Fred Dinenage Family Tree

Fred levelled his eyes at me across my dining room table and said:

 ”You’ve shattered my illusions!  I thought I was a Brummie, but now you say I’m a Man of Kent, and a Man of Sussex!”

All I could say was that, he was also a descended from a Soldier who served at the Woolwich Arsenal, so he was also a Gooner, and he cameraman chipped in with the worst accusation of all, calling him a Southampton Scummer, what could be worse for a man who had been a director of Portsmouth Football Club, Pompey fans would be shocked and horrified.  I was tempted to use some cockney rhyming slang as one of his ancestors was born in Bristol City, but thought that he had probably suffered enough by then.

So how did we happen to be sitting in my dinning room insulting the good name of ITV’s Meridian Tonight anchorman Fred Dinenage?  The story starts with Fred appearing in my living room every evening covering stories across the South of England for Meridian,  as all regular viewers do I felt like I knew him without really knowing him at all, and whereas some men just can’t resist a pretty face, I just can’t resist the challenge of an unusual name. 

Out came the etymological dictionaries, the surname records, and Victorian encyclopedias, and I tracked the name back to its early roots, which lay in the word Dunnage, meaning the contents and covering of a boat’s hold.  This word doesn’t appear in English before 1620, so was of foreign origin, and low and behold, as with many nautical words, it has its roots in Dutch and Low German from the North sea coastline.  The term was variously written Dunnage, Donnage, and most tellingly Dinnage, probably from the Dutch word “Denne” for the deck of a boat via  “Dennen” to load a boat.  The word was taken into English by the sailors from the Southern and Eastern ports that traded with the North Sea ports of the Low Countries and Germany, and given that it appears in writing in the 16oos, it had probably existed in colloquial speech for at least a few hundred years before, back to Mediaeval times, when sea trade boomed via the innovations of the North Sea Cogge Boats, which were sturdy enough to survive the North Sea, broad enough to take large cargoes, and flat-bottomed to allow access to the shallow coastal waters and river estuaries from France to Denmark, taking their cargoes of English broad cloth from the downlands of Southern and Eastern England.

This fitted well, as the most common form of the Dinenage name “Dinnage” was almost entirely found in Sussex, which after the Black Death had reduced the population turned to less labour intensive sheep rearing and broadcloth weaving on the downs, which was then exported via the local ports.  A man who was skilled in loading a Cogge Boat to its maximum capacity without endangering the stability of the boat, or causing it to sit badly on the sea and lose speed by a bad distribution of weight in the hold, was a very valuable and sought after commodity.  So the name, and the Family, will have originated from Boat Hands, and Dock Labourers in Mediaeval Sussex, where most of the “Dinnages” stayed until the present day.

But Fred’s branch of the family was more adventurous than that.  They had moved up from the Sussex coast to Canterbury in Kent, and were living there in the Georgian period during the 1700s.  And whilst  Fred’s Great Great Grandfather Samuel was a boy the Napoleonic wars were raging across Europe and the rest of the world, and a new innovation in the British Army was developed; The 95th Rifle Regiment.  So successful had early experiments with these Green Coated troops proved on the battlefield, that a second Battalion was raised at Canterbury in 1805,  and local men flocked to join this elite unit and were duly shipped to Spain and Portugal under Lord Wellington to liberate those countries from the tyranny of Napoleon.  These were the originals brought to life in fiction as Sharpe’s Rifles.

Once Samuel “Dinnage” (this was how the army spelled his name) was old enough he enlisted in the 2nd Battalion 95th Rifle Regiment,  and we next see him taking part in the last battle of the Peninsular War, the storming of Toulouse in 1814, which was to finally destroy Napoleon’s armies in Southern France , guarantee the freedom of Spain and Portugal, and force Napoleon to step down as Emperor of France, and allow himself to be deported to Elba.  The battle  of Toulouse was a bloody one with over 8,000 men dieing in the taking of the city.

Samuel was shipped back to Canterbury once Napoleon was gone, and the Royalist Bourbons reinstated in France, but the peace was short lived.  In 1815 Napoleon broke his parole, returned to France, and aided by the public hatred for the excesses of the “White Terror” carried out by the Royalists in revenge for their years of subjugation under Napoleon (more French citizens died during this than in the “Red Terror” of the French revolution) the country rose up in support of him.  So the 2nd Battalion of the 95th Rifles were embarked again, this time for Belgium.  They would face their last battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and it would be the ultimate battle of that conflict:  Waterloo!

 

Napoleon had managed to split the allied forces, separating Blucher and his Prussians, from Wellington and his Allied British, Germans, Dutch and Belgians.  After forcing Blucher and the Prussians to retreat, Napoleon faced Wellington, but on ground of Wellington’s choosing near the village of Waterloo.  The battle would, in Wellington’s words, be “A damned near run thing.”  The British units were spread across the field to bolster the morale of the rather skittish Dutch and Belgian troops, and much tooing and throwing took place over the two fortified positions which dominated key positions on the field, the French Heavy Cavalry dominated the field breaking like a wave against the solid allied squares, who holding their nerve, cut them down in swathes, as Wellington said when asked if he thought that the French Cavalry came up well, he dryly replied “..and they went down well also.” during this time Samuel Dinenage and the 2nd 95th Rifles were held in reserve, being finally moved up to support the crucial left flank of the Allied lines alongside the Foot Guards and the 52nd rgt.  This was to prove crucial, as the French overran the strongpoint on the allied left centre, and Napoleon then ordered his never beaten elite Imperial Guard to advance in column and break the allied Foot Guards on the left flank.  With drums beating and flags flying, the Battle hardened Imperial Guard surged forward muskets at the ready.  But Napoleon had not reckoned on Wellington’s cunning, he had ordered the Foot Guards to lay down in the corn field they occupied to conceal their position and protect them from French artillery fire, now he gave the order, “Up Guards and at ‘em!” the British Guards sprang up in a perfect line, just 50 yards from the advancing Imperial Guard and unleashed a withering fire that stopped them in their tracks.  Surprised, shocked and bloodied, the Guard hesitated, and in this pause the Commander of the 52nd regiment wheeled his troops and the 2nd 95th with Corporal Samuel Dinenage, round the flank of the Imperial Guard column, unleashed a massive volley to their open flank, and then charged them as the British Guards hit them in the front, putting them to flight.  This had never happened before, the whole French army gasped in amazement, to see their finest troops in full rout from the shouting red coats and the green jacketed rifleman with Corporal Dinenage amongst them.  This was the beginning of the end, as the French wavered, Blucher and his Prussians arrived riding full pelt bare-headed at the French, pursuing them across country and wrecking havoc.  The Battle was over, the carnage had been massive, one in three of the Rifle regiment had fallen, the rest were exhausted.

The war was over, Napoleon was sent to St Helena  in the South Atlantic to while away the rest of his days, and Samuel Dinenage’s Rifle Battalion settled down to occupy France and make sure there was no further chance of Napoleon or his followers rising again to throw Europe into chaos.  The life for the occupying army was good, billeted with French Families friendly relations and fraternisation was common, especially as British soldiers, unlike those of most other nations, including the French, had been subject to heavy penalties including the death penalty, under Lord Wellington not to pillage, rape, or rob the local populace, so British Gold paid for food and lodgings, making them quite welcome guests, and any household containing British Soldiers was sure to be safe from any vigilantes looking for revenge at the end of the War.  It was in this situation that Samuel Dinenage, now Sergeant Dinenage met his wife to be Felicite Amable Pinnin from Versailles.  Samuel was tall, literate, brave, and earning a reasonable living, a good catch for a young woman prepared to travel, and on 9th December 1815 the pair were married by The Reverend Charles Dayman, the occupying force’s Chaplain at Versailles.

Life for an army wife was an itinerant one, and their progress can be traced by the births of their children, Florence in Rosult France (between Versailles and Waterloo) in 1816, followed by Hannagh, Sophia, and Samuel between 1819 and 1824, all born in Ireland, where Samuel had been transferred with the Rifle Brigade.  Samuel was now a Recruiting Sergeant, travelling in a small team signing up young men to serve the colours, and earning a very lucrative income with the bounties for each man recruited.

However Samuel was posted back to England in 1829 and living there until about 1834 when he was discharged from the army after about 20 years of service.  He received a pension from the army, moved back to his home town of Canterbury, and being able to read and write, rare among working men at the time. found employment as a Merchant’s Clerk.  This move spelled the break up of the family, the children going their own ways; Samuel the eldest son had died in infancy, the older girls married Butchers and a Fisherman settling initially in the East of London before they all moved to Gravesend where they raised their families. 

By the 1850s Samuel and Felicite had moved to Woolwich Barracks where Samuel had been re-employed by the Army as a Barracks “Serjeant”, a Chelsea Pensioner in a more or less administrative and training role, where he may help with the new recruits, but would not see any combat in the field, given that he was in his 50s this was a good position to hold.  By 1855 he had died of the dreaded “White Plague” (TB) leaving Felicite to be taken care of as a seamstress living with her daughters and their families.

Present at Samuel death was his remaining son William Henry Dinenage.  He had left home at the tender age of 17 to join the newly formed Ordnance Survey in Southampton.  Impetuous and adventurous as his father had been, William Henry married a young girl from Liverpool, Jane Breeze.  he was employed as a “Computer” by the Ordnance Survey, calculating distances and heights of landscape features, and was paid 6 shillings a day, a very good wage, even if he wasn’t needed every day, by comparision a labourer received about 9 shillings a weekat this time.  He had obviously inherited his Father’s charm and persuasiveness, as he joined the Ancient Order of Forresters, and took to selling their life Assurance policies to the mariners’ families who lived in Southampton, rising to be secretary of the local branch, where he made his name after being sued by the wife of dead mariner, to whom he had refused assurance payments because of irregularities in the membership of her husband, this case lead to a change in law regarding Assurance Societies, bringing in better arbitration for dependants of the deceased.  William and Jane also had tradgedies of their own to deal with as both a son and a daughter died in infancy in the 1860s.

But overall William Henry was  sucessful, and well connected, making his living between the Ordnance Survey, Accountancy, and the Order of Forresters, in the early 1870s he decided to take over an Inn in Southampton which would prove his undoing; the business failed, and he was declared bankrupt.  This was the beginning of a difficult period for the family, the family broke apart, William Henry moving to the Industrial Midlands in the mid 1870s to become a Clerk at a Colliery, they struggled, and a son born in 1876 died shortly after birth, but they survived.  The younger children went with them, most of the elder children married and stayed in Southampton except for one of the boys who moved to Lincoln.  The other boys were a mixture of charm, brawn, and brains, like their father and grandfather; he two sons who stayed in Southampton went to sea working as 1st Class Stewards, the boys who went to the Midlands with their parents went into accountancy and Electrical Engineering, a New Technology, that offered great opportunities to the talented, whilst one son became a Railway Goods Guard.  The girls married men in good solid working class jobs, such as house painters and Railway guards.  But the stigma and shame of their Father’s Bankruptcy still haunted the family, the children commenting on their background in Southampton.

William Henry Dinenage and his wife Jane’s story ends in Walsall.  Both lived well into their 80s, Jane bore William 14 children the eldest William Edward being 30 years old when the youngest, Edgar Breeze Dinenage (Fred Dinenage’s Grandfather)  was born in 1881.  Their life had been eventful and full of ups and downs, but what we can say is that William Henry never gave up, he pursued any opportunity that life through onto his path, and despite failure and tragedy he always pushed on and did the best for his children.

Meanwhile back in Southampton as the new century came in, James Richard Dinenage (Fred Dinenage’s Grand or as we would say Great Uncle) had a stroke of luck, so well regarded as a Ship’s Steward, he managed to get a place on the ultimate Passenger Liner; The Titanic.  His family must have been overjoyed when they got the news, this was a major achievement, how tragic then, when news reached the family that the ship had gone down after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic.  They would have waited anxiously for news, but after several days when all the survivors had been accounted for, and the recovered bodies had been identified, there was still no news of James.  Eventually there was no possibility of his having survived, despite the lack of a body, and he was declared dead, lost at sea.  He left a young son and a widow who had already seen one child die in infancy, their plight was made worse by the ship’s owners, who immediately stopped the wages of their crew from the point that the ship went down, leaving the family destitute.  No doubt some help came from the Forresters and the family in Walsall, as James’s young son Richard John survived until the ripe old age of 83 living in Romsey Hampshire.

Back in Walsall Fred’s Grandfather Edgar Breeze Dinenage married Emma Louisa Smith, and rose from an Electrical Apprentice, through a qualified Journeyman Electrical Engineer and Armature Winder, to end up as a Company Director of an Electrical Engineering Company.

His son (Fred’s Father) Aubrey Dennis Dinenage) lived in Erdington in the Midlands, before eventually retiring to the Portsmouth area, which is how Fred Dinenage came to be back in Hampshire 100 years after his Great Grandfather had left under a cloud of Bankruptcy for the Midlands, and nearly 150 years after his Great Great Grandfather fought at Waterloo.

Scandinavians Are Descended From Stone Age Immigrants, Ancient DNA Reveals

Scandinavians Are Descended From Stone Age Immigrants, Ancient DNA Reveals

How my Y Chromosome I1a ancestors took over Scandinavia in the Neolithic, see previous blog on Genetic Genealogy

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Genetic Genealogy

There has been a massive interest in Genetics over the past few years driven by advances in research and improved techniques to decode our Genetic makeup. Most people know about the use of DNA to track down criminals, sometimes decades after the crime was committed, and the political hot potato of a proposed DNA database holding the details of every individual in the country to help prevent crime and terrorism, you may be less aware that it has thrown up some interesting applications when applied to Family History, sometimes throwing up anomalies in family lines, but more often linking people to geographic areas way back before written records were kept, and thereby extending albeit sometimes tentatively, the reach of the Genealogist.

Let me give three examples of what can be achieved using the latest research.

Ireland

The first is my own Tree for the last 140 years we have gone by the name of “McNeil” and from then till the present generation the family lived in Peckham in South London. Straight forward Genealogy, using Birth, Marriage, and Death Records (BMD) showed the ebb and flow of my direct ancestors over that time, and Parish Registers filled in some of the blanks concerning brothers and sisters of the direct ancestors, added to this were War Service Records, and Census returns which showed a slightly wider picture of family and neighbours, from tall of this a picture of the impoverished family performing constant “Moonlight Flits” one step ahead of the rent man in the back streets of Southwark. But having gone back four generations the records seemed to stop. Eventually the course of the gap was tracked down to the Family changing their name between Neal, Neill, O’Neal, O’Neil, McNeill, and McNeil, which in turn with earlier census records and a lucky break with a marriage in the Catholic Sardinian Chapel in London, showed that the family had come over from Kerry in Ireland. The upshot of all this detective work was a fascinating family tree going back to 1801, but again a gap was found in that generation as records in Ireland are sparse to say the least, most Census records having been destroyed during the Civil War in the 1920s, and most of the remaining being pulped for newspapers between the wars, Catholic Parish records being hard to get hold of made the matter worse. So it looked as though the trail would stop there, until the option of Genetic testing came up.

Surnames are passed down through the male line, and in the same way, the Y chromosome is passed down from father to son generally unchanged through many generations before the odd benign mutation crops up to differentiate branches of a family from the rest of that family with a similar Y chromosome. Using these near identical Y chromosomes a family tree can be built up over thousands and tens of thousands of years, with specific mutations showing a timeline and, because of genetic research, geographic locations for the family line over the years.

So off went the swab of cells gently rubbed from the inside of my cheek, and back came a series of numbers showing specific mutations of my particular Y Chromosome, which fitted in to the latest genetic research showing the modern distribution of the Chromosome, and the journey it would have taken over time. The upshot of the results were that my particular Y Chromosome was of a type found in relatively low levels in the British Isles, and even rarer in Ireland other than in very specific areas/families, but very common in Norway, technically it is classed as I1a.

The reason for this “Norwegian” Gene in County Kerry in Ireland, is because there were very specific enclaves in Ireland, the Vikings having founded various ports in the West of Ireland in Kerry and Cork during the 9th to 11th centuries. That would also help to explain the family’s blonde hair as children, turning much darker with age, and the blue and grey eyes, there were Norse recessive showing up through the dark Irish genes through the generations.

Going back further, this particular I1a Chromosome traces itself back from Kerry to the coast from Bergen/Oslo in Norway through the Iron (500 B.C.) Bronze (1800 B.C.) and late Neolithic (3800 B.C.) periods. In the hundred years before this their Neolithic Culture and genes, perhaps driven by internecine warfare, had pushed across the Mesolithic indigenous tribes in the Baltic marshes and islands of Northern Germany and Denmark. In the 1,100 years before (5000 B.C. to 3900 B.C.) they had multiplied with a sedentary farming way of life in North central Europe, especially Germany, clearing forests, building long houses, raising cattle and crops, as well as the proto-German branch of the Indo-European language tree, and their decorated Linear Band Ceramic (LBK) pots from which their culture took its name. They had pushed up the rivers and river valleys through central and northern Europe along the Danube, Rhine, and Elbe in the 500 years from 5500 B.C. to 5000B.C. driving their cattle and carrying their seed wheat and barley in ceramic pots.

Prior to learning agriculture from their south eastern Balkan neighbours and making their long trek up the Rivers of Europe to the North and West, they hunted deer and boar in the woods and fished along the coastline of Slovenia during the Mesolithic Age for perhaps 6000 years, and the roots of the founding father of the Group lived in the Ice Age Balkan Refuge around 11000 B.C. where he and his family hunted horse and reindeer across the tundra and plains, painted cave walls and carved animal bones into voluptuous platted haired Earth Goddess figurines, before the glaciers receded and allowed them to spread North and West giving us one of the main Germanic/Nordic Gene Pools.

The other interesting research shows that the first individual to have blue eyes in the world (due to the OCA2 mutation) from whom over 99% of all blue eyed people are descended on either their male or female lines was born to this or a related group at the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, and the Blonde Hair mutation (MC1R) appeared perhaps just before this around 11,000 B.C. in roughly the same area of the Balkans refuge. Pale skin probably originated (to a great extent via the SLC24A5 mutation) around the time of the earlier ancestral migrants of this and other groups reaching Eurasia in the period 20,000 – 50,000 years ago.

The line goes all the way back from here through various measurable Y Chromosome mutations in a direct line to Genetic “Adam” who lived in North East Africa about 80,000 years ago, and is the genetic Daddy of us all, who would have had black skin, hair, and eyes.

Quite a journey for the lineage of a working class boy from Peckham! This gives the broad picture of what can be discovered by combining genetics with family history, but how can it help in pining down other family research?

Scotland

Let’s look at a Scottish example I recently traced. The Genealogical research started fairly conventionally with the family in Yorkshire working in engineering in the second half of the 20th century, and farming during WW2, prior to this the family lived in Sunderland, working in the ship yards, the generations living in late Victorian times were still in Sunderland but working as Gardeners in the Parks and Cemeteries of the town. Then I got back to a major leap for the family their Great Grandfather had been the Captain of a small vessel running wine beer and spirits up from the importers and distillers in Northern England to Leith in Scotland, which having gained its political and economic independence from Edinburgh by act of parliament acted as the Port for Edinburgh, and was a boom town in the mid-1800s. His parents and siblings had lived in Dundee and worked in the first Jute and Flax Mills in the city in the Georgian Period.

So far, so good, but then I hit a block, as is often the case, once you get back beyond Census returns and Government Birth, Marriage, and Death registrations, you are back into Parish Records which can be a bit hit and miss in their contents, and for which it can be difficult to find corroborating evidence, albeit that the Scottish Records are somewhat better indexed than their English equivalents. The question was where had the family originated? Were they natives of Dundee, or were they incomers with the flood of people who poured into the city to seek employment in the new Flax and Jute Mills?

Using traditional methods of Census returns, BMD Registers etc, I had narrowed the family origins down to two families, both with the surname Stewart, and the same Mother, father, and child’s name, these were the only two families in Scotland at the time that fitted the bill for my client’s ancestors, sifted through what little supporting evidence I could find it was fifty fifty which of them it would be, and at this point I applied the genetic information we had gathered from a test of my client’s Y Chromosome which swung the balance.

The two candidates for the family were one Family from Dundee, and another from the other side of Scotland in a small Peninsula in Argyll. At first glance the Dundee family looked the obvious candidates because of their Geographic location in Dundee, but there were some very small discrepancies which made me cautious. Applying the Genetic evidence showed that the Y chromosome of my client was of a type loosely referred to as “Celtic” i.e. the genetic “Haplogroup” R1b, the commonest male genetic group in Scotland, on the face of it not a great help, until you start to look more closely at the detail. There is in fact a genetic gradient between Dundee and Argyll, i.e. from West to East for R1b, it being relatively more common in the West (Argyll) than in the East (Dundee), and also my client was from a sub-group commonly referred to as the descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages, “Niall Noigiallach”.

Niall of the Nine Hostages, the High King of Ireland in the second half of the 4th Century AD, the same Irish King who kidnapped Succat a Romano-British youth who escaped back to Britain and took Holy orders, returning to Ireland where he would become known as St Patrick! Niall is believed to be responsible for fathering the ancestors of a disproportionately large number of Irish descended men, up to 25% of the male population in some areas, which goes a way to showing how he left his mark on the tribes he defeated, and the likely size of his own personal “harem”. Niall defeated the Dal Riada (Scots) in battle when they originally lived in the North of Ireland, and forced them to migrate to Argyll and the surrounding area in what was Pictland, but was later to become known as Scotland. Interestingly some of these Scots warriors joined the Roman army as auxiliaries and are mentioned by at least one Roman writer as cannibalistic savages due to their habit of ritually eating the odd captive. As well as forcing the Scots to migrate from Ireland to Pictland, Niall also had his own colonies in Argyll and retained a loose overlordship of the Dal Riada (Scots). Genetically this “legend” is backed up by the replacement of “Pictish” genes and language with Scots Gaelic genes and language in Argyll during the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. It was from this movement of people that my client’s Stewart genes were descended, either from one of Niall’s own colonies in Argyll, or from a subject Dal Riaddic settlement on which he had donated his genetic line to a member of their female aristocracy. Eventually all of these Irish settlers became known collectively as Scots.

The other interesting fact apparent from this is that the Picts were not “Celts”, they had a separate language unintelligible to Gaelic and English speakers, a different genetic mix, pointing to a Scandinavian origin, and rode ponies that can also be traced back genetically to Scandinavia in pre-Viking times; Roman writers compared the Picts to Belgic, Germanic, and Scandinavian tribes in appearance, large limbed and with many red heads, unlike the dark haired dark eyed Gaelic speakers of the western extremes of Britain and Ireland. So counter intuitively, the next time you see a burly red or blonde headed Scot, draped in tartan and balling his Celticness at a Football or Rugby match, you can rest assured that there was probably nothing Celtic about his ancestry till well into the Middle Ages.

Using this genetic information I tied the family into the historical records, tracing them to Morvern in Argyll, and the picture became clearer. A small independent Sept of the clan Stewart held the lands of Morvern in Argyll, in the early 1700s they probably numbered about 1,500 of whom about 300 were men of fighting age. When Charles Edward Stewart landed in Scotland to raise the Scots in war against the house of Hannover in 1745 the 300 Stewart men of Morvern rallied to the Brattach Bhan, the White Banner, under Stewart of Ardshiel culminating in their presence at the Battle of Culloden, where the Highland Scots faced an army of Lowland Scots (there being very few Englishmen present at the battle) at the first sign of a retreat by part of his army of Highlanders “Bonnie” Prince Charlie ran away with his entourage despite being begged to re-enter the fight by the Clan Chief Clunie MacPherson who had arrived with reinforcements.

Despite this and the fact that Appin the wily Clan Chief of the Stewarts had not gone to the battle, Stewart of Ardshiel fought bravely with his men, attacking the Lowland Fusiliers and Cannon that faced him. These tore great gaps in the Highland ranks, and broke their charge. The Brattach Bhan, the White Banner which was the Royal Standard went down with the Standard bearer, and would have fallen to the Lowlanders, had not one of the Morvern Stewart Clan, a man called Mac an t-ledh, snatched it up, tore it from its staff, and wrapped it around his body to prevent it falling into the hands of the Lowlanders as Ardshiel and the bloodied remains of his brave clan including the Morvern Stewarts were forced to make their escape.

After the defeat Bonnie Prince Charlie took ship to France and lived the rest of his days travelling Europe living off the hospitality of whichever sovereign wanted to use him as a political pawn against the British Crown. The Clans were disillusioned by their leadership, and broken as a political force, with the lowlanders imposing harassment and armies of occupation in Highland areas. The Stewarts of Morvern were forced to give up their language, their plaid, and their religion (to a great extent), and settled down to work their crofts and looms for the Clan landlords who had refused to take the field in the rebellion (most Clan Chiefs had one senior member who followed the rebellion, and one that stayed at home and could therefore claim to be blameless if it failed).

In the intervening generations between Culloden where my client’s five times Great Grandfather fought alongside Ardshiel and Mac an t-ledh, and the birth of his three times Great Grandfather, the relationship between Clan Chief and Clansman was slowly eroded by the realisation of the Chiefs that they could become wealthy by turning their lands over to sheep and more intensive farming methods, these would produce more capital and higher rents than they could get from their subsistence farming clansmen growing Potatoes and a little Flax on their smallholdings. The situation was made worse by many of the chiefs preferring to live in Edinburgh or London rather than on their lands, and thereby loosing the connection with their tenants. The clansmen were slowly squeezed off their land by the avarice of their Chiefs, and were forced to embrace the future as best they could. In the case of Morvern the forests were cut down and the timber sold off for ship building and paper making, the tenants were removed from their ancestral homes in the interior and relocated to loch side and coastal settlements where they were instructed to supplement their reduced land holding with kelp collecting and fishing or small scale weaving.

Those who tried to grow Potatoes in the traditional manner were hit with an outbreak of Potato blight; it seemed as if even nature was conspiring against them. Their former farms were given over to sheep rearing by the Duke of Argyll. Betrayed once more by their countrymen, it was ironically English capital and an English industrial revolution that would save my client’s family. In 1829 it was to Dundee that the Stewart Family trekked and it was the English Industrialists in Dundee who welcomed in the starving Stewarts to work in their Flax and Jute Mills, pleased to find dispossessed skilled weavers used to handling flax were abundant and cheap it was a capitalist dream come true.

So the mystery of my client’s ancestry was solved by eliminating an obvious candidate for what was at first site a less obvious candidate via the genetic information which placed the Family’s origin amongst the descendants of a ferociously over-sexed Irish Warlord.

England

Here we have an example of evidence for a family staying put over a long period rather than throwing light on their travels.

Having traced the family through farming communities in Skipton in Yorkshire, where they had lived since the turn of the 20th century, it turned out that they had originated in Lancashire, over a period of hundreds of years, I followed members of the family from farm to farm, some never rising above labouring status, but the core line tenanting farms of their own paying rent to the local lord, and getting by through thick and thin, back to a single farmhouse out in the bleak marshes of the land between the Lune and Cocker estuaries on the Lancashire coast, where they slowly reclaimed rich farmland from wild marsh during the Georgian period. Generation after generation had been born, farmed and died in that place, side branches of the family never moving than a few miles from the family in the marshes.

This begged the question of how long they had actually been in that area? Civil records will take you back through the 19th century, Parish records, if you are lucky will add maybe a hundred to three hundred years on top of that if they still exist for the Parish, and you can find them, and they are legible, much further than this and you are in the lap of the gods for families that don’t own land or find themselves on the wrong side of the law. But genetics can throw a light further back than this if the circumstances are right.

In this case it was obvious that until the beginning of the 20th century the family had stayed in the same area of the same county, and for a great number of generations before that they had not even left one single isolated farm in the marshes. Given that the great upheavals of the passing of the Stewart, Georgian and Regency Kings and coming of Victoria had barely affected them, let alone the Corn Laws, Cholera Epidemics, Agricultural unrest, Industrial Revolution, The Napoleonic Wars, and Jacobite Rebellions, had not left their mark on them or their life styles, how long had they been there for?

My client carried out a genetic test on the male members of the family’s Y chromosome and came back with some interesting results. These showed that they had the “Celtic” R1b Y chromosome, which in this case pointed to the more or less original “indigenous” population of the West of the British Isles (as well as Ireland), they could have had other “intrusive” chromosomes from other “tribes” of the British Isles, for example the areas to the north in Cumbria, and to the south in the Wirral and Cheshire had strong intrusions of Viking settlers who show up with a different genetic makeup in modern British populations, or specific “indigenous” Eastern British chromosomes from the near continent, not just late Roman and Dark Age “English” markers from Frisia and Denmark, but ancient and related groups from early Neolithic farmers, and invading Belgic tribes. But none of these showed; the line was Celtic, and not obviously associated with sub-groups of the R1b type indicating Scots or Irish descent, it was most likely a native i.e. Mesolithic gene marker, probably in Britain from the repopulation of the land by Iberian hunter gatherers after the last Ice Age.

This gene marker had survived a second wave of immigrants and ideas from Iberia bringing Agriculture, polished stone axes and megalithic worship to North Wales, and ultimately to the indigenous tribes of the surrounding counties including Lancashire, this happened about 6,000 years ago. A third influx brought traders, miners and metal workers from Iberia to the Copper deposits of North Wales, and their trading and culture would have heavily influenced Lancashire leading to the Bronze age Culture between about 2,000 and 750 B.C., they would also have brought their “Lingua Franca” the Celtic language, which appears to have developed as a trading language for the Atlantic seaboard of Europe (rather than a movement of people) from the South of Spain to the North of Scotland.

The next major cultural innovation came with the Iron Age, with it came Belgic tribes (who the latest research would tend to show were not “Celtic” more likely “Germanic” in speech and culture from the North of France and The Low Countries) to the East of England from around 800 B.C. This ushered in an era of slightly colder and wetter weather and a push west against the Celtic speakers in the West by the Belgic speakers in the East. The Celtic speaking tribes with this family’s R1b gene in Lancashire adopted Iron tools and weapons and coalesced as a confederation called the Sistuntes (Sistuntii in Latin) in the coastal areas where their maritime trading and fishing skills helped them survive the climate down turn and warlike raids by the Brigantes from the East in Yorkshire. This places the Sistuntes bang in the middle of the area where the family were from both geographically and genetically.

The Sistuntes would have lived tolerably well in their little corner of Britain during the Iron Age, the climate improved again slightly from the turn of the Millennium from BC to AD, managing to just survive the Brigantian incursions, then came the Romans. In 79 A.D. the Roman Governor of Belgic Britain, the future Emperor Agricola, march to Mona (Anglesey) with a massive force of Legionaries, sweeping the North Welsh tribes aside, he crossed from the mainland to Mona, slaughtered the entire Druidic population there, and cut down their sacred Oak Groves. A Roman hob-nailed marching boot had been stamped down on the throat of Celtic resistance in the north west of Britain.

Agricola then marched north through Cheshire, to Yorkshire where the Brigantes were brought to heel, and into Lancashire where the Sistuntes were encountered. Being more interested in trade, and having seen what had happened to those who resisted, the Sistuntes sensibly acquiesced to Roman domination, and were rewarded with eight fortified military camps, connected by roads, which although built to protect Roman communications in the North of Britain actually protected the Sistuntes from the Brigantes, and enabled the Sistuntes to sell supplies to the garrisons thereby opening up trade and wealth for them. Out of the amalgamation of these Military camps, native civilian shanty towns, and agricultural villages, the Romans built Towns which would become Manchester, Warrington, Lancaster, Overborough, Freckleton, Blackrode, Ribchester, and Colne. The Roman occupation from the Sistuntes viewpoint was almost completely benign and indeed a great leap forward culturally, they could worship and live how they liked as long as they paid their taxes and kept the peace.

400 years of benign Roman rule collapsed over a period of about 100 years between about 400 A.D. and 500 A.D. What was left of the Garrisons in the cities held out under local Romano-British gentry. This was thrown into turmoil when the descendants of the Brigantes now with a veneer of Scandinavian pagan incomers from Angeln in Denmark, decided to push West again in what became known as part of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. In fact this was just a continuation of the Brigantian encroachments that had been going on since the start of the Iron Age 1,200 years previously, and carries up till this day with the rivalry between Yorkshire and Lancashire in Cricket; the names and weapons changed, but the genetic makeup of the players has remained more or less the same for the last 3,000 years.

The outcome of all this was that after initial setbacks when the invaders took some of the old Roman cities, the Celtic British managed to hold out, retake them, and formed the British Christian Kingdom of Rheged (sometimes two Kingdoms North and South) which at various times spread from North Wales and Cheshire to the Scots Border, the Anglo-Brigantes set up the rival “English” Kingdom of Bernicia facing them to the East, initially Pagan, eventually becoming Christian.

Politics being what it is, in 730 A.D. a dynastic marriage and a settling of disputes between the Celtic speakers of Rheged and the English speakers of Bernicia led to an amalgamation to form the Kingdom of Northumbria, giving them a fighting chance against the Picts, Scots, and Irish, who now menaced their coasts and borders. This was short lived as within 150 years Northumbria was effectively overrun by Norwegian Vikings in the West and Danish Vikings in the East.

Despite all of this turmoil the family’s ancestors survived to pass down their “Celtic” Y chromosome; a British “aboriginal” male line, that had survived Brigantes, Romans, Angles, and Vikings to come down intact to the present day. Interestingly names like “Roskell” appear in the early female lines of the tree and are derived from Old Norse, so although the male line went straight beck to Mesolithic times it intertwined over the centuries with genes through the female line from the Viking invaders and no doubt others. The point about the Y Chromosome is that is doesn’t get genetically shuffled every generation they way most genes do, so retains it “character” over millennia bar the occasional mutation which form the “branches” of its tree. Thereby giving us a glimpse of the amazing geographic stability of the families who farmed the marshes.

Conclusion

So as a tool for Genealogical research, genetics provides some certainties, a host of clues from which inferences can be made, but can be a blunt instrument in terms of throwing light on the specifics of a tree, other than proving a negative. As an example, genetics tells us some interesting facts, like if you have blue eyes you have a n ancestor who lived in the Balkans at the end of the last Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago, it can give you clues to an ethnic identity linked to a Celtic tribe allied to the Romans 2,000 years ago, a Viking colony in Ireland 1,200 years ago, and differentiate between two families in Scotland 200 years ago. Using it sensibly adds a new dimension to genealogical research, and paints in broad brush strokes the missing centuries in a family tree.

My Services

If you would like to have your Family’s genetic Origins traced please contact Paul McNeil on the following email address:

paulmcneil@timedetectives.co.uk

Australian Family History

The majority of Australians have family roots in the UK, and it is always interesting to trace them back from hot southern sun to rainy fileds in Britain where their ancestors may have toiled since before the Norman Conquest.   To get an idea of the kind of things that can be discovered, take a look at the excerpts from an Australian Family Tree below.   Although not the complete Family Story, it will give you an idea of what can be achieved.  I hope you enjoy the story.

The Godding Family From England to Australia

The research of the name Godding itself showed that it is derived from an Old English name “Goding” meaning Goda’s child.   The original “Goding” spelling of the name coincides with the early family distribution around the Gloucestershire/Somerset borders.   Given that the name is not associated with a particular profession or craft, and we discovered through research that the family worked the land for many generations at the humblest level of society in future centuries, we can be confident that in the 11th  Century we would have found Goding (Goda’s son) also working the land but as a serf for the lord of the Manor.    

From the Norman Conquest to the 14^th century Goding and his descendants would have toiled the land never leaving their home Parish except for the occasional Market Day or Saints Day celebration.   Even during the 14^th century with the upheavals of the Black Death which wiped out nearly half the population of England, and the subsequent Peasants’ Revolt which almost overthrew the king in London, made little difference to the lives of the Godings.   Perhaps they gained a little more mobility, and slightly better wages due to the shortage of able bodied workers due to the plague, but it is unlikely that they moved more than a few miles from their home Parishes, given that they were still there some centuries later.   One thing is sure, this part of the family actually survived the Plague and lived to pass on their genes to future generations.

Centuries passed, Civil Wars came and went, as did Kings Queens, Catholicism, and a Cromwellian Republic, but still the Godings toiled in the earth for the Lord of their Manor, scraping a living and living long enough to produce the next generation.   Eventually we find them in the 1700s having gained an extra “d” in their name, courtesy of the local Vicar’s whim, given that most of his flock were unable to read and write, he decided on the spelling of their names, and these became set, and so we find William Godding born in 1793 in the Gloucestershire market town of Thornbury.  

This was the age of enclosures, landowners now started to turn their land back to cereal cultivation, which required more man power.   In order to meet the higher demand for grain crops the big landowners would seek permissions from Parliament to carry out “Enclosures”, not just the taking of uncultivated waste land, but also land that was communally farmed by the agricultural population for each person to keep a cow, or for raising of vegetable crops.   The peasant farmers who previously had rights to this land,   lost their opportunity to make a living from farming, so, having robbed them of their livelihood, the Lord would take them on as paid labourers to work the land they previously had rights over.   The Lord would also decide what he would pay them.   If they didn’t like the wages, they could always decide not to work for the Lord, in which case they would loose their cottage, would have to leave the village to look for work elsewhere as they would not be entitled to poor relief from the Parish, or, of course they could choose to starve to death in a ditch.     The landowners had worked out how to control their local populations via wages and rents rather than through the sword and gibbet.   In the words of one MP who railed against the plight of the rural poor;

“The poor in these Parishes may say; Parliament may be tender of property; all I know is I had a cow, and an act of Parliament has taken it from me.”

So this is how William Godding came to be working for wages on local farms dependant on large tenant farmers and the Lord of the Manor, rather than owning a small holding of his own.  Then surprisingly when in his twenties around 1816 William takes the bold step of moving, not just from his home town of Thornbury, but out of the County of Gloucestershire to Keynsham in Somerset where he meets and marries a local girl called Isabella.   Such a move was a major decision for an unskilled Agricultural Labourer, so we needed to see if we could find the cause of it. 

 

Trouble at Thornbury 

 

The enclosure acts had caused resentment between the Lords who took the land and the Peasants who lost it.   But the lords had the law on their side and penalties could be harsh for Agricultural Labourers who weren’t prepared to cow tail to the local Lords.

To take back some of their lost assets, and as an act of defiance local people would poach animals for the pot from the Lords’ lands, which was illegal and violently resented by the Gentry.   The penalties were drastic, one member of the Godding family being transported in a prison ship to Australia for offences in 1810.    

At Thornbury in 1815, a man called Thomas Till had been legally killed on the Estate of Lord Ducie by a Spring Gun,   a firearm booby trap left in the woods by game keepers,   Thomas Till had tripped one such wire and been shot and killed by the device when out looking for a rabbit for the pot. This legally sanctioned killing heightened tensions between the common people and the Gentry in Thornbury which would eventually spilled over into an act of defiance.    

On a cold and frosty moonlit night on 18^th January 1816 a group of young labourers gathered at a house in Thornbury, with blacked faces to aid camouflage and avoid recognition, they set out on an act of civil disobedience to poach on the lands of Colonel Berkeley at Berkeley Castle.   Undoubtedly this was a political move, rather than a pure poaching for the pot exercise, as the leaders of the participants were from middleclass backgrounds, indeed one of the organisers was a lawyer, and guns had been provided, something no peasant would have owned.

However by the time they reached the Berkeley Estate word had leaked, and ten gamekeepers lay in ambush for them.   The poachers were challenged by the keepers, and realising that they had been betrayed, decided to make a fight of it, at least some among them were ex-soldiers, and they formed up in a double line, advanced on the keepers and   fired a volley killing one keeper, William Ingram, instantly and wounding several others. It then seems that after some confused fighting the poachers made their escape.

Over the following weeks Two of the group lost their nerve, gave themselves up and turned King’s Evidence in return for a dropping of charges, the less well off were apprehended over the following weeks, their fates were mixed; two were hanged for the murder of Ingram, nine were transported to Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) for life, and probably another eight (who had the money and connections to facilitate it) fled to America, Ireland, and the Caribbean. No doubt there were many other men involved in the fight that night, but not important enough to warrant a prolonged pursuit.  Adding up the facts and timing of William Godding’s move, it does look like he may well have decided to flee as a result the Thornbury Poacher’s Battle.  

It seems that fleeing one county away was enough as William and Isabella set up home in Keynsham and raise a family there.

We followed William and his family through the archives decade upon decade from 1841, we find them in Keynsham with six of their children, five sons and a daughter, William eventually gives   up work on the land when in his fifties to work as a Labourer on the newly arrived Railway, his daughter Elizabeth found work as a domestic servant at the tender age of fourteen with a Railway Contractor, times were hard, the children left home and William continues to work as a labourer into his eighties after the death of his wife.

 

Vines Godding and the move to Australia

Vines was often misrepresented as “Fines” due to his West Country accent, and the name would stick.   The son of William and Isabella Godding born in Keynsham Somerset. Like his father and brothers he was a Labourer at a time in England when life was very tough for the working man and his family.   He had married Sophia Palmer in 1854, and by 1861 they were living in a working class area of Bristol with three children under of five years and under, so life was   hard for them with five mouths to feed on a labourer’s income.

During the middle years of the nineteenth century in England there was a big drive to “assist” paupers and the working poor to emigrate to Australia, some times this was a wholely voluntary process, and sometimes there was something close to coercion involved.   In the case of Vines, given how adventurous the family was prepared to be in order to find work; it seems likely that a mixture of poverty and daring fuelled their move.  

What we do know is that their move was “assisted” i.e. the costs were   covered by a local emigration scheme.     We found that they left in 1862 aboard the ship the Lady Milton.   With Vines and Sophia were their daughters Elizabeth five and Emily three, plus their one year old son Charles. They must have been fairly desperate, because Sophia was also pregnant when they undertook the trip, and gave birth during the voyage to Louisa.     But times could be hard in Australia as well, and both Bessy and Louisa died in 1868, with Elizabeth following in 1888.   The rest of the children survived to adulthood. Sophia lived till 1896, and Vines till 1901, they both lived out their lives in Australia.

 

Charles James Godding    

Times may have been hard, but with Imperial Wars to fight Vines’ eldest son Charles James, joined the Army as a Gunner in the Artillery on 26^th January 1881, he was listed as a Baptist, the first confirmation we have of the Godding family’s religious beliefs. By 3^rd of March 1885 he was shipped out to the Sudan during the war with the Mahdi, and General Gordan’s siege at Khartoum. The force left Sydney amid much fanfare, generated in part by the holiday declared to allow the public to bid farewell to the troops; the send-off was described as the most festive occasion in the colony’s history.

The NSW contingent arrived and anchored at Sudan’s Red Sea port Suakin on 29^th March 1885, and were attached to a brigade composed of Scots, Grenadier and Coldstream Guards. Shortly after their arrival they marched as part of a large “square” formation – on this occasion made up of 10,000 men – for Tamai, a village some 30 kilometres inland. Although the march was marked only by minor skirmishing, the men saw something of the reality of war as they halted among the dead from a battle which had taken place eleven days before. Further minor skirmishing took place on the next day’s march, but the Australians, now at the rear of the square, sustained only three casualties, none fatal. The infantry reached Tamai, burned whatever huts were standing and returned to Suakin.

After Tamai, the NSW contingent worked on the railway line which was being laid across the desert to the Nile.     Far from the excitement they had imagined, the Australians suffered mostly from the enforced idleness of guard duties. When a camel corps was raised, fifty men volunteered immediately. On 6 May they rode on a reconnaissance to Takdul, 28 kilometres from Suakin, again hoping for an encounter with the Sudanese, but the only action that day involved two newspaper correspondents who had accompanied the patrol before leaving the cameleers to file their stories in Suakin. They soon found themselves surrounded by enemy forces, and one was wounded as they fled. The camel corps made only one more sortie – on 15 May, to bury the bodies of men killed in fighting the previous March.

The artillery saw even less action than the infantry. They were posted to Handoub where, having no enemy close enough to engage, they drilled for a month. On 15 May they rejoined the camp at Suakin. Not having participated in any battles, Australian casualties were few: those who died fell to disease rather than enemy action.   By May 1885 the British government had decided to abandon the campaign and left only a garrison in Suakin. The Australian contingent sailed for home on 17 May 1885 arriving in Sydney on 19 June. They were expecting to land at Port Jackson and were surprised to disembark at the quarantine station on North Head near Manly as a precaution against disease. One man died of typhoid there before the contingent was released.

Five days after their arrival in Sydney the contingent, dressed in their khaki uniforms, marched through the city to a reception at Victoria Barracks where they stood in pouring rain as a number of public figures, including the Governor, the Premier, and Colonel Richardson the commandant of the contingent, gave speeches. It was generally agreed at the time that, no matter how small the military significance of the Australian contribution to the adventure, it marked an important stage in the development of colonial self-confidence and was proof of the enduring link with Britain.

 

The Grandsons of Vines Godding

 The family having seen action in the Sudan, their then settled down to civilian life until the next generation were called upon to serve the Empire in The Great War.

 

Clarence Sydney Godding 1898 – 1917

Clarence was working as a Farm hand on a Dairy Farm, before joining the 19^th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1916 as a Private, and had been living with his parents.   On his shipping papers his religion is stated as C of E, but his brother was a Baptist, perhaps he didn’t consider it an important detail.  In any case he was shipped out probably initially to Egypt where the Battalion was reorganised and new recruits were trained, before being shipped to France. The first major action for the Battalion was Pozieres, where the German shelling was the most intense ever experienced by the AIF during the war and was accompanied by nearly continuous German counter attacks to recover their vital ground.   In this battle 19th Battalion created a record by holding its sector for a period of 12 days. The most notable action that Clarence would have taken part in was the capture and defence of the notorious ‘Maze’ defence system at Flers on 14th November 1916. Clarence and his mates captured and held a salient deep within the German Lines, but their support battalions failed to reach their objectives on the flanks of the 19^th, and so the 18 year old Clarence and his unit were cut off deep inside the German lines.

For two days and nights Clarence held his position against counter attacks and intense shelling, almost running out of ammunition Charles and his mates picked up the rifles and ammo of the Germans they had killed and used them, so that their own ammunition could be saved for their Lewis machine guns to stop the German Infantry counter attacks. Of the 451 all ranks who went into the attack, 381 became casualties.

Clarence survived, and his next big battle was at Lagincourt in 1917 where his battalion was involved in the follow-up of German forces after their retreat to the Hindenburg Line.   The Germans counter attacked to try to halt their pursuit by the Australians, and Clarence was faced with an attack by a German force that outnumbered them five to one, they made their stand at Lagincourt and managed to defeat the German advance.  

On the 3^rd of May 1917 Clarence and his friends were thrown into “The Blood Tub” as the second battle of Bullecourt would be called by the Aussies.   General Gough had sent his troops to assault the fortress village of Bullecourt using the new wonder ‘tank’ and the Anzacs, it ended in disaster.   This was the first battle of Bullecourt, on the 3rd of May Gough launched a second attack on Bullecourt which dominated the British action on the Western Front for two weeks, and was the battle that Clarence fought in.     It was the excessive brutality and ferocity of the hand-to-hand fighting that earned Bullecourt the name ‘The Blood Tub’.

At a quarter to four in the morning of 3^rd of May 1917 two Australian and one British Brigade went over the top to attack Bullecourt.   The Australians penetrated the German line but met determined opposition which stop the force surrounding and cutting off the Germans.   It was during this fighting on the first day of the battle in fierce hand to hand combat in the German trenches that Clarence, at the tender age of nineteen was killed.     By the end of the battle the village was held by the Allies; the locality turned out to be of little or no strategic importance, and cost the Australians 7,482 in dead and wounded.

Below you have the Roll of Honour application made out by Charles James Godding, Clarence’s father, to have his son’s name added to the memorial and list.   It is a very sad document filled out by a proud but grieving father, the careful but inexpert nature of the writing in a time of grief, contrasts starkly with the bureaucratic and clinical nature of the form; it highlights the gulf in attitude between a statistic and a young man’s life.  

Sadly Clarence’s body was never found, but he did not return from the battle, and he was not taken prisonner, so it was beyond doubt that   he was   killed in action alongside hundreds of others from his Battalion, and by   July 1918 his status was changed from missing to killed in action.   To the credit of the Australian authorities, they were still investigating right up till October 1919, when they checked to see if he was among Australian prisoners of war released in Germany at the end of the war, but there was no trace of him.   All of this was recorded in the archives that we researched.

 

The Poppy marks the spot where his name is engraved on the Australian National War Memorial in Sydney.  

Although it is not known what happened to his body, he is remembered on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial in France.

 

 

Fines Henry Godding 1896 – 1918

 

 Fines had worked as a labourer until 26^th February 1915, aged 19, Fines joined the Australian Imperial Force as a Private in the Infantry.  He shipped out with the 17^th Battalion on the troop ship Themistocles in May 1915. He trained in Egypt from June until mid-August 1915, and on 20 August landed at ANZAC Cove.

At Gallipoli Fines fought in the last action of the August Offensive; the attack on Hill 60, before settling into defensive routine in the trenches. For the rest of his time in Turkey Fines was part of the garrison of Quinn’s Post, one of the most contested positions along the entire ANZAC front.   Eventually he was evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915.

After further training in Egypt, Fines   was sent to France, landing on 22 March 1916.   He took part in his first major battle at Pozières between 25 July and 5 August.   After a spell in a quieter sector of the front in Belgium, he was sent back into France again in October, where he spent the freezing winter of 1916-17 rotating in and out of trenches in the Somme Valley but was spared from attacking across the quagmire the Somme.   It was during this winter that his battalion earned the nickname “the Whale Oil Guards” after their Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel Oswald Croshaw, ordered the troops to polish their helmets with the whale oil that had been issued to them as a foot rub to prevent Trench Foot.  Trench Foot is caused by prolonged exposure of the feet to damp and cold, it can occur with only twelve hours of exposure, the first signs are numbness in the feet followed by a change in color to red or blue. As the condition worsens, the feet swell, followed by blisters open sores which lead to fungal infections. If not treated it results in gangrene and requires amputation of the foot. Unfortunately for Fines, Croshaw considered a smart turn out on parade more important than his mens’   health.   They were Lions lead by Donkeys.

In 1917 Fines took part in the pursuit of German forces after their retreat to the Hindenburg Line, and fought in the battle of Lagincourt where a counter stroke by a German force, almost four times as strong, was defeated. Fate then bequeathed that he would fight in the blood bowl at the second battle of Bullecourt (3-4 May), he would have known that Clarence his brother was fighting in the same battle, and no doubt would have had that on his mind during the action.   At the end of the Battle, he heard that his brother was missing, and tried desperately to find out what had happened to him sending letters to the authorities to try to find out as the excerpt   below show.

  “…his name was in the list of missing last evening, and now it has upset me a great deal.   I don’t know how my parents at home will take it when they hear the news, it will be a great blow to them, but still we must of hope for the best.   I am giving you his address and if you hear anything different please communicate with me as soon as possible.”

This letter was written from Perham Down, Andover, which was a Convalescent Depot. These were half way houses for casualties returning to the front – men who no longer required hospitalisation but were not yet fit to rejoin their units.  Fines had also been wounded at Bullecourt, seriously enough to have been shipped back to England for treatment.  At the end of his treatment in July 1917 he wrote another letter to make sure the Department of Wounded and Missing Soldiers would know where to contact him should they get news, as he had been temporarily moved out of the front lines. On the 3^rd of September he was still trying to find out the fate of his brother, writing again to the authorities on his return to his battalion.  Not knowing his brother’s fate he was shipped back to Belgium, where he fought at the battles of the Menin Road 20^th – 22^nd September, and Poelcappelle 9^th – 10^th October. In October his father wrote to the authorities about his missing son Clarence, but also mentioned   poignant words about Fines, pleading with the authroities to let his shell shocked son come home, we discovered these heart rending letters in the archives:

The father didn’t get his wish, instead, Fines was shipped out for another winter of trench duty. Fines then took part in   stopping   the German Spring Offensive of 1918. With this last desperate offensive defeated, the Allied armies turned to the offensive.   But Fines found himself   back in hospital in England. This time he had Trench Fever, a disease spread by body lice in the unhygenic environment of the trenches. Fines was treated in the hospial for just over three weeks, then given two weeks furlough before being shipped back to the front line. 

Once back in the lines, Fines received the official   letter from the authorities concerning his brother, his worst fears were realised.  We can only guess at the pain he carried in his heart as he fought in the battles that pushed the German Army ever closer to defeat: Amiens on 8 August, the legendary attack on Mont St Quentin on 31^st August. Then came the last major battle fought by his Battalion which started on 29^th September 1918. Two Australian Divisions in co-operation with American forces, attacked the formidable German defences along the St Quentin Canal, and on to the Hindenburg Line. 

Unlike his brother Clarence, Fines fate was well documented by his comrades, and we were able to discover in our research   many tetimonials from them describing what they saw:   Private Quantrill went over the top with him at 06.10 on the morning of 30^th September 1918 and saw him fall; Sergeant Callaghan saw him lying dead in a trench with machine gun wounds; Private Simmons wrapped his body for burial and noted that he had been hit in the neck and head by machine gun bullets; Private Green carried his body back for burial after Simmons had wrapped it; and   Sergeant Wilkinson oversaw Fines’s burial at Tincourt Cemetary.   The actions of his friends who had cared for him and provided some dignity after death must have given some comfort to his grieving parents. 

A number of these men were obviously his friends, and refer to him as Merry Godding (the strong Australian accent being mishearing “Merry”  as “Mary” by the officer typing one of the letters) because of  his happy disposition.  He was 21 years old carrried the grief of his younger brother’s death, had been wounded and   sufferred Trench Fever from body lice, he   fought in some of the bloodiest battles of WW1, but despite all of this he still managed to lift the spirits of his comrades.   What greater praise could a man be given?  

 

James Keith Godding 1905 – 1943

James Keith survived the First World War because he was too young to join up.   In 1920 he married Catherine Zada Thomson at Woolahra, and they had a daughter named after her mother, Catherine Zada Godding. 

But when World War Two broke out he followed the path of his elder brothers and father, and volunteered for the Australian Army, and after a brief initial spell in the infantry James joined the   artillery as his father had done a generation before him.   It also   looks like he either gave a false birth date on when he joined to make himself look younger.

But tradgedy would stalk the Godding boys again, but James did not succome to the enemy, he sadly died whilst a serving soldier od Tuberculosis, and was cremated in Sidney, attended by his parents and his wife.   The poppy in the picture shows the location of his name on the Australian National Memorial.

 

Roy William Godding

Roy Wiliam   born in Newton NSW Australia, the son of Thomas Sydney Godding, and the grandson of Vines Godding.   The records we found showed that he was 5ft 8ins tall had dark hair a dark complexion, no doubt tanned from his work shearing in the tropics, and had grey eyes.   He had a 34 inch Chest and weighed just over 1“Goding” stone, so he was quite heavy for his height, but wasn’t particularly broad in the chest.

He was a sheep shearer by occupation, and was working in Queensland when he joined the Australian Imperial Force.   He was shipped out as a member of the 15th Battalionon HMAT Wandilla on 31st January 1916 from Brisbane.

He joined the regiment in Egypt where it had been sent after leaving Gallipoli.   the records show that Roy proved to be a bit of a tearaway, finding himself in hospital on two separate occasions   for treatment for the result   of some “leisure activities” in Cairo, and he subsequently turns up in Rollestone, Wiltshire, UK in September 1916, where he goes AWL (Absent Without Leave), and is given 16 days confinement to Camp, and docked   16 days pay.

His battalion had been in France and had fought in the battle of Pozières in August 1916, so it was possible that he was wounded and shipped back to England.

By November 1916 he is shipped back to France, and must have started showing his worth as by April 1917 he is promoted to Lance Corporal. This probably happened at the first Battle of Bullecourt, the prelude to the Battle in which his cousins fought.   Roy’s battalion suffered heavy losses at Bullecourt when the brigade attacked strong German positions without the promised tank support. During July Roy spent another three weeks in hospital, probably through wounds.   Roy   spent much of the remainder of 1917 in Belgium, advancing to the Hindenburg Line, where again he no doubt proved himself being promoted to Corporal and then to Sergeant.   His greatest moment came in September 1917 in the battle of Polygon Wood, in the larger battle of Passchendale.

The attack on Polygon Wood was the 5th Division’s first major battle since it was savaged at the disastrous attack at Fromelles in July 1916 (although parts of the Division had been present at Bullecourt in April 1917). It would attack with the Australian 4th Division on its left and five British Divisions also taking part.

The troops advanced in the early hours of September 26, close behind a creeping artillery barrage. The barrage was, in the words of C. E. W. Bean, Australia’s Official War Historian, “the most perfect that ever protected Australian troops”. Under the protection of this barrage, the Australians advanced in several stages. The concrete pillboxes were manned by German machine gun teams who resisted fiercely and almost all had to be captured by acts of individual bravery. The Australians captured the pillboxes in what later became the classic style: a Lewis gun would fire on the pillbox, supported by fire from rifle grenades, while an assault team would manoeuvre around to the back of the pillbox, rather than attacking it head on. The technique worked effectively in most cases, but attacking pillboxes was never an easy task and casualties were high.

It was during this engagement that Roy won The Military Medal.   The Military Medal was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British and Commonwealth Armies, below Officer rank, for bravery in battle on land.   The medal was established on 25^th March 1916. It was the other rank’s equivalent to the Military Cross.

The official records said:

“During the attack near Zokkebake on 26th September 1917 he displayed splendid courage and gallantry in leading his men against a party of the enemy who were holding up the advance.

During the consolidation of the captured position he dispalyed great coolness and skill in rallying his men and beating off a counter attack.

During a very heavy bombardment he inspired great confidence in those around him by his coloness and disregard for danger.” 

 

He survived the war and returned to Australia in 1918 and was demobilised in 1919.

This is just an extract from what was discovered during the research, which also included the the parts of the family that stayed in England, and contained details of births, Deaths, and Marriages, as well as addresses and occupations.  If you are interested in having your own family tree researched you can find more details here; Time Detectives Services.

Vector Ancestors

Success; a 300 Year Experiment.

“Family History is a succession of Silk Stockings going downstairs, and hob-nailed boots clumping upstairs.” Voltaire

I was always baffled as a child as to why some people lived in nice houses with big gardens, had new clothes, and eat three meals a day, while I lived in a slum in Peckham, didn’t have enough to eat, wore hand me down clothes, why had my parents brought me here rather than in a big house with a garden? Bloody inconsiderate of them I would say. I won’t dwell on my own success, what I’m concerned with here is the wealth of data I’ve accumulated running a Genealogy Business tracing Family Histories and writing up their stories, on the phenomenon of success and failure transmitted down the generations like a gene, until a social mutation crops up in a single generation that takes the family to a dazzling rise or a crashing fall in future generations.

I’ve found that there are key ancestors that have very similar genes to their siblings, and identical upbringings to their peers, who cause these nexus points of success or failure. I will set out the main factors in this article.

For an example of the winning vectors, the Hob-nailed boots clumping upstairs, let’s take the example of a family that approached me to trace and write the father of the family’s ancestry as a birthday present. They are a nice, property owning, middleclass professional family, but unbeknown to them their roots came literally from the Chalk fields of Kent, watered by the sweat of their brows.

Descended from Agricultural Labourers, their forebears had tilled the fields for the landowners of Kent for generations, life for one family being fairly identical to the last generation and so on for hundreds of years with no social movement. The agricultural slump caused by foreign cheap imports of food after the end of the Napoleonic War hit them hard, and they were turned off the land and out of their homes by the struggling tenant farmers who employed them, to find a living elsewhere or face starvation in the years before the harsh sanctuary of the work house. It was at this time in the 1820s that Thomas, the Great Great Grandfather of my clients, left the land and turned up for work in the Chalk Mines of North Kent. These provided the raw material for the Medway cement furnaces, to be shipped to the exploding building programmes in London.

The Chalk diggers were a rough lot, being used by their employers as coercive voting muscle in rotten Boroughs. Swinging a pick at a Chalk face for twelve hours a day, was not a job with prospects, but it put food on the table, and a roof over their heads. It was from this base that their vector ancestor blossomed.

He was Thomas’ son, also a Thomas, the oldest boy, and third of eight children. Three of his siblings died in childhood, so times were hard. Prospects looked as bad for him as they did for his father working in the Chalk Mines, but the turning point came in the 1850s when, after getting a local girl pregnant and marrying her, he left Kent to earn more money in the building boom in London. Engineers in London needed experienced men who could work as navies in hard and dangerous environments, but it wasn’t his expertise that gave him his break, rather it was a break in his bones that gave him his break! Laid up in St Bartholomew’s Hospital he was forced out of the lucrative labour market and back to Kent. Now he couldn’t feed his family, so his wife sewed sacks for a few pence to ward off starvation until he had recovered enough to go back into the chalk pits. Necessity being the mother of invention, the only way for a man with an injury to earn as much as a man without one was by means other than muscle, but how could an illiterate injured man do this?

His route was to join the democratic, and therefore subversive, congregational church, here he learned to read and write, almost unheard of for an adult labourer. He goes from marking his wedding certificate in 1854 with a scrawled “X”, to witnessing the marriages of his siblings with a confidently scripted signature. His ability to read and write enabled him to become the foreman at the mine, which meant less hard labour and more responsibility.

Although this was as far as he got in his life, it was enough, and he made sure his children received the education that he had lacked from an early age. When he died the wonderfully grumpy entry in the local Church register commented that his funeral had “No Church of England Service” so he marched out of the world to the beat of his own drum.

Educated at their father’s insistence the children had a much better chance of dragging themselves out of the Chalk Pits, although two would die young from disease. His eldest son William Edward, started in the same Chalk Pits as his father, but soon left the pick and shovel behind, and moved into the new technology of Cement Milling. This needed skilled and literate operators, so William Edward was freed to use his intelligence to commercial advantage. He built a career on the back of the technology, and went from an operator to running his own Cement Mill, moving from the industrial village to the local town, and eventually retired to the south coast. His surviving brothers did well one becoming a foreman like his father, the second an electrical motor attendant; another new technology.

William Edward’s son, Edward Percy, used his education to become a Commercial Clerk, moved around the country with his job, and was just too old to be called up in WW1, which meant that he could make the most of his position with little competition at home. His son and grandson took up as an Estate Agent and a Solicitor respectively, benefiting from the housing boom that stretched from WW2 to the present day.

This family shares certain decisive factors with others that used their intelligence to rise above their social lot. The 5 common factors that allow people with high intelligence to overcome low social and financial status are:

1. Drive, born out of adversity; a belief that your personal actions will change the situation for the better.
2. A basic education: in order to utilise intelligence, formal qualifications are less important than the skills rendered by the education itself.
3. A lack of regard in your actions for existing social constructs; taboos, and social pressures should not be allowed to act as brakes.
4. Embracing skills in new technology and boom areas of the market; plunge into such areas when demand is high.
5. Avoid making sacrifices “for the greater good” unless you are part of an elite (officer corps, bomber crew etc); the PBI (poor bloody infantry) get the muck and bullets, not the pensions and medals.

The Strange Case of The Vampyre Lord of Hurstbourne Priors

 

When I research a Family Tree I spend time looking at the social and economic pressures that affected the family, in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries in Britain most of the population lived in thinly disguised feudal serfdom, so I always research the Lord of The Manor, and it was whilst delving through the archives that I came across an envelope covered in 1859 postmarks that would lead me to the Vampyre Lord of Hurstbourne Priors!

 The envelope showed a journey from Chatham in Canada through the south of England to Devon, in less than three weeks; a testimony to the speed of the Victorian Rail and Postal service.  The letter was neatly folded and looked like it had been read once, then put back in its envelope for the next 150 years until I opened it on a summer afternoon in 2007.  It was clearly written in an elegant hand on rough paper, and contained a tale of woe from an old lady begging for £10 or £20 to be sent to her; “…once the Lady of Hurstbourne Park, now with not sufficient to buy my daily bread for the short remaining time that I may need it..” further research showed stories from Canada of an old lady dressed in a red velvet cloak trimmed with Ermine gathering firewood in withered hands.  How had The Lady of Hurstbourne Priors come to this?

 On Friday 28^th February 1823 in the Freemasons Hall London, John Charles Wallop 3^rd Earl of Portsmouth and Lord of the Manor of Hurstbourne Priors was publicly denounced as having the disposition of a Vampyre, “…which was to be fed by nothing but the prey of death”.

 The Earl was accused of “haunting the abode of disease and mortality like a foul and obscene beast wherever a carcass may be found”, going to the hut of the village Carpenter to await the death of the man’s daughter, so that he might with “worse than savage joy”  follow the body from the house.  The Earl would order his servants to open his veins with a lancet and catch the blood in a bowl. The Village bell ringer testified that the Earl had thrown a bell rope around the neck of the man’s son, timing it to catch the upswing of the bell to sweep the boy up and hang him by his neck in the bell tower; only the boy’s quick reactions saved him.  The Earl had entered a slaughterhouse and attacked cattle with an axe with no regard to his own safety among the stampeding beasts, screaming “It serves them right!”.

 John Charles Wallop, like all the members of the British aristocracy, was descended from Sir John Wallop who, in the reign of Henry VIII, took to warfare in order to raise booty, invading the Spanish Netherlands in 1511, ravaging towns on the French coast for a couple of years, before finding time to marry Henry VIII’s elderly second cousin, who died within a year, leaving him free to join King Manuel of Portugal in an invasion of Morocco.  He then settled to a spot of campaigning in Ireland, and life as a diplomat.  Briefly accused of treason for being a Catholic, he astutely made his peace with the King, and the family continued to prosper through the generations, soaking up heiresses and estates, including relations of Sir Isaac Newton.  But despite the advantages of social position, and genetic descent from ambitious, ruthless, and intelligent men and women, John Charles Wallop the 3^rd Earl of Portsmouth would prove to be a negative vector to those around him.

 The 3^rd Earl of Portsmouth, our Vampyre Earl, lived at Hurstbourne Park in Hampshire.  Educated by Jane Austen’s father he was noted as being very backward, spoke with a stammer, and was in the habit of pinching the servants, tipping them into hedges, and pinning rabbit skins to their clothes.  His family arranged a suitable wedding match for him to the sister of Lord Grantley.  Just prior to his wedding in 1799, he was lodging with his family solicitor Charles Hanson, when the Solicitor’s ward, the eleven year old Lord Byron, came to stay.  Lord Portsmouth displayed his usual eccentric behaviour, pinching the young Lord Byron on the ear, the fiery Byron took this badly and hurled a large shell at Lord Portsmouth, breaking an expensive mirror.  A minor incident, but the memory rested heavily on Byron’s mind.  The solicitor’s wife excused Byron by saying that he did not mean to hit the Earl with the missile, but Byron would have none of it and exclaimed “But I did mean it!  I will teach a fool of an Earl to pinch another Noble’s ear!”  It would take the passage of fifteen years and another wedding before he had his revenge.

 The Earl’s marriage was more dynastic than an affair of the heart.  The new Lady Portsmouth proved to be a strong woman, keeping her husband’s more erratic behaviour in check by hiring a burly manservant, John Coombes, to act as minder for him, stopping the worst of his antics, and protecting him from retaliation by the more surly villagers.  The marriage was childless, and there was an intimation that the Lord had no knowledge of sex; at his insanity tribunal when asked to describe the act of love between a man and a woman, he attempted very clumsily, turning to the court and asking “That’s it isn’t it?”  Under the firm hand of his wife and John Coombes he managed a near normal life, holding balls for the local gentry including Jane Austen, and taking his place in votes at the House of Lords (derangement it seems, not being a bar in British Politics).  The furthest his eccentricities went were to ring the bells of the local church, race dung carts through the Village, and play childish tricks on his servants. 

 But in 1813 his wife died, and without her restraining influence, he had free reign to act however he chose:  He relished attending “Black Jobs” as he called funerals, turning up at those of complete strangers; waylaid coach drivers and paid them to let him drive their coaches forcing other coaches off the roads.

 One evening the Earl fatefully told his solicitor, Lord Byron’s guardian, that he wished to  marry again.  Hanson the solicitor realised that this presented an opportunity as he had two unwed daughters.  Seizing the moment he told the Earl that he should choose one of his daughters and threatened the him with confinement on his Devon Estate if he refused.  The Earl fearful of incarceration, and eager to have the prettier of Hanson’s daughters, agreed and asked for her hand.  Hanson told the Earl that he would let him know if she could be persuaded.  That very night the solicitor had contracts drawn up and witnessed, unsigned, by Lord Byron, and a family friend called Rowland Alder, a member of the Gentry who had a gambling habit, an eye for the ladies, and a reputation as a deadly duellist.  Hanson then contacted the Earl early in the morning, told him that his daughter had agreed to the marriage as long as it took place at noon that day!  As an afterthought he added that the Earl would not be marrying his daughter Louisa, but his somewhat plainer daughter Mary Elizabeth!

Staggeringly the Earl consented, a church service was interrupted by the party and the bride was given away to the hapless Earl by Lord Byron, who according to his diary “tried not to laugh in the face of the supplicants” and “rammed their left hands, by mistake, into one another.”  In the space of a few days the Hansons had taken control of the Earl’s holdings, and Byron had exacted his revenge for a pinch on the ear more than a decade earlier. 

 The Earl’s younger brother Newton Wallop seeking to protect the family from the Hansons, launched a Lunacy Commission to prove his brother incapable, but, helped along by a challenge to a duel issued by Hanson’s son to one of the Lunacy Commissioners, the case went the Hansons way and the Earl was declared sane.  The Hansons commenced selling off the Wallop London properties to raise cash.

 Rowland Alder moved fully onto the scene.  He was seen by the servants to knock the Earl to the ground and reduce him to tears in front of Lady Portsmouth.  The servants later testified to seeing Lady Portsmouth, her sister, and her brother, all perform acts of cruelty on the Earl, spitting in his face, throwing filthy water over him, and horse whipping him across the face.  Accusations from the servants became more scandalous, one of them said he had seen Lady Portsmouth lying in bed with Alder, her hand resting on his chest, whilst the Earl was asleep on the other side of the bed.

 To hide their activities the Earl was whisked away to Scotland by the Hansons and Alder.  Here their conduct became so scandalous, that, amid stories of Alder cavorting with Lady Portsmouth and her sister, and screams from their rooms as the Earl was beaten and horsewhipped, a number of Hotels ejected the party for fear that their reputations may be ruined.  They eventually rented a private house.  A stroke of luck came the Earl’s way when a solicitor engaged to settle disputes between the Earl and his brother, was contacted by the Earl’s bailiff in Scotland and told of the mistreatment, confinement to the house with only two hours of freedom per day, and how the Earl was so bereft of money that he would borrow from the garden labourers.  The Earl’s younger brother Newton Wallop was informed and a rescue mission planned.

 The Earl’s nephew was dispatched with John Coombes the Earl’s former minder to Edinburgh where they tracked the Hansons and Alder down, lay in wait, and managed to seize the Earl off the street, bundled him into a carriage and galloped back to London.  Here the Earl’s brother hired two Bow Street Runners to protect the Vampyre Earl.

The Hansons and Alder weren’t beaten yet.  They pursued the Earl back to Hurstbourne Priors, a legal challenge was mounted which removed the Bow Street Runners as it was technically illegal for them to be privately hired.  Horsemen and bailiffs entered the Earl’s estate, but the local Villagers, lead by the Earl’s Game Keeper armed with a fowling piece, mounted a counter attack, forming a human wall behind which darted the Earl.  The horsemen were seen off, and the bailiffs manhandled out of the Parish by the gleeful peasantry.

 The Earl was a danger to himself and those around him, he wanted to have a throne built and sit in court at Hurstbourne to receive supplicants “like the King” thius could be construed as treason, a hanging offence, so his brother was forced to instigate the lunacy investigation again, and managed to prove that The Earl couldn’t look after his own affairs, the marriage to the Countess was annulled, and the paternity of the Countess’s daughter rejected.  Newton wallop wrested control back to the Wallop family under his guardianship.  The Vampyre Earl settled into quiet retirement, I found him in the 1851 census listed as “Earl and Lunatic”, he died in 1853 and was buried at Farleigh Wallop.  Hurstbourne House, as befits the home of a “Vampyre”, burned down in a mysterious fire in 1894. 

 After the annulment the Countess married Alder, he fell into gambling debt, and they were forced to live in a single room in a Scottish fishing village.  Alder died and the Countess moved to London but with no income the money was dwindling fast.  She then moved to Canada with her son by Alder, leaving her daughter, the former heiress of Lord Portsmouth, in England.  Deeply impoverished and with her begging letters left unanswered and forgotten until I found them, the countess sold off the last of the family silverware and died impoverished in Canada in 1870.  Her son migrated south to Michigan and became a farmer. 

 Her daughter, titled by her mother Lady Marion Elizabeth Wallop, married William Newman in 1844, they took on The White Hart Pub at New Haw Surrey, which still stands on the banks of the Wey Canal.  Here “Lady Wallop” bore her husband three children, helped run the pub and let rooms to passing Bargees, but their happiness was short lived, William died in 1851, leaving Marion to struggle with the upbringing of their children.  A year later she married Walter Aylen, a former Policeman turned Railway Guard, they moved to Lambeth and Lady Marion bore him three children, life was hard and she died in 1865, aged thirty nine.  To add insult to injury Walter Aylen took Marion’s young daughter, his own step daughter half his age, as his common law wife.  Marion’s line died out in obscurity in the slums of late Victorian Lambeth.  All that remains of the scandal is a pub by a Canal once run by “Lady Marion” and a forgotten letter in The Hampshire Register Office.

Time Detectives

Personalised, Individual, Family History

  “Family History is a series of silk slippers progressing downstairs, and hob nailed boots progressing upstairs.”   Voltaire

Why should your family story be allowed to disappear forever?  Let Timedetectives do the time travelling to bring their stories back to life for you!  

Every family has a story to tell, and now you can have yours told, history is not just for the famous.   Hear the stories of families who had their own adventures in life, and if you like what you see contact www.timedetectives.co.uk to find out your own Family Story.  You will be able to hang your family tree on the wall and point to each ancestor with pride knowing what they did in life, where they came from and went to.   Your ancestors   brought you here, wouldn’t you like to listen to the story of their journey?