Cerrigceinwen

Okay.  Time to play catch-up and add some things to the blog that have nothing to do with weather in Canada, and everything to do with the point of this project: our ancient relations.

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Last September, A.R. & U.P. went to Wales for a holiday, and I asked them if they would stop and take some pictures of one of the little dots on the map off the North Wales Expressway to Holyhead called Cerrigceinwen, as this location is the birthplace of one of my great-great grandmothers, Mary Evans.   They kindly set off down a road that ended up as not much more than a grass track and found the church of Cerrigceinwen - and that was about all there was left to see.  Cerrigceinwen is the name of the parish, and there is not really a village, or even a crossroads there now.  I did go onto Google Street View later and "drove" all through it myself and I could see that it was really off the beaten track.  The church itself is closed and is for sale, but all the parish records are safe in Llangefni apparently.  I am hoping to get to Wales and spend some time researching in 2015.

Here are the pictures A.R.  took for us.

Thanks, once again, to A.R. for her enthusiastic assistance, even though this is not her side of the family.

Christmas Day

It was the first Christmas at my sister's new farm, and what a beautiful day.  One niece, Dad, and I went out on a photographic expedition before The Feast.  Here are some pictures of the surrounding land.  The drive down was gorgeous with the bright light reflecting off all the ice-encrusted trees, but my camera was in the trunk, so I didn't get any shots along the way.  The roads weren't too bad, thanks to the crews who'd been sanding/salting/plowing around the clock for 4 or 5 days.  As you can see, a dusting of snow came down after we got there, which was just right.

Today's Temperature

There is a reason why we obsess about the weather here in Canada.  It is only December 14th and we are getting mid-January temperatures and I, for one, am not amused.  See the blog entry for July 15th. There is about 120 degrees Fahrenheit difference.

JFK Assassination 50th Anniversary

Frame 367 from the Zapruder film

Between the fact that I had just been to Dallas this past spring and that my life was conceived somewhere around the date of Kennedy leaving this mortal coil, I have been following all the hoopla leading up to this auspicious anniversary with more interest than your average Anglo-Canadian.  Below are three photos I took when I went down to Dealey Plaza early on a misty April Sunday morning.   Even at that hour, there were tour buses arriving one after the other - it took some time before I could get pictures without any people in them.  It was a remarkable experience to be there and to talk to all the characters that populate the area.  



Elm St. facing in the direction down which the motorcade was travelling.



Taken from  the 'Grassy  Knoll'.  Notice the X's on the road marking where the two bullets hit.



6th Floor Window  of the old Texas Schoolbook Depository building

Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry - 100th Anniversary Song

Here's something to listen to on this Remembrance Day. My eldest brother belonged to the PPCLI for most of his military career, so it is fitting that I add this to the family blog. Next August the regiment will be celebrating its 100th anniversary, and this song was commissioned by the Colonel in Chief of the Regiment, the Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson, to commemorate the occasion.

It features some of the wives of serving members of the PPCLI singing in this. The title of the song, "Ric-a-dam-doo", is the name of the Regimental Colours, reportedly from the Gaelic for "cloth of your mother", and Princess Patricia herself made the flag.

Making Way with the Welsh

At last: I have been tracking down some of the Welsh relations today.   I'd thought I had an impossible task on my hands with my great-grandparents being Jones and Evans, but I made some solid headway with the censuses today after all.

This is 'Granny Jones', my great grandmother, and the only old picture we have of any members of her generation.  I must find out if any of Dad's cousins have any pictures of their Welsh parents and grandparents.

Esther Jones, nee Evans c. 1947

I've added the first of the information I've sorted out onto the Jones page, but there is more to come when I have time to concentrate more on this.

A Little Warm

This was the reading on my thermometer when I came in from work mid-afternoon.  I thought I would take a picture of it, so that in February I can look at it with wonder and try to imagine ever feeling  that I wished the heat would abate.

The poor hounds are being imprisoned inside, and even in the relative cool they are panting their heads off.  They have been promised a long hike in the morning before the day heats up again, but this is not making them any happier at this hour.

Dad's 80th Birthday

As milestones go, this is a big one.  Our dear old pater is 80 years old today, and happily going strong.  We are having the first big celebration today, and Part II next week when family will be here form Ohio and British Columbia

.  

Anyway, this is where Pa made his way  into the world: at St.George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner.  He likes to tell the tale of  his father picking him and his mother up in a Rolls Royce to bring them home for the first time.  [The Rolls belonged to my grandfather's employer.]


St. George's Hospital, Chelsea

And this is a studio portrait of Dad, aged 2 years and two months.

  

By Way of Remembrance

It was a year ago tonight that Uncle Rob left us for the ever after.  While he loved all sorts of music, I know that he particularly liked Elgar, so I have chosen Lux Aeterna set to Elgar's Nimrod, from the Enigma Variations, to put on this post... by way of remembrance.

I am convinced that Uncle Rob has been communicating to me via things electronic again.  When I was trying to choose the best video of Jacqueline Du Pre playing the first movement of the Elgar cello concerto (UR used to play the cello, so I thought that would be fitting), the sound mysteriously turned off on YouTube altogether.  So, that idea was cancelled.  Then when I was doing a search for a good Nimrod video, what was it that appeared at the TOP of the list in the column to the right?  It was nothing to do with Elgar: it was the Liebestod from Tristan & Isolde (Waltraud Meier's Isolde).   And what did I just see in Houston with AJ a few weeks ago?  Tristan & Isolde (with Nina Stemme as Isolde).  If Uncle Rob had still been alive, it would have been him by her side, not me.  [And if it had been Nina Stemme popping up on that Elgar YouTube search instead of Waltraud Meier, I would have probably fallen right off my perch.]  So, you will understand why I had to put the recording of this beautiful piece here tonight too.  People pay large sums of money to see Tristan und Isolde, just for the Liebestod at the end. This is for AJ, his eternal beloved. 

Neglect

Poor old neglected blog.  What news is there of family research from my end?  Not much, I am afraid.  I have had a busy few months recently with work and now hours and hours spent in the garden, as well as having been away on a GRAND trip to Texas on a Grand Opera tour in April.   That was quite an amazing treat, courtesy of my favorite American Aunt.  We were in Houston and Dallas, with stops in Ohio for me before and after.

As my heart is springing along full of the joys of the world in spring, I shall just add an updated picture from the garden for today.  I did spend a couple of hours trying to get more information on the Sawyer/Ingrams branch of the family the other day, and corrected a couple of things I had on that page, but I did not make any real inroads there worth mentioning.

Here's what I came home to from Texas: the daffodil shoots that were only about 4 inches out of the soil beforehand were fully formed and starting to open.

1901 Census

Sunday March 31st, 1901 was census day - and here we are on Easter Sunday, March 31st, 112 years later, and I have been going through the 1901 census pages  today.  There were a few things I was able to fill in, but not a huge amount of new information. Much of what I found was a repeat of the 1911 census.  The older generations that I was hoping may have lived until 1901 seem not to have done, so nothing new revealed there.  Lionel Waller was in China, according to his military records, so he was not included in the 1901 census.  His sister, Edith, appears to have been an officer in the Winchester Prison; how would a young woman from a village in Kent end up as a prison officer in Hampshire?  What are the stories that go with the facts?

It has been a glorious Easter Sunday here in Eastern Canada.  At last, the snow is (very nearly) gone and there are all kinds of shoots coming up in the garden.   And there are LOTS of birds to watch through the windows.



Annabel at the window

And While We're At It...

...Another birthday.



Doris Greed and her little sister Isabelle (aka Babs).

Today would have been my maternal grandmother's 102nd birthday.  And what a dear soul she was.  Born when King George V and Queen Mary ruled Britannia, three years before the outbreak of WWI, and seven years before the first handful of women were allowed to vote in the United Kingdom, she was a gentle, fascinating character and I loved her very much.  Here was a woman who could tell a story.  Everyone regrets that they did not write down or tape her conversations while there was still time to do so.  A library of information was lost when we lost her.

It might be a good idea to get another page started with some small biographies of the nearer relations than the ones I have been tracing here that I never had a chance to meet.  One day sooner than I care to think about, there will be no one to remember the nearer ones in detail either. 

Happy Birthday To You!

It's a big birthday - the changing of decades variety of birthdays - for AR today, and so I thought a little tribute to my Godmother would be appropriate here, especially as she has been such a help and all around encouraging force for this blog.  Generations to come will be able to look back and thank her!

She won't have seen these pictures in years (if at all), and since I just found them myself, I am posting these ones instead of more recent ones.  Happy Birthday BBAR!

A lovely schoolgirl visiting her big sister in London



Off on her adventures, leaving for Oz

The  Send-Off Committee, Southampton

Blizzard On the Way

We're all sitting around in the calm before the storm here on the East Coast.  There is one pummeling Ontario now, and an even bigger one coming up the eastern seaboard of the U.S. that is due to roll in here after midnight tonight.  It's eerily still outside my window, and I am watching a gang of roofers on the house behind mine racing to put on some temporary tiles to see the house through until Monday, I presume, when it will be safe to get up and do a proper job.  Unfortunately, I will have to go out in it tomorrow.  Twice. To and from the hospital - and I am not very happy about it.  For us hothouse flowers, the very best thing about winter is sitting inside and watching a storm rage outside.

Well, I have tried and tried to find a record of George Meadows' marriage anywhere at all in Suffolk, but I must admit defeat for the time being.  We are not going to find out which Mary Ann from Monk Soham is ours yet.  I know for certain that they did not marry in Monk Soham though,because that wonderful register book that I referred to in my last posting is also indexed, so I was able to look up every Meadows that had ever been hatched, matched, or dispatched in that parish, and there was no reference to George at all.  Brandeston is the next most likely place that they would have married, as that is where George Meadows' family was from, but no joy there either.

I did find out about the 17th century Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, though.  There was a novel about him that took place in Brandeston, and even a film based on it with Vincent Price playing Hopkins.  Given the events in the news today of the burning alive of a woman in Papua New Guinea who was believed to be a witch, I will leave this story for later.  I inadvertently saw the pictures, which I hope have all been removed from general viewing on the internet by now. 

On to a new line of enquiry again...

Marjoram

After puzzling over the name of Lily Maud Meadows' grandmother's name - Marjoram - and finding no reference to her anywhere other than the 1871 census online as transcribed by Ancestry.co.uk (not having viewed the original copy myself), I have come to the conclusion that she is Mary Ann Meadows, in all likelihood, as there are some other good connecting references to a George Meadows.  I'm still working on this, because the dates are all over the place with some children named Hannah and Frederick, which they had.  These dates don't match the ones I had for them, but the first ones could be the wrong ones instead, of course.

In another bit of blind luck, in 1920 someone privately printed the surviving registers of the Parish of Monks' Soham in book form, and there is a copy of it in a library at the University of California, which is available in its electronic form online  for all to view.  Oh, how I love technology when it comes to this enterprise.   I was able to go to the births section in 1818, which is when it is thought that "Marjoram" was born, and I found two girls born that year named Mary Ann.  The surnames are Barker and Smith.   One of these is probably our Marjoram.  So far, I have not found the marriage record for George Meadows, let alone that it was either of these two that was his bride, but it's a very good lead.

[Later]

I have now discovered something very interesting.  There is a book on Project Gutenburg called "Two Suffolk Friends", with the reminiscences of the Archdeacon of Suffolk, Robert Hindes Groome, about his father's  time as parson in Monk Soham.  If the above mentioned Mary Ann Smith, daughter of Phoebe and Samuel Smith, turns out to be George Meadow's wife, then I have something quite remarkable for us.  One of the many anecdotes of the parishoners he relates is about this Mary Ann's mother when her parents were living in a sort of parish seniors' home, an almshouse called Guildhall.

Phœbe Smith and her husband Sam lived in one of the downstair rooms.  At one time of her life Phœbe kept a little dame’s school on the Green.  One class of her children, who were reading the Miracles, were called “Little Miracles”; and whenever my father went in, “Little Miracles” were called up by that name to read to him.  Old Phœbe had intelligence above the common; she read her Bible much, and thought over it.  She was fond, too, of having my sister read hymns to her, and would often lift her hands in admiration at any passage she particularly liked.  She commended a cotton dress my sister had on one day when she went to see her—a blue Oxford shirting, trimmed with a darker shade.  “It is a nice solemn dress,” she said, as she lifted a piece to examine it more closely; “there’s nothing flummocky about it.”

I am greatly hoping to find out that Mary Ann turns out to be a Smith rather than a Barker now.  There are very few people, alas, who have a single written record of something an ancestor once said or did, beyond their occupation.  It may be a while before I can verify which one George married.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20576/20576-h/20576-h.htm

Hoo-ray! Sutton Hoo

Another fun research day. The latest family meanderings have taken me to Woodbridge, Suffolk.  Lily Maud's grandparents and great-grandparents (I have not traced further back than them yet), were from Woodbridge.  And where is Woodbridge, I wondered?  Only on the opposite bank of the River Deban from Sutton Hoo! 

Sutton Hoo is the site of the famous and most significant Anglo-Saxon burial ground in Britain, dating back to the 6th and early 7th centuries.  The Romans had scarpered by 410 AD, and pagan Germanic hordes (from Anglia and Saxony) began moving into the area, and by the 7th century a number of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had been formed.   It is generally agreed that it is a 7th century king named Raedwald of East Anglia that is the king buried at Sutton Hoo.

 

Our 19th century Quinton relations in Woodbridge, some of whom were shoe makers and lived on the still dear little street called Theatre Street, would have looked over these burial mounds every time they gazed across the river, but since archaeological excavations did not begin until 1938, they would have lived their whole lives never knowing what lay beneath these grassy knolls.

map credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wicklaw_and_Ipswich.jpg

Sutton Hoo photo credits: http://www.britishmuseum.org,

Ipswich

Custom House and Old Wherry Inn, Ipswich, 1870s

It's been a balmy minus 31 degrees here in Eastern Canada today, so I stayed inside and worked on some more family history.   Off to Ipswich I went, via the internet, and found another distant relation's well-researched family tree pages - complete with sources - who is connected to us through Sarah Quinton's younger brother (Sarah Quinton being Lily Maud Meadows' mother), and I was able to correct some errors with the Meadows information I had.  I sent him an email message of thanks, so I may hear back from him at some point.

After discovering in the 1881 census that Lily Maud's father, Frederick Meadows, was a shipwright, I did a bit of digging around to see what I could find out about shipwrights in 19th century Ipswich.  Suffice it to say that Ipswich was once the largest grain terminal in Europe, so there was an ongoing demand for ships and barges to transport it around Britain and to the continent.  Apparently, each shipwright would have his own chest of tools that he took to work with him each day (picture below), containing about 75 different tools.

In 1881, the Meadows family lived at 20 Cavendish Street, which was very close to the Orwell River waterfront.  I went to Google Street View and the houses are not there any more - there are some sort of commercial enterprises taking up that end of the street now.  

A shipwright's chest c. 1850, with around 75 tools in it.

Photo credits:http://www.bargemen.co.uk/images/shipwrights.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47120000/jpg/_47120383_dolphin_wharf_1870s.jpg