I am not a genealogist but note the enthusiasm and dedication with which many members of this Forum pursue their interest in their family histories. One question does intrigue me: how do you know when to stop and then, do you follow it through by doing the tedious bit of pulling it all together and writing it up? And if you do the latter, then how do you present it?
I am prompted to ask this question by a couple of sets of documents which I have in front of me and which look to me like an object lesson. This is what they are and these are the stories they contain.
And I go back to my original query to Forum family history researchers. How do you know when the time comes to delve no further? Are you going to pull it all together to make it accessible to future generations? And what form are you going to present it in so that posterity can enjoy it to the full? Perhaps the answers are obvious – but then, as I say, I am no genealogist. And it may just be that they are worth sharing amongst members.
Chris
I am prompted to ask this question by a couple of sets of documents which I have in front of me and which look to me like an object lesson. This is what they are and these are the stories they contain.
1. My own line
This is a set of five booklets, A5 and each of between 20 and 100 pages. They are the work of my late brother, Graham Myers. He developed an interest in family history research in the 1980s (prompted, I am proud to say, by some notes our father jotted down at my insistence in the year before his death in 1974). My brother did all his research the hard, pre-Internet way by trundling around the country and spending days of delving in county archives and elsewhere, not least the Birmingham Central Library. No countrywide searching of Census information then, at the click of a button! His subjects were our father's line, our mother's, our paternal grandmother's and his own wife's; and finally the lives of our father and mother. This was all his own hard work with no professional assistance - with the single exception of part of his wife's line which had its roots in Northern Ireland. (The latter exercise involved tragedy, as it happens, since the first professional researcher he employed found himself in the wrong bar at the wrong time and lost his life).
What emerges is the story of ordinary people, most of them living ordinary Birmingham and Black Country lives. They appear in Birmingham at the end of the 18th century from somewhere in Eastern Europe (my father's line) and in the early 1860s from Winchcombe in Gloucestershire (my mother's). The limit of social and professional success is a bit of school mastering, a lot of inn-keeping (New Inckleys, Edgbaston Street, Pershore Street), auctioneering (Bull Street) and ownership of a number of retail businesses (Dale End, Union Passage, Broad Street, Snow Hill, Navigation Street, Ladywood Road, Martineau Street); and of one small factory in Digbeth. Homes included Longmore Street, 3 Monmouth Street, 75 Soho Hill, 50 Claremont Place, 42 York Road, 15 Beaufort Road, 83 Stirling Road, 197D Hagley Road, 44 Snow Hill, 10 Highbury Road (Kings Heath), 38 Summer Lane, 10 Wheeley's Road. But much in the books is of hard, Victorian grind – papermaking in Gloucestershire, service, chain-making, carting, mining in the Black Country – often by men and women who could not sign their own names. And sometimes of children lost in infancy. The most exotic story to emerge is of our great-grandfather, Henry Myers, who spent seven or eight years in Gold Rush California before returning home to the excitement of running an ironmonger’s shop. (What an adventure in the 1850s and if ONLY he had kept a journal!)
Graham continued this work for at least 10 years. By the mid-1990s he concluded that he had done enough. Most of the avenues which could be explored with the facilities at his disposal had been gone down; and he had other historical projects to pursue - the history of his Devonshire village and his own Eighth Army memoirs. So he pulled it all together and produced these five wonderful booklets with the help of his ancient word processing machine, each concentrating on one of the above subjects and full of charts and narrative.
2. A cousin’s line
The second set of documents are two beautifully presented, fully illustrated, glossy A4 books, the second of which only reached me a few weeks ago. These are the result of work done, more recently and with similar dedication, by a member of this Forum, JoanM, the wife of my Australian cousin, Richard Myers.
The first of these deals with Richard's paternal gt-gt-grandfather's line where there is a strong Birmingham connection (and links with my own). Jacob Myers had been born in Prussia in about 1810. In 1840 he married Juliana Aaron of Edgbaston Street, a member of a prominent Jewish family whose Birmingham roots can be traced back at least to the beginning of the 18th century. Jacob had a jeweler's business at 59 Caroline Street. Their son, Alfred Jacob, was a pupil at King Edward’s in the 1850s and in 1870 he married a Wolverhampton widow, Rosamond Williams (nee Joesbury), a brass-founder's daughter. They married at sea, on the Swiftsure. And THERE's a mystery - why marry that way? And a further mystery: it's not even the ship that you travel on when you decide to emigrate to seek your fortune on the other side of the world - which Alfred and Rose did together the following year. After reaching Melbourne in 1871 Alfred initially pursued his profession of jeweler but later managed sheep stations. Alfred and Rose's son, Alexander Alfred Myers, cousin Richard's grandfather, was born the year after his parents' arrival in Australia. In 1893 he married Alice Louisa Hamond who would be the cause of much excitement 119 years later. Alfred's story in Australia is a generally happy one. His descendants have proliferated, thrived and pursued successful professional careers in several fields.
The second, more recent book, investigates the line of this obscure Alice, the wife of Alexander Alfred and Richard’s paternal grandmother. Her father, Ernest Augustus William Hamond, had arrived in Australia at the age of 17 in 1852, but unlike that of his future son-in-law, Alfred, his story demonstrates the downside of the Australian Dream. Ernest had been following the gold but success eluded him and he and his wife lived a life of grinding poverty. This impoverishment led to Alice’s spending several years of her childhood in an orphanage. Ernest was for years a mystery to JoanM. Nothing could be tracked down of his origins and all that existed was the dimmest of suggestions within the family that somewhere in his background there was a drop of blue blood.
But at last, the breakthrough!
When the obstacle of incorrect spelling of the name and incorrect recording of place of birth had finally been overcome, all was revealed. Ernest had come to Australia at the age of 17 having been declared redundant two years earlier from his position of "Subordinate Lieutenant" in the Royal Navy after some two years of service. (Yes, redundant at 14 after two years of service!) His early life, it emerged, had been one of considerable privilege and affluence. His earliest years had been spent in the Court of King Ernest Augustus of Hanover, son of George III and uncle of Victoria, where his father had been aide-de-camp and friend to the King. After that the family moved to Cherbourg where his father was British Consul. Ernest’s earliest life involved children's parties in the Palace at Hanover and no doubt many other privileges; probably seeing his father receive Victoria and Albert when they steamed into Cherbourg in their yacht; acquaintance with influential cousins including Lord Malmesbury, British Foreign Secretary and other family friends such as the young Disraeli; and no doubt much else.
Ernest's parents both had aristocratic backgrounds. And this discovery was of course where Joan hit the genealogical equivalent of a Lottery jackpot. Once the link to these families was established with absolute certainty, everything opened out. If you think about it, I suppose it is obvious; but aristocratic families have much better recorded lineage than do we lesser mortals and for this reason: it is important for them all to know who stands where in terms of succession to title or even throne. And so, if you are lucky enough to have this link you will find records going back to time immemorial, generation after generation, portraits of many of them, books written about them and perhaps, here and there, the odd book of memoirs written by them themselves. You are not stuck at a dead end of 16th or 17th century Church records becoming unavailable or unfathomable – if you are lucky; or if you are unlucky or are researching a non-Christian ancestor, when the brick wall is early 19th century when official registrations and censuses started.
And so, now, I can read that Richard's line (regrettably not mine!) goes back generation after generation, with links by blood, marriage and close association to dozens of noteworthy faces from history including Nelson, Robert Walpole (first British Prime Minister and a direct ancestor), Lady Jane Grey and innumerable barons and earls. There’s a direct line to a Grey who collaborated with the Duke of Monmouth to overthrow Charles II and somehow escaped with his life; and a Grey ancestor of his who in literature appears as a character in Shakespeare’s "Henry V" and in real life meets an extremely sticky end as punishment for involvement in a plot to kill the same King (but, happily for Richard, not before producing children), And so the direct line goes back, generation preceding generation, through traitors and archbishops, earls and barons, baronesses and Plantagenet ladies, to King Edward I and beyond him, to his direct ancestor William the Conqueror There is even a parallel line back to one of William’s knights at the time of the Conquest – almost certainly related, one way or another, to his boss. Not a pedigree many of us will be able to match. I feel I should now address my cousin as "Sire".
And now Joan has decided to stop, or at least pause. It is not a question of running out of material - far from it, as there are now more avenues to pursue than ever there were. But the time has come to consolidate and resist the temptation to go on digging for ever. And she has done that, producing (with the help of my cousin as Junior Researcher, Head Scribe, Director of Desktop Publishing and object of all this attention) the second of two wonderful books which reads like a first-class detective story and a British history book, all rolled into one.
This is a set of five booklets, A5 and each of between 20 and 100 pages. They are the work of my late brother, Graham Myers. He developed an interest in family history research in the 1980s (prompted, I am proud to say, by some notes our father jotted down at my insistence in the year before his death in 1974). My brother did all his research the hard, pre-Internet way by trundling around the country and spending days of delving in county archives and elsewhere, not least the Birmingham Central Library. No countrywide searching of Census information then, at the click of a button! His subjects were our father's line, our mother's, our paternal grandmother's and his own wife's; and finally the lives of our father and mother. This was all his own hard work with no professional assistance - with the single exception of part of his wife's line which had its roots in Northern Ireland. (The latter exercise involved tragedy, as it happens, since the first professional researcher he employed found himself in the wrong bar at the wrong time and lost his life).
What emerges is the story of ordinary people, most of them living ordinary Birmingham and Black Country lives. They appear in Birmingham at the end of the 18th century from somewhere in Eastern Europe (my father's line) and in the early 1860s from Winchcombe in Gloucestershire (my mother's). The limit of social and professional success is a bit of school mastering, a lot of inn-keeping (New Inckleys, Edgbaston Street, Pershore Street), auctioneering (Bull Street) and ownership of a number of retail businesses (Dale End, Union Passage, Broad Street, Snow Hill, Navigation Street, Ladywood Road, Martineau Street); and of one small factory in Digbeth. Homes included Longmore Street, 3 Monmouth Street, 75 Soho Hill, 50 Claremont Place, 42 York Road, 15 Beaufort Road, 83 Stirling Road, 197D Hagley Road, 44 Snow Hill, 10 Highbury Road (Kings Heath), 38 Summer Lane, 10 Wheeley's Road. But much in the books is of hard, Victorian grind – papermaking in Gloucestershire, service, chain-making, carting, mining in the Black Country – often by men and women who could not sign their own names. And sometimes of children lost in infancy. The most exotic story to emerge is of our great-grandfather, Henry Myers, who spent seven or eight years in Gold Rush California before returning home to the excitement of running an ironmonger’s shop. (What an adventure in the 1850s and if ONLY he had kept a journal!)
Graham continued this work for at least 10 years. By the mid-1990s he concluded that he had done enough. Most of the avenues which could be explored with the facilities at his disposal had been gone down; and he had other historical projects to pursue - the history of his Devonshire village and his own Eighth Army memoirs. So he pulled it all together and produced these five wonderful booklets with the help of his ancient word processing machine, each concentrating on one of the above subjects and full of charts and narrative.
2. A cousin’s line
The second set of documents are two beautifully presented, fully illustrated, glossy A4 books, the second of which only reached me a few weeks ago. These are the result of work done, more recently and with similar dedication, by a member of this Forum, JoanM, the wife of my Australian cousin, Richard Myers.
The first of these deals with Richard's paternal gt-gt-grandfather's line where there is a strong Birmingham connection (and links with my own). Jacob Myers had been born in Prussia in about 1810. In 1840 he married Juliana Aaron of Edgbaston Street, a member of a prominent Jewish family whose Birmingham roots can be traced back at least to the beginning of the 18th century. Jacob had a jeweler's business at 59 Caroline Street. Their son, Alfred Jacob, was a pupil at King Edward’s in the 1850s and in 1870 he married a Wolverhampton widow, Rosamond Williams (nee Joesbury), a brass-founder's daughter. They married at sea, on the Swiftsure. And THERE's a mystery - why marry that way? And a further mystery: it's not even the ship that you travel on when you decide to emigrate to seek your fortune on the other side of the world - which Alfred and Rose did together the following year. After reaching Melbourne in 1871 Alfred initially pursued his profession of jeweler but later managed sheep stations. Alfred and Rose's son, Alexander Alfred Myers, cousin Richard's grandfather, was born the year after his parents' arrival in Australia. In 1893 he married Alice Louisa Hamond who would be the cause of much excitement 119 years later. Alfred's story in Australia is a generally happy one. His descendants have proliferated, thrived and pursued successful professional careers in several fields.
The second, more recent book, investigates the line of this obscure Alice, the wife of Alexander Alfred and Richard’s paternal grandmother. Her father, Ernest Augustus William Hamond, had arrived in Australia at the age of 17 in 1852, but unlike that of his future son-in-law, Alfred, his story demonstrates the downside of the Australian Dream. Ernest had been following the gold but success eluded him and he and his wife lived a life of grinding poverty. This impoverishment led to Alice’s spending several years of her childhood in an orphanage. Ernest was for years a mystery to JoanM. Nothing could be tracked down of his origins and all that existed was the dimmest of suggestions within the family that somewhere in his background there was a drop of blue blood.
But at last, the breakthrough!
When the obstacle of incorrect spelling of the name and incorrect recording of place of birth had finally been overcome, all was revealed. Ernest had come to Australia at the age of 17 having been declared redundant two years earlier from his position of "Subordinate Lieutenant" in the Royal Navy after some two years of service. (Yes, redundant at 14 after two years of service!) His early life, it emerged, had been one of considerable privilege and affluence. His earliest years had been spent in the Court of King Ernest Augustus of Hanover, son of George III and uncle of Victoria, where his father had been aide-de-camp and friend to the King. After that the family moved to Cherbourg where his father was British Consul. Ernest’s earliest life involved children's parties in the Palace at Hanover and no doubt many other privileges; probably seeing his father receive Victoria and Albert when they steamed into Cherbourg in their yacht; acquaintance with influential cousins including Lord Malmesbury, British Foreign Secretary and other family friends such as the young Disraeli; and no doubt much else.
Ernest's parents both had aristocratic backgrounds. And this discovery was of course where Joan hit the genealogical equivalent of a Lottery jackpot. Once the link to these families was established with absolute certainty, everything opened out. If you think about it, I suppose it is obvious; but aristocratic families have much better recorded lineage than do we lesser mortals and for this reason: it is important for them all to know who stands where in terms of succession to title or even throne. And so, if you are lucky enough to have this link you will find records going back to time immemorial, generation after generation, portraits of many of them, books written about them and perhaps, here and there, the odd book of memoirs written by them themselves. You are not stuck at a dead end of 16th or 17th century Church records becoming unavailable or unfathomable – if you are lucky; or if you are unlucky or are researching a non-Christian ancestor, when the brick wall is early 19th century when official registrations and censuses started.
And so, now, I can read that Richard's line (regrettably not mine!) goes back generation after generation, with links by blood, marriage and close association to dozens of noteworthy faces from history including Nelson, Robert Walpole (first British Prime Minister and a direct ancestor), Lady Jane Grey and innumerable barons and earls. There’s a direct line to a Grey who collaborated with the Duke of Monmouth to overthrow Charles II and somehow escaped with his life; and a Grey ancestor of his who in literature appears as a character in Shakespeare’s "Henry V" and in real life meets an extremely sticky end as punishment for involvement in a plot to kill the same King (but, happily for Richard, not before producing children), And so the direct line goes back, generation preceding generation, through traitors and archbishops, earls and barons, baronesses and Plantagenet ladies, to King Edward I and beyond him, to his direct ancestor William the Conqueror There is even a parallel line back to one of William’s knights at the time of the Conquest – almost certainly related, one way or another, to his boss. Not a pedigree many of us will be able to match. I feel I should now address my cousin as "Sire".
And now Joan has decided to stop, or at least pause. It is not a question of running out of material - far from it, as there are now more avenues to pursue than ever there were. But the time has come to consolidate and resist the temptation to go on digging for ever. And she has done that, producing (with the help of my cousin as Junior Researcher, Head Scribe, Director of Desktop Publishing and object of all this attention) the second of two wonderful books which reads like a first-class detective story and a British history book, all rolled into one.
In boring everyone with the above summaries, I pay tribute to two family history researchers both of whose work involved at least in part their Birmingham roots and who decided that their work should not end up as the muddly contents of a few old box files on the top of a wardrobe. They decided when to stop . And they went to the trouble of producing permanent documents which will bring knowledge and pleasure to the many generations who succeed them: the late Graham M. and the happily still-very-much-present JoanM.
And I go back to my original query to Forum family history researchers. How do you know when the time comes to delve no further? Are you going to pull it all together to make it accessible to future generations? And what form are you going to present it in so that posterity can enjoy it to the full? Perhaps the answers are obvious – but then, as I say, I am no genealogist. And it may just be that they are worth sharing amongst members.
Chris
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