The Nosey Genealogist

I was re-reading the first chapter of The book on British Genealogy and Family History yesterday. I am talking about Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails.

It has a great section on understanding relationships. No I don’t mean its a help for couples going through tough times, more what the terms stepfather, half-brother and so on means! It explains simply that “step” indicates that there is no blood relationship between parties and only a relationship through marriage. “Half” is something different and is where the parties only have one parent in common.

Now I was very aware of this terminology myself as, in my family, I have a stepmother and a half-sister and had a step-grandfather. So, while these relationships are actual fact, somehow to me when I see these cold terms used to describe people that I am extremely fond it appears to me as if I am trying to distance myself from them in some way. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that this is just not true. But in Family history research we sometimes have to be precise in relationships and detail exactly where and how people fit into our family tree. None more so when we have to deal with illegitimacy.

Where as today, being born to parents that are not married carries little stigma, in the past it was a different story and so it needs to be dealt with sensitively when dealing with relatives of a different generation.

Staying with this chapter from Mark Herber’s book I was amused to realise that when, at a family wedding, my first cousin once removed, introduced me to one of her friends of her own generation as being “Mum’s cousin” she was in fact being completely correct in her description. As Herber says: “Relationships between cousins are more complex. Cousins are people who share a common ancestor…The children of two siblings are “first” cousins of each other. The children of two first cousins are “second” cousins of each other and so on.”

OK so far, but then we move on to different generations. The word we use to denote this is “removed” so my first cousin’s daughter is my cousin once removed. When she has a child it will be my first cousin twice removed. We have to work out the number of intervening generations between ourselves and the common ancestor and use that number before the word “removed”. Now here comes the bit that I had forgotten!

“The word “removed” is generally only used to express relationships down a family tree.” So this was why Jenny, my first cousin once removed, being the daughter of my first cousin Julie was correct when she referred to me as her “mum’s cousin”

Here ends the pedant’s lesson for today!

Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails available from all good bookshops.

Isn’t the new series of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ great?

Last week with Patsy Kensit delving into her father and grandfather’s criminal records and going on to discover her ‘honest upright’ folk from Kent that finished walking sticks for a living until the trade disappeared.

Then there was her ancestor the Rev James Mayne, a noble and tireless Victorian curate of St Matthew’s Church in Bethnal Green honoured with a ‘Lambeth MA’; a degree that the programme taught me the existence of for the first time. But what I empathised with here was the Catholic Kensit discovering her Protestant churchman ancestor. I have similarly been intrigued to find that my Catholic maternal grandmother was descended, on her Scottish fathers’ side, from an Episcopalian Bishop! We have to go all the way back to the 1680’s for his birth and to 1727 for the period when he was Bishop of Brechin, then Dunkeld in Scotland, but all the same…a Bishop! Not just a Bishop, but from 1739 to 1743 the Primus of Scotland and all the while the 20th laird of Craighall-Rattray with a castle in Perthshire.

This then echoes some of the second episode featuring Boris Johnson. In his travels he finds he is descended from a German Baron, who’s wife was illegitimate daughter of a Prince with a fabulous castle. In my travels I found that my Scottish ancestors, unlike my English ones, were almost all gentry with the daughter of the Bishop marring a Baronet. I too found other castles in the family, although not of the magnificence of the one Mr Johnson found, but all the same thrilling to me.

I love this family history experience!

One of the great things about this Family Tree thing is being contacted by others who are descended from common ancestors.

Once I published my first website www.nicholasthorne.info I started to get hits from all over and some of them were ‘cousins’ many times removed.

From my Devon ancestors I exchanged photographs of Captain Henry Thomas Thorne and got to read a typescript of a newspaper article.

From my Scottish ones I have had emails that disputed some of the lines and others that were supportive of the research. But the most fun were the ones that, with a proviso that the further back we went that some error may have crept in, seem to show that we were descended from various European royals and back to Adam and Eve!

Recently I have had pedigrees and photographs of Castles in the Hay Clan all of which is thrilling for somone who lives modestly in a cottage by the sea!

To anyone who is just thinking about setting out on this journey I would echo what Mark Herber in his book ‘Ancestral Trails’ says, don’t be put off by the fact that you think your family may be modest, you just never know what you are going to find.

Mark Herber’s book is available from all good bookshops: http://www.jerseybookshop.co.uk/promotions.htm

I knew that some of my family were from Dartmouth in Devon and when I set out on this search into my ancestors I did a Google search for one of them called Captain Henry Thorne. I was over the moon to find a picture of the captain at the wheel of the Railway Steamer Dolphin. I think the page has been taken down now but at the time it made me do a second search for a family History Society in Dartmouth.

Once I made contact, I then planned a visit and was rewarded by being introduced to cousins descended from the eldest son of my great-great grandfather!

From this I realised that it is well worth trying to contact FHS in the area that your ancestors lived in.

I’m a bit nosey really, that’s what this boils down to. I am fascinated by who my ancestors were and what they got up to so I decided to start researching my family tree several years back now. I had very little to go on especially when I asked my dad if he could remember his grandfather’s name. He thought for a second or two and told me: “We called him grandpa” !

I’ve subsequently found out how to use Ancestry.co.uk and  have become really quite proficient in finding my way round it. I used the full set of UK census back to 1841 and the Birth Marriages and Deaths until I had got myself back 5 generations of Thornes and discovered on the way that we adopted the extra ‘E’ on our surname in-between the 1871 and 1881 census when my great-great grandfather came back to Dartmouth from working in the naval dockyards of Portsmouth. He returned with a wife and I wonder if it was her influence that the extra letter was attached?

When I started on my paternal grandmother’s line I found myself in Plymouth and some problems with misspelling in transcriptions. One of my ancestors seemed to be called Rover! He turned out to be a Robert, I am pleased to say. This branch of my tree impressed me in that they all seemed to be grafters, working their way up from being mostly small businesspeople to one or two of them living on their own means.

When I turned to my mother’s line I was in for quite a surprise…I shall post about them later.

As I tell people about this journey I am always a little surprised at just how much people are interested in Family History, but often tell me that they find they don’t have the time or the knowledge to do the research. I don’t think it is too difficult for the majority and I wonder if I should put down some simple pointers for people to follow.

Now that’s a thought!