Long Ago and Far Away

Within the short time that has elapsed since I proudly announced, three weeks ago,  the arrival from Dublin of a brightly coloured  Irish marriage certificate, the world of genealogical research has taken a new and exciting turn.  On Wednesday of last week, 7th September, Ireland's historic civil registers of births, marriages and deaths became available on line.  The information that I paid €21 for only weeks ago is now available to print out at home free.  And for the majority of these events an image of not just the entry sought, but the whole page on which it appears (that's 10 births or deaths or 4 marriages) can be downloaded ... also free.  Scotland has offered this service to genealogists for many years, but in England and Wales the only option is the standard 'official certified copy' of a single register entry.

Imagine my great delight then when, earlier this week (after allowing the initial worldwide enthusiasm to die down), I took to the screen and - rather like a child let loose in a sweetshop - printed out register entries for every event I could remember (and one or two more that I discovered on the way). If I'd obtained this volume of detailed information about English relatives, the heap of paper I printed in about two hours the other evening would have cost me nearly £300!

Included in this collection were two particular marriage certificate images for daughters of my great-uncle.  One of them I knew about already, but didn't have the full information. It was for a girl variously reported as Rosanne, Rose Anne or Roseana, who married a soldier in Limerick in 1904. At some point in the following years her husband was posted to England, and their first son was born near London.  The family next surfaced at Kinsale near Cork, where the soldier died in the military hospital in September, 1909.  Rose Anne was then pregnant with their second child, who was born in January, but died of bronchitis at the age of only eight weeks.

The other certificate was a much happier one.  It was for her youngest sister, born in 1901, about whose marriage status I was quite convinced I would never learn until I should be able to visit the record office in Belfast.  But there it was in black and white, Rebecca Evans married in Belfast on 17th February 1921.  The records for the North available from this source end some time in 1921, when the six counties were separated following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, so I consider this find doubly lucky.  It was perhaps a sign of the new modern age that, instead of a labourer or soldier, her husband was described as a 'cinema operator'.

So, for a Norfolk boy already thinking of his 'homeland' as Suffolk (my parents 'migrated' north in 1909 and 1926 respectively), this whole week has had a strangely Irish flavour as, first of all, I entered all these quasi-certificates into my records as 'valued documents', and then added all those extra details to that branch of my family tree.  Two particular aspects of my great-uncle's story emerge.  He went to Ireland in the first place as a soldier, having enlisted in the 27th Regiment of Foot at Norwich in 1871.  He married a local girl and settled in Enniskillen, where they raised a family of seven daughters and four sons.  The army had a continuing influence on the family.  The 27th Regiment was one of the forerunners of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers; three of his sons and one son-in-law served with the Fusiliers, while four more sons-in-law served in other regiments.

It was interesting also, to note the various ways he described his 'rank or profession' at the births or marriages of his children.  For the first five years, he was a 'Pensioner' or 'Military Pensioner'; then he appears for some years simply as a labourer.  After this came a long period when he worked for the railway company and described himself variously as 'Porter', 'Railway Porter', 'Luggage Porter', or 'Railway Luggage Porter'.  There followed more years as a labourer before in 1911 and 1914 he was a fisherman.  The entry I liked best came on the marriage of his youngest daughter, where he proudly announced himself as 'Porter G.N.R.' (i.e. the Great Northern Railway, the importance of which was as the only railway company to cross the border with the Free State).

As I pondered this good fortune, memories of my father came to mind.   Last week saw the thirtieth anniversary of his death and I realised - not for the first time - how little I know of his younger life.  I have one photo of him in his schooldays, and one from teenage with his younger sister, and the next pictures show virtually the man I remember from my own early years, when he was courting my mother in his early 40s.  In the light of these latest discoveries, I wonder just how much - if anything at all - he knew of his Irish cousins.  Some of them were already married and living in England with their families by the time dad was going to school.  When dad was meeting German prisoners-of-war in the farmyard (as I mentioned here a few weeks ago), two of his cousins had already died in the war.