Up the Garden Path 9

I am pleased to report that the summerhouse now has a roof. It was a tad concerning watching my trusty assistant climb on a wooden roof whose strength was an unknown quantity but this passed without incident. Now if I could find a way of getting baked on masking tape glue off the windows all would be well (I’ve tried white spirit).

The pond/sink is causing a few issues as sinks by definition have a plug hole. This isn’t the sort that you could just put a plug in, (supposing I had one) as it is flush with the bottom of the sink. First attempt was fibre glass, which didn’t work, strange this as this is how the fisherman of my acquaintance fixes holes in his boat. I can only hope, for his sake, it works better on boats. Next attempt was to try to seal some spare shed roofing felt over the hole. I was never very convinced by that one and it failed miserably. Now we’ve emptied half a tube of the sealant you put round baths into what remains unsealed of the fibre-glassed plug hole. We are waiting to see if that works.

Flowers are flowering bravely, with a rose, a fuchsia and a hydrangea coming to light. The convolvulus is still convoluting away. Annoyingly, much of it is coming from the other side of the fence so can’t be dug up. I’ve harvested the first three tiny tomatoes from my solitary tomato plant. The remaining  tomatoes look like they may be pea sized.

The other ‘big task’ – moving the once moved shed again, is also accomplished. This was necessary because it really was too wobbly. So it was back with the plastic rollers to pull it out of the corner in order to put down some large paving slabs before rolling it back. This all makes it sound remarkably simple. It wasn’t. The shed had to come forward and be shoved/rolled round a corner and back, ideally without one of use getting stuck behind it. While the corner was clear I took the opportunity to cut back whatever is going all along the side fence. This is a bed that is untouched so far. It seems to be something in the honeysuckle family but with much smaller flowers. The ends are leafy and flowery but underneath is a whole load of dead looking bush. Hacking away at it was not easy and my arms are tastefully decorated with scratches. Much as I hate digging up living things, I think the only way to deal with this bed will be to dig it all out. I will wait until the what ever it is has stopped flowering and then hope that it wasn’t holding the fence up. Reinstating the shed in the desired position has meant that I could at last put away things that have been lying around in the garden because it ‘wasn’t worth putting them away as the shed would need to me emptied’.

What’s next on the agenda? Well if the sink holds water, planting the pond. Much as I don’t want to fill the tiny garden with sheds and water butts, I am debating a new water butt; I fancy one of those that double as a planter. I’m sure I’ll find more jobs to add to the list

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Fun and Games with Family History: encouraging young family historians

On Saturday, I am due to give an online talk to the Society of Genealogists. The brief was to provide family history related ideas, suggestions and activities for young people, with the rapidly approaching school holidays in mind. This is something that I always enjoy and it is vital if we want to encourage the next generation to engage with their history and heritage. ‘Young’ is a bit of a moveable feast in a family history context. If you look at the stereotypical demographic amongst genealogists, ‘young’ could mean anyone under retirement age. For the purposes of my talk, I am aiming slightly lower, at 0-16 year olds, though some of the activities will be fun for adults too. This might also be an opportunity for Family History Societies interested in involving younger people to gather a few ideas.

These days, history is hanging on to its place in the school curriculum by its fingernails. You only have to watch general knowledge quiz shows to realise how woeful the general public’s knowledge of history is and it seems that the reduction of time devoted to history in schools means that the younger people are the worse this gets. Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware how over-full school timetables are and that other subjects, some of which didn’t exist forty years ago, are equally important. It does mean however that history doesn’t get much of a look in and we can be starting with a pretty low knowledge base in some cases.

This has a knock-on effect for older family historians too. I loved history at school but many more senior family historians I talk to did not. In addition, the kind of school history that was taught in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was rarely the sort that was the most relevant for us as family historians seeking context for our ancestors’ lives. This means that the dedicated family historian who seeks to extend their genealogical education needs to acquire not just knowledge of research techniques and sources but broader history, most notably social history, as well.

So my talk will be about things that are fun, things that are, for the most part, nothing like school but activities that will encourage a curiosity about the past, remembering of course that, in this context, the past could be the 2010s! Having said ‘nothing like school’, I spent seven years teaching in a school that was not hampered by the National Curriculum and my lessons were often ‘nothing like school’ either!

There is still some space to book on the talk and it will be recorded for watching later if you aren’t free to join the live broadcast. You can book here.

If you are interested in books, videos and games for children relating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (as well as resources for adults) you can find some lists on my Swords and Spindles site. There is also a list of Children’s Historical fiction, across all time periods and age ranges, on the Braund Society website.

I can’t leave the subject of young people without putting in a word for the Next GENeration online Family History Conference on 5 October. This showcases younger speakers and it would be great to show them some support, as well as being informed and entertained. This is a ‘pay what you can afford’ event, so please do just that. You can book here.

Forays into the Sixteenth Century and other news

There’s not much to report but I thought I should mark the fact that it is exactly six months since I moved house. The time has flown by, not helped by losing a month to Covid. The house is pretty well settled. There are things I want to do but nothing urgent. Everything has a place and I am just awaiting some shelves to unpack the last two boxes of ornaments. I am loving being able to see the sea almost every day, although I am ashamed to say that I have not yet co-ordinated time, tide and temperature to dip my toe in. I’ll leave gardening progress to a post of its own. Much of my local walking takes place in the early hours of the morning. This photo was taken at 6am less than ten minutes from home.

Recent excitements have included a few days seeing family and walking on the Isle of Wight. ’Walking’ makes it sound like we going on ten mile hikes; sadly those days have passed. We did manage a couple of five milers but it was mostly strolling along the cliff path. Then there was a trip on PS Waverley in full OAP mode, using my bus pass to get to the pick-up point. There have been meals out with friends and more to come. Mistress Agnes may also have been spotted at an event commemorating the 475^th anniversary of the Prayer Book Rebellion, trying armour on unsuspecting passers by and killing people off sixteenth century style. This was quite fun as members of the audience succumbed to plague, warfare and accusations of witchcraft amongst other things.

It hasn’t all been fun and games and I have yet to comprehend what ‘retirement’ might mean. The job I must not mention is now in full flow, so other things will take a back seat for the next couple of months. I do still have some talks to give and my online One-Place Studies course for Pharos Tutors starts on Monday. That will be swiftly followed by another run of Writing your Family History. There’s a new course in preparation for next year but more of that another time. It won’t go public until I’ve actually written it! I have managed to get another non-fiction book off to the publishers but that won’t see the light of day until well in to next year.

Up the Garden Path 8

One month on and the summerhouse roof is still unfixed and the shed is still baseless but in my defence, I have been away. In my absence, things have been growing apace, not least the pesky convolvulus. I am particularly please with the progress of the ‘veg patch’.

I however can relate the saga of the pond. Daughter and son-in-law have recently moved house and inherited an enormous garden. In amongst the weeds wild area was an old butler sink. Having established that it was surplus to requirements, I decided that I would acquire it to create a mini pond. As we were in the area a few weeks ago, with sufficient room in the copious boot, it was time for mission pond to commence. Said sink was a long way down a very long garden. These sinks, although small are dear reader, not light. Never fear, with the aid of son-in-law’s muscle and a wheelbarrow, the soon-to-be-a-pond was stowed neatly in the boot.

Part two of the saga relates to how to get the sink out of the boot minus any muscular assistance and is a clear illustration that I did not think this through. I am actually quite good at lifting and carrying stuff, sheds for example but lifting up and over is not my thing. This is the point at which we became acutely aware that we are pretty much devoid of local friends and acquaintances who are fit enough for heavy lifting. To add to the difficulty, it needed to be done quickly, as we were about to set off on holiday and didn’t want to take a heavy sink with us. Fortunately, inspiration struck and a kind, not quite so local friend, who happened to be in the area helped us and the sink out. It now reclines in roughly the right place waiting to be cleaned and to have its plug hole fibre glassed up. This task is firmly in the queue behind summerhouse roof fixing and shed moving. Cue putting ‘how to create a tiny pond’ in my web browser.

Some Cornish Family History

I’ve just come back from a foray into a small part of my Cornish family history. This involved a visit to the newish Cornwall Archives at Redruth. All very posh and multi-purpose, with very helpful staff but like many similar ventures, fewer actual research facilities. ‘Have you been here before?’ I was asked and could reply confidently that indeed I had. In fact, Cornwall was my first ever archive visit way back in 1978. I did then have to admit that my last visit was in 1983. I think the premises have moved three times since then!

I had ordered a pile of documents in advance and set forth photographing them. Several of these were leases, so had to be captured in multiple images and will take me a lifetime to transcribe but hey ho. I also arrived armed with an extensive list of parish register entries, that I had written out by hand from the original registers on my previous visits over forty years ago. I was hoping to get images for my files. Sadly the two microfiche readers that allow you to download images directly to a memory stick were booked when I rang to reserved my documents but my luck was in as one became free when I was there. It should have been straightforward, as I knew exactly what I was looking for. Using the reader was definitely not intuitive, want it to go right, push it left, want it to go up, pull it down. I never was very good at patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time. Add to this the fact that I was mostly after seventeenth and eighteenth century entries, in registers where baptisms, marriages and burials might all be mixed together, or basically just written on any old spare page and finding the entries that I wanted took forever. I managed to knock about a third off my list but have since added more from another Cornish branch of the family. I might be forced not to leave it another forty years to return.

The gems amongst the documents included two instances of my ancestors coming before the courts for what was categorised at the time as fornication. I couldn’t help feeling a tad sorry for Philip and Elizabeth Buckingham, who married in February 1759. Their oldest child was baptised three months later. Getting married was not sufficient to satisfy the powers that be and despite being married, they were hauled up in front of the Archdeaconry Court. This however didn’t happen until eighteen months later. Was there a backlog? Was this normal? Was it eighteen months before anyone decided to complain? In any case, they had to perform a public penance in front of the congregation, admit their fault, promise to mend their ways and ask the parishioners to pray for them.

At the end of 1725, or in the early years of 1726, another ancestor, Frances Geach, gave birth to a daughter who she named Mary Roberts Geach. The baptism register records that Spry Roberts was the reputed father. In the July, Spry was also ordered to do penance; there is no record of Frances being summonsed as well. The scene of his public penance was St Stephen’s, Saltash, shown in the photograph above. The requirements were similar to the Buckinghams’ case but Spry was instructed to have his head uncovered, be bare-footed and bare-legged, to put a white sheet round his shoulders and carry a white rod in his hand. Despite this public humiliation, within a year, Frances was once again pregnant with one of Spry’s children.

It is documents like this that really bring our ancestors’ stories to life; yet another reminder that not everything is available online.