On the Ancestral Path

On October 22, 2023October 21, 2023 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs, Myth and Landscape

Ancestral stone figures on Easter Island

In the last post, I suggested one way in which we can get to know our ancestors, by plotting the relationships between us, and contemplating the circle which they form around us. This current post now moves away from the charting of ancestry, to focusing on some of its spiritual aspects, and considering whether our line of ancestry may still play an active part in our lives. As we now head towards Halloween, based on the ancient Celtic festival of the dead, it’s the season to speculate more about the possible dimensions of life and death, and how we may connect to these.

I’ll also mention the role of shamanism in connecting us to our ancestors. Shamanism is, in essence, an ancient belief system of inter-penetrating worlds of spirit, in which we can play an active role. It includes both animate and inanimate forms of life, in modern terminology, and the realms of both the dead and the living. The ‘religion’ of shamanism – using the term loosely, for there are many versions of it – may once have been widespread throughout the world in its various forms, fundamental to many if not most cultures, including the greater part of Europe. And it contains the belief that journeying between these worlds is possible, often with the assistance of a shaman. Although such travelling must be done with care, it can help us to access knowledge, including foreknowledge, the power of healing, and positive forces which can guide us through life in this middle world.

Birds are often thought to represent the flight of the soul – (illustration by Helen Cann, with artist’s permission)

The otherworld of the ancestors

In the Western world, although this shamanistic world view has largely been abandoned, there are still traces of it in folk lore and myth, as reflected in this ancient poem from the north of Britain. It reveals that a soul must travel a particular path at the time of death, to make the transition between worlds and reach its new dwelling place. Here in the poem, this sanctuary is that of Christ, combining the older world view with that of Christianity. (See Jeff Duntemann’s post ‘Understanding the Lyke Wake Dirge’ for a translation into modern English.)

A Lyke-Wake Dirge

This ae neet, this ae neet, (night)
Every neet and all,
Fire an' fleet an' candleleet,
And Christ receive thy saul. (soul)

If thou from here our wake has passed,
Every neet and all,
To Whinny Moor thou comes at last,
And Christ receive thy saul.

And if ever thou gavest hosen or shoen, (shoes)
Every neet and all,
Then sit ye down and put them on,
And Christ receive thy saul.

But if hosen or shoen thou ne'er gavest nane, (none)
Every neet and all,
The whinny will prick thee to thy bare bane, 
And Christ receive thy saul.

From Whinny Moor when thou mayst pass,
Every neet and all,
To Brig o' Dread thou comest at last,
And Christ receive thy saul.

From Brig o' Dread when thou may'st pass,
Every neet and all,
To Purgatory thou comest at last,
And Christ receive thy saul.

And if ever thou gavest meat or drink,
Every neet and all,
The fire will never make thee shrink,
And Christ receive thy saul.

But if meat nor drink thou ne'er gav'st nane,
Every neet and all,
The fire will burn thee to thy bare bane,
And Christ receive thy saul.

This ae neet, this ae neet,
Every neet and all,
Fire an' fleet an' candleleet,
And Christ receive thy saul.

As far as I know, there are no tunes extant to this old rhyme, althought various arrangements of it have been made. But this recording made by the Young Tradition folk group in 1965 resonates with the spare harmonies of earlier periods, and sounds like a ritual chant as it announces the path of death which must be trodden. This is likely to have been its original function, chanted over a dying or dead person, to guide their soul on its way.

And if you’re up for another song, this one was composed in recent years, but commemorates another very old custom. ‘The Old Lych Way’ tells of how a body in a coffin on Dartmoor had to be carried right from its home parish, perhaps a tiny hamlet on the moor, to the church at Lydford, which alone was authorised for burial. It could be many miles, for the bearers and the mourners to trudge. The song, by Topsham musician and friend Chris Hoban, is here performed by his colleagues in the folk group ‘Show of Hands’.

And after that, let’s move on from the death of the human body to what might be your ancestors’ presence in another realm.

The long line of ancestors

For many of us who embark on researching family history, it becomes more than just creating charts and checking out parish records. It can bring a sense of a living connection with our ancestors. When I was gathering material for my book Growing Your Family Tree, I conducted a survey for readers of a family history magazine, enquiring about their experiences of researching their family tree. Many of the respondents reported that after doing the ground work, they felt their ancestors were in some sense becoming ‘alive’ to them. And some also mentioned that strange occurrences began to happen during their research, such as unexpectedly discovering new family connections, as if the ancestors were eager to reveal themselves. It seems that when we start paying attention to our ancestors, various synchronicities and surprising events may happen.

The Welsh Voices

Standing among the ruins of the abbey at Abbeycwmhir, in remote mid-Wales, from where my Welsh line of ancestry primarily comes from .

Here’s one of my own experiences of this kind:

It happened one summer night, a few years ago. I had been working on my Welsh line of ancestry, trying to figure out the branch of the tree which I could now trace back to my 3x great grandfather, Edward Owens of Abbeycwmhir, the soldier in the Napoleonic Wars.

All that night, my sleep was disturbed by what seemed like a babble of voices. I heard people chattering insistently, and I knew that they were my Welsh ancestors. I could not make out what they were saying, but I had the distinct impression that they wanted to be ‘found’ again, and that they wanted their story to be told. Edward’s own insistence came through, and I inferred that his special wish was for his prowess as a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars to be remembered, and perhaps for his medal to be found again.

This might seem like fantasy. However, it made a profound impression on me, and within a couple of months extraordinary things started to happen. A seemingly random hit on a website for a Welsh chapel led me to finding two separate lots of new cousins, also direct descendants of Edward Owens, whose families were still living in the same region as my ancestors in mid-Wales. I had thought previously that everyone had moved away from the area. When I met up with Harold, my third cousin, he shook my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and said, ‘You’re the first member of the family to come back for a hundred years.’

I was swept into a whirlwind of activity on that first expedition. With these two families I looked at photos of my ancestors that I had never seen before, heard anecdotes about their lives, including those relating to a 2 x great aunt who was a midwife and a herbalist, and shown of the local places associated with them. I also saw pieces of furniture actually made by our joint 2x great grandfather, who turned his hand to cabinet-making as the small stipend he received as a minister couldn’t support his family. Beautifully made, of polished oak, the cupboard and two tables took my breath away as I touched the work that my ancestor had created. After this, research went like greased lightning in the Powys Archives, and I was also able to trace the existence of Edward senior’s medal up until its last publicly-recorded sale in the 1970s. The speed at which all this unrolled was incredible. I felt that I had unlocked a door to the past, and that the wish of the ancestors to be known and acknowledged by their descendants had a kind of volition of its own, which fuelled my search.

All this has fed into my current network of family connections. Cousin Harold and I have kept up our acquaintance, exchanging cards and phone calls every Christmas. Likewise, I keep contact with others of the new-found cousins, one of whom ended up living very close to us for a while. My only sadness is that my mother never knew about this branch of the family. For the last thirty-five years of her life, she lived in Church Stretton in Shropshire, which was less than thirty miles from her cousins over the hills in Wales. She would have loved to meet her relatives there!

Cousin Harold and his wife Vera, standing outside their cottage in Kerry, near Newtown in Wales, close to the one once inhabited by my great grandfather

The Ancestors and our Spiritual Heritage

We are unusual in the Western world, where the prevailing culture doesn’t generally consider the ancestors to be a direct influence in our lives. Our deceased relatives are remembered fondly (or otherwise!), stories may be told about their lives, and graves tended for a while. But that’s generally as far as it goes. Many if not most other cultures around the world, however, consider the ancestors to be a living presence. Although they may inhabit another dimension, their world and ours can interact. This may at first strike the Western mind as naïve, or reeking of old-school Spiritualism, but if you study these different belief systems, it becomes apparent that they can be subtle and sophisticated in their appreciation of different forms of consciousness.

Connecting with the ancestors at a temple in Georgetown, Penang

And a sense of this interdependence can also be used for specific purposes. For instance, in Tuva, Siberia, if a man or woman feels called to become a shaman, they may try to draw on their connection with a particular ancestor who was a shaman, and link in to their power and knowledge as a source for their own initiation. Unlike some New Age perceptions of shamanism, it’s often a calling that a Siberian would rather not experience. The commonest way of realising that they are being compelled to become a shaman is through falling into a period of illness or intense suffering. It’s more a case of giving into the demand, rather than seeking it out. And in which case, a contact with an ancestor who was also a shaman may be the best way to tread the right path and set the seal on it.

In shamanism, drumming and chanting can be a way to communicate with the ancestors. This also means opening up the threefold world, and going beyond our human ‘middle world’. Spirits of the dead usually inhabit the world below, and sky spirits or transcended spirits inhabit the world above, according to this shamanic world view. And once this connection is established in a conscious way, the shaman has a pathway into the world of the spirits. It means that he or she can then regularly practice rituals to awaken the connection, which serves as a channel for wisdom, healing or prophecy, according to whatever is required by those who need their help.

The shamans’ ritual; Herel and his wife conducting a blessing ceremony in Tuva, Siberia

The Way Forward, with a contribution from R. J. Stewart

Shamanism is thought to be the most ancient of religions, and interest in it is growing again in the modern world. There is an eagerness among many spiritual seekers to work with their own form of shamanism. But how do you go about this, and does it work? Can it be done by blindly copying the practices of existing traditional shamans – in Siberia, South America or Africa, for instance? Perhaps a more authentic way forward is to re-connect with our own ancestors, and learn from them if we can. Author R. J. Stewart, an expert in Celtic mythology and the Western tradition of magic, has kindly contributed this post which sheds light on a controversial question:

Between the late 1980s and the mid 90s I had several meetings with Native American Elders, often to compare what is known as “Celtic” tradition today, with aspects of their multifold traditions. When the first contingent turned up unexpectedly at a talk I was giving in a bookstore in Greenwich, Connecticut, I felt as if I was on trial…as indeed I was. Subsequent private meetings relaxed into a degree of mutual trust, resulting in a potential invitation to join the World Council of Tribal Elders, to represent Celtic tradition, in a forthcoming gathering in Australia. The elders were especially critical of New Age shamanism, which they saw as form of alternative popular psychology, and not truly shamanistic. We agreed on that.

As I was unable (though not unwilling) to attend, the invitation was never formalized. A few memories of our meetings stand out for me, and we seemed to confirm to one another that a proportion of my Scottish ancestral traditions shared certain truths and magical practices with theirs. We talked a lot about revenge and forgiveness, ancestors and spirits. Two examples will have to suffice here:

1 – Spirits through the fire. During a convivial meeting with Grandmother Kitty the log fire exploded into extra flame very dramatically then died right back only to resurge, three times. As in old Gaelic tradition, such manifestations are not commented upon when they occur, but silently acknowledged, perhaps with a slight nod of the head. The next day her apprentice (a mature woman) said “Grandmother instructed me to ask you how many spirits came through the fire last night ?”. I answered “There were three spirits that came through the fire… I sensed them, but could not tell what they intended”. That seemed to be acceptable. There was no “teaching” no “wisdom transmission” just mutual silent acknowledgement. At one point, though, Grandmother had said something that I could not fail to forget: “We do not want your people adopting our traditions. You have your own traditions to feed and care for. When your people are mature again within their own traditions, we can all come together in peace at last”.

2 – Ancestors: on another occasion, Big Toe Hears Crow looked at me and laughed. He said “We feel sorry for you white folks…you only have your miserable human ancestors. We have birds, animals, forests of trees, and even entire mountains”. He had a habit of humorous provocative utterances. And again: I was talking about the Wheel of the Year (at the bookstore mentioned above) and asked if anyone in the audience had examples in their own understanding or tradition. Big Toe quietly said “ Well, just like you, we have the East and the West, and then..hmm…yes… there is the South and the North. And there is a Buffalo in there somewhere, but the Buffalo moves around a lot”.

Both of the elders that I mention here have passed on into the spirit worlds in the years between then and now. Not all of my ancestors are miserable, except perhaps some of the Calvinists. One “went native” in South Africa in the late 19th century, where he was renowned at spirit healing. He surely found a wandering Buffalo.

Note: The correct bovid name is “Bison” for North America, and “Buffalo” for Africa. But the ancestors do not seem to care.

R J Stewart 2023

Books by R.J. Stewart include The UnderWorld Initiation, The Well of Light, and The Spirit Cord

Involving the Ancestors

I have written elsewhere about my own visit to a wise shaman in Kizyl, Siberia, in 2005 – see ‘Meeting the Shaman in Siberia’.

During this session, with chanting and drumming, he endeavoured to drive out the ‘bad energy’ or misfortune, which he identified as lodging in my shoulder –indeed, I did tend to ‘shoulder’ burdens. I can interpret this in a straightforward way, since I’d had a period of trouble and ill health. However, just as the ritual involved Herel connecting with his own ancestors to help him, so I sense that my own ancestors may have been involved too.

Shaman Herel in his consulting room at Kizyl, Tuva in Siberia

For several years before this trip, I had been researching my family history, which was mostly a pleasurable experience, with stimulating discoveries. However, quite early on in the process I had a different kind of experience, which I can only describe as a spontaneous vision happening on the borders of sleeping and waking. It seemed that a whole procession of dark, shadowy forms was marching right through me, coming in through my back and emerging from my chest. They seemed oppressive, somewhat sinister, and even threatening. I sensed that they had emerged from my ancestral past, and that something connected with fate was unfolding. It was a time when my own life balance was shifting in a profound way.

However, after the visit to Siberia some seven or eight years later, I returned to the UK via Moscow, and en route recorded in my diary:

Woke up 5am after 7 hours solid sleep – with an impression of my relatives and ancestors at my right shoulder, flowing out of it in a wavy shape like a kind of stream. A warm and light quality to it.

So perhaps the shaman’s ritual had actually relieved that heaviness in me, removing the weight of a negative aspect of my ancestry? At any rate, it certainly seemed that something had now been transformed.

The paths of ancestry may run deeper through our lives than we imagine, and it may be understood better than we might think by the ancient practices of shamanism. I can only speculate how that works – whether, to put it in a rather crude way, a shamanic ritual can work like unblocking a clogged conduit, so that the water can run free and clear again. Perhaps it helps to balance out energies, as anyone’s ancestry is bound to be a mixture of forces, some outdated and needing to be left behind.

At any rate, the season of Halloween is an appropriate one in which to remember and honour our ancestors. Amidst the jolly, scary ghouls and witches trick-or-treating round the town, perhaps we can take time also to quietly recall those who have come before us on the ancestral path, and to cherish their memory. They are not lost, for indeed, we all share one ‘common life’.

A modern take on Halloween from Topsham, Devon above, with an older depiction of an ancestor from Easter Island below. Perhaps they are not so different after all.

Acknowledgements:

With thanks to R. J. Stewart for permission to include his account of conversing with the Native American Elders.

And to Herel, the shaman of Kizyl, Tuva, who remains a bright presence in my mind.

Plus the organisation known as Saros, which explored notions of ‘common mind’ with the motto that ‘there is always somewhere further to go’. Its history and purpose can be discovered here. Offshoots of Saros can be found here

The month of the ancestors

On October 8, 2023October 4, 2023 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs, Myth and Landscape

For the month of October, I have prepared two posts on the deep past of our inheritance. Autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere now leads us towards the darkest time of year; many cultures celebrate festivals of the dead after harvest time, when darkness begins to prevail. Halloween and the Day of the Dead are probably the best known of these customs.

So in the months of declining light, our thoughts may track back more often to distant memories. And we might find time in those darker evenings to research the deeper areas of life, including our origins in terms of family history.

My own father was dying over Halloween, but he actually made it into the small hours of All Saints’ Day (Nov 1st). I was glad of this, as it is a day of more peace and less turbulence. At about 5am, I got the call to say he had passed away. But when I rushed out of my house in Bristol to drive up to Shropshire (too late to bid him farewell) I couldn’t leave straight away. I discovered that the chaotic energies of Halloween had been at work in the night, and my car windscreen was now smashed. However, perhaps none of us can pass on to peace without a breaking up of the familiar world around us. It seemed symbolic.

Listen to the spine-tingling ‘Soul Cake’ song sung here by the Watersons folk group. People would go door to door around the time of Halloween and All Souls’Day, begging for a soul cake.

The Circle and the Line

I have taken a different approach in each post. My first post here is about the ‘circular’ form of viewing our ancestry, which can open up a new perspective on our direct ancestors, through grandparents, great grandparents and so on.

The second will look at some of the more mysterious and magical aspects of ancestry, and explores the idea that it may still in some sense be present for us today, and that we can have a relationship with this. This is about the resonance of our ancestral line and how it may play a part in our lives.

The Circle of the Ancestors

As part of my degree at Cambridge, I studied anthropology. But although I loved the course, I was alarmed to be told that understanding ‘kinship systems’ was one of the most important elements of the syllabus. Really? I had hoped to learn about myths and rituals, songs and customs, maybe even a bit of magic or witchcraft… And it turned out to be rather heavy reading, untangling the complexities of who can be considered a brother, aunt, cousin, or potential marriage partner in each particular tribe. But anthropology certainly did open my eyes to other ways of viewing different systems of human relationships. I learnt that all in all, there is no one fixed pattern of how to define a family or a relative.

Kinship systems can indeed be complex and confusing!

All this can have a bearing on family history. By the time I came to research mine, in the early 2000s, I had forgotten the nuances of Nuer kinship degrees, but I did know for sure that there was more than one way to cut up the ancestral cake. This had largely been ignored by an older generation of genealogists in our Western Societies, who used to focus almost exclusively on the paternal line, which usually carries the family name. The ‘distaff side’, as the mother’s line was disparagingly termed, was often neglected. Why bother with it, was the general genealogical view, when the all-important family name could not be traced up and down the generations? (And heaven help us if there is a hint of illegitimacy! Better cover it up if possible.) However, in a curious way this practice actually benefited me, because my father’s diligent research on his paternal Irish ‘Phillips’ line – including any distantly-related aristocracy that he could dig up –largely ignored my mother’s family history. It was thus new ground for me to investigate.

Like many other people, I didn’t care much about family history until both my parents had died, and suddenly I was next in the firing line. Perhaps this is commonly a time when we claim our family inheritance, in its intangible sense, along with any material goods left to us. It may turn into a job of stewardship, done according to our own beliefs, as it’s the oldest generation who tend to be the gatekeepers to the family stories, keen to impart the ones they choose, hiding the ones they don’t like.

We can and do change the lens through which we view our ancestors. Knowing this also offers opportunities to ‘choose’ our ancestors, in the sense of selecting that viewpoint. It can be argued that DNA is the sensible way to determine our family connections, but that doesn’t necessarily give us the full picture, since beyond a certain degree of blood kinship, DNA may not share common traits. And for many of us, the ‘story’ of the family is more important anyway, including members who’ve been adopted, born out of wedlock, etc. One branch of my Phillips family is linked to me by the story of two boys, cousins of a sort, who were taken into the main family home at Gaile in Tipperary, while their father purportedly went off to fight for the British in the American War of Independence. And yet, no one can quite be sure whether they were blood relatives – the DNA doesn’t confirm this – or illegitimate and more distant descendants, or even no relation at all, just welcomed into the family and taking its name. In the long run, does it matter? They are firmly embedded in its story now.

So I’m giving over this blog to one particular way of not only seeing, but experiencing the ancestors. It’s ‘the circle’ method, which I’ll now describe here in a slightly adapted compilation from my book ‘Growing your Family Tree: Tracing your Roots and Discovering Who You Are’.

Setting up your Circle of Ancestors

I first heard about this way of invoking your ancestors at a concert celebrating the life of John Clare, a poet who was himself firmly attached to his roots and ancestral landscape. One of the musicians performing there mentioned a family history project which his daughter had brought home from school. She had been asked to enter all her direct-line ancestors into a series of concentric circles, expanding from a central point representing the person in question to include each generation further back. In this case, therefore, the musician’s daughter, would be named at the central point, and her mother and father placed opposite each other on the first circle that surrounded her. The second circle would be marked with the names of her four grandparents, and so on through six circles in total, ending with a final circle containing sixty-four ancestors, all of whom would be her 4x great-grandparents.

It fired my imagination, and back at home, I tried to draw neat circles divided in the correct way, divisions doubling in each circle. It was tricky! Eventually, I achieved a rough template and started to fill it in. This was at a time when I hadn’t got so far with my family history, and inevitably I ground to a halt in different areas of the circle. There weren’t many 3x great-grandparents that I could name at this stage, and very few 4x ones. But the concept, of standing in the centre of circles of ancestors was compelling. I still come back to it frequently, and sometimes check to see if all those sixty-four are now included. (Not quite!)

Making a circle diagram for your ancestors

Creating the Circle: Exercise

See if you can create something similar, but I suggest a reduced version to make it more manageable, which will probably end at the circle of thirty-two. I find that thirty-two direct ancestors are plenty, if I want to know them as individuals, and discover their stories. Thirty-two are as many as I could hold in my mind at once, and as this diagram works as a visual aid and a tool for connecting with your ancestors, I recommend keeping it within practical bounds. Bear in mind that if you were to go some nineteen generations back, you would have over half a million ancestors in your circle!

Yes, we do indeed have thousands of direct-line ancestors!

Contemplating the Circles

Now you can start to make use of your chart. What does it feel like, to be at the centre of your ancestral circles? Try the following:

Look at the finished chart (even if not all the names are complete); gaze at it for a few minutes.
Then close your eyes and try to visualise it. Call up the names of those you know; this is probably easiest in terms of one circle at a time, your grandparents followed by great-grandparents and so on.
Can you see in your mind’s eye a circle of sixteen, then thirty-two grandparent ancestors, even if you cannot differentiate each one of them? Which ones do stand out clearly? Which are shadowy figures? Which faces do you know, from your own life or photos, and which are as yet unknown?
Acknowledge them all with gratitude and respect for the life they have passed on to you.

This is a powerful exercise, which can produce different types of effects. You may experience the ancestors as protecting and caring. But being surrounded by family in this way might also come across as suffocating and restricting. There is no ‘right’ way to experience it, and it may well be that you will find that it varies at different times. After all, this is on a par with family life – sometimes it’s the best support we can have, and sometimes it curbs and frustrates us. But if you keep this as an exercise to return to, you may find that your sense of being connected with your ancestors grows, and that in some sense, they become more ‘alive’ to you. Use the circle as a personal ritual to greet and get to know them.

The remote hills at Bwlch-y-sarnau, Wales, which is the landscape which my Welsh ancestors came from

As Awo Fa’lokun Fatunmbi says, writing in connection with the Yoruba people of Africa:

‘Communication with your own ancestors is a birthright….You cannot know who you are if you cannot call the names of your ancestors going back seven generations. Remembering names is more than reciting a genealogy, it is preserving the history of a family lineage and the memory of those good deeds that allowed to the family to survive.’

The wedding of my Welsh grandfather, Rev. Bernard Owen, to my grandmother Hannah Brown, of Devon and Midlands heritage.

The Ancestors of Easter Island

A Coventry Quest: Finding a Grandfathe

The Abduction of Mary Max

Following the Trails of the City

On January 30, 2022January 29, 2022 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Myth and Landscape2 Comments

*As winter moves towards spring, I am tramping the streets of Exeter and taking a break from writing*

Becoming a City Guide

I am training to become one of the City of Exeter Redcoat Guides, a six month long course which qualifies us to lead a variety of historic tours around the town. We tramp around the streets with our trainers – I call them ‘handlers’, as we can be a bit of a handful! – working on the different routes and the stories embedded there. All this is transforming my view of the city, as I learn to see it in its Roman incarnation, as a medieval centre of wool trade, a gracious place for 18th century gentry, a smoking ruin in the Blitz, and a trail blazer in pedestrian shopping precincts (yes, really! With a view of the Cathedral, the architect specified.) The detail of all this is enough to take your breath away, but of course we must keep our breath so we can spill it out to our future interested visitors. Exeter has minted coins, hidden the mother of King Harold, killed people with cholera, and hosted the oldest civic Guildhall in the country – the office of Mayor dates back to the early 13th century.

The ceremony of the Lammas Glove, opening the season of the summer fair as it once was. You can see the Civic treasures – the ‘Cap of Maintenance’ and the sword given by King Henry VII. The garlanded glove is born aloft on the carriage behind.

And I go on my own exploration tours of the city. I learned long ago that if you approach the place you live in, or near, with a specific desire to seek out its hidden treasures, you begin to see with fresh eyes and perhaps make discoveries in a serendipitous way. While living in Cambridge in the 70s, for instance, I went out on a walk one morning with this intent, and to my surprise stumbled across an archaeological dig. I’d had no idea that this was taking place; it was now empty of archaeologists, but I just happened to arrive when one of them was making her final site visit. She was able to tell me that this was an exciting new discovery of a Roman Mithraic Temple. It transformed my sense of the townscape and its ancient origins.

*The medieval bridge over the River Exe, now in a kind of traffic island*

In Exeter recently, Robert and I went out on a cold, murky Sunday morning so that I could visit the remains of the medieval Exe Bridge, now lying beneath a modern concrete interchange of roads and new bridges. (For my presentation topic in the Red Coats training, I’ve chosen ‘Bridges over the Exe’.) I knew that it can be a dodgy area for drug dealers and the like, but we had it all to ourselves. It looked pristine, and the recent rains even gave a glimpse of what it must have looked like when water once flowed under it. We looked at the remains of St Edmund’s Chapel, patron saint of bridges, and I mused over the story of a 12th century female anchorite, who walled herself up on the bridge and refused to move to let travellers pass!

*Walking along the bridge, with the remains of St Edmund’s Chapel*

Just as we left the bridge and walked towards the nugget of medieval Exeter still preserved around Stepcote Hill, the door to St Mary Steps church opened. A congregation of two elderly ladies climbed gingerly down the steps (hence the name!) and an array of priests and servers invited us in warmly to view the church, which is normally closed. We drank in the ancient atmosphere, enhanced by recent liberal doses of incense. Another stroke of luck!

I have in mind to write a post later on about ‘Pilgrimage of Place’ – of how visiting or re-visiting a town or a landscape can be a heightened experience, often, as mentioned, with happy coincidences along the way. My survey of family historians, when I was writing ‘Growing Your Family Tree’, also showed that others had shared this experience, treading ancestral trails. When I return from my break, I hope to share this with you. If any of you would like to write to me with your own experiences, I’ll be glad to read them and perhaps share them in the post. You can reach me via the Contact form on this website or on my author’s website at www.cherrygilchrist.co.uk.

*Medieval Stepcote Hill, once the main route into Exeter from the river and through the West Gate*

A Winter-into-Spring Break

I am now going to take a break for a couple of months, as I do every now and then. This gives me a chance to replenish my writing energy and fish up a few more ideas from the deep.
Thank you for coming with me thus far!

*The alchemist fishes for coral, in the warm Sicilian sea. I shall make do with the Devon sea and rivers to inspire me. (Epigram 32: ‘Atlanta* *Fugiens’ by Michael Maier, 1617)*

Stories from the Christening Mugs – Part 2

On October 10, 2021October 9, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Treasures

In the previous blog, I told the stories of three children born in the 19th century, based on what I could find out about their lives from their christening mugs. This post will cover the rest of the christening mugs which I have in my collection, but I’ll begin with the odd one out. I bought all but one of mugs as a job lot in an auction some years ago, but there was already one on my shelf, which had been handed down to me through the family. However, when I investigated its provenance, it wasn’t quite what I thought.

The Mystery Mug

*Thomas William Picken’s christening mug – or is it?*

I have a decorated mug sitting on the shelf which bears the name of my great grandfather. It’s inscribed Thomas William Picken 1862. But here’s the thing: he was born in 1834. And there’s no one else on the family tree who it could possibly be. So as he would have been 28 in that year, what could this mean? It’s a large mug, good enough for a strong cup of tea rather than the dainty little mugs for children to hold milk. Most of the others that I have are quite small, by comparison. But perhaps it was also a custom to give personalised mugs as birthday presents to adults?

But no – it seems that this is a shaving mug. I found the relevant information on an American website, since there seems to be much more interest in the history of barber shops in the USA than there is in the UK, and hence a study there of the mugs themselves:
Mugs purchased and held at barbershops were customized with the client’s name and often displayed to encourage the customer to return to the barbershop regularly. Most barber shaving mugs were imported from France or Germany undecorated: it was customary to have the mug then hand decorated with the shaver’s occupation and name….
Barber shops sold mugs with the owners’ names on them partly because they thought that shaving rash came from sharing the same soap. In reality, the rash was not a result of soap but of un-sterilized razors. ‘The Sharpologist’

*A barber’s shop of the 19th century. Grave concerns were raised in ‘The Lancet’ medical journal about the risks of infection there, including the transmission of syphilis*. *It paid to bring your own equipment.*

So that’s something new to add to the story of decorated mugs! My great-grandfather Thomas Picken was himself a Chemist & Druggist, and so might have been especially keen to avoid infection. Perhaps it was given to him as a gift, or perhaps he could order a mug from the supplier who provided him with other apothecary jars, which likewise were often ceramic, with beautiful decoration and calligraphy. (Selections below include a Delft jar on the left and a Spanish one on the right)

The Unidentifed Babies

Before I come to the three christening mug stories for this post, I should also pay tribute to those owners who proved elusive to research.

Alas, I cannot trace William Pedley 1848, M. Lightfoot 1855, or Alice Barber born Mar 19 1866! There are multiple possible entries for each of them, and no clues as to the areas of their births. Many different locations for babies of these same names appear in the birth registers, including Yorkshire, Wiltshire and London. Although Alice’s mug has an exact date, the registers only state the quarter year of birth, so it would require applying for certificates for all the Alice Barbers born in the first quarter of 1866 to find the right one.

Below, you can see their very pretty mugs, some of the most charming in the collection

But the good news……is that for all the mugs I have traced, the children lived into adulthood. In the second half of the 19th century, at least one in ten babies died before their first birthday, and older children were vulnerable to infections and accidents. Perhaps this set of babies had a better start in life than some; although not in the top rungs of society, several of those I’ve traced were born into a well-off family, or one where there was solid employment for the father. Although no one in Victorian Britain was completely protected from infection or mishap, the dangers of early death must have been higher for the very poor.

Ronald Arthur Shipstone

Ronald Arthur Shipstone was born on Nov 29th 1880, in Basford, Derbyshire, and he was to become a pillar of society. His father James was a brewer, and the Shipstone brewery became a mighty enterprise, with Ronald Arthur eventually taking its helm as Managing Director. James had at least six children, and was able to call the brewery ‘James Shipstone and Sons’. It ran for almost a century and a half, from 1852 to 1991.

Ronald Shipstone supported many charities, was President of numerous associations, and became a benefactor to various Nottingham hospitals and medical institutions through his will. He married Patty Theodora Woodhouse in 1913, but as far as I can see, had only one child – another Ronald – who died in 1930. Perhaps this lack of heirs is why he distributed his fortune so widely among good causes when he died in 1944. His fortune at his death in 1944 was recorded as £334,065 – approximately £15 million pounds in today’s money. The turnout for his funeral was enormous, according to the newspapers:

‘Large Gathering At Funeral Of Mr. R. A. Shipstone’
A long column of uniformed special constables marched in the funeral cortege yesterday of Mr. Ronald Arthur Shipstone. Commander of the Nottingham Special Constabulary, of Lucknow House, Mapperley Park. Nottingham, who died last Friday, aged 64…There were so many wreaths that a special dray had to be used to carry them, and the concourse of the mourners at the church was tremendous…A guard of honour of special constables was in attendance upon the coffin, which was draped with the Union Jack. Nottingham Journal, 22nd Nov. 1944.

His story is a worthy one. He fulfilled his parents’ expectations, succeeded in business, and became a public benefactor. And that’s where I’m content to leave it, although for anyone interested in further details, a family history website gives more detailed information. At any rate, I have his christening mug, a reminder that this brewing magnate and philanthropist was once a tiny helpless infant.

*The Shipstone Star Brewery in New Basford, Nottingham*

Joe Singleton

In brief, this is the Quiet Life of Joe Singleton who was born on July 24th 1861, in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Details of his life are scanty, but I can report that he went to school (not all children did), became an iron moulder, then a foreman at his work. He married a woman called Sarah, and lived in Leeds with her and their two children at the time (1901), a boy and a girl. Joe, like Ronald Shipstone, seems to have died in 1944, aged 83. To his descendants, there may be much more to say about Joe, but this is as far as my investigations have led.

W. H. C. Gayner

And finally, in the christening mug collection, we come to W. H. C. Gayner, which opens up a different type of story, one where family history, geography, religion and economics all play a part. I’m pleased to have had this opportunity to delve into these areas, and see more of the background against which his life story unfolded.

Although it can be difficult to research a name with only initials, and especially if there is no date or place of birth, the combination of these three initials did prove enough to identify William Heydon Champneys Gayner, born 11 Nov 1888 in Gloucestershire, and buried in Birmingham in 1949.

As with Emily Cranfield, the questions that surfaced aroused my curiosity. In particular, why did William’s father, John Edward Gayner, move from rural Filton near Bristol to the city of Birmingham? And why or how did he change his occupation from that of farmer to being a manufacturer? This was a big leap, and unusual for the times.

Luckily, a local history website has filled in some of the gaps here, showing that the clash between the non-conformism and the established church played its part. The Gayners were an old Quaker family who had lived in this and the nearby Thornbury area for generations, and there were other Quakers in the area too, such as the Champneys, whose name William also bore.

Although Filton is now an outlying urban district of Bristol, it was at that time countryside. The Gayners worked the land that they owned there, but in common with other staunch Quakers and non-Conformists, they refused to pay tithes to the Church of England. This meant that they were hard hit by fines, which in this case gradually eroded their holdings. The website reveals that William H. C. Gayner’s grandfather, another William, stood by his beliefs:

William GAYNER, (1754-1830) took over both Church Farm and Meadowsweet Farm in 1787, Congyre in 1790 and Late Millett’s Farm in 1792, the first and latter of which were called Upper House and Lower House by his family. His farm products were gradually taken away by warrants for non-payment of tythes. On one occasion in 1783, John Owen II and Benjamin Pierce had to take ten sacks of wheat valued £16 3/6 from Gayner’s farms for the rector, Francis Ward. William Gayner was Filton’s principal employer and kept diaries of work done, mainly telling of the activities of his daymen, carters, oxen and horses and records of his sales and purchases in connection with the farm. (Bristol & Avon Family History Society – Filton area)

*Compare the plain style of this mug for a Quaker child with the more elaborate twirling decoration of Ronald Shipstone’s, above, heir to a brewing empire.*

William junior, W.C. H. of the christening mug, seen above, spent part of his childhood at Meadowsweet farm, mentioned above. But in 1901, the census records that he was living instead at 81 Kingsdown Parade, Bristol, with three siblings, but no parents. This might seem very strange indeed, but I think this was due to poor census keeping. I actually lived in in Somerset Street, Bristol for 13 years, which is the next street in parallel to Kingsdown Parade. And while doing some house history research, I found that our house and the adjoining one were used in earlier times as a small boarding school. (Ours had been the girls’ house, and had a huge lock on the front door!) Apparently, in the 19th century, Gloucestershire farming families frequently sent their children to Bristol, to get a good education. Facilities were presumably limited in their own areas, and roads in Gloucestershire were notoriously bad, often choked with mud in the winter months. Boarding school was the obvious practical option.The big houses in these two roads, Kingsdown Parade and Somerset Street, were ideal for modest, small schools, serving the yeoman farmers who could afford to educate both their boys and girls there. So my supposition is that the census entry for William is poorly recorded, since it doesn’t indicate a head of the household, as it should, and has failed to mention that this is not a family home but a school boarding house. Probably too, further census research might clarify this, although such schools often came and went quite quickly.

Then, in 1911, William’s parents John and Charlotte have moved with their children to Edgbaston in Birmingham. The family is fully back together again. And I can confirm that a Edgbaston is a very pleasant leafy area, despite being almost central, since I myself went to school there! But there is no more farming for the Gayners, and suddenly John Edward (b Filton) 53 is Managing Director of a Woodturning Company, of which our William is the Company Secretary. Mother Charlotte is 48, sister Elsie Charlotte, 24, a ‘Musical Student and Teacher’, while Helen Lucy, 20, is a bookkeeper. They have 9 rooms in the house at 81 Ryland Road.

What has brought about this remarkable change? Perhaps it was partly the decline in their farming fortunes, but I think it was more likely that they started to sell off their farmland for building. Filton now began to grow: Between the wars, Filton expanded rapidly to become a suburb of Bristol. Terraced and semi-detached housing was built in small estates on both sides of the A38 trunk road. A housing estate was laid out in the 1920s covering much of GAYNER’s land and one of the first roads was named GAYNER Road in recognition of the family’s long association with the parish. (Bristol & Avon Family History Society – Filton area) Eventually, it became the local centre for the aerospace industry and retained a small airfield until 2012. (I had personal experience of this in 1999, when our flight from Bristol to Amsterdam, was transferred to Filton because of fog at Bristol airport. We were bussed from there to Filton and took off from what seemed to be an almost toy-sized airfield!) So the Gayners, deprived of some of their fortune by intolerant and greedy church authorities, must have been pleased to turn the tables and make good money from their remaining land.

*Filton House – one of the few old farmhouse buildings left in the area, now dominated by the Aerospace buildings next door*

Birmingham offered good manufacturing opportunities. There may be more to the reasons why John Edward and Charlotte Gayner chose to uproot to this spot, but cash in the bank and good prospects for enterprise must have driven their decision to a large extent. However, it’s also worth mentioning that other Quaker businesses did well in Birmingham, the most famous example being of course Cadbury’s chocolate empire at Bournville. (When the wind blew in the right direction, we could smell the liquid chocolate on the air as we walked in through the school gates!)

Son William (W.H.C.) served in World War One, in the British Red Cross Soc & Order of St John, and was awarded the British War Medal, and the Victory Medal. In 1920, he married Emmeline Ewell at Eastry, near Sandwich, in Kent. And oddly enough, this is yet another place connected with my life, as Sandwich was where I spent a large part of my childhood.

In 1939, William appears in the National Register as a manufacturer, living at 9 Hintlesham Ave Edgbaston, B’ham. He died 17 April, 1949, leaving £52,507 to his wife Emmeline, to Margaret Ewell Gayner, spinster, and to John Veale Gayner, student. The family had made a huge shift since his childhood in the fields of rural Filton, in Gloucestershire.

And this rounds off my journey through the christening mugs and their stories. I hope they will have engaged you too. Next time you go to an antiques shop or auction, if you spot an object with a name, such as a sampler or a christening mug, give it a little nod of recognition. Here is someone’s personal history, a story that you might be able to tease out if you have the time and the inclination.

Next time….

We are heading into Halloween and I have a couple of spooky posts coming up, on Haunted Dartmoor and Ghostly Topsham. Please join me for a frisson of fear on Oct 31st and Nov 14th.

*My black cat and my Russian witches are preparing for the season of ghosts and ghouls*

Stories from the Christening Mugs – Part 1

On September 19, 2021October 1, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs, Treasures2 Comments

At an auction about ten years ago, I bought a collection of Victorian christening mugs. I was drawn to their charm and to the idea that each name heralded a story, a story of a life that had unfolded in some way and which I might perhaps be able to trace. I was deeply into family history research at the time, and was also writing a book about life stories, Your Life, Your Story. I made a start on the research but got distracted by other avenues to explore, which included investigating the history of two samplers which had been passed down to me from my mother. Their story is already on my blog at ‘A Tale of Two Samplers’.

And so the mugs decorated the shelves of the houses we’ve lived in since, and look particularly pretty filled with summer flowers. Then, recently, my subscription to Ancestry was about to expire and I decided to have one last go at researching their origins. I dug out my original notes, sorted and typed them, and away I went on the trail.

Objects which have a personal story fascinate me, but if they’re not part of my own heritage or a strand of history that I’m following, there’s a limit to how far I’d be prepared to go in chasing every detail. But it was a pleasure to discover the outline of six of these lives. The other three, as I’ll explain, could not be traced. And then, finally, I also solved the mystery of a named mug passed down through our own family, which I couldn’t understand before.

So let’s imagine these 19th century babies, each one the apple of its parents’ eyes. Each one wide-eyed and curious about the world around, with a future life as yet unwritten. How did it all turn out?

I’ll give the essence of what I’ve found, since unless by some strange coincidence any of these is connected to your own family, you will not be enthralled by too many dates and details. These are stories-in-a-nutshell.

Silvester Rose

Silvester Rose was born on May 16^th 1876. An unusual name is a good start for researching family history. In this case, it’s a rather suave name which we might associate with the leader of a swing band, or perhaps a louche artist. However, our Silvester was born into a solid tradesman’s family – his father Fred was a plumber and decorator, and Silvester followed in his footsteps, becoming a plumber’s apprentice when he was in his teens. The family lived in Towngate, Leyland, a few miles south of Preston in Lancashire. (If you’re interested in how the village looked at the time, there are many historical photos here ) In 1904, Silvester married Jane Ellen Bowling, but she died before 1911 when he remarried Sabina Booth, a dressmaker. By that time Silvester was 34, and described his occupation as ‘publican’. Perhaps he was tired of crawling under floorboards to deal with pipes. Perhaps he fancied a more sociable occupation.

Silvester died in 1933, and was buried on 28th January at St Andrew’s Church, Leyland. He was only 56, but had seemingly done well enough in his working life to leave £4002 14s 6d to his widow Amy.

There’s one more element in his life which might play a part in this: in 1909, aged 32, he had become a Freemason, and joined the Carnarvon Lodge of United Grand Lodge of England. He would thus have had solid connections in the area which may well have helped him in business. Did he have children? According to a family tree uploaded to Ancestry, he had at least one child – a daughter called Dorothy Mabel Ellen Rose, born in 1913, who died in 1983 at the age of 69 in the same area of Lancashire. She was given the same name as his mother, Dorothy, the woman who had gazed into her newborn baby’s face back over a hundred years earlier. Who chose his name, Silvester? Fred or Dorothy, or even another relative? That we shall probably never know.

Places and families

Often, in previous generations, people didn’t move too far from their birthplace. Although there are plenty of exceptions, especially the emigrants, who sailed away to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, many life stories ended more or less where they began. Marriages were often to partners known since childhood. Other relatives were on hand to help out with the children. There were economic, social and practical benefits to staying put in your area. Most of the stories I’ve researched here turned out to be about those who stayed local, with one interesting exception.

*This painting, ‘***Letter from the Colonies**‘ by Thomas Webster, was painted in 1852, a time when many migrants had already sailed away from their homeland to the far shores of Canada, America or Australia, for instance. The arrival of a letter must have been a great event, perhaps containing news that was already several months old, but still vital to the relatives remaining behind.

Frederick John Bartlett

Frederick John Bartlett was born in 1877. His is the only christening mug among my collection which tells us where he was born, in Eastbourne, and it seems he stayed there most of his life. His father William was a Bank Manager, and his mother Sara Elizabeth looked after her brood of children at 3, Prospect Cottages, Crown Lane. Frederick himself started his career – and indeed ended it – as a Bank Clerk. He married Emily Adeline Manning, and by 1939 was retired and living with her in Milton Road, Eastbourne. However, he did have one major interlude in his settled Sussex life, and that was serving in World War One. His army records show that he signed up in 1915, and plainly survived his service. According to a family tree on Ancestry, he died in 1954. Is this another quiet life, well-lived, with just a brief foray into the theatre of war?

Next we’ll move on to the only girl commemorated in my set of mugs. Were such mugs ordered more to celebrate the birth of boys, rather than girls? I haven’t yet found a definitive answer to this, but I discovered that Emily Bronte had her own mug, which is now preserved in the Museum at Haworth. Perhaps girls played more with their mugs as children, at pretend tea parties for instance, and they were more likely to get broken? But this is merely a guess.

*Emily Bronte’s christening mug, now kept in the Bronte Museum at Haworth*

Emily Cranfield

Emily Cranfield came from the Bedford area, where she was born in Roxton in 1863, and died in 1952, at the good old age of 89 years. Her full name was Emily Wilkerson Cranfield, as she was given her mother’s maiden name for a middle name being, which was a common practice in the period. She had strong family connections in the area, yet in all the census entries from 1871 when she was 8, to 1911 when she was 48, and even again in the 1939 Register aged 76, she is never once found living with her own family. Even in her girlhood she was not at home according to the records, and although in adult life she remained a spinster, this usually meant a woman would be more likely to live with relatives, and not try to fend for herself. There is surely a story here, which I have only partially teased out.

Emily’s father, Thomas Cranfield, married Emily Wilkerson, and they had three children – Mary Jane, Emily Wilkerson of the christening mug, and Anne. But Emily the mother died in 1864, the year that Anne was born, and when baby Emily was only a year old. Thomas re-married a Maria Gibbins two years later, in 1866. This was not unusual – the majority of widowers married again as quickly as they could, often within three months, in order to have a new mother for their children and someone to run the house while the man worked to bring in a wage. For a widowed woman, this was equally advantageous in terms of economic survival. ‘Blended’ families were commonplace, despite the perception that it’s a modern invention. My own 2 x great grandmother, who came from a poor family of weavers and miners, ended up with at least twelve children under her roof, both her own, and as step-children from her two marriages to two widowers.

Thomas had already made a big financial commitment, since in 1864, the same year that Emily’s mother died, he had taken on the lease of a large country house and its farmland. As the documents tell us: In 1864 Rev. Robert Delap leased the house, with 749 acres and 37 poles of land to Thomas Cranfield of Roxton, yeoman, for £1,274/0/4 per annum. This lease was renewed in 1873 at a rent of £1,226/16/- per annum. You can also read a list of all the rooms in the well-appointed house at the records here. This was a sizeable holding, and Thomas went on to establish his position as a farmer, finishing his farming career with an impressive 1172 acres under his command in 1881. The gamble paid off.

But perhaps not for his family. Emily is never reported as living there. Was she, perhaps, rejected by her stepmother? Did they clash badly enough for Emily to want to move out when she could? Or was her father uncaring, and uninterested in providing for his daughter?

In 1871 she was named as a boarder at a school in St Peters Green, Bedford, with her sister Mary. A spell at boarding school wasn’t uncommon, and was often favoured by yeoman classes. who couldn’t get a good enough basic education for their children locally, as I’ve mentioned in A Tale of Two Samplers. The house we used to live in in Kingsdown, Bristol, was once a small school, filled with the sons and daughters of farmers from across the other side of the Avon river in Gloucestershire (boys in the house next door – girls in our house, which had a gigantic keyhole lock on the front door!) But the pattern for Emily seems here to be set for all the later years too. In 1881 she was a ‘visitor’ at the farm of Alfred Rogers in Bromham, Beds, and in 1891 she was living at her brother-in-law’s, Frank Hilton, another farmer. Then in 1901 she was working as a housekeeper at Mansion House, Bedford. By 1911, she was a ‘boarder’ with the family of William Barber. Finally, in 1939 (there are no accessible censuses between these dates) she was living on ‘private means’ at Manor Cottage, Kempston, with Mary J. Hilton. According to family trees posted on Ancestry, this was Emily’s sister Mary Jane (b. 1861) widow of Frank Hilton, the farmer referred to in 1891. It seems the two sisters were living out their latter years together as widow and spinster, so at least she was back with one of her own relatives.

Emily seems to have inherited a little money eventually, or perhaps was a very careful saver, as she has her own ‘means’ to live on, and a legacy to bestow at her death in 1952. She was able to leave the tidy sum of nearly £3000 to Marion Hilton, spinster, presumably another member of this Hilton family. But for several decades, she was just the boarder, the housekeeper, the maiden aunt. Was it a sad life? It’s probably unwise to jump to conclusions, based on intermittent records and no personal memoirs. But it certainly seems that she was excluded from the heart of the family, and its fortunes.

Refugee Ancestors: A Huguenot family in Devon

On March 21, 2021March 22, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs1 Comment

On the first of December, 1685, a band of bedraggled refugees landed at Appledore in Devon, and made their way to nearby Barnstaple. They were both sea sick and hungry after a difficult eleven day crossing from the West coast of France. Among them was my 6 x great grandfather, Louis Mauzy, a Huguenot minister, along with his wife Suzanna and at least two children. All the refugees on board the ship were Huguenots, fleeing a new wave of French persecution against their Protestant-based religion. Although they had no friends or contacts in this area of Devon, they were welcomed with open arms by the inhabitants of Barnstaple, who rushed to find them bread to eat, gave all of them lodging and hospitality in their homes, and then helped them find their way into new lives here.

An aerial view of Appledore as it is today, on the banks of the River Torridge

This dramatic story might never have been recorded, but for the diligence of fellow-refugee Jacques Fontaine, who had helped to organise the escape. Many years later in 1722, as Jacques reached the final stages of his life, he decided to write up his life story for the sake of his children and descendants. He made two copies by hand, to try and ensure that it would never be destroyed, and you’ll find the touching way in which he addressed his descendants at the end of this blog. It’s a rarity to find such an extended and accessible memoir from this period.

I have a particular interest in life stories, and have coached many courses and individuals to encourage memoir-writing, along with writing the book Your Life, Your Story. What we don’t write down may soon be lost, so it’s a huge gift to posterity to tell a life story, in full or in part. Thanks to Jacques’ resolution to preserve his story, we have a remarkable first-hand account of the flight of this group of French Huguenots from their homeland to begin new lives in England, and later in Ireland, both in Fontaine’s case, and in that of my own Mauzy ancestors. Jacques’ full-length memoir is entitled Persécutés pour leur foi: Mémoires d’une famille huguenote (Persecuted for their Faith: Memoirs of a Huguenot Family), and written in a very direct and engaging way. (The subsequent translation is a different matter, as I’ll explain later.) Extracts are included here, to bring to life his riveting account of this extraordinary journey. You can read the full set of extracts that I’ve translated via a link to a PDF at the conclusion of this blog.

Huguenot Ancestors

I knew that we had one prominent French Huguenot line in our family tree on my father’s side, which is that of the Despards, who arrived much earlier, at the court of Queen Elizbeth I in the late 16th century, and settled in Ireland as engineers and miners. I plan to write a blog about them in the not-too-distant future, celebrating my illustrious Despard cousin ancestor, the famous Col. Edward Marcus Despard (1751-1803), who fought alongside Nelson, was hanged as a radical, (or as a traitor, depending on your point of view) and who features, in a fictionalised version, in the television series of ‘Poldark’!

But as for the Mauzy family, I knew nothing, except that my 6x gt grandfather Louis Mauzy had been born in France and somehow ended up in Devon. His granddaughter Elizabeth, like my 7 x gt grandmother Alice Despard earlier, later married into the Irish line of my family. Living in Devon myself, I was curious to learn more about the story of how they arrived on these shores.

And I owe it to Jacques Fontaine’s enthusiasm for detail, that the name of my grandfather is actually recorded in his account of the escape from France. I’d probably never have found it though without an internet search for the uncommon name of Mauzy, which led me to the French edition of the memoir, available as a printed book. If I’d simply looked at the English translation, I wouldn’t have found it, as it only refers to a ‘Huguenot Minister’. This English version was produced in 1838 by one of Fontaine’s descendants, and omits many other chunks of text; it also changes the tone, endeavouring to make it consistently solemn and pious throughout, instead of the mix of entertaining digressive rambles and changes of mood which Fontaine himself employed, in an engaging way. If by any chance you’re eager to delve into this life story, I suggest you try the French text if you possibly can, as it has a wealth of detail and genealogy excluded from the later translation.

One of many studies of the Huguenots, and of how they entered into the social fabric of the countries where they took up new lives

The Huguenots flee from France

Who were the Huguenots? They were principally French Protestants who emerged in the wake of the 16th century Reformation, and followed in particular the doctrines of the religious reformer Jean Calvin. (The origin of the name Huguenot is uncertain, but is probably taken from Dutch or German allusions.) They came under attack from Catholics in France, and many were killed in ambushes and by raiding parties, especially in the infamous St Bartholemew’s Massacre of 1572, the time when the Despards in my family tree fled to England and Ireland. For a while, peace between the two religious factions was restored by a treaty known as the Edict of Nantes, issued in 1598. But this stability eventually broke down, and under King Louis IV, persecution of the Huguenots began again. When King Louis XIV ascended the French throne in 1643, it escalated to the point where he directed troops to seize Huguenot homes and force them to convert to Catholicism. Then in 1685 Louis XIV enacted the Edict of Fontainebleau, otherwise known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which made Protestantism illegal. More bloodshed ensued, and over the next several years, over 200,000 Huguenots fled France for other countries. You can read the full account here, and another produced by the UK Huguenot Society here.

The infamous massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572, painted by François Dubois. No one knows exactly how many Huguenots died, but the number is estimated to be between 3,000 and 50,000

It now becomes clear why this particular party of Huguenots fled to Devon in 1685. But this order of 1685 also forbade Huguenots to leave France, so anyone who wanted to make a run for it had to do so with great secrecy, as Fontaine’s story reveals. Patrols were out, looking for would-be deserters. Anyone caught trying to escape would be punished: the men condemned to row on galley ships, and the women imprisoned or sent to convents. ‘Convert or be enslaved’ was the message. The Huguenot Society tells us : About 200,000 Huguenots left France, settling in non-Catholic Europe – the Netherlands, Germany, especially Prussia, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and even as far as Russia where Huguenot craftsmen could find customers at the court of the Czars. Many of the Huguenots were well-educated and highly skilled in trades such as weaving, engineering, goldsmithing and clock-making, so their exodus deprived the country of a whole class of professionals and artisans.

But one thing puzzled me: in Fontaine’s account he says that while he and the others had to hide while waiting to board their ship, terrified of being caught, Louis Mauzy and his family were already on board, with a passport to leave. Then I discovered that Protestant Ministers were in fact ordered to ‘expatriate’ at this point in time. So to keep his faith, and to keep his family safe, Mauzy was compelled to leave his homeland.

A scene of Huguenot emigration, painted by Jan Antoon Neuhuys

And then, reading further, I learned that, as it happened, this turned out to be his sole chance to escape. The English translation of Fontaine’s memoirs gives a note that: ‘In 1686, The enactments were still more severe. A Protestant taken in the act of public worship was punished with death, and all Protestant clergymen whether natives or foreigners were to be executed. To increase the vigilance of the soldiery, a reward of three or four pistoles [gold coins] was given for every Protestant that was taken up.‘ (A Tale of the Huguenots, Jacques de La Fontaine, translated 1838, p100). So as it turned out, Louis Mauzy had only a few short months to make good his escape to England, during the brief period when he had been ordered to leave. If he had tarried, he and his family would most probably have been killed. Louis Mauzy brought with him his wife Suzanne, née Sannager, and at least two children, a girl also called Suzanne, and my future 5 x gt grandfather who was probably christened Louis, but known later as Lewis, in the anglicised form.

An article on ‘England’s First Refugees’ notes that ‘comparatively few refugees came in 1685, the actual year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or in 1686’, so it was only the brave or desperate few who took their chances at this period. I will now let Jacques Fontaine’s story take over.

A historic map of the complex coastline around La Rochelle and La Tremblade, which required much careful plotting to forge a safe route for the escaping Huguenots, plus dealing with tricky winds and currents.

Mémoires d’une famille huguenote

Chapter IX p. 127
In November 1685, Jacques Fontaine realised that it was the moment to try and escape from France with his own family, which included a sister-in-law and a niece. ‘I offered others the chance to come, but the response was that it wouldn’t only be foolish, but simply crazy, to risk such great dangers, since the coasts were all well-guarded, both on land and at sea.’

They arrived at a place called La Tremblade, not far from La Rochelle on the west coast ‘We stayed with a drunkard who was to be the pilot for the English vessel and who spoke English, and because of whom we ran a thousand risks of being discovered due to his carelessness and inebriation.’ After waiting for a few days, they were told that they could leave the next day, and ‘the drunkard’ ordered them to wait for him on the beach at Mus-de-Long. Here he intended to pick them up his boat. ‘We left at night, with a couple of horses to carry our small amount of luggage. Once on the beach, I made a speech to those there, and said a prayer for our situation…a prayer which was definitely uttered from the heart as much as from the mouth.´ They weren’t alone: ‘We were among some 40 or 50 people on the shore, nearly all of them young men and women.’ Things did not go as planned: ‘Some of them didn’t take all the precautions necessary to conceal their escape, with the result that the papists [Catholics] were forewarned, and sent orders that the ship should not depart; therefore, we remained in the dunes the whole day.’

There was a further scare, as the parish priest from La Tremblade had decided to take a stroll in those dunes, with his dog and a companion. ‘They were almost upon us; we had placed ourselves between two little hills of sand, and we could see the dog… But, by divine providence, two poor fishermen, who had already seen us [and were sympathetic to our plight] …made them believe that they were off track. They assured them that if they continued in this direction, they would get lost in the hills of the sand dunes.’ The fishermen thus successfully diverted the priest and his friend onto another path.

Earlier Huguenot refugee journeys in the 16th century, which helped to lay down tracks for those escaping later on.

Since the first attempt at boarding the ship had failed, Fontaine and his family party returned to La Tremblade:

We lodged at the home of a local townsman, where fifteen or twenty of us spent the day hiding in his house. He took us in very reluctantly, as they’d been searching all the houses in order to discover where we were. He was in a terrible state of fear…, because he would have to pay a fine of a thousand ecus if he were caught harbouring a Protestant. Night having come, he finally decided not to run such a risk, and ordered us all to leave his house; this was a little uncivil, but his reasoning was understandable.

“I have,” he said, “damned my soul in order to save my wealth, and I would lose it to save yours! No,” he said, “either do as I do or take your chance elsewhere.”

We considered this treatment to be rather cruel, but we had good cause to thank God later, since less than half an hour after we had left, the authorities came with some soldiers, and visited the house of our host, where they didn’t find anyone hiding. We hid ourselves again as best we could, one here, another there, among the poor sailors’ wives who we found far more charitable than the rich people, and thus we spent the next four or five days.

The area around La Rochelle itself was at this period largely Protestant, which also helped their chances of escape. But their troubles weren’t yet over. The captain of the English ship eventually arrived, but told the group they would have to follow him in their little boats to a place on the coast where he could pick them up unobserved once he’d cleared customs and finished with the official paperwork.

‘In the dusk of the same evening, on the 29th November 1685, we went on board a little open launch – my fiancée, her sister, my niece and me, two lads from Bordeaux and six young girls from Marennes, and, under the cover of night, we passed the guard boats on the Seudre and got through the current of Oleron without being spotted. Then at ten o’clock in the morning, we got soaked near the Ile d’Aix, at the tip of the Ile d’Oleron. There we waited until our ship appeared. We’d given an order to our boatman that if we were pursued, he should beach his boat as fast as he could, and then it would be simply a question of “Run for dear life!”‘

However, Jacques Fontaine had been lame ever since childhood, when a doctor failed to diagnose his broken leg. Running away was something he couldn’t do: ‘As for myself, who couldn’t count on my legs to carry me off, I had my gun and a pair of pistols, and was resolved never to sell my life and be taken alive.’ All went well though to start with, and they had already exchanged the agreed signals with the English captain, when suddenly: ‘We saw a royal frigate, which was used solely for checking ships, to make sure that no Protestant left the kingdom; if they found any, they sent the men to the galley ships and the women to convents.’ Their own boat lying at anchor would most definitely attract suspicion. ‘And we were only a canon ball’s length away from them!’ The escapees were in a state of utter terror.

A portrait of Jacques Fontaine. He is at pains to explain in his autobiography that the family was once called ‘de la Fontaine’, implying nobility.

The officers did indeed search the main ship, and this is where Fontaine refers to my own great grandfather, Louis Mauzy, mentioning that he had already boarded: ‘They searched everywhere in the ship. But no one was hiding on board; only M. Mauzy, a minister, and his family were there, with their passport. What a blessing, Lord, that we hadn’t already managed to get to the ship! If they had been delayed until an hour later, they would have found all of us.’ They still could not board however, but had to try and keep up with the ship to a place where it would be safe to embark, while at the same time not giving the officers any cause for suspicion. ‘When they had finished, they ordered the English captain to set sail, which he did, and he left with a favourable wind, leaving us behind, and with the frigate positioned nearly between us and him. This was a terrible crisis, because if we returned to La Tremblade, it was a hundred to one that we would not be able to escape.’ The little boat they were waiting in would arouse suspicion if it was still there: ‘The poor boatman, who only had his son as crew, wailed and lamented his plight and that of his son, persuaded that only the hangman’s noose awaited the two of them, since he had already changed his religion.’ This was a real crisis.

Finally, Jacques came up with a ploy to explain convincingly why they were anchored in this spot. The Huguenots would hide at the bottom of the boat, covered by an old sail, while the boatman blamed his presence on unfavourable winds. Fontaine, rather proud of his ploy afterwards, told the boatman what to do while the officials made their inevitable inspection: ‘If those on the frigate asked him where he was going, he would say:”From La Rochelle, and I want to go to La Tremblade.” If they asked, “And what have you got on board?” “Only ballast.”‘ The boatman must also pretend that he and his son were drunk and incompetent, presumably to heighten the impression of poor judgement!

An artist’s impression of Huguenot refugees arriving at Dover. The scene appears to be set at a similar period to the emigration of the Fontaine and Mauzy families, in 1685

It worked! They were then able to board the ship piloted by the English captain, and endured an eleven day crossing, with strong head winds and little to eat and drink. ‘At last we disembarked on the 1st December (old style calendar) at Appledore, in the Bristol Channel, at the mouth of the little river, which flows to Barnstaple. Having paid for our passage, your mother and I only had twenty gold pistoles [gold coins] left between us; but God, who had not led us to a safe country only to let us die from hunger, touched the hearts of the chief citizens of Barnstaple, who having sent for us, all twelve took one or two of us into their homes and treated us with incredible gentleness and friendliness, each taking as much care of the French person they had in their house as if we had been their children or their brothers, meaning that God allowed us to find fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters amongst strangers.‘

That first bite of fresh bread, given by welcoming strangers, made a huge impression on Jacques and his fellow refugees: ‘I am also compelled to remember, with gratitude for Divine Providence, that first mouthful of bread which I ate, having disembarked in Appledore. Our joy at being safe, and the privations we suffered in the ship, added to the usual purgations from being at sea, with myself in particular being the one most afflicted by sea sickness, led us now to having a great appetite, with the result that the most urgent thing (after giving thanks to God) was to ask for some bread.’

The shoreline of Appledore, as it is today.

But it only took a minute or two before Fontaine, who was an astute trader, as well as preparing to for Protestant ordination, saw a perfect business opportunity:

‘They gave us ‘biscuits’ [baked roundels of bread], as big as plates, which in France would be worth around two sous apiece; and, when we came to pay, they asked us to pay only half a sou for each ‘biscuit’. I was impressed with their good price, but because the man we were talking to spoke only very poor French, I thought he had made a mistake; after asking him several time he always said that each biscuit cost half a sou. Unable to believe this, I gave a little girl a marked sou, and told her to go and buy me bread with this amount. She went to the baker and brought me back two of these biscuits or galettes. That confirmed the price to me.’

The bread, and thus the wheat grain it was made with, were very cheap. He began to hatch a plan: ‘At first it occurred to me that anyone who could send grain to France would make a considerable profit; but my fiancée and I only had twenty pistoles left.‘ He lost no time in checking out the grain market in Bideford the next day, accompanied by an interpreter, and then in borrowing money from other refugee friends already based in Plymouth., and thus he started making his first deals on English soil. One of his projects soon afterwards was to import fancy French items and sell them through his own shop in Exeter – brandy, tobacco and fine wine being among the goods.

Images of Appledore, taken on our visit there in 2018. Many of the houses and quaint cottages in the town date from the period of the Mauzy family’s arrival in 1685. The Customs House would surely have been an important place!

Fontaine’s story continues in the memoir, as he moved with his family to Taunton, where he ran various import and export schemes, some more successful than others. Eventually, they settled in Ireland where a kaleidoscope of adventures continued, including inhabiting a ‘haunted’ house in Dublin and dealing with pirates off the coast of Cork. Jacques died in 1728, aged 70, having written his life story, and prefaced it with this touching dedication:

My dear children,
Having observed the deep interest you have taken in all that has befallen your ancestors, when I have related their adventures to you, I am induced to write down their history for your use, to the end that the pious examples of those from whom we derive our origin may not be lost to you, or those who succeed you.

Translation: With grateful thanks to Gill Yates, who helped me to translate these extracts, and more of the text, from the French. You can read the full text of our translations as a PDF file using the link below.

memoires-dune-famille-huguenote-extract Download

Barnstaple, in a historic photo from the 19th century. The old buildings on the left were probably there when the refugee party was lodged in the town.

The Mauzy family

But what of the Mauzy family? After this tantalising, eye-witness glimpse of my ancestors on the boat, it’s back to the records, which are scanty. However, the basic outline of their lives is that Louis Mauzy became the pastor of the Huguenot congregation in Barnstaple in North Devon. His daughter Suzanne married André Majendie, and they settled in Exeter where André became a minister for the Huguenot Congregation, possibly at the ‘French Church’ of St Olave’s, or more likely at the second French congregation which existed in the city, its meeting place unknown. Suzanne died as a widow, in Dartmouth on the south Devon coast, leaving her ‘garden’ to her daughter Charlotte, and her ‘silver candlesticks’ to her son John James, along with other bequests. She was buried at St Petrox , an ancient church which stands on the rocky peninsula at the end of the estuary, looking out at the sea which featured so dramatically in Suzanne’s life; she had been one of the refugee party, on board in 1685.

Louis’ son Lewis Mauzy (my 5 x gt grandfather) became a doctor of medicine, married Anne Hutchinson in about 1705, and lived in Exeter; he also left a will when he died in 1727, which establishes some of the family connections. True to his Protestant ethics, the will opens with the mournful instructions: It is my desire to be buryed in the most private manner my body to be laid in a plain black coffin without any Binding and carried to the Grave by six honest and ordinary Men without any other Bearers or Mourning. We do not know as yet where he was buried.

Lewis and Anne had at least five children, one of whom, Elizabeth, married into an Irish Protestant family (with names Long and then subsequently Phillips) and became my 4 x gt grandmother. Among the children of Lewis and Anne is a son, also called Lewis, who graduated from the University of Oxford, where he is recorded in the alumni lists.

St Olave’s Church in Exeter, which served the French Huguenot congregation at one period

I never expected to find a Devon connection in the Irish side of my family history, or to have a first-hand account of how these ancestors escaped from France. They were refugees, and they were welcomed into Devon, which has given me pause for thought in these times when we have our own refugee crises. In one sense, they paved the way, and indeed, the word refugee is said to have come from these Huguenots who fled in fear of their lives. They certainly enriched the life of those countries which which took them in, as they brought their considerable talents and skills with them.

My task here has been to tell just one family story, backed up by reliable sources, but without the expertise of specialist researchers, who devote themselve to the task of Huguenot history. As soon as I can, I plan to go back to Appledore and Barnstaple and look at these places with new eyes, knowing now that this is where the Mauzy family and their fellow refugees landed and began their new lives.

The cross which is the symbol still used by descendants of emigrant Huguenots

A Coventry Quest: Finding a Grandfather

On February 28, 2021February 28, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs4 Comments

Family history is a quest, and the act of going out on site visits to do your research can be a story in itself. If you visit the places where your ancestors lived and worked, it can become a magical journey where surprises and discoveries abound. Savouring the atmosphere of ancestral haunts and walking the landscapes where they too walked can bring a kind of knowledge beyond that of hard facts.

In this post, I have written up one of my own quests on the trail of the ancestors – a trip to Coventry to discover more of my 3 x great grandfather, watchmaker Daniel Brown. I wrote it down a few years ago, in such a way that I could share the story with others, but it has never seen the light of day until now. I offer it here, after giving it the cold editorial eye, and a sprucing-up.

For those interested in doing something similar, I’ve added tips and suggestions about the process at the end. It’s worth making a special undertaking to do this. While teaching life writing and family history courses, I’ve often encouraged people to set up a ‘quest’ and write about their discoveries, and it’s always been exciting and moving to read their stories.

Spon Street, Coventry, photographed on the morning of our visit

Arrival in Spon Street

‘Is this Spon Street?’ asks my husband, in mild disbelief.

We gaze down the narrow city street, studded with a mixture of nightclubs and kebab takeaways, bridalwear shops and ‘the last proper butcher’s in Coventry’. It’s a wet, cold Saturday morning, and the street is deserted. Is this really the historic quarter, the street once filled by hundreds of craftsmen: dyers and weavers, shoemakers and watchmakers? The Coventry websites call it ‘the town’s finest renovation project’, but it seems a little sad right now. The photos they show, a real dream of an ancient street, obviously must depend on where you point the camera. Historical in part, we concede, noticing some exquisite groups of half-timbered houses dotted along the street, among the Victorian and ‘60s infill. We are here to follow up one of those former inhabitants, my 3 x great grandfather, Daniel Brown, watchmaker of Spon Street in the late 18th century. And even though first impressions are not quite as expected, we’re ready to take what the city can offer us.

I was last in Coventry when I was at school in Birmingham. Coventry wasn’t a place you came to then except to see the new cathedral, or, in my case, to listen to the Rolling Stones. It’s not familiar, although I can still recognise the ‘modern’ shopping precinct of the late 1960s where I looked in vain for trendy clothes, now smartened up with a glass roof. We aren’t here to cover my old trails, though, but rather to find new ones. When you’re hunting ancestors, even in a place you know well, you inevitably see your surroundings in a different light, and explore nooks and crannies which wouldn’t have attracted your attention before. Even the air smells different when you’re on the trail; often, a strange magic creeps in, and such days remain glowing in the memory.

One of the truly old houses in Spon Street

So here is the background to this particular quest. Daniel Brown was born around 1768, and lived in the labyrinth of workshops in Spon Street for most of his life, practising his skills as a watchmaker. He married a woman called Anne –surname possibly Fulford – and they produced a family of some five children. One of these children, James, became my 2 x great grandfather. It seems that Daniel’s own father, Isaac, was a weaver, and since James reverted to the weaving trade, Daniel is the only watchmaker in my line, and of great interest as such. What can Coventry tell me about him?

He must have done well at his trade, since at his death at the age of 81 in 1849, he had money and property to leave in his will, an estate worth about £25,000 in today’s terms. Daniel’s first will had me fooled, though: it was a draft prepared less than ten years before his death, written in an almost indecipherable hand. I assumed it was his final will, but when I’d finally transcribed it, I thought it might be prudent to check for a proven will. There was one – much more legible this time, but oh, what had the old so-and-so done? He’d gone and got married again, in 1844, at the age of 76, to one Sarah Stone. Both their ages are coyly concealed on the marriage certificate, which declares simply that they are ‘of full age’. Well, it must have been obvious in Daniel’s case, but I’d like to know if Sarah was a tempting young wench, or a shrewd elderly widow? At any rate, Sarah comes in for the sum of 10 shillings to be paid to her ‘at the end of every week’ until it reaches a total of £300. This surely shows an astuteness in Daniel’s control of his money – if she was a gold digger, she would only be in line for a share of his assets and if she died soon after him, the residue of the bequest would pass back to his own family. Other bequests are to his children and grandchildren, who each receive a decent legacy. All, that is, except for my 2 x gt. grandfather James, who obviously owed his father a packet already, since Daniel’s will offers to write off James’s debts, but little else.

St John’s Church, Coventry, where my 3 x gt grandfather married twice, the second time in his late 70s. Below is the carving of the Green Man, which might have given him pause for thought then.

In the city centre itself, we admire Lady Godiva’s statue, a legend which is a tribute to the independence and feistiness of the inhabitants.

Robert is casting an artist’s eye over the sculpture of Lady Godiva who rode naked through the town in order to save the townspeople from punitive taxes. You can read the story and see another striking image of her here.

Discovering the city

We pay the steep entrance fee into the Cathedral to see not only the famous Graham Sutherland tapestry, but the Piper Baptistry window, the Whistler angels etched on glass, and the Frink choir stalls. The more we gaze, the more I appreciate this incredible building and its art, far more than I did in my restless teenage years. Yet I’m assailed by a sharp sense of the sadness and anger embedded here, in the juxtaposition of the new Cathedral and the ruins of the old, following the horrendous destruction of the Blitz. Witnessing this contrast, though, helps me to get a perspective on the longer history of the city. Although my direct-line descendants moved out to the nearby town of Bedworth, Coventry must still have been imprinted in the family story. My sense of the old Coventry as a productive, busy place, fostering independent craftspeople and small businesses, has now been heightened by the contrast with its post-war trauma. Indeed, almost anything you see and experience on a family history quest is likely to feed your knowledge, and fire up your imagination. You can never achieve this in quite the same way from research carried out at a distance.

The wonderful Baptistry window by John Piper, in Coventry Cathedral

I am eager to visit the ribbon weaving display at the Herbert Museum and City Art Gallery. Many of Daniel’s relatives and descendants, including my great grandmother, worked in this industry, often from as young as ten years old. In the 19th century, beautiful and intricate silk ribbons were woven to adorn ladies’ costumes, and both Coventry and Bedworth depended economically upon this trade. The industry continued through the era of hand loom weaving into that of machine weaving and jacquard looms, which were capable of reproducing complex patterns. The Museum has a stunning example of a jacquard loom, and a video of the monster at work. (You can see below an example of an earlier hand loom on the left, and a jacquard on the right.)

The images below show the types of decorative silk ribbon that were being woven in Coventry and the surrounding areas in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These are in pattern books, preserved at the Herbert Museum.

Ribbon weaving was often done from family workshops, sometimes situated on the top floor of their cottages for maximum light, but later subsumed into fully-industrialised factories which swallowed up their children for the workforce. Cash’s (of school nametapes fame) is probably the most famous of these old Coventry firms. At the Tourist Information Office – another source of local wisdom – the woman at the desk told me wryly that most of the Cash’s name tapes are now woven in Turkey, although some decorative bookmarks are still made locally as souvenirs. Now, in the Museum, we admire the sample ribbon pattern books dating from the 1840s, the time when my Bedworth ancestors were in the trade. There’s also an account of the terrible times of hardship that hit the ribbon weavers after the tariffs were lifted on the import of French silk, causing a major slump in home production. Famine struck both Coventry and Bedworth, soup kitchens were set up, and charitable funds were used to send whole families abroad to the Colonies. My great grandfather was fortunate in that he spotted the opportunity to work on the railways, which gave the chance for a family to move, something very difficult at the time. (He ended his career as signalman at Althorp Park Station, known these days as the stately house where Princess Diana lived.)

The plight of the ribbon weavers, from an information board in the Herbert Museum

Winners and Losers

On these quests, not every plan may prove possible. It seems that I can’t make the special visit that I’d been promised earlier, to see the rest of the ribbon weaving samples in store. It’s Saturday, and curators only work Monday to Friday, I’m told. Another time, perhaps. Indeed, I’ve learned from past experience, that it’s more rewarding to stay with what can be done, than to fret about what can’t. Perhaps I can take this enticing option on a future visit.

But, to balance this up, contrary to what the website says, the History Centre is open on Saturdays. An inviting, glass-walled library on the ground floor of the Museum, it is available for any walk-in visitors who’d like to consult shelves of local material, with the assistance of knowledgeable volunteers. We only have a short time, but some quick browsing produces a possible match for Daniel in the apprenticeship records and a plot number for him in the London Road Cemetery. This will at least give us a chance to see his gravestone; I discovered a picture of his memorial stone on a website a couple of nights ago.

A map of the London Road cemetery area. I wish I’d taken one of these with us! The location on the left hand side, with the Non-Conformist Chapel, is the area we needed.

We return to Spon Street, which is now looking a little brighter, with a few visitors in its shops and cafes. This was once a major highway into the city, and has been an important part of Coventry’s trading quarter since medieval times. But apart from the recent historic reconstruction at the inner end, little now remains of the cottages and bustling workshops which once flanked it for the best part of a mile. The city ring road has cut through it, and the two parts are severed, and only accessible on foot. The move to the era of ‘Car is God’ has created some truly terrible town planning in the Midlands, as I’ve written about in ‘Finding Brummagem’. The outer stretch is quiet now, leading us past blocks of flats, deserted open grassland, community centres and an occasional old cottage. But the sense of space is opened up, and it’s possible to project the imagination even further back in history, to a time when the area was rural. The river Sherbourne, which the dyers once used, is still racing along behind a row of houses, and on the old stone bridge which crosses it, you can stand and dream of life gone by.

The River Sherbourne, once semi-rural and passing weavers’ and watchmakers’ cottages. Now it passes through new housing estates.

Two o’clock, and we haven’t had lunch yet. (Food is always important on my quests. Fuel is definitely needed.) Oh, and the Watch Museum is open in Spon Street as well. Another piece of good fortune, as it only opens for a few hours twice a week. Can’t miss that. So shall we try the cemetery too? I steal a sideways glance at my husband. He doesn’t look too jaded, so maybe something to eat will strengthen us enough to complete the quest. We go for coffee and sandwiches in a bistro operating in one of the reconstructed 17th century houses, then stroll over to the Watch Museum. This consists of a very decrepit block of cottages, which lead back from the street into a courtyard.

‘Come out to the back!’

A museum guide beckons us eagerly. He throws open the door to one of three privies, lovingly restored. A hundred and eleven people once lived and worked here, and they had to share the facilities.

He scratched his head. ‘Some tourists have borrowed our bowler hats,’ he says, and shows us to where a couple of visitors are posing bowler-hatted for their photos against the back wall of the final cottage, which has a gaping crack running from top to bottom.

The inside rooms on show are incredibly dilapidated too, with flaking, distempered doors and bare floors, but they give me a sense of the old way of life more vividly than an artistic reconstruction. Was Daniel’s life this hard? Did he have to squirrel away his money to improve his lot?

‘Spon Street, Coventry, West Midlands. The Spon Street building, now almost a skeleton stripped of its fabric, was built as a pair of semi-detached houses, probably in the 14th century. Markings on the end truss indicate that the timber framework is to be taken to pieces carefully and possibly re-erected. June 1963.’ From a newspaper article about the re-construction of Coventry, which also included the photo of the River Sherbourne above

We admire the selection of Coventry watches on display, and I wonder about Daniel’s status. I’ve found him listed in the watchmakers’ records for the town, but I don’t know if he worked entirely on his own account, or as a piece-worker for one of the local firms? I’m told by the guide that watchmakers could do either, or both, but that individual watches were rarely signed as many watches were composite productions. I’ve already seen in my research that the censuses of the period reveal many dial-makers and watch-finishers, as well as watchmakers proper. So finding a ‘Daniel Brown’ watch remains a dream for me.

‘Most watchmakers were apprenticed, and the first thing they got when they’d served the apprenticeship was the sack,’ the guide informs us. ‘They had to make shift for themselves, then. But they were also freer to do what they wanted. Look out for a marriage at around the age of twenty-one. They weren’t allowed to marry before that. It can help you with knowing the age of your ancestor.’

I check my dossier. ‘Twenty-four,’ I say.

He nods sagely. ‘Sounds about right. They tended to marry as soon as they could.’

A restored weaver’s house in Spon Street

I buy a booklet produced by the Museum, describing a historic watchmakers’ trail around the city, and then we’re off to our final stop: the London Road Cemetery. We are back in the car, and snarled up on the Coventry Ring Road, which was probably devised by planners when they were in a sadistic mood. Poor old Jane, our Sat Nav voice, can’t cope with all their loops and kinks. We circle around the city in the wrong direction. Eventually, as navigator I tell Robert to take the next road off the demonic ring.

‘Where’s it going?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know. I don’t care. Anywhere is better than this.’

There were plenty of watering holes around Spon Street and Spon End. This one was apparently called ‘The Old Windmill’, but known at one time as ‘Ma Brown’s’. Could Ma Brown or Sydney Brown have been a relation, I wonder?

Jane recovers her sanity and coolly directs us to the post code for the cemetery. And that’s where she can help no further. We only have a vague memory of the plan we consulted at the History Centre, with its numbered section and grave. We drive all around it, finally choose one of the unmarked entrances, and drive the car a little way in. It’s late afternoon now, and the place is practically deserted. We wander through the vast graveyard, looking for older stones that will show us we’re in the right area. But only modern graves catch our eye, some vividly decorated with pink flowers and teddies. Who can we ask? There’s one mourner by a grave, but he is truly mourning, wiping away tears. I decide to go through an iron gate in the wall – shades of The Secret Garden – to see if the old area is beyond there. It’s getting dusky, and I hesitate when I see three lads who look as though they might be drug dealing. Ah no, here comes a safe-looking middle-aged couple with their shopping. They tell me, rather vaguely, that there’s another complete section of the cemetery we need to find.

‘Where the Rolls Royce factory was. You know,’ she says helpfully.

‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t,’ I reply. ‘Do you know what road the entrance is on?’

‘No, haven’t a clue,’ answers her husband.

We decide to try again. This time, we find a friendly Irish lady tidying up a grave. She’s driven her car right up to the graveside. ‘Have to be careful. People have been robbed here.’ She tells us that there is a Chapel, and an older graveyard around it. ‘Just up there.’ She waves her hand vaguely.

Thank you, thank you. By now, Robert is using his visual skills as a professional artist and is consulting the photo of the gravestone.

‘Look at the shape of it,’ he says, tracing the indentations and angles cut into the top of the stone. He also has stonemason ancestors, so I’m trusting his instincts to spot the right one.

But we can’t find anything. We ask another man, also Irish as it happens, who shakes his head. As we head towards the exit, we see a very organised-looking lady tending a grave. I say it’s not worth asking, but Robert says we should give it one last shot.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘You need to go out of here, and then find the other entrance, the original one. It’s just down the road.’

The old Non-Conformist Chapel, in the section of the cemetery where Daniel Brown was buried. This family line is mainly Baptist, so it’s possible that Daniel was as well. (Non-Conformists often married in Anglican churches, and were sometimes required to do so by law.)

Ah, it’s in a different place altogether! The cemetery was opened in 1847 and since then, the railway line has sliced it in half. We pick up the car which is languishing near a cedar tree, and drive out, round, down – and there it is – the older, grander entrance to the original cemetery. Daniel Brown was one of the first to be buried there in 1849.

Four magpies bounce across the path.

‘A boy!’ we say excitedly, in line with the old children’s rhyme. But will we find our man?

We search the first area without any luck, and I am thinking that it’s nearly time to go home. The air is darker, the mood is eerie, and we’re in a place where the dead are thick in number and the living very scarce. We are the only ones, in fact.

Then we spot the Chapel, further along. It’s a kind of strange, mausoleum type of building and with it comes a whiff of the Victorian cult of death. We move towards it, through the obelisks and the forest of stones, both plain and elaborate, some now leaning at an angle or almost swallowed up by the trees.

‘I’ll take this side, you take the other,’ I suggest.

Five minutes later, Robert calls out: ‘Found it!’

And there he is. ‘Daniel Brown, departed this life June 21st 1849 aged 81 years. And of John Brown, son of the above, who died Dec 5th 1855, aged 58 years.’

‘Hello, grandpa,’ I say softly.

Websites for Coventry history
Cash’s weaving, Coventry
Coventry Watch Museum
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum
Spon Street, Coventry – Coventry Walks website , Historic Coventry
Article on the changing face of Coventry, with photos of historic buildings in Spon End

Tips for a Family History Quest

Planning and carrying out the quest
Plan out your day, but allow for the unexpected as well. Following up new leads is half the fun!
Think about your route in advance, especially if it involves finding car parks in towns. It can save you time and frustration.
It can be more fun and give support to have someone with you, but be up front about the fact that you’ll be focused full-time on following the trail. Don’t plan extra side trips.

Suggestions for what to take
A small dossier of relevant material, eg local information and notes on family records. (Keep it light and compact – it can be difficult to find something quickly from a big sheaf of papers.)
Recording materials, such as a notebook, camera and a voice recorder, which can be on your phone.
A relevant map if possible. Ordinance Survey maps are useful for detailed navigation in the countryside (or the equivalent outside the UK); for a city, you can probably download a visitor’s map from the internet.

While on the trail
Ask for help from locals – anyone from a farmer to a museum attendant may have valuable clues for you. If you tell them you have family connections they may open up, and give you much more detailed information.
Buy local leaflets or booklets, on anything from folklore to churches. If you don’t have time to look at them while you’re on your quest, they may be really useful later. It’s much harder to track them down when out of the area.
Follow your nose – it may be the best guide that you have!
Be philosophical: you may be thwarted on some counts, but find wonderful new avenues to explore too.

Afterwards
Do write up your quest within a few days. If you’re short of time, just make notes, but make them as full as possible. It’s extraordinary how quickly we forget details.

Set yourself a reasonable length to write to – about 1500-5000 words is usually plenty. If you make it much longer, it may be too much of a project and never get completed. It’s better to make the first account precise, and expand it later, if you wish.

There’s always scope for editing! Sometimes the story comes out in a rush, which is great for conveying energy, but be ready to check and prune it later.

Share it with others – it makes a wonderful bulletin to circulate to other family members. Everyone loves to read a story.

Reflect on what questions have arisen out of your quest. You may end up with more questions than answers, but they may stimulate further research, and might even pave the way for the next quest.

You may also be interested in these other family history posts:

The Abduction of Mary Max

Following the Female Line

Seduction, Sin and Sidmouth: An Ancestor’s Scandal

The Abduction of Mary Max

On November 29, 2020June 10, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs, Myth and Landscape3 Comments

A runaway bride at the age of 13

Gaile House, co. Tipperary today, where Mary Max was born

I first posted a version of this story on my author’s blog at in Dec 2019. Various other Phillips descendants got in touch as a result, so I’m delighted to have expanded the current family network! In autumn 2019, my husband and I had planned to visit Gaile House (the first time for me), staying in the house where Mary Max was born, and visiting the graveyard nearby where she is buried. We would have been joined too by one of my ‘new’ cousins who I’ve discovered through sharing her story. Sadly, the owners of Gaile House cancelled our booking due to a bereavement in their own family, so we’ve had to postpone our trip. At present, in late 2020, it’s impossible to say when we may be able to travel to Ireland again, but I hope that 2021 will bring better opportunities to use my new Irish passport, and that I can see for myself both where Mary Max lived, and where my own grandfather was born. My father who was a regular visitor there during his life, while his elderly cousin was still in residence, always had a dream of buying back Gaile and living there in his retirement, but as is so often the case, life got in the way. It was sold, and is now beautifully renovated and operating as a working stud and horse training centre, so it has certainly come into good hands.

Note to other Phillips descendants: if you are connected to this line, and would like to be put in touch with others researching the Phillips family, please contact me either via this website or my author’s site at http://www.cherrygilchrist.co.uk. (use the Contact Form)

Mary Max

This is the story of my 4 x Irish great grandmother, Mary Max, who was abducted and forced into marriage in1777, at the age of thirteen. She lived in the Max family home at Gaile House, County Tipperary, and was an heiress to a £40,000 estate, which was worth over £6,000,000 in today’s terms. Her father and brothers had all died in quick succession, so in 1777, as a young teenager, Mary was set to inherit the family fortune when she turned eighteen. Her only close relative was her mother and guardian, Joan Max.

At the time, abduction was rife in the heartlands of Ireland, and Mary was a tempting candidate. Bride-snatching had become almost acceptable as a way of securing a bride, and although it was a capital offence, the risk of conviction was low. The target was usually a girl who the prospective bridegroom thought would better his position, preferably with money or property, and of good social standing. He would then gather a band of supporters, often including friends and family members, and they would plot to seize her by force. Plans were audacious, with ambushes and even armed hold-ups. One episode on record involved locking the priest and the congregation in church while the raiding party singled out their chosen target from the worshippers!

Mary Max was abducted by Samuel Phillips of Kilkenny in August 1777. He was her first cousin-once-removed, who lived about forty miles away in the Phillips home of Foyle. The Phillips family had arrived in Ireland before 1600, possibly as Welsh immigrants, and as merchants they then rose through the ranks to produce a couple of Mayors of Kilkenny, marrying into moneyed or landed families such as the Despards along the way.

By the 18th century, the family had some land and money of their own, but not enough to satisfy them, it seems. And so a secret plan was made to grab the family fortune of the Maxes, their kinsmen, to add to their own. A raiding party was put together: Samuel Phillip, groom was then 21, and his supporters included his father Richard Phillips, who was a Magistrate and Justice of the Peace, his sister Frances, and, surprisingly, Dennis Meagher who was Mary’s uncle on her mother’s side.

Mary was snatched late one evening, as she was returning home from a ball. Samuel’s sister acted as the decoy, pretending to offer Mary a safe lift in her carriage back to her mother’s home. Instead, the coach sped away to Waterford, where the conspirators and prospective bridegroom were waiting. It sounds the stuff of a period drama movie, and it certainly caught the public attention at the time. Reports spread through the press like wildfire as the story unfolded.

The lands of Gaile, at the time when the estate still had hundreds of acres

One newspaper gossip column reported:

Letter from Dublin, dated Sept. 20: As I make no doubt but you will be curious to know in what manner Miss Max was carried off, I have collected such particulars as I could, and have sent them for your entertainment. Miss Max was at a ball, at which also was Mr. Philips, with whom she danced the evening. —The husband intended by her guardian was also one of the company; after the ball, Mr. Phillips’s sister walked with Miss Max towards the carriages, and prevailed her to accept of the use of theirs to set her down. All things having been previously concerted, Miss Max stepped into the post-chaise, and was drove directly to Waterford, where Philips, the young Lady, and assistants, embarked, and arrived safely in England, from whence they crossed over to France. Miss Max not being missed for above two hours, full time was given for eluding a search, which was afterwards made to no purpose. She is first cousin to her adventurous lover.

The current driveway to Gaile House, through what look like very old trees from the days of its estate

Newspapers around Britain went crazy for the story, and this particular ‘letter’ was republished in local papers from Kent to Newcastle.

From Waterford, the ‘wedding party’ went by boat to Wales, and then by road to Scotland. (All land transport was, of course, by horse and carriage in this era). A hue and cry was raised, and a magistrate’s militia was sent off in hot pursuit. At this point, the Phillips family’s first aim was to get Mary married off to Samuel, before the pursuers could intervene. Many such forced marriages were conducted in all sorts of shady ways, with little regard for the legitimacy of the priest. In Edinburgh, as we’re told by subsequent legal documents, Samuel procured a so-called clergyman, ‘a man of very indifferent character’. (In later years, he came to regret not finding a priest with better credentials, but only because he was worried that it might otherwise undermine his claim on Mary’s fortune!)

Mr and Mrs Phillips then hastened to travel south with their ‘wedding party’. But by then, there was a price on their heads: Mary’s mother offered a handsome reward for Mary’s safe return, and a bounty price to anyone who could hand over Samuel Phillips or his father to the law. Knowing little of the geography, Samuel’s troupe made a strenuous journey by side roads down to Brighton, at the time a small fishing village known as Brighthelmstone. En route, they stopped at Kingston, and asked if the sea was nearby! When they finally made it to Brighton, they then set sail for France. All but one of the party – Mary’s uncle- escaped across the Channel. He however was arrested and clapped in jail in Dublin. It was a close-run thing: according to one newspaper report the abduction party was chased right to the edge of the water.

‘Before the packet in which they sailed was lost out of sight, two of Sir John Fielding’s men arrived at Brighthelmstone, in pursuit of them, and offered any of the fishermen a large reward, that would give chase to the packet, and prevail on the Captain to steer back; but not one of them would attempt it.’
(Hampshire Chronicle, 15 Sep 1777)

Print of Brighthelmstone in 1785, around the same time that Mary and Samuel sailed from here to France

It was reported that they made a successful landing at Dieppe and then headed for Paris. It was time to draw breath, perhaps. Within the space of a month, a thirteen-year-old girl had gone from living quietly with her widowed mother in rural Ireland, to being forcibly married to a cousin, and chased across four countries. But even in France they were not entirely out of reach of British law. As the Freeman’s Journal reported on Sep 25th 1777: ‘Application has been made by the English Ambassador at Paris to have the Phillipses who ran away with Miss Max delivered up if they could be found in the French dominions, and liberty given to have them transmitted to this kingdom to be tried for the felony.’

But before the law could finally catch up with them, Mary’s mother Joan made them an offer. She was desperate to get her daughter back, having lost her husband and both sons in quick succession. According to later legal reports, they stayed in Paris for some time, until the new year of 1778, when Samuel finally decided to bring his ‘bride’ home. On Dec 31st, 1777, Joan Max had formally withdrawn her offer of rewards for capturing the kidnappers. She withdrew her threat of prosecution too, and allowed Samuel to bring his under-age bride back to Gaile House, the Max family home.

Gaile House in 1913, which became the home of the Phillips family after Samuel married heiress Mary Max in 1777

Samuel Phillips now became head of the household in a dwelling that was most definitely superior to his father’s home at Foyle, Kilkenny, and he lost no time in using Mary’s money to make it even grander. He still however had to stand trial at Kilkenny Assizes for a hanging offence of abducting a minor, but as Joan Max refused to offer any evidence, he walked free. Though Samuel didn’t win hands down. Mary’s money and property was put in trust for her heirs, so he never had complete control of it. He did however secure Gaile house, which then became the Phillips’ family home for over 150 years after this. My grandfather, Richard Phillips, was born there, before emigrating to England, where my father was born. (Thanks to having an Irish-born grandparent, though, I have recently been able to obtain Irish citizenship and an Irish passport!)

The photos below, from my father’s colleciton, show the glory days of Gaile in the late 19th and early twentieth century – the hunt meeting, garden parties and bicycle races!

Tea parties and what looks like a ‘doubles’ bicycle race on the lawn

Pets were popular, as we can see from this long lost Pet Cemetery in the grounds of the house.

Samuel Phillips and Mary Max, now Phillips, had three children: Richard, Joanna and Frances. (Richard and Samuel were names which were chosen in almost every Phillips generation). Then Mary died, aged only 26. Who knows what a toll the early marriage and childbirth had taken from her? She had her first child, Richard, when she was only sixteen years old.

The graveyard with view towards Gaile House, taken by my cousin Rebecca Ditchburn. Photo below from my late cousin Robin Phillips, who also appears in the photo below on his ancestor-hunting journey in 2004, before the house was restored

But despite family papers and newspaper reports, we still don’t have the whole story. Was it a forced abduction, that ripped a young girl away from her mother, her only protector, and laid claim to Mary’s fortune? Or could it be that Mary and Samuel were indeed in love? Or, again, perhaps she was a headstrong young teenager with a thirst for an exciting adventure. The idea of running away might have seemed very romantic. They were not strangers; the families lived only forty miles apart and already knew each other well. At that period in history, thirteen was considered nearly ripe for marriage. But even for those times, she was still very young: although most Irish abductees were under the age of 21, very few indeed were as young as that. And it seems that Sam and Mary started sexual activity straightaway. One newspaper reports: ‘It appeared that when they left Ireland they sailed for and landed in Wales, that they crossed all England and made the best of their route to Scotland, where it is supposed young Phillips and Miss Max were married, as it also appeared they slept together at Kingston, and at Brighthelmstone.’

As her direct descendant, I’d like to think that Mary and Samuel married for love. Or at least, that there was some romance, or sense of adventure on her side. Perhaps she was a catch in more ways than one – a couple of newspapers described Mary as ‘exceedingly beautiful’, though we have no surviving pictures of her to check this. One gossip column of the day suggested that the couple already had an ‘understanding’ and that when Mary’s relatives began to arrange a marriage for her to ‘a young Gentleman of a distinguished Family in Dublin’, Mary and Sam decided to secure their own marriage first. Nevertheless, would a thirteen-year old girl really understand what was in store for her?

More Phillips descendants visiting Gaile House, before it was renovated. Family lore has it that the Phillipses are tall and lean, that they love horses and are very untidy! My father always said that this fitted me very well.

My father was a keen genealogist, and he uncovered this story and pieced it together. I’ve added to it with the advantage of excellent internet tools now, and a rich trove of old newspaper reports available for searching online. And thus a tantalising, dramatic, but still mysterious story has unfolded, to which we will probably never have all the answers. One question is why Mary’s mother Joan dropped the prosecution, and accepted that her young daughter’s marriage? For that, there is a historical answer: studies from the period reveal that a girl was often regarded as ‘damaged goods’ once she had even been alone with a young man, let alone travelled abroad with him, and that she would henceforth be rejected as marriage material. Once a daughter had been abducted and married off, it was a fait accompli, and parents usually decided that a forced marriage was better than no marriage. And later reports do indicate that Mary and Sam did settle together quite happily, for the thirteen year period of their marriage.

Below are three of my direct-line grandfathers, all named Richard Phillips, and all of Gaile House.

The family lore which was passed down through the generations, doesn’t seem to include a strong sense of outrage or pity for Mary. My father, Ormonde Phillips, often talked to his ‘kinsman’ Jack Max, who still held some of the Max family papers about the legal side of the abduction, and he didn’t glean any indication from Jack that it was a blot on the family landscape. This isn’t conclusive, but does at least give a window of hope that Mary was not completely devastated by the event. The Max family, rather than the Phillipses, would surely be the ones to hold onto a grievance.

This Facebook video is a delightful sequence of a Connemara pony being put through its paces at Gaile today, which is now an equestrian centre for training and supplying sportshorses.

I’d like to honour my 4 x great grandmother by telling her story, and keeping its memory alive. Researching it has led me into a fascinating area of history, when the law in central Ireland was largely disregarded, and old clan ways still prevailed. I cannot help be somewhat uncomfortable, however, about the way my Phillips ancestors acquired their ‘forever’ home of Gaile House, Tipperary. Eventually, there was no one in the family suitable to take it on any more, and so it was sold. But from falling nearly derelict, it’s now under new ownership, and beautifully restored as an equestrian centre. The wheel of Fortune turns again.

To the memories of Mary Max 17763-1789 and Samuel Phillips 1756-1816. I wish you could see how the family has grown today, and how splendid Gaile House looks once again!

Related Reading

The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland 1740-1840 – A. P. W. Malcomson (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2006)

Forcibly without Her Consent: Abductions in Ireland, 1700-1850 – Thomas P. Power (Universe, no date). My father contributed his Mary Max research to this book, which also contains a very good Bibliography

You may also be interested in other family history posts on Cherry’s Cache:

Seduction, Sin and Sidmouth: An Ancestor’s Scandal

A Tale of Two Samplers

Relevant books by Cherry Gilchrist

Following the Female Line

On November 22, 2020January 2, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Feminine Spirituality, Life Stories & Memoirs4 Comments

The three women in my immediate female line: my mother Kathleen Phillips (centre), grandmother Hannah Brown (right), and great grandmother Sarah Lee (left).

‘As I watched a tallow candle burn in a seashell, I tried to sense the ancient life of the cavern and its early inhabitants. And something strange happened; a connection opened between the caves and my own deep layers of memory. Their shadowy depths seemed to generate wisps of recall, floating streams of impressions that came from a realm beyond my conscious grasp. The Great Mother had stored the memories of her former children here and, even though I could not capture them distinctly, I received fleeting glimpses of the manifold life she had contained in her rocky womb, of the times when both beasts and humans lived within her shelter. The memories of the lives she nourished are still alive there.’

I was visiting Kents Cavern, an extraordinary set of caves entered through a clifftop, near Torquay in Devon. Passing through the unassuming door in the visitor centre, I stepped from the everyday world back into ancient times, entering the darkness of Stone Age, where humans and wild beasts lived in uneasy proximity. I was writing my book The Circle of Nine, about feminine archetypes, and what could have been more symbolic for my chapter on the Great Mother? The opening quote of this blog is taken from this. And, in a more general sense, the experience also linked into my long-term quest to explore my mother’s line of ancestors.

A rock formation in Kents Cavern, which looks rather like the head of a woman. And visiting the caves at a later date with my granddaughters Martha and Eva.

Discovering your female line
For women, and very possibly for men too, reconnecting with the female line can be an empowering experience. We emerge from our mother’s body, as she emerged from her mother, and so on, back to our earliest female direct-line ancestor. We can find ways to sense this lineage with only a few facts at our disposal, but through the excellent family history research tools available now, we may be able to get acquainted in more detail with individual grandmothers back through the generations, whose existence we knew nothing of before.

My research into the female line was triggered by my mother’s death, in the year 2000. She was 87, and although I knew that she couldn’t last much longer, I hadn’t take the chances that those last few years offered. Suddenly, I had no living link to my mother’s line of ancestors, and I longed to know more. Following family history research up the mother’s line, sometimes called rather condescendingly ‘the distaff side’, is a quest with a particular challenge. Most modern societies are patrilineal, which means that it’s the father’s surname which is usually passed down through the family, and thus women often change their surname in every generation. Once the oral history link is broken, the female line can all too easily slip into the shadows.

My mother Kathleen as a little girl (centre) with her parents Hannah and Bernard, sister Maisie and brother Neville

Maria and the Army
But nevertheless, approaching family history through historical records can reveal things that our mothers and other close relatives may never have known. My first great thrill, when I took up the research, came when I discovered that my 3 x gt grandmother, Maria Owens, had travelled with the army. It’s on record that she accompanied her soldier husband Edward to Sicily in the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century, and gave birth to a daughter there in 1812. Possibly she was with him earlier, in 1809, at the battle of Corunna too. I was inspired to read up about ‘camp followers’, a disparaging term for the wives who were often desperate to stay with their army husbands, and might indeed become destitute if they didn’t. There was a cruel system on some campaigns, where the wives had to travel to the ports of embarkation to take part in a lottery, in order to become official followers. Although I don’t think my grandmother had to do this, just as an example in her case this would have meant travelling from mid-Wales to Plymouth, a huge distance on difficult roads. Those who failed to win a place had to make their way home, sometimes hundreds of miles, with no travel or living expenses awarded to them. Some women jumped into the sea, rather than face this.

But Maria made it one way or another – many women ‘followed’ unofficially, and often had a hard, if adventurous time, unless they were officers’ wives. Maria was married to a foot soldier, so no luxury would have come her way. Female camp followers struggled to find food to eat, and worked as unpaid cooks and laundresses. It must have tested her courage to the full.

Female camp followers of the period, travelling with children in tow.

The Travelling Urge – I visited the ruins of the little stone cottage in mid-Wales, to which they returned when soldiering days were done, and imagined her leaving this remote, rural environment for the army life in faraway foreign lands. Did this influence the family line ever after? Her grandson, David Owen, my mother’s grandfather, definitely had a roaming urge. His calling as a Baptist minister took him from Wales to Devon to the USA and back to the English Midlands. It’s said in the family that he sought a more open mindset than he could find in rural backwaters. One of his daughters, my Auntie Blanche, wrote to me that she had an adventurous turn of spirit which she attributed to growing up in America. And I’ll confess to a restlessness in my own moves around the country, and to a strong urge to visit many far-flung places abroad, such as the Silk Road, Siberia, and Easter Island. Perhaps if Maria had never decided to go with Edward, that spirit would not have been embedded in the family, on my mother’s side.

The remote hillside where Maria and Edward Owens lived after their return from the army, in Bwlch-y-Sarnau, in mid-Wales. This is the site where their cottage once stood.

Seeking a better life
A very different 3 x great grandmother of mine, who is the earliest known grandmother in my direct female line (ie mother’s mother’s mother etc), is another Maria but in this case a Maria Adie, born into a different kind of life at the end of the 18th century. She came from a family, who were silk weavers and miners in the Midlands town of Bedworth. They were poor, as all such workers were, and lived in the humblest terraced cottages in the town. Her daughter Jane, my 2 x great grandmother, started work as a ribbon weaver when she was a child, though she was at least able to learn how to read and write. The Bedworth trade of weaving decorative silk ribbons for ladies’ gowns and bonnets sounded glamorous, but the weavers themselves and their families worked long hours for a pittance. The Adies, and the Lee and Brown families which succeeded them, must have struggled desperately to stay afloat when the bottom fell out of the silk trade around 1840. (This was due to ill-advised import duty changes by the government.) Their town became known as ‘Black Bedworth’, rife with famine and violence. Many families were offered charity places on boats travelling to the USA and Canada, and emigrated from the area.

The images show patterns for the ribbons that were woven from silk, and how they might be used on ladies’ attire

But Jane’s own daughter Sarah (my great-grandmother) found a means of escape with her miner husband Henry. He made a shrewd sideways step, and took a job on the railways. This was a passport to moving elsewhere, something very difficult to do for working people at the time. In their case, it took them to a more secure way of life in Northamptonshire. Here Henry became first a porter and then a signalman at Althorp station, the train halt for Althorp Park, later the home of Princess Diana. Not all the traumas of their previous life were left behind, however, as two of their children died of a diphtheria outbreak due to a polluted water supply.

Below you can see my gt grandmother Sarah Lee, standing with her daughter Sophie who kept the Post Office at Great Brington, near Althorp in Northamptonshire. And here am I, sitting in exactly the same place about 100 years later!

Following down the female line, from Althorp my own grandmother went into service in ‘the big house’ as a lady’s maid. She told her children tales of her time there which, sadly, have never come down to me. I know that she worked at either Althorp itself or Holden House, but the rest is a mystery. My mother, eventually, did what her grandmothers could never dream of, by training at Homerton College, Cambridge, to become a teacher. Here she met my father, as an undergraduate.

My parents on my father’s graduation day in Cambridge (early 1930s)

Connecting with the grandmothers
So much for family history, and the pictures that it can paint of your grandmothers. But what about those grandmothers who you cannot trace this way? In my book The Circle of Nine, I’ve suggested some exercises, as other ways of re-connecting with the grandmothers of your line. An imaginative approach can be rewarding, as we discovered at a women’s camping weekend on the theme of ‘Generations’.

‘The outdoor site was on a gentle slope. We took a rope roughly sixty feet long and tied it securely to a tree trunk at the top of the slope, leaving the bottom end loose. The rope, representing the matrilineal line, was knotted at six points. The first knot, at the bottom of the slope, represented the maternal grandmother. Moving up the rope, the second represented the great-grandmother, and so on up to the knot representing the five-times great-grandmother closest to the tree. One by one, each woman was blindfolded and handed the free end of the rope. From there, she worked her way up the slope, hand over hand on the rope with a helper each side to support her. As each woman pulled her way up the rope, she paused at each knot and greeted the grandmother of that generation. By the close of the exercise, she had travelled roughly 200 years back in time, “meet¬ing” maternal ancestors, most of whom she had previously known nothing about. When we shared our impressions, however, most of us felt that we had had real communication with these unknown grandmothers.’

If you don’t have the facilities to try this exercise – and it does indeed take some setting up! – you could create a much simpler version. Simply substitute a length of cord that will stretch across the room, with enough to spare for knot-tying as above, and a loose end for holding. Secure one end of the cord to an anchor point such as a door handle. Ensure that you have a clear passage across the room, and with your eyes closed, hold the end of the cord and make your way from one knot or ‘grandmother’ to another, as just described. Keep the action gentle, without too much physical force. This could be done alone or with other women in turn.

And you can even do a completely internalised version: imagine yourself holding that knotted rope, and feeling your way along it to pay tribute to each grandmother. Find a way that works best for you, for instance by just invoking a tactile sense of the rope, rather than seeing it as an image. Or you can picture the rope as it was in our outdoor exercise, stretching up a grassy hill to an old, ancient tree beyond, to which it is safely tethered. Feel free to experiment and see which is the most evocative way for you to connect with the grandmothers.

Washing clothes in the 18th century: Remembering the everyday activities which both we and our great grandmothers carried out can also be a way to connect to their line – even if methods have changed!

There are simple everyday activities which can also connect a woman to her female ancestry. Just bring your grandmothers to mind as you do the same simple things that they would have done – picking blackberries, washing clothes, stirring a pot on the stove. Our lives have expanded greatly now in terms of professions and occupations, but there are core tasks that we still do, which haven’t changed so very much. Pick up ordinary objects, such as baskets, combs, saucepans, spoons, and spades – let your mind run back up that female line, and enjoy the moment of sharing activities passed down from mother to daughter.

Picking blackberries – something that never goes out of fashion! Painting by Myles Birket Foster

The grandmothers who surprise us
Returning to family history research, you may stumble across female ancestors whose lives were just that bit different. As well as my globe-trotting grandmother Maria, I’ve also discovered a 4 x grandmother in Ireland who was abducted by her cousin at the age of 13. She was carried off by an ‘raiding party’ from Waterford to Wales, from Wales to Scotland where they got married, then from Scotland to Brighton and thence to Paris, with the magistrate’s men hot on their heels. I’ll be telling her story in my blog next week, so catch the next episode here!

So at last my mind could now run up and down the storylines, feeling both compassion and admiration for my grandmothers who struggled to provide a better future for their granddaughters-to-be. I relish knowing that some of my grandmothers had adventures, probably facing more challenges than I have ever had to, in our much-expanded way of life today. I’m thankful that they persisted, sometimes against the odds, and kept their line going.

My own family group – myself as a baby with my brother Richard and parents Kathleen and Ormonde, taken in about 1950

Related books by Cherry Gilchrist

You may also be interested in:

A Tale of Two Samplers

Seduction, Sin and Sidmouth: An Ancestor’s Scandal

The Moon Meditation of Kuan Yin

Seduction, Sin and Sidmouth An Ancestor’s Scandal

On April 1, 2020January 2, 2021 By cherrygilchristIn family history, Life Stories & Memoirs2 Comments

The historic village of Hemyock, in the Blackdown Hills

I was idly browsing the online newspaper archive one evening, looking for entries about my respectable great-grandmother, Mary Masey Walker and her staunchly Baptist family from the Devon village of Hemyock. They may have been pious, but they were also entrepreneurs. Mary’s mother Catherine had begun making butter, and soon expanded the business into a sizeable and successful dairy. Becoming ultra-respectable and prosperous, they then moved over the Blackdown Hills into the nearby town of Wellington, becoming pillars of the community there. The last thing I was expecting was scandal – until I hit upon a startling court case from 1869 headed:

Walker versus Salter – An action for seduction

The defendant, one Edwin Masey Walker (and as it happens, my 2 x great uncle), was accused of deflowering a young girl called Jane Salter, getting her pregnant, trying to persuade her to have an abortion, and eventually abandoning her. Jane had kept the baby, and now her own mother was suing Edwin for ‘loss of her daughter’s services’.

I’m probably the first member of the family since that generation to come across these newspaper reports – I’m sure that it was swiftly hushed up after the event. There are several accounts of the two trials, delivering the sordid details with gleeful relish. Edwin was the son of Catherine nee Masey and Thomas Walker. Both the Maseys and the Walkers had been in Hemyock since at least as early as the 17^th century, two of prominent and close-knit tribes of the village.

Hemyock lying at the foot of the Blackdown Hills; dairy herds do well in this area

At the time of the scandal, the dairy was doing well. My formidable 2 x gt grandmother Catherine had twelve children, and she and her husband roped many of them in to help out both with the dairy and their local shop. Catherine’s reputation lived on after her; according to family memory, certain visiting reps would always try to make an appointment to visit on a day when she was not in charge! The dairy certainly took off as a business, and Catherine and Thomas decided to expand it by moving to Wellington. Here they also acquired a comfortable new brick-built villa, something now more suited to dairy owners, the Walkers of Wellington. And Edwin was told to change his ideas – his father had found a new candidate for him to marry, someone more suitable than a country cousin such as Jane.

The formidable Catherine Walker, nee Masey, who sales representatives feared to deal with.

But Jane Salter, back in the village of Hemyock, now wrote to him Edwin to tell him she was pregnant. The statements read out in court declared that not only had he reneged on his promise to marry her, but he had instead committed the unpardonable sin of offering her money to go to Sidmouth for an abortion. (From the tone of the report, it seems that in those days, Sidmouth had a reputation as the Devonian den of vice.) And at that point, Mrs Salter decided to bring the whole matter to court.

‘Up the Steps’ – probably a former shop run by the Walker family in Hemyock

Now the counter accusations flared up. Edwin had primed his defence, Mr Prideaux QC, to interrogate Mrs Salter about the nature of the house she kept in Hemyock. Was it not, in fact, a bawdy house? Was young Jane no better than she ought to be, coming from such a home? He had a witness: John Pursey, confirmed that he and another friend had had sexual relations many times with both Jane and her sister Sarah – and while the girls slept in one bed. Was Jane then really an innocent deflowered maiden? According to Pursey, she shared her favours generously around the neighbourhood.

The judge hovered, almost ready to throw the case out, but Mr Collins, Mrs Salter’s attorney, leapt heatedly to Jane’s defence, and protested that the ‘abominable insinuations’ would be refuted by the ‘minister of the parish’ who would testify to the family’s ‘irreproachable characters’. If this was the Baptist minister, then the temperature was getting hot indeed, with Edwin’s family also prominent in Baptist circles. The Baptist Church abhorred any sex outside marriage at the time; people were often excluded from the church for less.

And so the jury found in favour of Mrs Salter, with Edwin ordered to pay £50 damages, just over £2000 by today’s values.

Wellington High Street, a grander place to live than Hemyock for the ambitious Walker family

The solid villa in Waterloo Road which Thomas and Catherine Walker moved to

But that was not the end of the matter. John Pursey was brought back to court on Wed August 3^rd, 1870, accused of perjury. The ‘friend’, Robert Wright, who said he had slept with both girls, hastened to back off from his testimony. John now maintained that he had plainly fallen into a kind of trance, and that he had found himself by the girls’ bedside one day with no idea of how he had got there. Of one thing he was no sure – there had been no intimacy. Edith Salter likewise denied that her house ‘was frequented by young men who played cards and drank to a late hour.’ The colourful accusations were hurled backwards and forwards in court that day, which finally resulted in a bemused verdict by the jury that ‘there was a doubt in the case’, and so Pursey was released.

After I’d investigated this scandal, I was contacted by two new descendants. One was descended from Edwin’s legitimate heirs – his father Thomas Walker had indeed persuaded Edwin to marry into a better family – and the other was the grandson of the illegitimate daughter with Jane Salter. Jane had defiantly named her daughter Emily Masey Walker Salter, and sadly, my new contact confirmed that Emily had carried a sense of betrayal and resentment all her life. Both of these men, who didn’t know each other, were curious to know anything I could tell them about their ancestor Edwin. I pondered this – one of the ethical dilemmas of family history can be whether to tell the whole truth. My solution was this: to both of them I replied that I could certainly do so, but I should warn them that nobody came out of this very well. Did they still want me to go ahead? Oh yes, they each replied enthusiastically – please dish the dirt!

A rather faded but telling photo of Edwin Masey Walker – note the rather flashy tie pin. The census reveals that he was born with a club foot.

There was some rough justice, as Edwin didn’t make a success of his life. He became a failed and bankrupt businessman several times over, and his socially desirable marriage ended in separation. Meanwhile, others in the family prospered. Two other sons, Clifford and Eustace Walker took over the dairy business and became pillars of society. Eustace served as a Justice of the Peace and Portreeve of Wellington, while Clifford built a classy mansion known as the Gables, where the cream of the town gathered for tennis parties on the lawn. They died well-established and wealthy, and the dairy was not forgotten even after various take-overs and its final demolition in the 1980s. ‘Walkers Gate’, a small development of executive-style houses, is built on the site. I think formidable Catherine would have approved.

The housing development standing on the site of the old Walker’s Dairy, run very successfully by Eustace and Clifford Walker, Edwin’s brothers

The dairy as it used to be in its closing days of business. It was the principal employer in the town. The Walker family had sold it on some decades beforehand.

A more flattering newspaper story than the reports of Edwin’s court case

As for my great grandmother Mary, family memory relates that she resented acting as a nursemaid to her six younger brothers and sisters, and was only too pleased to an offer of marriage from the Rev David Owen. Great-grandfather David arrived in his first pastorate in Hemyock as a newly-qualified Baptist Minister from mid-Wales. The story also relates how he found the Devon mindset too closed for his liking, (he was a highly-educated scholar of Hebrew and Greek, even though he came from humble beginnings), which is why he whisked his bride off to a new life in Ohio, USA. They returned later to England, but never a word was breathed about the scandal of the wicked great uncle Edwin.

In the 1980s, I used to live on Exmoor and would drive over to Wellington to buy feed for my horse and chickens. The dairy was still operating then as a sizeable factory, and under a different name. I had no idea that it had a family connection. Since then, I’ve moved away, and then back again to Exeter, from where I’ve explored Hemyock and Wellington more thoroughly, seeking out the family stories. What has struck me is the comparative remoteness of Hemyock as a historic but quiet village, reached by a maze of lanes, whereas Wellington has what must once have been Victorian sophistication, and was well-connected to places further afield. Although there are only five miles between them, they are two different worlds. I have pity for the girl that Edwin abandoned, but am also proud of the 2 x great grandmother who set the scene for family success. Family history can certainly be a cause of conflicting emotions.

Moving over the hill, from Hemyock to Wellington, certainly brought about a new era of family life for the Walker family, but was also the cause of a scandal long hidden out of sight.

If you’re interested in viewing another blog which focuses on discovering lost ancestors, try:

A London Family

Huguenot Jo

Related books by Cherry Gilchrist:

The otherworld of the ancestors

The long line of ancestors

The Welsh Voices

The Ancestors and our Spiritual Heritage

The Way Forward, with a contribution from R. J. Stewart

Involving the Ancestors

The Circle and the Line

The Circle of the Ancestors

Setting up your Circle of Ancestors

Creating the Circle: Exercise

Contemplating the Circles

Becoming a City Guide

A Winter-into-Spring Break

The Mystery Mug

The Unidentifed Babies

Ronald Arthur Shipstone

Joe Singleton

W. H. C. Gayner

Next time….

Silvester Rose

Places and families

Frederick John Bartlett

Emily Cranfield

More Stories and a Mystery Mug

Huguenot Ancestors

The Huguenots flee from France

Mémoires d’une famille huguenote

The Mauzy family

Further reading:

Other stories from my family history

Arrival in Spon Street

Discovering the city

Winners and Losers

Tips for a Family History Quest

A runaway bride at the age of 13

Mary Max