When the Skies of November Turn Gloomy

                     

Does anyone know where the love of God goes 

when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

                              Gordon Lightfoot, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald


In the past eight years, I have dodged at least four hurricanes between Cape Cod and Halifax (when they'd altered course away from wherever I'd been), but in each case everyone had plenty of warning of what was oncoming, as did all shipping traffic, so appropriate steps could be taken to minimize damage and loss of life.  These days, we often have up to a week's notice before a hurricane makes landfall, and ordinary citizens are able to track it on the National Hurricane Center's website for themselves.  This, along with a steady feed of media obsessing around the weather day after day, makes us barely able to imagine what it was like twenty years ago, never mind three or four hundred years ago, for the sailors and coastal communities whose lives were directly affected by extreme weather, and who had virtually no warning before the gales and high seas hit.

In the last couple of days, I've been reading about the storms and wrecks that most affected Portland and surrounds in the past.  The very worst of the storms -and there were some horrifically destructive ones - all occurred in November.  I was launched on this quest after reading one of  Elizabeth Pearce's journal entries in Old Portland, in which she describes her state of mind on her 14th birthday (January 9th, 1796).

...I somehow felt older this winter; it has been so sad.  The storms have been terrific, especially one in November.  And the most terrible thing chanced here that has happened since the old, old days when the Danes used to land in the night (or the French), and burn and kill all before them.  A lot of men-of-war got in our bay in the storm; and once in, they couldn't get out, or keep off the dreadful rocks.  The long cruel swish of the waves, and the jagged rocks!  Good God, but it was awful!  I hear them every night when I lie down...

Over a thousand poor souls perished...

And none of us have had heart for anything since.  Every time the wind rises, we look at each other and turn pale... We put up no holly nor mistletoe, and the mummers had no heart in them.  We wished each other a happy new year from our hearts, hoping never to know such another winter.  And Wyke churchyard is getting very full; for they bury the poor washed up bodies there. 

The storm that Eliza is referring to was a hurricane that came careening into the Dorset coast on the 17th-18th November, 1795.  There was a naval fleet of ships (these were Eliza's "men-of-war"), heading from Portsmouth to the West Indies that got tangled up in it that day on their way to "fight the French".  [The arch-enemy, Napoleon, had yet to meet his Waterloo.]  And it was these unfortunate souls who accounted for most of the casualties.

Before this, there was an even mightier storm on the 26th of November, 1703.  This was probably the most destructive thing to hit England right up until the days of the Third Reich.  Daniel Defoe described it as being "like an Army of Terror in its furious march".  Between Cornwall and the Wash, an estimated 8,000 people were killed.  This storm is still considered to be the worst one in British history.

Another infamous November hurricane was a killer known as the Great Gale of 1824, that smashed into Devon and Dorset on the 22nd-23rd of November of 1824.  This is the one that was immortalized in Moonfleet.  [And for my young relations in Canada who haven't yet read this - you're all getting copies of it for Christmas.  I first read this when I was 10 or 11 (and I got it for Christmas, come to think of it), and did such a fine book report on it for school, that it was put on display in the library - where we can be sure that no one else ever looked at it.]  The Fleet was flooded in the surf that broke over Chesil Bank in the massive storm surge; reports say that sea water was as high in the Fleet as the bank itself, which is very difficult to imagine if you've seen it.  The ferry house for Portland was inevitably washed away and the ferryman drowned, along with many others from the ruined villages.

P.S.  Here's the rest of the song, now that I've put it into your heads.   I found out today that I can put a YouTube video right on the blog page instead of adding a link.  This one is a family favorite when the guitars are out and the talent gets going.

Picture credit: http://www.richardhellergallery.com/dynamic/artwork_detail.asp?ArtworkID=1178

In Peril on the Sea

It was rather a busy day and I didn't get to any genealogy research, but I have recently discovered this absolutely wonderful painter in my quest for a certain sea captain that may or may not be related to us.  And since my head is full of shipwrecks and storms at sea all the time these days, I really must share some of the gorgeous work of the Armenian-Russian Romantic painter, Ivan Aivazovsky.  I had never heard of him before this week, and now love his work. It's easy to imagine any of these scenes taking place around Portland Race or the nearby coast.





http://www.tanais.info/art/en/pic/aivazovsky

330 Years and Counting



John William Upham 1819, Portland and the Ferry



Yesterday proved to be very interesting, research-wise.  I came across a series of old postings on a geneaology site from 2001-02 that were all about our Pearces.  If it is still possible to contact the person (who would appear to be a distant cousin in Ohio) through the email address she used ten years ago, then I may soon have a lot more to report.

In the meantime, I have taken the information that was being messaged back and forth with others, which we can reasonably take to be true, as it is unlikely that people make things up for their own entertainment on these genealogy sites, and added it to the "Known So Far" page, if you'd like to see how much further this has taken me now.  Obviously, until I can see records for myself, I cannot confirm any of this data, and there may have been new facts learned later that these people exchanged among themselves.

So.  We are back to 1680 now, with a marriage in Wyke Regis, and then one in Melcombe Regis two generations later.  These are the first records of events for our line of Pearces off the Isle of Portland.  In those days, you had to take a ferry to get across, as the bridge was not constructed until 1839.  You could go all around via Chesil Beach on foot, but it was not possible for horses, as they would sink in the pebbles.


[Later.]
Update: no luck with the distant Ohioan cousin - the email address is no longer working.  Foo.



picture credit: http://www.britishmuseum.org/

It's All Relative

It's only been 250 years so far, but I'm starting to feel like I'm half-way back to the ark here.  The further I go, the more disconnected and dizzy I feel at the thought that these people all belong to me.  Having grown up relatively relative-free on a separate continent from everybody else, this is beginning to do a number on my head.  We now have Fuzzards in the family.  I have never met a Fuzzard in my life, and now I find out I have Fuzzard DNA.

At the beginning, having everyone all contained on a tied island was immensely comforting to think about - how my relatives were lucky enough to have known each other and have shared history, and they must have had enough new blood introduced each generation to save them all from turning into daisies - but that containment seems to have blown open now, and a bit of chaos has entered.  Perhaps it's just that all of a sudden I'm wondering what I've got myself into.  That would be typical.

Or, perhaps I'm just overstimulated with everything today and need sleep.  I think I should go to bed now.

photo credit: http://www.mcescher.com/

First Day of Autumn

If I wasn't so happy with the way this day has gone, I would be mourning the end of another summer today, but it has been gorgeous here - the leaves have just started to change color this week, and it's been hot and humid - AND... I have my Portland book.

Elizabeth (Eliza) Pearce was a hoot.  This I can tell, and I only got to page 20 before going into work.  She starts off keeping a journal when she is only 11, and she remarks on the year that has just passsed, Louis XVI having met his fate with the guillotine and all hell breaking loose in France.   There are only five other entries before her seventeenth year when she is 'grown up', and "there is much I don't like in this; for I must give up my tomboy ways, they tell me.  I do love jumping and running on the stone trollies, when none is nigh to see."  We have a free spirit here.

Back to it then.  Morning will come fast, and a 12-hour shift with it.

O Happy Day!

Incredible.  I still cannot believe what has come into my hands today: a book that Mum had, called Old Portland: the eighteenth and nineteenth century Memoirs of Elizabeth Pearce (later White) and Clara Jane White (later King Warry) of Portland Isle, Dorset.

!!!!!!!  Just when I was bemoaning the fact that I wasn't finding anything about the women of Portland, I now have a mother-lode of information.  It is jam-packed full of riches.   And will this Elizabeth Pearce be one of our Pearces?  That would be too much to hope for, but I'll settle for distant cousin.

I must get back to it now, as I have to go into work for a few hours soon.

Snake Stones

...a thousand snakes each one
Was changed into a coil of stone

When holy Hilda prayed.

                                    Sir Walter Scott

A.R. introduced me to a new term yesterday: snakestones.  This is what fossil ammonites used to be  called.  Until natural historians started coming up with some better explanations for the existence of fossils (and there were some clever ones along the way), it was left to legend to explain their presence.  In the north, the Saxon Abbess of Whitby, St.Hilda, was given credit for turning a plague of snakes into stones.  Whether belief in her powers reached as far as the Isle of Portland is unknown by me so far, but ammonites were called snakestones in Dorset too.

After looking at the pictures of some of the fantastic fossils that had been dug out of the quarries, I have been wondering what Portlanders thought about these curious things.  Dealing with them first hand in their daily labors would mean that they had to have had some pretty definite opinions on the matter, one would think.

More on this topic soon.  


What is also becoming patently clear is that I am not going to find out an awful lot about the women and girls of Portland - other than maternity-related facts - as it's the men and their labors that have (as per boringly usual), been the stuff of historical record.  What were the women all doing day after day while the men were killing themselves hammering rocks out of the earth's crust?  Were there any Mary Annnings among my distant cousins scrabbling about collecting fossils?  Writers, chroniclers, quiet thinkers working in a shop that never got an inch of inkspace allotted to them for posterity?  What were the women who worked in the quarries doing?  Portlanders were reported to be such independent spirits, so was it the women that provided the collective backbone?   Probably... but how will I find out in what way?  

photo credit:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/loan_in/f/fossil_ammonites.aspx

  

Burying the Dead

Looking along the branches to Isabella's siblings today, I found out that two of the children of Mary & Abel died very young.

Abel (the son), who was baptized October 31st, 1841 appeared on the St.George's burials list on October 10th, 1843, aged 2.   And William John Abel, baptized August 24th, 1856 was buried December 16th 1857, aged 17 months.

Poor old Mary had been popping out sprogs from 1839 to 1859, and lost at least these two.

It was fascinating to look through the St. George's burials lists and see such entries as:  "A man unknown found drowned, washed up Chesil Beach"; or, the body of an infant "brought ashore from HMS Palmillon"; or "Thirteen males cast on beach drowned", and two days later, "Five bodies of males cast on this beach".  The latter two entries were obviously following a shipwreck.

I wonder how many people ever found out that their sons/husbands/brothers were carefully buried, "unknown", in a Portland cemetery.

The Quarrymen

The quarrying of Portland stone, that beautiful, creamy white limestone that has been sliced out of the Jurassic rock of the Isle of Portland since Roman times, or before, provided the livelihood for the men of the family in the generations I am getting to now.  From the outset, I thought that I would get all caught up in tales of the dodgers of the Excise Men in the early 19th century, but I find myself much more interested in the quarries and quarrymen after all.  I did re-read Moonfleet a few weeks ago, but the smugglers are on the back shelf for now.

Really, I could write an entire essay, or several essays, on the history of different aspects of quarrying this famous stone, but I must refrain and try and keep a little more focused on one project at a time: genealogy, not geology!  So I won't airily throw around terms like, curf and chert, or ooids and skull cap, as though I had not just been introduced to them.  Instead, I will give the briefest of commentary on this rock, for those (mostly on this side of the Atlantic) who do not know anything about it.



Original St. Paul's in Flames

Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral

After the Great Fire of London, in 1666, which destroyed hundreds of buildings, including the original St. Paul's Cathedral, Portland stone was used extensively in the rebuilding of London, as it would be again after the German bombings of WWII.  It was the architect of the new St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren, who popularized its use, and he would even end up being elected as a Member of Parliament for Weymouth in 1702.   The stone has been famously used for Buckingham Palace, Waterloo Bridge, the Palace of Westminster, the Tower of London, the British Museum, the National Gallery, as well as Christchurch Priory and Salisbury Cathedral, and some of it was even hauled across the Atlantic to clad the United Nations building in New York City.

Many millions of tons of stone have been extracted from Portland over the centuries, and until recently, it was all done by men, not machines - and I'm just finding out about those of them that share my DNA.  From all accounts they were a fit and "intelligent-looking" bunch, which is reassuring to know.  It would be unfortunate to find out that I am descended from a brood of funny-looking inbreds. 
                                                
photo credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Fire_London.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hosmer_Shepherd

Limelight

Best historical tidbit du jour: there are many disused lime kilns around Portland that were once employed in the production of quick lime.  Quick lime was combined with an oxy-hydrogen flame which produced a brilliant white light, used in spotlights in Covent Garden and the London theatres during Victorian times.  From this we get the expression: being in the limelight.

In my spare moments, I've been having a weekend of mapping, geology, engineering, and lots of history, and I have been boring everybody senseless with my discoveries about the Isle of Portland.  Most people, being East Coaster and fans of cross-border shopping,  have thought I've been researching Portland, Maine (named for Portland, Dorset, by the way).   I have quickly subjected them to an introduction to *my* Portland though.  The favorite story has been of the prison convicts building the breakwaters for the harbour.  It is a good tale.

It turns out that Isabella Pearce and family were from Easton Village, not Weston.  They were in Weston by the time of the 1871 census though, from which I had retrieved information earlier than these newest facts about Abel Pearces' family.

Not surprisingly, I have been bringing my  Grandmother back to life in my dreams - it's wonderful, and painful... she's back, then I wake up, and she's gone again.

photo credit: http://www.compulite.com/stagelight/html/history-4/limelight-spot.html

The Great Flood of 1968

This has not been a day for sitting still and researching, so there is nothing new of the Old to report.  I've been busy painting some outdoor trim, staining, refinishing an old wooden chair, putting in a window frame upstairs, and generally going into controlled panic about getting things done before the cold weather sets in for good.

Two nights ago it was hot enough to sleep with the windows open and no blankets; tonight, it is supposed to go down to 5 degrees.  <sigh>.  Vive le Canada.

To mix it up a bit then, I have serendipitously found out this afternoon that it was on this day in 1968 that our family set out on the first leg of the week-long journey to Canada.  It was the day after the worst of the torrential rains that culminated in The Great Flood of 1968 (which sounds like something out of "The Vicar of Dibley", but was not as funny).  There were delays and diversions and line closures all over the South East.  

                                       

In a letter card to her parents from the S.S. Empress of England, Mum wrote on September 17th:

(Off Greenock)
Dear All,
     We finally made it!  After stopping & starting all the way we eventually arrived at Waterloo at 11:20 am.  We missed the boat train at Euston of course, alongt with quite a few others, but we were directed to the 1 pm for Liverpool (Lime St.).  There was a van waiing for all our luggage and we took a taxi to the ship.  We walked straight through all the checkpoints and were on  board at 4:15 pm.
     We all slept well last night after watching the ship leave L'pool at 7:30 pm.  Arrived here this morning early.
Much love from, us all.

Just imagine.  It's not exactly a report from a train journey to a death camp, but it makes my head spin in horrified circles at the thought of my parents with four small children and what they must have gone through hauling us all around the country, along with the worldly possessions that had not gone on ahead.  I have almost no memory of this journey at all, but there is a reason that I had a Titanic obsession from an early age.

Portland Churches

Time to get back to Portland.

I wished that I was within a short drive of Portland today.  When I was looking up the date for the demise of St.Andrew's church I found out all kinds of interesting things, and the hikes along the coast look spectacular.  Apparently there is a pirate cemetery beside the St.Andrew's ruins, though the gravestones are illegible.

Here are some key dates regarding the churches, those essential repositories of all information genealogical, which I found on a helpful site titled "Chronology of the Island of Portland 700 - 1905 AD": (http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pbtyc/Portland/PYB/Chronology.html.)


1475. St. Andrew's Church dedicated.
1676. This is the earliest date decipherable on a tombstone in the old St. Andrew's Churchyard. The name on the stone is Attwooll.
1752. Last recorded burial in St. Andrew's Churchyard.
1754. St. George's Parish Church was begun in this year.
1756. Services transferred from the old St. Andrew's Church to the " Tabernacle" for ten years.
1764. The new church of S. George was completed.
1766 (July 29th). St. George's Church was consecrated by the Bishop of Bristol. King George II gave £500 to the Church. The register at St. George's Church dates from this year.

Baby Caroline

I haven't had time to find out much more in the last couple of days, except for one thing.

It looks very much like baby Caroline Hyde Adams did belong in the family.  When I went back and checked on the record of burial for baby William Pitt Adams (he who we also did not know anything about before - the brother of Thomas, and child of George with his first wife, Elizabeth Adams), I found that he had been buried at St.Clement's Church on November 21st, 1878, aged 3 years, and his abode was listed as Victoria Rd.

When I found Caroline Hyde Adams listed below, buried March 7th, 1890, aged 16 months, her abode was also listed as... Victoria Rd.

Surely, this is fairly strong evidence that this little girl belongs to us.  Once I get my hands on copies of all the birth and death certificates, these puzzles along the way will  get answers.

But!  There is still no sign of that Elizabeth Adams making an exit.  What became of her?  Why was she not buried at St. Clement's?  

I have just spent the last half hour going around Victoria St. and St. Clement's on Google Street View.  The houses on Victoria St. do not look old enough to be the original buildings.  When I went around Cranborne on  Google Street View last week, I could still see the old Adams family home there, although there were no civic numbers on the buildings, so I could only guess at which of three or four it could have been.  It was listed as 29 High St. in the censuses I checked in the 1800s, in case anyone else wants to have a look.  Isn't technology wonderful?



photo credit: http://archiseek.com/2009/1876-st-clements-church-bournemouth-dorset/

Reflecting A Bit

I think I have been spending too much time with ghosts and the dusty dead recently.  Here I was a few minutes ago, sitting peacefully at my computer, when I noticed a massive, shadowy, spidery creature - it was like something from a Tim Burton movie - walking across my ceiling.  It's a quiet reminder that the right lighting can eliminate all need for hallucinogenic drugs.

Anyway, the trespassing insect has been dispatched, and I am back to where I left off.  To weave the new with old a bit, I have added a picture of my hound (any excuse...).  This was taken a few days ago when my young relations and I went for our (probably) last swim in the sea for the season.  You can see Confederation Bridge in the background, which links Prince Edward Island to the mainland.

So, I have been talking with Mum today, who has corrected another few things I had wrong.  How on earth do people with no living relatives ever get anywhere with genealogy?  I suspect that most of them have been found dead beneath piles of the aforementioned red herrings, and since they have no living relatives, no one has even noticed that they've failed in their attempted research.

George's and Isabella's Children

Just some dry facts this morning.  It's a gorgeous day and I must get out and work in the garden before the thunder and rain forecast for this afternoon blow in.

This beauty in the photograph is George's and Isabella's firstborn child, Alice Mabel Adams, known in the family as Gangan, stemming from the inability of a child along the way  to say 'grandma'.   She has quite a look of one of my nieces about her.

In order of their appearance in the family, here are my Great-grandmother and her brothers:

Alice Mabel Adams, b. July 4th, 1880 (d.1964, Bournemouth)
Samuel Hyde Adams, b. January 1st, 1882, d. 1958
William Pitt Adams, b.October 24th, 1884
John Adams, born and died November 3rd, 1885
Frederick Harold Adams, b. March 26th 1887, d. 1957
Leonard Stewart Adams, b. December 13th, 1889
Reginald Augustus (or Augusta?) Adams, b. July 23rd, 1892

Two notes:
Here is the other William Pitt Adams, "Uncle Bill", who did live and breathe, and went off to Australia.  More on him when I get the facts.  I have some photographs of him that are most intriguing.  Hopefully there will be some Aussie relatives that we know more about.

And another item I have found is the record of a Caroline Hyde Adams on the St. Clement's Church burial list, who died 7 March 1890, aged 16 months.  George's mother was named Caroline Hyde, so this little girl is quite possibly a niece?

Trans-Atlantic Rescue

This was a better day.  In no time flat I found what I was looking for, once I had the facts straight.  A.R. had called U.A., who then consulted the Family Bible in his possession with written records in it that are believed to have been started by Isabella Pearce/Adams, and with an email back to me with the birth date of George's first son, Thomas, it was possible to cherchez la femme.  At last.

Let me introduce you to Elizabeth Adams, mother of Thomas Dennis Adams, born 29th May, 1875.

Now, here's a development: in the Cranborne baptism records, Thomas was Christened the same day as his brother William Pitt Adams.  Family **  In my records from Grandma W., I have a William Pitt Adams with a birth date of 24th October 1884.  I will be finding out from A.R. later, as she now has the rest of the birth dates that were in the bible for G&I's children.

Family lore has it that George had Thomas before marrying Isabella, but it looks as though a William was in there too.  Or, were they twins/brothers and William died, then a later child between George and Isabella was named in his memory?
Swiftly returning to the mysterious again though,  I cannot see any record of George and Elizabeth getting married.  The census of 1871 still has George living at home, 25 years old and unmarried, and that's all I could find.

And I could not unearth any record of an Elizabeth Adams in Dorset or Hampshire (that would fit the age group) dying around this time.  I expanded the search to the whole of Britain and only found two possible candidates: one who died in Newton Abbott (Devon), aged 24, and another who died in Abergavenny (Wales), aged 22.  Strangely enough, considering we generally believe that women were still dying by the dozen every week from complications of childbirth in the 1870s, there were very, very few people in that age group in the death records.  Causes of death were not recorded in the records from those years that I viewed.

So now it's back to Cherchez-ing la femme again.  Had she been sent away for health reasons to some distant dismal asylum or sanatorium?  Did she abandon the family?  Was there a clerical error or loss of the record of her death?  I must leave this trail again until I have something to go on, or I will be found next week by the police, buried under a pile of red herrings.

**  [Added later.]  Yes, Thomas and William were twins: the 1881 census lists Thomas as age 6.  William died, age 3, in 1878.  And there was another son William later.

*photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13026542

Fruitless Days

This was one of those days that took me nowhere.  It's not the first and it won't be the last.  How incredibly annoying to be chasing dead lead after dead lead, only to end up with eye strain and a headache.

I have been trying desperately to find George Adam's first wife - for there was one before Isabella - and they had a son named Thomas together.  It has been assumed that she died in childbirth, but we don't know for certain.

It's a little thing I wanted to tidy up before getting back to Isabella and the Pearces, but it's ended up taking hours and hours of fruitless work.  No more of that though.  It can wait until I get access to the mass of  records online under subscription.

So, to make myself feel better, I am uploading some pictures of the Isle of Portland and Chesil Beach before I go to bed.  I took these on our recent trip to England.  There is one of the Church of St. George - literally, a drive-by shot taken from the car with me thinking how pretty it was (all that beautiful Portland stone), not knowing that a few months later I would be wishing I'd had several hours there to view parish records and gravestones.  It is the only C. of E. church on the 'Tophill' part of Portland, so I am assuming it was the setting for all the Pearce rituals since it was built.

Back to Portland and Isabella Bathsheba tomorrow.

Chesil Beach from Portland

Disused Quarrying Site

The East Coast near Portland Bill.

Portland Bill Lighthouse

St.George's Church

The Underhill end of Portland with Portland Harbour to the left.
Yachting events for the 2012 Olympics will be held here.

Chesil Beach looking toward Portland - the place of wrecks and smugglers

George Adams

George Adams

Great-great grandfather George Adams

Born: November 22, 1845, Cranborne, Dorset.

Died: August 6th, 1923, aged 77, in Bournemouth

Occupation: Tailor

Isabella & George

Here is the full photograph (and the only one we have this side of the Atlantic) of Isabella and George.

Yes, George looks a bit cross and humorless, but this is how they posed people in those early days of photography.  When I first saw this picture, I thought, good Lord, he looks like a Victorian 'master of the house'.  But, I am pleased to report that from all accounts, George was in possession of a wonderful sense of humor and was very much loved by his granddaughter (my grandmother), as was Isabella.  So, lesson learned early on: don't judge an Ancient Rellie by his one and only photograph.

I wonder where they met.  He was from Cranborne, a fair distance from Portland.  Since he was a tailor and she was a dressmaker, A.R. speculates that they may have met while working for one of the 'big' houses belonging to the wealthy burghers.  And with the arrival of the railway in the 1870s, Bournemouth was growing like a bad weed, with bags of money and lots of families and domestic servants to clothe.  Will we ever know?

Isabella B. Adams

This is her: my great-great-grandmother Isabella Adams.

The Census facts: 

Isabella Bathsheba Pearce born in Easton on the Isle of Portland, 24 July, 1853.

Married George Adams on November 22nd, 1879 in the Church of St. Clement's, Christchurch parish, Dorset (which was then in Hampshire).

Occupation: Dressmaker
Died on January 29, 1927 in Bournemouth.

By way of a beginning.

A blog for both my own entertainment and for my extended family and Young Relations to be able to see where they come from and can remember.      

                                                                   September, 2011.

***

Genealogy - the Great Obsession.  Well... I have learned how to spell the word, at least, but it quickly does become an obsession, that much I can confirm.  One day you are vaguely interested in it then  <bang>  you're up to your ears in dry English Censuses and juicy tales from the Isle of Portland.  And a wonderfully humorous discovery I've made is that the old Portland relations all 'lived in sin' as a matter of course before marriage.  This regional custom even gets a mention in Havelock Ellis's magnum opus Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volumes 1-6, in volume 6.   More on that later.

So!  Smugglers, modern-style relationships before the age of Victoria, along with traces of beloved great-grandparents and aunts & uncles still remembered by Dear Old Mum and A.R.  How far can this all go with just sitting in front of a computer in Canada, I keep asking myself.  This is what I am in the process of finding out, and it is pure magic.  Soon, I will have to pay to subscribe to a professional genealogy website, but there is much still to be learned for free.  And I'm only at the first branch of the massive family tree.

On my most recent trip to England with Mum, we were taken around the old family haunts by my mother's sister and her husband.  On different outings fanning out from Bournemouth we went around the Isle of Portland, Chesil Beach, Weymouth, Swanage, Durlston, Lytchett Matravers, Cranborne, and some other places of which I missed the significance, alas, because there were sometimes three voices telling three stories at once in the car - and I was thoroughly enjoying that, without being able to keep any of it in my head for future reference.

New Forest Donkey

So, why now?  Why join the hordes of the genealogically-obsessed?

It all started with the delivery of 50 box-loads of books belonging to a stranger who had died recently, and through my father's literacy connections, ended up in the sorting depot of my enclosed front porch.  On a  hot August Saturday evening, a glass of wine at hand, I began to sort through these books.  The name of the lady to whom they had belonged was inscribed in several of them and it turned out that she had been someone I knew from work, and so the next day when I was still thinking about her, I found her obituary on the internet.  From there, piecing together what I had gleaned and searching her English connections further, I found that she was a relative of one of the pioneers of medical radiation therapy.  This was exciting stuff!  And it was so easy to find.  Then, I suddenly stopped myself and thought - this is stupid - how about seeing how easy it is to look up my own family.

The only soul I could remember of my ancient relatives that day at work, was the wonderfully named Isabella Bathsheba Pearce of the Isle of Portland.  It had been about four months since I'd been taken to where my great-great grandmother came from, and the name had stuck in my imagination.  And would I be able to find a single reference to her on the internet?  The answer was: yes.  And so it began...

In honour of my late, adored maternal grandmother, and the memories she passed on from her mother and grandmother to my mother and aunts - I begin with the first branch of the tree through matrilineal descent.