It Could Happen

Did you see Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC1 last week?  Fans of the series have been waiting for this last episode for a while but it was worth it.  Unbelievably moving.  Very stark.  None of the happy chat with relations before or after the search.  But it was perfectly pitched in this respect.  Ruby Wax has suffered from mental health issues for twenty years and her search was very much to look for answers about the parental behaviour which she knows damaged her.

Ruby had never been told anything about her parents' history or their families.  She admitted during the programme that only her continuing medication was at that point keeping her calm about what she was finding out.  If you haven't seen the programme, please do click on the link above.  I don't want to spoil it by saying much more except to say that there are both Holocaust and mental health links.

And on a connected note, last week my daughter came home from school in quite a state.  They had been reading The Boy In Striped Pyjamas in English at school and her teacher had decided to show them a film about Auschwitz.  My girl was terribly affected by it and said she had cried in the lesson.  She is only eleven.

If you have read this blog before, you will know that I try to link history to current events and trends.  I am very much in favour of learning the lessons of history, of not turning away from difficult subjects, of fighting back against inequality and so on.  However, the tearful questions which arose from my daughter's experience last week really tested me.  Let me give you a taster:

1)  'The really skinny people were smiling in the film.'

'Well, I think those people were probably being filmed by the American and British liberators.  It sounds like survivor photos.'

'But why didn't we do anything sooner?  Did they know?  How could they not help?'

Can open, worms everywhere.

2)  'Why do I need to know this, to see this stuff?'

I'm sorry you got such a shock and I don't agree it was the right time to show you a film, but it is important that everyone knows about what happened.  It mustn't ever happen again.

'But this wouldn't ever happen again!'

We don't know that.  That's why we should stand up for what we believe in, for what's right.

'Is this to do with Donald Trump? Could he do this?'

What the hell do you say to this, other than try to be comforting whilst worrying about Trump, Putin and the rest.

And so on and so forth.

I do not agree with how this teacher has handled the subject matter and I have told the school so.  However, in some ways I was glad to see the connections being made.  I wrote the other week about not just looking forward in our own lives and the Holocaust is probably the most horrendous example in history of something which should never be forgotten.  The Nazis manipulated public thoughts and feelings in ways which should provide a terrible lesson to us all.  If they could achieve such control using relatively primitive methods of propaganda, what could  - are - those in power doing today?  With all the modern communication methods available to them?

The world is becoming a nastier place for all sorts of people and all sorts of reasons.  And the gaps between the haves and have nots are becoming larger.  A world like that is not why we fought the Nazis.  It will soon be Remembrance Sunday.  Remember those who fought and died but also the reasons why.

Best for a while

I can't post a lengthy missive this morning.  I have done my back in so badly that I just can't sit in my desk chair very comfortably for a long time!

However, I did just want to comment on Frank Gardner's Who Do You Think You Are? last night.  I have enjoyed all of the programmes in the last couple of series but it was really great to see an episode which really pushed the genealogy line rather than just concentrating on one or two ancestors' stories.

Who would have thought anyone who is not currently royal or "landed gentry" could trace their ancestry to William the Conqueror himself?  There is hope for us all!  It was just a shame that the programme was not long enough to show the paperwork route to the Tudor ancestor.  I personally have stalled with my own tree in the late 1600s.  I am proud of having got that far but it spurs you on to want more!  Human nature.

I was terribly envious of Frank Gardner's visit to the heraldic college too.  Even if it was not my tree, to have the chance to visit such a place and handle those documents would be amazing.  Weird genealogy crush, anyone??!

The Return of WDYTYA

Far too many weeks since I last posted, sorry.  I had promised myself to get better at setting the timer thing to post more regularly.  Instead I have found myself on Yorkshire beaches, driving children to gym practice and walking the dog with ideas buzzing and no time to get them out.

 

However, I have managed to read Not My Father's Son, an excellent memoir by the actor Alan Cumming.  I heard him reading it on BBC Radio 4 soon after it was published last year but I have only just managed to discover the conclusion.

 

The gist is that at the same time Alan Cumming was doing Who Do You Think You Are? in 2010 - which turned up a completely fascinating family tale - he received a call from his estranged father, saying Alan should know, in the light of the programme being made, that he, Alan, was not his biological son.

 

The memoir is written in a number of  movingly interwoven strands - the WDYTYA shoot;  the time following its completion; childhood in Scotland; and early years as an actor.  The book is a great read and I really admire Alan Cumming for doing it but I won't discuss it further as I highly recommend reading it!

 

I watched Cumming's WDYTYA quite shocking episode when it was broadcast.  It has been fascinating, though, to read about what the poor guy was going through while he was on screen and talking about his ancestors.  And the childhood side of the memoir is awful but moving.  Human resilience in action.

 

However, as someone looking forward to the start of the new WDYTYA series (next week!), I was particularly interested in the machinations of the programme makers.  All the celebrities say, when asked, that they are told nothing before the shoot starts.  Read in the context of someone trying to deal with a personal crisis at the same time (albeit unbeknownst to the TV company), their methods seem almost cruel.  Of course, that is what makes good television.  Those special or disturbing moments, captured close-up.  I mean, they even squeezed a tear out of Jeremy Paxton so they must be good at what they do!  Television gold usually involves a "journey" these days and genealogy gives that in spades.

 

I don't imagine any of us, if confronted with the sort of information given to Alan Cumming, would keep a poker face.  The episode link is above.  Do watch it if you have not seen it already.  But read the book too.  The two make a good pairing.

 

And when WDYTYA returns, I think we should spare a thought for the celebrities who have agreed to take part.  Yes, they get top of the range (!) family trees given to them at the end but in return, they are expected to trip out their emotional reactions to whatever the producers have decided is most television-worthy.  Incidentally, for an example, in my humble opinion, of when the celebrity does not provide this entertainment, please see Sarah Jessica Parker's US episode of the show.  She literally had nothing to say....

Valid History

 

 

Last night, on Simon Mayo's Drivetime, it was Book Club night and the book being discussed sounded really fascinating.  The Truth According To Us by Annie Barrows is set in small town America in the Depression era.  I cannot comment on the book as I have not yet read it.  [Although I have now added it to the ever growing list of "must read" along with many Sunday supplement clippings, the Woman & Home Reading Room recommendations, my own local book club and the research for my fledgling creative writing.  No pressure...]

 

One discussion concerned "what is history".  Apparently, the book deals with the writing of a small town's history and the struggle to make sense of past events in the light of age-old grudges and warped memories.  Annie Barrows agreed very much with a comment that history is "about who writes it".  Very dependent on how someone or some organisation or some nation wants to be remembered.  Ms Barrows said that history is just a construct, not factual at all, "just a bunch of stories".

 

And I feel this resonates with many of my blog subjects in the last year.  Family history is what we make of it in the present generation.  My blog about The Demon Drink is an example.  Posts on how disease actually affected a family would be another.

 

John Hurt spent the whole of his Who Do You Think You Are? episode firmly convinced that he somehow came from Irish aristocracy.  He had been told so many tales over his life time that he had even convinced himself of a natural affinity with the country.  It was not true.  But it had coloured his family's view of themselves for generations.

 

Last weekend, I was reading a BBC History magazine (I know - my life is just so exciting...).  One of the articles was a revisionist view of the War of the Roses.  The author believes, along with many others, that Tudor propaganda aimed at cementing that family's position was responsible for substantially altering views of the pre-Tudor period.  He said, though, that it was not just down to primitive propaganda.  It was due to Shakespeare wanting to excite audiences, it was down to thrilling tales passed down and exaggerated between generations, and so on.

 

Look at Wolf Hall.  Tudor history rewritten in the twenty first century.  Thomas Cromwell has been a well known historical villain, of sorts, for centuries.  Now, after Hilary Mantel has finished with him, we are all feeling rather sorry for him and desperate for him not to die in the (please finish it soon, Hilary!) last of the trilogy.  Even though the fact of his death is one of the few certainties of his story.

 

Winston Churchill said "History is written by the victors".  Did you ever hear of a world famous book or film about German POWs escaping?  And what about Hiroshima's sufferings? 

 

It is not just victors though.  It is perception.  It is feelings.  In this blog, I have tried to look at how certain facts may have made participants feel and/or influenced their decisions.  I agree with Annie Barrows' assessment of history to a degree.  But history is no less valid for taking account of prevailing feelings, fashions, fortunes and families.

It's Live!

Much excitement here at Piece of String HQ.  My husband has managed to wangle his work diary to enable me to go to Who Do You Think You Are? Live!

 

I suspect that I am going to be quite underwhelmed when I actually get there - such events are often quite frustrating due to the crowds.  However, I will not let that spoil the anticipation.  [He works away and it is usually impossible to pin down a whole day when he can take over dog, children, children's social lives, etc.  Trying not to think about the number of times he has changed his plans at the last minute...]

 

I am highly amused by the use of the term Live for the show, I must say.  I mean, it is a show about, mostly, searching for people who are anything but live.  However, it appears that this title is justified by the celebrity visits - people who have had their family trees done for the television shows.

 

And one of my main reasons for going is, in fact, to try to see the interview with Alistair McGowan on the Friday.  It was his episode of WDYTYA? back in 2007 which gave me the first real leads into my Anglo Indian ancestors.  I had had a lifelong interest in my family tree and as a child, had interviewed grandparents and others.  But despite some cursory searches online, I had not got very far with my dad's family.  It all felt a bit needle in a haystack and I had abandoned those lines for a quite a while.

 

The McGowan episode was a real turning point though, as mentioned before on this blog.  I had watched so many previous WDYTYA? programmes just out of interest.  I watched that one with a pen and paper in my hand.  McGowan genuinely had no idea that he had any Anglo Indian blood from his father.  It was fascinating. (Look on YouTube and you can see his reactions if you have not seen his show.)  As soon as the programme ended, my dad called to ask if I had seen it.  He couldn't quite believe it either.  I was already online at that point!

 

Being so inexperienced in genealogy then, that was my first foray into British Library India Office records!  (http://indiafamily.bl.uk/ui/home.aspx).  I only found one or two mentions of the surname Shaller but it was enough to give my search fresh impetus and spur me on to look for new online resources (Family Search, Families In British India Society, etc) which had not really existed when last I had attempted that particular line.  Strangely, my brickwalls on Shaller are now mostly back in the UK as they are pre-1837.  The Indian bit is as complete as I could have ever hoped.  Always looking though and open to new sources.  Plus I obviously have a number of other Anglo Indian surnames to work on and they are proving harder to crack.

 

I am not really sure what seeing Alistair McGowan Live is going to contribute to my research, come to that, but it feels important to hear what he has to say - if only because he was lucky enough to go to India to see his dad's home and meet some relations.  So, a day of mooching around family history exhibits, and hopefully attending the interview and some workshops, awaits me.  Well, got to get your genealogy kicks where you find them...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be My Guest

 

 

This last week, every time I have sat down to write, something has interrupted me.  Stuff completely beyond my control but I do apologise for the silence (although maybe you were relieved). 

 

However, I have been attempting to write a post about my great great great grandfather Edward Guest.  I was even going through my notes as I sat waiting in A&E after my son sustained a footballing injury - not serious incidentally, I am not completely heartless!  So here, finally, is the tale of Edward Guest... 

I knew that one of my paternal great great grandmothers had been Annie Jane Guest and from her marriage and baptism details, I knew that her father was called Edward.  Until last year, however, I had not pursued this line of inquiry very far.  Reading a back copy of a  Families In British India Society (FIBIS) journal though, I came across a mention of an Edward Guest.  The article's author Dorota Walker was a British Library employee and had been engaged in research in areas of the library's resources outside of the India Office collections.  [These are the collections that relate to the entire period of British rule in India - the East India Company, the Empire and all their records.  Follow this link for details.]

Anyway, she had stumbled upon two volumes from the papers of a Sir Charles Napier relating to his time with the Indian Army.  Some related to the 22nd Regiment of Foot and amongst them was a permit for a Private Edward Guest.  From her description of him and from the follow up work I was able to do, I am sure that this was my ancestor.

Edward Guest was born in Belfast in 1808.  A labourer by trade, he signed up for the army in 1825 and joined the 41st Regiment of Foot.  He served in Burma, Afghanistan and Madras apparently.  There are records relating to him in the National Archives though and these concern three court martials.  Two in 1834 for drunkenness and theft.  He served three months in solitary the first time.  The theft charge brought a sentence of fourteen years "transportation" but this ruling was overturned for, as yet, unknown reasons.  Makes one wonder what he stole!  The court martial papers for these two appearances can be seen at the FIBIS website.

 

The third was in 1839, again for drunkenness.  According to the FIBIS article, this resulted in the loss of a Good Conduct badge - I could not find this note.  In the meantime, he had married, in 1837, an "Indo Briton" (ie an Anglo Indian) woman named Amelia Emsley.  The marriage record states that she was fifteen - her baptism record suggests that she was probably thirteen... shocking to us now but not unusual then.  Her father Joseph Emsley had also been in the 41st Foot and the Emsleys were a large family.

Between 1838 and 1861, Amelia and Edward had at least eight children - I suspect there may be others as yet untraced as there are some long gaps between them.  Five children were living when Guest made his first petition in around 1850.  He had been discharged from the army in 1846 (having transferred to the 22nd Regiment of Foot in 1843 in order to remain with his family when the 41st returned to England).  "Extreme ill health" was cited.  He then managed to get a permit to open a stall in the bazar [market] of the 22nd Foot - selling anything but alcohol!  The pension award is also shown on FIBIS - 26 April 1846.  However, in 1848 his pension was withdrawn - it looks like drunkenness is given as the reason for this....

Ex-Private Guest must have been desperate at this point.  He obviously had issues with alcohol - a common problem in the army in India in the nineteenth century as it was not exactly a stimulating posting - Billy Connolly's Who Do You Think You Are? gave further details of British India army life recently and it left a lot to be desired!  He managed for two years but then tried and failed to get his pension reinstated in 1850.  In 1854 he wrote to Sir Charles Napier and even to the Duke of Wellington [hence the tenuous use of his picture above! - I could not identify the correct uniform for Guest - when you Google, you get lots of re-enactment society snaps...].  There are no records pertaining to the result of this second attempt.

At my great great grandmother Annie Jane's birth in 1858, Guest is listed as "a discharged soldier of the 41st Regiment of Foot".  Then in 1860, he died on 10 September of "ebritas".  If you were watching the  Billy Connolly WDYTYA episode, you may remember that this is alcoholism.  He was buried a day later, aged around 52.  [As an even sadder postscript, his youngest daughter Isabella Bedelia was born in 1861.  Her father is listed as the "late Edward Guest".  She herself only lived for a year.]

By my calculation, my 3 x great grandmother Amelia was then left with at least three children who would still have been dependent, including my toddler great, great grandmother.  In 1860, Amelia also lost her father Joseph, then aged 72, to dysentery.  Her mother had died in 1841.

 

In a move typical of the times in which she lived, Amelia Guest almost immediately remarried.  Another soldier, Daniel Liffick.  He had been widowed only months before he married Amelia in June 1861 but it would seem to have given both of them a form of security as he too had young children to cope with.  However, in 1870, Daniel Liffick - by then working as a guard on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway - died of "an accidental gunshot wound to the chest" according to his death record.  I am still looking into this - not that he is directly related to me, of course but as previous readers of the blog will know, I find it hard to resist a detour when an interesting story awaits!

 

So it just goes to show what information is out there about apparently lowly relatives.  We can find chapter and verse about the Duke of Wellington of course (although I prefer to think of him as Stephen Fry played him in Blackadder The Third!) but Edward Guest, Joseph Emsley and Daniel Liffick were in the lowest ranks of the British Army and there is far more available to find then I ever thought would be possible.  Incidentally, if you want to make a start with military records, the National Archives are the best place to begin but the various chat forums such as Victorian Wars are also very good.

You Never Can Tell

Given my blog's frequent mention of my Anglo Indian heritage, it would be a crime if I were not to post about the wonderful episode of Who Do You Think You Are? last night where Billy Connolly, the quinessential Scotsman, discovered that he too has a little Anglo Indian blood.

Thanks to the amount of research that I have done for myself in the last four years, I guessed which way the wind was blowing for his tree but it was still amazing to watch.  In particular to see that the brilliant researchers had managed to find such a huge amount, by British India records standards, of original documentation.  Many of those researchers can be found on Twitter if you would like to see more of what they do - eg Kirsty F. Wilkinson, @GenealogyGirl.

And who would guess, from Billy Connolly's appearance and immediate family tree that such a secret lay buried?  From his tree, it looks as if the Anglo Indian relation (that is, the offspring of a white British soldier and an "East Indian" lady then actually married a white British soldier herself.  So the Anglo Indian blood line did not continue in the way that many, including my own, did.

For as British rule tightened and the rules pertaining to society got stricter, Anglo Indian people were gradually squeezed from British society without feeling that they had a place in full Indian society.  They were generally employed in jobs where their loyalty to the British could be used to the best advantage of the British government.  Civil service and vital services such as the telegraph and railway services.  Not allowed to climb, in general, too high in the ranks but high enough to persuade them of their superiority to the Indian workers and thus have a vested interest in British rule.  On my own family tree, it is a succession of railway workers - mainly drivers and station masters - with the odd school master or doctor.

It was lovely to see Billy Connolly's reaction.  He clearly enjoyed being in India and had visited before.  And he was so amazed and delighted by the results of his journey.  Times do change, don't they?  A century and a half ago,  a person would have gone to great lengths, if they were as European looking as Billy Connolly, to hide any connection with an "East Indian"...  Even my own grandparents preferred no mention of their true antecedents.

As usual, WDYTYA made the whole experience of looking for family history and documentation look rather easy.  In actual fact, I can imagine a whole heap of work went into Bily Connolly's story, to say the least!

A few days ago, I briefly mentioned FIBIS, that is the Families In British India Society.  This is a wonderful volunteer-led self-help organisation.  They have a fantastic website and wiki at fibis.org  and you can find them on Facebook and Twitter.  It is a great place to start your search if you come across or suspect a British India connection.  You can use the site without taking membership but I would urge you, if you find yourself using the site regularly, to take the membership or to make a donation.  These things do not pay for themselves even with volunteers running them!  As an ex PTA co chair, I can test to the economics of this!  Apparently their Twitter feed went crazy after last night's programme.  I hope that Billy Connolly's story will be of benefit to them, they deserve it.

Tweet, Little Birdie, Tweet

 

Once again I find myself blogging about the most recent episode of Who Do You Think You Are?  The reviews of last night's programme seem to unanimously be amazed about the tragic story of Brendan O'Carroll's grandfather was and how fantastic the programme was all in all.

 

And I quite agree.  Marvellous all round.  Plus I watched the programme with my husband.  A record as it is the second full episode that he has probably watched!  Not his thing at all usually.  I thought the quality of the research that had been undertaken in order to take Brendan O'Carroll on his journey of discovery was completely outstanding.  To have reached a point where he was able to see the face of the presumed murderer of his grandfather was really incredible.  Just awful to find no justice at the end of the process.

 

 

 

An aspect which I found extremely interesting after the show was the reaction on Twitter.  Now, I do have a small number of friends on Facebook but I use it mainly to keep in touch with old friends more easily.  Twitter, on the other hand, I have been trying to use more for genealogy and history work.  I have been able to follow all sorts of (hopefully!) like-minded people and Twitter is great for picking up hints and tips.  [If you are on Twitter, the best way to find them is to search #genealogy or #family history or #family tree.  Too many on my list to put them all down here.]

 

For example, the other day, I stumbled across a tweet from someone in New York, offering advice on using the notetaking app Evernote for genealogical research.  I had downloaded Evernote but had not really done much about making proper use of it.  The short Tweet reminded me about the possibilities.  Other Tweets have helped with unusual sources, special offers for services and interesting facts and figures.

 

Last night, some of the genealogists whom I follow had done the kind of running commentary tweets as WDYTYA was broadcast (I only looked afterwards, I'm afraid, can't follow as I go along yet, not got the hang of that).  I also noticed that the "main providers" (for want of a better description) such as Find My Past and Ancestry were tweeting as the programme went on, advertising their services!  Only to be expected, I suppose.  There are not exactly many mass marketing opportunities for their services, are there?

 

I am not particularly techy, never have been.  My son is a typical 2014 kid - loves his tablet, Minecraft, Skype, etc.  However, although I am obviously coming late to Twitter - and I expect the in-crowd is completely onto something else by now - I do like how easy it is to make contacts on it.  I used to get sent to networking events as part of my various parliamentary and City jobs and I always hated it.  I am a fairly outgoing and confident person, I think, but I never found it easy to strike up conversations for work contacts reasons.  Maybe though, if I can manage to work up some interesting Tweets of my own - rather than following and/or re-Tweeting - I might make contact with some people who I might eventually meet face to face.  What a thought in this day and age!  Face to face meetings!  Whatever next. 

 

[By the way, to follow me on Twitter and see how I get on, you can find me @debcyork.]

 

 

Don't Give Up

A break for the arrival of our puppy and now I am sneaking a post while she is snoozing.  Honestly, it is like being back in the baby days with my two.  No idea what we are doing, trying to understand what the creature wants, up half the night.  Can't say we weren't warned though and to be fair, Bonnie (for that is said puppy's name) has actually been very good.  Just house bound now while we wait for her to get vaccinated against all of the many dog diseases that I had never heard of before.  But, as usual, I digress....

I am a big fan of the ITV programme Long Lost Family and have been thinking about the lessons that it gives to those of us starting out in genealogy.  For those who have not seen the programme, they follow two stories per episode.   In general they are connected with adoption cases - one story might be a parent searching and the other, an adopted child wanting to trace their birth parents.  The stories themselves are not so straightforward obviously but you get the concept of the programme.

I was a little wary of the fact that Davina McCall is one of the presenters when I first watched it.  Pre children, I watched far too many early series of the original Big Brother and have it found hard to take Davina "please do not swear" McCall seriously ever since.  However, she seems a lot calmer (thank goodness) these days so please don't let her presence put you off!  For Long Lost Family, she seems to strike the right balance of information and sympathy and not to have the mocking edge that she used for Big Brother interviews.  And the other presenter, Nicky Campbell, is generally to be relied upon as serious plus has apparently been through an adoption search himself.

In "genealogy circles" (do I sound like I know what I am talking about?!), the general term used for points in a family tree that cannot be pushed any further back is "brickwalls".  If you look at the covers of the magazines or Google genealogy, you will see that there are a great many articles/people.organisations offering to help you  "break down those brickwalls".

The Long Lost Family team are masters at breaking down brickwalls.  Lest we get too excited, they have the budget to employ adoption specialists, to fly all over the world and so on, remember.  However, I do think that the programmes offer a lesson in never giving up.  There is the "tugging of the heartstrings" side of bringing anxious people good news and introducing them to each other on camera.  All makes for good television.  (This week, though, was the first time that I can remember them finding out that a father for whom they were looking had died some years ago and they did give this news off camera.)  The good television moments are based on startlingly good research though.  Even Iranian spies have been found this series!

In research terms, I believe the programmes show just what is possible.  Who Do You Think You Are? of course does something similar.  The difference is that WDYTYA uses each celebrity's story to provide us with social history lessons as well as providing the celebrity with personal answers.  Long Lost Family shows what can be achieved with stories much harder to trace due to privacy laws, lack of online data and so on.  Sometimes they even admit that they have trawled social networking sites, looking for clues.  Censuses are embargoed for one hundred years.  The next time that UK census full results will released to the public is 2021 - for the 1921 census.  So researching the movements of people after 1911 is currently more difficult than nineteenth century research in many ways.

It would be interesting to know just how many cases do not make it to our screens of course but in general, I think we can draw the lesson "do not give up" from the episodes which are actually shown.  My father has a second cousin of whom he was vaguely aware.  There had been contact years ago but little or nothing since the death of my grandfather.   After much fruitless searching for anything later than 1950, I searched his last known locality's newspapers online and I did find him.  And he had been done for drink-driving so had made the press...  not an ideal thing to find on the other side of the brickwall but hey, at least I broke it down....