The Mystery of Uncle David

I think the lock-down has anaesthetised my inspiration module, or simply stopped up my ability to think.  The obvious topic for this week's post has not revealed itself to me.  I did think of writing about the way that a blank diary page at the beginning of the month now looks as if a spider has crawled over it via the inkpot, but that would take only a couple of sentences.  I could boast of winning last week's quiz, but I actually came bottom ... and I'm not feeling exactly buoyant about the one I'm taking part in tonight.

So, in extremis, I return to the ever-giving realm of my family history, and I'll regale my readers with the story of uncle David - well, he was actually great-great-uncle David, being the brother of my grandfather's father.  David was born ten days before Christmas 1868, the fifth of eight children, in the Suffolk village of Stanton.  His father died when he was only 10 and in 1881 the census showed that the three eldest children had already left home and the four youngest were at school.  David's elder brother William's tiny wage as a farm labourer was the only income keeping their widowed mother and five children from the poor house.

The next few years could only have been a struggle.  David left school and probably joined his brother in the fields; the younger children, two girls and a boy, as they grew up, would have become more and more involved in running the home and perhaps their mother would have taken in washing or sewing - the usual occupations for single mothers in those days.  In May 1887, she married a widower in the neighbouring village, which would have involved considerable change for them all.  Maybe relieved that the family's circumstances were somewhat eased, in the spring of the next year, David made his way to Liverpool and sailed for Canada.

He arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in April aboard SS Polynesian.  For a 19-year-old, it must have been quite daunting, but also a great challenge, to start out on a new life thousands of miles from everything he'd known up to then, in a country that was, in effect, doing the very same thing: Canada itself was barely 20 years old.  The next twelve years were spent travelling bit by bit across the continent, gradually gaining confidence, experience, possessions and sufficient savings to provide security.  The next record I have of him is on 18th April 1901, when he was listed as a miner at the settlement of Rossland Riding in the British Columbia census.

This is where the mystery begins.  In the next twelve years, David re-entered Canada twice more and, in the meantime, left definite traces of his life in England.  The only evidence - if it exists at all - of his return journeys to England lies apparently in un-indexed passenger lists accessible only at the Public Record Office.  All searchable attention, it seems, has been given to emigration and none to returns to these islands, however temporary.

The first trace of David's return is at Langham, Essex, where he married Annie Flatman on 1st October 1906.  Both of Annie's parents had died during the previous year and this might have been one reason for David's return to England, although we don't know when that was.  Nor do we know why, when the families of both of them lived in north Suffolk, they married in a village just outside Colchester.  The timing of their wedding was critical for, only four days later, they left Liverpool on RMS Empress of Britain, bound for Quebec.  On their arrival on 12th October, they were marked as 'Returning Canadians', bound for New Westminster, BC, and it was there the following year that their daughter Ivy Annie Sturgeon was born.

 

The next 'missing' record is the return of the trio, David, Annie and Ivy, to Suffolk some time before August 1908, for it was on 20th August that their next child, Nevelin David, was born in Redgrave, possibly at the home of Annie's brother and his family.  Either that Michaelmas or the next would probably have been the timing of their move to Hinderclay, to Mudds Farm, where their third child, Clifford George, was born on 5th March 1910.  Their stay at Mudds Farm was long enough to get settled and complete such formalities as the 1911 census, and electoral registration;  David first appears on the electoral roll of 1913.

However, another precipitant departure prevented David from exercising his franchise.  His eldest nephew was married on 12th October 1912 and on the 18th they sailed once more from Liverpool, this time on RMS Empress of Ireland, and this time for good.  When they stepped ashore in Quebec a week later as 'Returning Canadians', their destination was shown as Prince Rupert, BC, via the Canadian Pacific Railroad.  How different from David's first arrival 24 years earlier!  

As a matter of interest, RMS Empress of Ireland had just left Quebec for Liverpool on 28th May 1914 when, early the next morning she was struck by a Norwegian coal carrier in heavy fog and sank.  The death toll in this, the deadliest maritime disaster in Canadian history,  included 840 passengers, more than the Titanic!

The Z-Word ... and a Bit More!

I suppose it's a regular question in many a household - whether we're in lock-down or not - "Is there anything worth watching on the telly tonight?"  In my case, in a household without a TV, it's one that's never asked, not least because there's no one to reply anyway.  But with endless days spent in the same two or three rooms, disturbed only by the occasional walk around the block, I confess that my attention is often drawn to another, smaller, rectangular screen for relaxation.

I have a couple of shelves of DVDs, a few of which have not actually been watched yet, so there is capacity to provide entertainment of my own choosing, but another phenomenon that has crossed my visual threshold in the last few weeks is something called Zoom.  I first encountered it last summer during my brief flirtation with a small committee whose members were located as far apart as London, Edinburgh and Plymouth.  Now, however it's come into its own in a really big way.

This week for me - if you'll pardon the pun - has positively 'zoomed' by.  Since we started having live-streamed worship on a Sunday morning, the service has been followed by a virtual coffee gathering through the medium of Zoom.  This week started, though, with more of a 'boom' than a 'zoom' when the virtual coffee session seemed to explode.  I had other things I could get on with and decided to abort rather than sit looking at a frozen screen waiting to see what would happen.  I heard later that Zoom itself had collapsed.

By Tuesday evening it had all been fixed and I was able to take part with several dozen others in a Q&A session with a new MP, in the campaign for whose election in December I'd played a very small part.  Wednesday in my diary was 'Zoom Day'.  In the afternoon I attended an 'introduction to Zoom' webinar, hosted from Germany by a lady whose English was faultless; then in the evening I was once more looking at the diced screen.  This time I was one of about a dozen who took part in a quiz organised to raise funds for the hospice for which I volunteer in normal times.  Sadly my enjoyment was not matched by my success .. I came last!

Yesterday was Ascension Day in our church calendar and I spent half an hour in the morning following an international talk and prayer session led by three Archbishops (Canterbury, York and Westminster); it actually came to my screen via YouTube, but had clearly been made using Zoom.  And then, to crown my Zoom week, this evening for, I think, the third time, the men of the church are joining for a chat session, again using the 'Z-technology'.

Now, just in case you are getting the idea that I do nothing but look at the computer screen (it's almost true, but not completely so), let me finish by telling you about two books I've been reading.  The first is The House on South Road by Joyce Storey, the biography of a woman who lived for most of her live in Bristol and was almost exactly contemporaneous with my mother.  And the second, which I actually sat in the armchair and finished last evening, without falling asleep (the usual outcome when I try to read there), is If I Only Had Wings by Paul Daneman.  This is fiction, so I can't vouch for how true to life it is, but it tells of a young man who yearned to fly but was failed for aircrew because of his eyesight, and describes his time on a bomber base in Yorkshire towards the end of WW2. 

While total opposites, these two have each presented me with just a kernel of atmosphere that I might be able to utilise in my efforts on my mother's biography in the coming weeks.

Words Fail Me!

This week has been something of an anti-climax.  The project I've been working on - which failed in its objective, but which produced a number of interesting stories that I've shared with you - has finished, the loose ends tidied up and I've had to look around for something new to grapple with.  If you are interested in my final reflections on family history and what can lead from it, this has been the inspiration for my 'other' blog this week.

The immediate aftermath of no longer having something that has been the focus of attention for a while - to the extent that I described it the other week as 'an obsession' - was that I felt lost, unable to focus properly on what I did turn my hand to.  It was as if there were something over my shoulder, calling me away, something that I ought to be doing but had neglected.  I can only imagine (forgive me, please, if this is you) that bereavement must be similar but far more pronounced and long-term.

Those who know me of old will not be surprised to learn that my interest has been re-kindled in something that was parked long ago, rather than turning to anything actually 'new'.  Many years ago, I had the idea of writing up my family history in narrative form and producing a book that I could pass on to my children, or circulate among interested friends.  I began ... and, realising what a mammoth task it was, and totally incompatible with a working life, abandoned it.

This week I've picked it up and, in the form that I'd left it probably ten years ago, abandoned it again.  However, I can now see that what I had produced has possibilities in two different directions.  For the moment, I've selected the one that I think will be easier, a biography of my mother (which will, almost of necessity, include her side of my family history).

Apart from anything else, the exercise of reviewing in detail what I wrote then has brought to light a number of short-comings.  The disciplines with which I recorded my research were somewhat lax compared to what I do almost as a matter of course these days.  There were also a number of errors that had to be corrected, including one that I corrected yesterday, still felt dissatisfied about ... turned out the original correspondence that had led to the entry ... and then uncorrected my correction, upon realising that it hadn't been an error in the first place!

The further I get into this - and I realise that, to date, I've only just scratched the surface - the more I find myself 'digging'.  I'm venturing into boxes that haven't been opened in months ... years, often.  And with the digging comes discovery; and discovering some artefacts that lead to memories of my own past.  One such memory the other day was of a stroll that I took with my cousin at least 65 years ago, along a quiet country lane, each of us holding one of our great-uncle's hands.

The occasion was a visit we made to the 'old family home'.  I say 'we made', but of course it was a case of our 'being taken along' when our mothers paid a rare visit to the house where their own mother had grown up.  The other day, I pinpointed within a few months when it was that the family moved there.  It had to have been in 1881 - and, since it was a farm, I would guess at Michaelmas that year - because the aforesaid great-uncle was born there that November, but the family had been recorded in the neighbouring village at the census the previous April.

I referred to having a memory of that stroll; what do I actually remember of it?  If I try to describe it, words fail me ... literally!  It has to have made a deep impression to have lingered so long in my memory and yet, if I try to describe what we saw, what was going on around us, how far we went ... nothing.  It has an importance that deserves a whole paragraph at least in my life story, and yet a single line can sum up the entire experience.  To try to encapsulate that in a form that can be passed on to others is beyond the power of words.

What is needed is to turn time back, take a cine-camera with us and re-walk the walk ... a total impossibility, of course.

The Father, his Daughter and the Pensioned Soldier

While there are many challenges in life for which an obvious, usual or most likely solution can be identified, many other remedies - less common but rarely unique - might be adopted instead.  Last week I mentioned the options for a young widow in the 19th century; much the same choice was open to a man.  Childbirth, for example, was much more dangerous then than we might appreciate today, and it wasn't uncommon for a man to be widowed with a young family.  The solution was usually to take a new wife - possibly a widow with young children of her own - and form a new family, but more importantly, to enable him to continue working to provide for them all.

As I begin my story with a man who followed a less common route, I repeat my caveat of last week.  The snapshots provided by the censuses and other records are just that; the intervening events can only be interpreted by guess and assumption.  You must make your own judgement as to what actually happened.

John Vincent was born in the Breckland village of Feltwell in 1828.  The 1841 census reveals that he was the eldest of six brothers, and had two elder sisters.  Not content with life in his home village, ten years later he was lodging in Burnt Fen, near Littleport, Cambs., although working as a farm labourer just as he might have been in Norfolk.  We can take it that he had some desire to travel, though, for within the next six or seven years he had found his way to the Kent coast.  Perhaps he was a bit homesick there; he found comfort in the company of a Norfolk girl, Sarah Carman.  Sarah was two or three years younger and was born in North Lopham: not Breckland, but less than thirty miles from his home.

They were married near Folkestone at the end of 1858 and made their home at the rectory in the village of Saltwood, where Sarah was a servant.  John worked as labourer nearby.  Their daughter Eliza Jane was born early in 1863; this event may have been the trigger for their next move, or they may have followed some other encouragement.  In 1871 they were found in Hayes, Middlesex, where John was working as a gardener.  All seemed fine for a year or two, until Sarah died in the autumn of 1874.  Eliza was nearly 12 and, with no younger children, John decided not to take another wife.  Instead, he moved back to Norfolk, and occupied a house next door to his mother, by then a widow living with her youngest son.

The 1870s were a time of great change for Eliza; the eight-year-old schoolgirl of 1871, now without her mother, became the housekeeper.  No doubt she learned much from her grandmother next door and quite possibly took on much of the work of running both households.  More changes were to come in the '80s.  Her grandmother, born in the first years of the century, died early in 1885, but this wasn't the first shock of the decade.  Two years earlier, Eliza had given birth to a son, Charles William, who was baptised on 23rd March 1883.  Bernard John followed four years later and by the census of 1891, she was pregnant with George, who was born later that summer.

During those years, John's brother James, ten years his junior, had moved into the house.  In 1891 he was working as a butcher, and John still a labourer, providing between them for Eliza and two - soon to be three - growing boys.  The census recorded John as head, with James his brother, Eliza his daughter and the boys his grandsons.  There was no sign of a husband, but children continued to arrive, Louisa in 1893 and Florence five years later.  When the new century heralded both a change of monarch and another census, England was in the midst of a war in South Africa, which may prove to be of significance as the story develops.

The 1901 census asks many questions.  The head of that household in Feltwell was still John, 73, widower and labourer, in addition to whom were his brother James, 63, single and now described as a shepherd, and Bernard, 14, George, 10, Louisa, 8, and Florence, 3, all described as John's sons and daughters; in addition were shown a married daughter Eliza Newman, 37, and a one-year-old daughter (not granddaughter!) called Charlotte Newman.  Eliza was placed between James and Bernard, in other words in descending order of age like one complete family.

The last snapshot in 1911 gives only some of the answers.  In Feltwell, the head of the household was James, the shepherd, 72, described as 'head and uncle' (John had died in 1910); the other five occupants were all described as his nephews or nieces: George Vincent, 19, Frederick Vincent, 15, (there had been no earlier mention of him and I assume he was the son of another of James's brothers), Florence Vincent, 12, Charlotte Newman, 11, and Cecily Newman, 9.

Bernard, 24, was recorded in Southampton with the 3rd Mountain Battery of the Royal School of Artillery; Louisa, 18, was working as a housemaid in Holloway and, as in 1901, there was no sign of Charles.  In a household in Waterloo Road, Lambeth, headed by a couple both described as 'Dining rooms keepers', was a couple listed unusually with the woman first.  She was Eliza Jane Newman, 47, who had been married for 11 years and had had two children, both still living.  With her was 44-year-old George Henry Newman, described as an army pensioner; both said they were born in Folkestone.

Did Eliza meet and marry a dashing young soldier in the late 1890s?  Was this a much-delayed honeymoon, now the girls were old enough to be left with their 'good shepherd' uncle?  All is far from clear.  For one thing, I couldn't find an appropriate marriage for Eliza and George; the only one recorded between Newman and Vincent is in Wareham in 1895; apart from the location, this was before the birth of Florence, who was clearly registered as Vincent.  I was also unable to find a birth registration for George in Folkestone, nor did he appear in the earlier censuses.  But of his existence there is little doubt.  He's recorded in Feltwell in the 1939 Register as a widower, Eliza having died in 1936.  In the 'additional information' section is noted, "Army pensioner, Middlesex Regt. Sergt. 6333".  From George's date of birth given in the Register, I was able to find the only Newman birth in that quarter of 1867 with both of his Christian names ... in Wandsworth! ... Maybe that notion of being 'born in Folkestone' had been a ruse to gain Eliza's approval.

Sadly, Cecily died in 1912, aged only 11; Charlotte was married in 1920 to a farm worker, Sidney Nichols and later that year gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Peggy.  By 1939, Sidney was a horseman; they were still living in Feltwell and had another couple living with them at the farm.  Later they moved to Cambridgeshire, where Charlotte died in 1965 and Sidney in 1974.

When Death Came Calling, the Workhouse wasn't far Behind.

I'm giving serious consideration to a re-write of my answer to the question 'what have you been doing during the lock-down?'  If I say 'family history' the usual come-back is along the lines of 'Oh, that's interesting, how far back have you got?'  'Family research' might elicit a more appropriate follow-up that is lateral instead of historical.  Genealogy (sub-genus: family reconstruction) is not simply the production of a list of names generation by generation, but a vehicle to find out about past generations and how they lived their lives.

The main sources of information - especially during a period when visits to a record office are out of the question - are the indexes of Births, Marriages & Deaths, and the Census records from 1841 to 1911, these now supplemented by the 1939 Register that was compiled just after the start of World War 2.  These records provide only the basic life facts at a fixed point in time; in the absence of other data that will vary from case to case - and is unlikely to be available on line - everything else is assumption or guess-work and has to be subject to alternative explanations, such as the one with which I concluded my post last week.

I have often quoted the opening words from L P Hartley's novel, The Go-Between, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."  Hartley wrote in 1952, looking back to 1900.  As I look back now to the nineteenth century, these words carry an even greater truth.  We have constantly to recall that the social norms of those days - for good or ill - were not those of the 21st century.

I recently researched a family that started with the marriage of Alan Carman and Alice Ann Meakin in the June quarter of 1890.  Their entry in the census of the following year included Alan, 19, Alice, 22, and two boys, Arthur Meakin, 1, and William Carman, 9 months.  My initial assumption was simply that Arthur had been born a few months before his parents married.  I hadn't considered the needs in those days of a 20-year-old widow, seven or eight months pregnant.  In addition to the demands of the birth itself, unless someone could be found to care for the child, she would be unable to work to support them both.  The workhouse loomed and, looking beyond the birth of her child, the most pressing need would be to find a new husband, and quickly.  This was possibly the situation that confronted Alice in the spring of 1889. 

Having found the Carman-Meakin marriage, I couldn't then trace a birth registration for William Carman with a mother whose maiden name was Meakin;  when I found the entry for Arthur the previous year, I was surprised to see that, instead of the dash that usually signifies an illegitimate birth, the name Clay appeared as the maiden name.  I then found that there was an entry for William Carman with the mother's name of Clay ... and subsequently discovered similar entries for their later children (subject to variations of the name Carman!)

Alice Clay had married Arthur Meakin in the June quarter of 1888, and he had died about a year later.  Arthur's widowed father had two sons living at home in Basford (now a suburb of Nottingham) in 1891 and his only daughter (married in 1885) and her young family lived with them.  Young Arthur's place of birth was shown on the censuses as Basford, rather than Heanor, where his mother was born and my guess is that Alice and her husband had also lived with his father prior to Arthur's death, or at least that they looked after her in her confinement.

How long Alice had known Alan Carman is, of course, unrecorded.  In 1881 she and her family lived in Heanor; Alan's family were in Cotmanhay a little over three miles away.  To have been 9 months old at the census on 5th April 1891, William would have been born soon after they married.  This was a mining area: Alan's father and his elder brother were shown as miners in 1881,  Alan was working as a general labourer in 1891, possibly also at the pit, since he was a sawyer at a colliery in 1901 and 1911.

There is nothing to suggest that Arthur, whose family were in the bleaching trade, was a miner, but if that were the case, he and Alan could have known each other.  In either of these industries - and in many more - there were lethal dangers, or he might have suffered illness - without investing in a death certificate, the cause of his death remains unknown.  Suffice to say that Alan, four years his junior, was there to offer support to his widow.

The census of 1901 suggests that Alan had accepted young Arthur as his own son, since he is entered as 'Arthur Carman', but Alan and Alice were not spared further heartache.  In 1911, she was stated to have been married 20 years, having borne 12 children, 8 of whom were still living but 4 had died.  All four had lived less than a year, two of them dying within the same quarter of their birth.  Alice died at the age of 64 in Heanor in 1933.  Alan was still living there in 1939, along with an unmarried son and daughter; he died nearby in 1941, aged 69.