember sitting in this old church with stained glass windows and listening to the Christmas Carol 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' being sung. We didn't attend a church at that time but this must have made an impression on me and this carol has always remained a favourite.

On Christmas Eve we would lay a pillowcase at the foot of our bed, it was always exciting, wondering when Father Christmas would come and I can remember sometimes waking to check whether the empty pillowcase was still on my bed or whether it was filled, I still have a plastic pillowcase with a picture of Father Christmas on it which I used. In the morning we would carry our filled pillowcases to the living room and open our presents under the Christmas tree. When we lived in Scotland we had a silver Christmas tree with fuchsia pink ribbons and coloured lights (very retro).

When I was about 8 my Mum began a new Christmas tradition, after our traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and roast potatoes etc. followed by a real Christmas plum pudding with hidden coins, which I think where put in the pudding to encourage the children to eat them, and the Christmas crackers with party hat and joke. A small self made snowman would be set on the table. This little snowman, which was a large jar covered in cotton wool with a removable head, sometimes Mum used a white balloon with a face drawn on, which would be popped when the meal was over. The snowman was filled with little presents for everyone, even though we had been spoilt rotten by Father Christmas this little present after dinner was always looked forward to by me, infact I still possess one of these presents, a little plastic clip purse.

I have carried on this tradition with my own children and grandchildren and even though it is sometimes difficult to find presents small enough to fit in the snowman's body it is still a much appreciated tradition. 

Underneath are some photos of my Christmas memories- my pillowcase and snowman gift and a film of Christmas 1972 when we were living in California.

Bicycles

 Living in the Netherlands I am blessed to be able to bike everywhere, mostly on bike paths and a nice flat terrain. Last week my bike had to go to the cycle repair shop to fix a flat tire and several other necessary repairs. On Thursday afternoon I always pick up my granddaughter Naema from school, as my bike was still at the repair shop I borrowed my daughter Esther's bike. My bike has back pedal brakes whilst Esther's bike has hand brakes, something that I took into consideration whilst biking down the hill from the dyke but when I suddenly had to stop at a junction I automatically tried to brake by peddling backwards before I remembered that the brakes where on the handlebars. Thankfully everything went well and I was able to stop in time, but it reminded me of one of the stories that my Nana told me about her childhood.

      My Nana, Violet Popplewell was born on the 12 December 1900, yesterday would have been her 120th birthday. Her father died when she was 2 years old and her mother eventually remarried a widower with five daughters. Violet went from being an only child to suddenly having five sisters, one of whom was the same age as her. They lived in the seaside town of Bridlington and her mother ran a small bed and breakfast located on Quay Road. Some of the stories that my Nana told me remind me of Louisa May Alcott's book 'Little Women' especially since the sister closest to Violet in age was called Joey, and she seems to have been just as vivacious and headstrong as the Joey in Little Women.

     The story that I was reminded of last week also involved bikes. The girls all owned a bicycle, which wouldn't have been so common in the early 1900's. I think that Violet and Joey where aged about 12 or 13 and together with a friend they decided to go for a bike ride in the countryside. Their friend had just received a new bicycle for her birthday and Joey desperately wanted to ride on that bike instead of her own. She kept on pestering her friend to swap bikes for a short while so that she could ride on the new bike. Eventually her friend gave in and swapped bikes with Joey. Everything went well until they began biking down a steep hill, Joey tried to brake to slow down her decent but discovered that the bike didn't have any brakes on the handlebars. Her friend had forgotten to inform her that her new bike had back pedal brakes, Joey and the bike ended up in the hedges. Luckily both where not badly damaged and everyone could laugh about it later.

Stories

 My five grandchildren are blessed to have their grandparents around them and also two great grandparents. My Mother in law celebrated her 92nd birthday today and my Mum celebrated her 94th birthday last August. These two wonderful women have lived through almost a century of history and have memories of their parents and grandparents. Our grandparents and other elderly relatives are a link to our past and our family history, it is also one of the first things that I advise people who are beginning with their family history to do, to ask their elderly relatives for information about their past.

My Dad's parents died when he was a teenager and my Mum's father passed away two years before I was born, so I grew up with only one grandparent. Thankfully when I first became interested in family history at the age of 16, I was living close enough to my Nana to be able to talk to her regularly about her past and listen to her stories about her Edwardian childhood growing up in the seaside town of Bridlington. 

 I was also able to talk to my Dad's elder sisters, auntie Alice and auntie Lily who were teenagers when my Dad was born and were able to share stories of my grandparents and their childhood during the 1920's as well as my grandfather's experiences in the First World War.

Genealogy isn't just a list of names and dates but should become a patchwork full of stories of our family which brings the backdrop of history to life.

When I think of my auntie Alice I recall her story of my grandmother Charlotte, wrapping Alice and her sister in blankets and taking them out into a field on a cold winters day during a First World War air raid from zeppelins. Also stories of my Grandad who served in the Royal Garrison Artillery in Flanders and was hit by shrapnel at Hell Fire Corner and was for a time declared missing and presumed dead. Eventually after applying for a widow's pension my Grandmother received a notification that my Grandfather was alive and in a hospital in New Castle. Auntie Alice told me about the huge scar across his back and the problems with his lungs preventing him from being able to hold a full time job.

My Nana told me that her grandmother Eliza Challis had long black hair, and she gave me a perfume bottle that belonged to her mother which still carries her scent.

My Mum told me stories of her childhood, growing up in the 1930's and 40's, of sleeping in their air raid shelter during the Second World War and listening to the buzz bombs passing overhead, and her new pink coat being covered in plaster after a bomb dropped at the end of their road.

My Dad had stories about working on the dogem cars at Hull Fair, and how he learnt to drive whilst driving a laundry delivery truck. He told me about the death of his father when he was 13 and then the death of his mother a year later, and that he was sent to live with his aunt in SouthShields. Of his many jobs, even working for Billy Butlin, and where he was when the end of the war was announced.

All these stories paint a colourful picture of their lives and are so integral in helping us to understand who they where and who we are.

We need to record these stories and pass them down through the generations along with our own personal stories.

Sometimes stories can be remembered for several generations, my husband heard a story from his uncle Freek, who was also a Miller about a young Miller's assistant who almost fell into the machinery. The Miller was able to catch him by his collar and saved him from a painful death, the saying was that the young boy laughed but the Miller was white from fright. When my husband visited the windmill where this happened he discovered that the Miller who was "white from fright" had been a Miller there in the 1700's, whilst he had always thought that the story happened during his uncle's lifetime he realised that it was a story that had been passed down from generation to generation.

This is the power of stories, whether good, bad, happy, funny or sad our stories can help and inspire future generations.

Genealogy, detective work and DNA part 3

If you have been researching your family tree for as many years as I have then maybe you will also have branched off of the direct line and tried to find out about the siblings of your direct ancestors.
During the mid 19th century as many Tin and Copper mines closed down in Cornwall the Cornish people migrated to all corners of the globe in search of employment in mines, infact there is a common saying in Cornwall that "a mine is a hole anywhere in the world with at least one Cornishman at the bottom of it!"  It is estimated that 250,000 Cornish migrated abroad between 1861 and 1901.
My own great great grandfather Robert Stickland left Cornwall in the mid 1840's to work as a boilermaker and engineer in the industrial midlands of England, I was also interested to discover what happened to his siblings.
Through Ancestry.com I came in contact with a distant 'cousin' living in Australia who was also busy with her family tree and we discovered that she was descended from William Stickland the younger brother of Robert, who had emigrated to Australia in the mid 1850's, after arriving in Australia he married a Cornish girl and they had four daughters, his second daughter was given the name Grace Morsehead Stickland after my great,great,great grandmother, confirming the fact that we had the right William Stickland. My distant 'cousin' in Australia has also done a DNA test and I was pleased to discover her name among my DNA matches, confirming biologically our distant relationship.
One of Robert's sisters,Wilmot Stickland, married and travelled with her first husband to California during the time of the Gold Rush, their eldest child was born in California but after finding their fortune they returned to Cornwall, her story can be read in one of my previous blogs.
Robert's youngest brother Richard Arundel Stickland died at the age of 14 after a fall from the mast of a schooner in the port of Hayle. That left one brother unaccounted for, John Stickland who was born a year later than Robert in 1829. On the 1851 census aged 21 he is recorded as still living with his parents and his occupation is recorded as being a copper miner. In the summer of 1851 I found a record of a marriage between a John Stickland and Eliza Treglown but in 1862 Eliza was living in Norfolk and was married to someone else, her marriage certificate declared that she was a widow, so I assumed that John had died, though I couldn't find any record of his death.
Then my DNA test results came back, Ancestry 's results give you a list of possible relatives, people who share a small part of your DNA, recording how many segments, according to how close the relationship is.
Ancestry also shares a list of surnames which you have in common and places where your ancestors lived. One of my DNA matches shared the name Strickland and looking at his tree I saw that he had a John Strickland born around 1830 and living in Australia close to the area where William Stickland, Robert's brother lived. The only thing was that on this person's tree he had recorded that John was born in Australia and had a different father. After doing genealogical research for more than 40 years I know that family trees are not always correct, infact I have had mistakes in my own which I have discovered later after more research and after more information becomes available. I decided to check all the documents which were available about this John Stickland/Strickland and discovered the following facts that convinced me that this is my long lost John Stickland, brother of Robert.
First of all in August 1854 a John Stickland arrived in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in October 1857 he was initiated as a Freemason in Beechworth, Victoria, his occupation was recorded as being a miner. In 1863 and in 1864 he fathered two daughters though he didn't actually marry their mother until 25 November 1864 (could this have been because he was still legally married to his first wife in England?)
On his marriage certificate he is also recorded as being a miner and as final proof I found a copy of his daughter Maria Strickland's birth certificate on which it records her father's birthplace as being Cornwall! Also an interesting fact is that the area around where some of John's children where born is often referred to as the Cornish settlement.
John had a total of 10 children and passed away in 1908 at the age of 78.
One of his sons, also named John, and also like his father and grandfather, a miner, fought during the First World War in Gallipoli. During one of the battles he was severally injured and was sent to England to recover. His vision was so impaired he was unable to return to active service, but during his stay in England he met and married his wife and resided for a short time in Dorset, very close to his ancestral home of Cornwall.
Without the help of the DNA test I probably never would have found out about John Stickland/Strickland (like my great great grandfather he added an 'R' to his name) and now I have found a lot more 'cousins' in Australia.

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Genealogy and Detective work part 2 - using DNA tests

 As I mentioned in a previous blog which I shared last year, my half sister Jacqui was able to find her biological father Wayne Frederick Webber, who thankfully aged 96 is still alive. A DNA test which both Jacqui and Wayne's son submitted gave us the definite proof that our research was correct.
Via a DNA test you can get in touch with other people who share some of your DNA, and you can search out how you are related. Through my test I was able to get in touch with my second cousin Brenda Masse who lives in Canada, our mothers were first cousins and so we share the same great grandparents. Brenda and I were able to share photos and I was able to see a photo of my great grandmother Theresa Orwin nee Bromby for the first time, on a wedding photo of Brenda's grandparents.
Sometimes it involves some detective work in order to figure out how some of your DNA matches are related to you and which branch of your family tree they share with you. One case involves someone whom I contacted who shared quite a large segment of DNA, he also had an extensive family tree on Ancestry, but I couldn't find any links to my tree. After contacting him he informed me that some of his ancestors were from Hull, which is were my ancestors all ended up living and where I was born. He also told me that he had a couple of missing fathers in his tree, so ancestors who were born out of wedlock and no father named on the birth certificate. This is a big dead end in tracing our family tree, but possibly one of my ancestors or their sibling was the missing father. After checking Jacqui's DNA matches and asking Brenda to check hers and discovering that this person was also in their matches I was able to narrow our connection to our Orwin or Bromby family. Even though I was unable to enlighten him about who the missing father could be I was able to narrow it down as to via which families we are probably related.
My great great grandmother on my Orwin side, Emma Young was also born illegitimate, she was born on the 1st May 1839 in Thorne Union Workhouse to 22 year old Elizabeth Young. Emma grew up living with her grandparents William and Elizabeth Young in Crowle, Lincolnshire, her grandfather was a tailor and her grandmother was a school mistress, her mother never married but became a dressmaker in Crowle.  I never expected to find out who Emma's father was, and I am still not sure that it is correct, but shortly after receiving the results of my DNA test I was looking through the list of potential 'thru lines' which Ancestry.com provides. Most of the names were people already on my tree, but I suddenly saw the name of Samuel Lister in the place where Emma's father should have been. I decided to do some research about Samuel Lister, he was born in 1797 in Sturton, Nottinghamshire and was married in 1818 and he had four daughters. The interesting fact was that in the Autumn of 1838 he and his wife applied for a position as school teachers at Retford Union Workhouse. Even though Crowle is in Lincolnshire and Retford in Nottinghamshire they are reasonably close with Doncaster which is in South Yorkshire being the largest town between them both. Via a newspaper report I discovered that even though Samuel's application for the job was approved by the Guardians of the Workhouse his and his wife's appointment was rejected by the Commisions Office, in London. The reasons that were given were that Samuel's farm had become bankrupt, that one of his daughters had given birth to a child out of wedlock and he had refused to support her and that Samuel had been convicted of an assault on someone, making him morally inadequate to be a teacher to young children. Apparently the Commissions Office had received this information about Samuel Lister from a "secret enemy ", Samuel renounced the accusations, his farm was indeed bankrupt but that was the fault of his father, he claimed that he hadn't refused to support his daughter and that the assault charge was against another person with the same name. Even though the Nottinghamshire authorities were on his side he and his wife didn't receive the appointment but less than a year later, in February 1839 they were given the appointment of Master and Matron of Thorne Union Workhouse. In May of the same year Elizabeth Young gave birth to my great great grandmother Emma Young at Thorne Union Workhouse !
I still can't explain why Samuel Lister's name appeared on my DNA thru lines but the fact that he was living in the area and later became the Master of the Workhouse were Emma was born is very coincidental, but until I can find a definite descendent of him who shares DNA with me I will just have to keep him as a presumed ancestor.
In my next blog I will share how I have found a missing brother of my great great grandfather on my Strickland side who I have been able to prove via my DNA relationships ended up in Australia.

Genealogy and detective work

I have been doing genealogical research for more than 40 years now as I caught the bug when I was 16.
One of the reasons that I love doing this work is because it is like detective work and I love detective books.
Sometimes you can get stuck with a genealogical line for several years until you suddenly find a hidden clue which can then help you trace that line back several generations. This was the case with my Strickland line.
In the past genealogical research usually entailed that you travel to the place were your ancestors came from and if you wanted to find them on one of the census returns then you needed to have an address as the censuses weren’t indexed. So armed with the newly ordered birth certificate of my great grandfather John Robert Strickland, I travelled to Doncaster, South Yorkshire and payed a visit to the Record Office where I could view the census returns for Mexborough, the place where his parents were living when he was born in 1861. Scrolling through the microfilm roll of the 1861 census of Mexborough I was eventually able to find the street in which they lived and found the census record of John’s family. The nice thing about census returns is that they record how old everyone is and also their place of birth, so this can then help you to get a step backwards in your tree. The place of birth of John’s mother was very clear to read - Norwell in Nottinghamshire which is a small village close to Newark where I knew that the family had lived. I was eventually able to trace her family - the Templemans back several generations as they had always resided in this village.
John’s father Robert Strickland was a different problem as his place of birth was unclear on the census and for the county was a question mark. I remember asking someone at the time what he thought the place was and he said he thought it looked like Hayle which is located in Cornwall. I dismissed this as Cornwall was so far away and I had always been told that Strickland was a Northern name.

1861 census of Mexborough 

During the course of the years I researched several possible places were Stricklands had lived and which looked similar to the place name on the census, such as Hale in Westmoreland, which is close to Sizergh Castle which I knew to be the ancient home of the Strickland family. This place seemed to make sense, but the Robert Strickland I found didn't connect to my family in Newark. I also tried Hawes in Yorkshire, but all avenues led to a brickwall.
It wasn't until several years later that the 1881 census return was indexed that I was able to find my great grandfather's family and on this census the place of his father's birth was clearly written and it was indeed Hayle in Cornwall!
This opened up a whole new avenue of research and I discovered a whole community of Stricklands or rather Sticklands (a different spelling) living in the Hayle area. I was eventually able to trace this family back to the early 1600's and found a wealth of information and documents, so much so that I was eventually able to write a book about my Cornish ancestors.
That is why genealogical work is like detective work, eventually a clue will turn up which will shed new light on your family or will point you in a different direction.
Nowadays research is a lot easier, so many records have been indexed and digitalised that you can do your research whilst sitting comfortably in your own home.
Also DNA tests can help us to link up with distant family members and allow us to share our research with each other.
In my next blog I will share a story about how my DNA test helped me to discover the father of my illegitimate great great grandmother Emma Young.

The May Pole

I have shared this photo on a previous blog several years ago, it was taken on May Day around the year 1910. My Nana, Violet Popplewell is the little girl in the front marked with an X. She once told me that her ribbon was the colour red.

May Day has been celebrated in the northern hemisphere, in one incarnation or another, for centuries. Predominantly falling on the 1st May, on May Day people from all around the world celebrate the first day of spring. The quintessential symbol of the May Day holiday is the maypole.
A long, thin pole is erected and intertwining ribbons are attached, whereby the maypole dance is performed. The participants move in concentric circles about the garland-festooned pole, each holding a coloured ribbon, and work together to plait the fabric, unravelling it by performing the dance in reverse. The maypole is the focal point for a carefully choreographed ceremony that creates kaleidoscopic patterns of overlapping multi-coloured ribbons. It is an ancient custom still performed at spring fetes and village greens yearly.

These young school girls were all pupils of the Oxford Road Primary School in Bridlington, North Yorkshire.