Family History Archives - Page 3 of 3

Henry Jones’ First Wife

June 17, 2008 by Nicholas Hedges

I have been looking to find the first wife of Henry Jones for a while now having got it wrong first time round, albeit getting her first name right. I had – for reasons I cannot recall – listed her as being Mary Carey, but have since discounted that having found no matching record for their marriage.
In May, we visited the graveyard in Cefn-y-Crib which some of my Welsh ancestors are buried, and there found the grave of Henry Jones, which we could see was also the grave of his second wife Rachel and his first wife Mary and daughter Lydia.

The gravestone was a little damaged and the name of his first wife a little bit obscured, but one could nevertheless make out the name, Mari – the Welsh spelling of Mary. But what was her surname?
Having searched through the marriage indexes I came across a few possibilities that fitted in with the dates they would have been wed; Mary Lewis (1859), Mary Harris (1860) and Mary Issacs (1860). The last of these names rang a bell, and when I looked at the certificate for Henry’s marriage to his second wife Rachel, I saw the name Anne Isaac as being one of the witnesses.

Edmund Jones, the other witness, was the father of Rachel Jones (Jones was also her maiden name) and so I can only assume that both Henry’s parents were dead at the time. Of course, Isaac is not Isaacs but then spelling mistakes were made. Furthermore, when searching for Mary Issacs’ birth, I found only a few, all of whom would have been too young to have married Henry in 1860. Could the name have been wrong on the marriage index? Should it have been Isaac?

We know that she died in 1869 at the age of 27 and having searched for Mary Isaac in the birth records I found one Mary Isaac, born in the Pontypool district in 1843. But what of the other contenders; Mary Lewis and Mary Harris? There were a number of Mary Lewises born in 1842 (which one assumes is the correct year of birth), as indeed there were a number of Mary Harrises also born in 1842.

Rogers Conundrum II

May 12, 2008 by Nicholas Hedges

Following on from my previous post on this subject (see Rogers Conundrum) I obtained today a copy of my great-grandmother’s birth certificate.

On the certificate, it clearly states that Mary Jane Rogers was born on 27th November, 1886 in Crumlin, Mynyddyslwyn; that her father was George Rogers and her motherMary Ann, formerly Brooks. Having Mary Ann’s maiden name is obviously a great help, but it just goes to show that censuses can be wrong.

Below is a detail of that census.

In this entry there are two errors; one the name of George’s spouse which should read Mary A and not Sarah A, and secondly the name of their daughter (my great-grandmother) Mary Jane which is given as Bessie J.

2nd Battalion Monmouthshire Regiment

May 9, 2008 by Nicholas Hedges

Having discovered that my great great-uncle, Jonah Rogers, was a Private in the 2nd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment (he was killed in active service on May 8th 1915 and is commemorated on the Menin Gate) I began searching for anything which might tell me more about the place in which he fought and died. Fortunately, I happened upon a book which couldn’t be more useful; ‘A History of The 2nd Battalion The Monmouthshire Regiment’ compiled by Captain G.A. Brett, D.S.O., M.C. in the 1930s.

The first thing I wanted to do was be sure that this book covered the history relevant to Jonah, and in the back, in the Roll of Honour, I found him, ROGERS J., one amongst many other names.

In the book, the author relates in great detail information concerning the preparations for war and the route the Battalion took as it moved into the theatre of this terrible conflict. It seems that there were three units of the 2nd Battalion, the first formed from the outset of war in August 1914, with two and three following thereafter. I wondered to which unit Jonah had belonged. The following is a passage taken from the book:

“The 7th November, 1914, is an historic date for the and Monmouthshires, for early on the morning of that day the Battalion landed at Havre on active service. Over four long and terrible years were to drag their slow length before it would recross the narrow sea from France, and few of those who disembarked with it were fated to return with it. Its strength on landing was 30 Officers and 984 Other Ranks. Before it came home t8o Officers and 3,878 Other Ranks had passed through it. But they had earned for their Battalion a name for fighting and endurance of which their county, with all its old traditions of border pugnacity, could well be proud. While some of the officers came from other counties, a few indeed from the colonies and abroad, the vast majority of the men were from the mining valleys of Monmouthshire, every town, village and hamlet of which must at one time or another have been represented in the 2nd Battalion.”

The key part of this passage is of course the date, 7th November, 1914, and having consulted Jonah’s medal records, I discovered ‘the date of entry therein’ corresponded exactly: 7-11-14.

The movements of Jonah Rogers and the 2nd Battalion can be listed as follows:
5th August 1914 – Orders to mobilise the Battalion.
6th August 1914 – 7.30pm. The Company entrained at Crumlin nearly 100 strong, en route for Pembroke Dock.
Evening of 7th August 1914 – The transport moved off and halting for the nights at Llanellen, Hereford, Ludlow and Church Stretton, completed the march to Oswestry on the afternoon of the 11th August 1914.
20th August 1914 – The Brigade moved to Northampton where the Welsh Division was concentrating.
Evening of 5th November 1914 – The Battalion embarked at Southampton on the ‘Manchester Importer’.
6th November 1914 – Arrived off Le Havre and anchored until night.
7th November 1914 – The Battalion landed in Havre.
8th November 1914 – Entrained, arrived at St. Omer, 10th November 1914.
18th/19th November 1914, passed fit by Inspector or Reserve Troops, marched to Bailleul, halting for the night at Hazebrouck and reaching Le Bizet the following day.
21st November 1914 – ‘C’ and ‘D’ company enter the trenches, relieved by ‘C’ and ‘D’ on the 23rd.
2nd December 1914 – 2nd Monmouthshires relieve the 2nd Essex, taking over a battalion frontage of eleven hundred yards of trenches.
Christmas Day 1914 – Informal Truce
January 1915 – Redistribution of troops. The forward company of the 2nd Monmouthshires, which was relieved every 2 days, held some cottages and some trenches behind Le Ghier Wood.
20th February 1915 to end of March 1915 – The Battalion relieved the 2nd Essex taking over the same frontage occupied in December.
2nd May 1915 – 2nd Monmouthshires experienced the heaviest shelling they had yet encountered. Later in the day, the enemy launched a fierce attack under cover of asphyxiating gas.
Night of 4th/5th May 1915 – The Battalion relieved the 5th South Lancashires about Weiltje. Another heavy gas attack, not followed up by infantry assault. The position included Mouse Trap Farm (known also to the British as Shell Trap Farm).
8th May 1915 – Battle of Frezenberg Ridge with desperate fighting ensuing for the following six days. Private Jonah Rogers was killed in action on the 8th May 1915.
Although I have no photographs of Jonah, there is a photograph in the book showing a front-line trench in 1915. It’s impossible to say whether one of these men is Jonah, but what one can say is, he was no doubt just like them.

The following is a map of positions occupied by the 2nd Monmouthshires during the 2nd Battle of Ypres. You can see (click on the image for large view) that on the day Jonah was killed, they were positioned in Shell Trap Farm.

Rogers Conundrum

May 5, 2008 by Nicholas Hedges

Having made the recent trip to Wales, I decided to try and get a bit further with a line on my family tree – that of my grandmother’s mother’s parents. My grandmother’s maternal grandparents were George and Mary Ann Rogers.

In my family tree I have them and their children listed as follows:
George Rogers (1864-1944)
Mary Ann Rogers (1864-1941)
Alfred John Rogers (1886-1954)
Mary Jane Rogers (1887-1969)
William George Rogers (1887-1897)
Ruth Rogers (1890-1925)
Evan Rogers (1892-?)
Jonah Rogers (1894-1915)
Enoch Rogers (1896-?)
George Rogers (1898-1916)

Although these dates aren’t all 100% accurate, they are for the most part within a year or two. I discovered them through a combination of the 1901 Welsh Census and a visit to the churchyard at Cefn-y-Crib, but what I want to know now is the maiden name of Mary Ann Rogers which I began to look for by searching for details of her marriage to George, narrowing my range between 1880 and the date of their first born. However, having located several possible entries for George Rogers I found that none of them tallied with anyone called Mary Ann; in fact, I could find no evidence at all for their marriage within this range.

I began to wonder whether (as was the case with my great great-grandfather Henry Jones) George Rogers was married twice. Perhaps this was the reason I could not find the dates I expected. I therefore noted down all the references for George Rogers and looked up all the female names which correlated. There were a fair few names one of which stood out as the most likely. This was a lady called Sarah Hiley who was married in Pontypool in the second quarter of 1885 to one of two possible grooms, one of which was a George Rogers. Given that his first child was born in 1886, this date seemed to lend credence to this theory.

It was then as I looked through the Wales Census of 1891 that I found the following entry along with the ages of those listed:

George Rogers (28)
Sarah A Rogers (26)
Alfred J Rogers (7)
William G Rogers (4)
Bessie J Rogers (5)
Ruth Rogers (1)

What struck me was of course the names, all of whom (except for Bessie and William (who died in 1897)) I’d found in the 1901 census albeit with a different mother. But what about my great grandmother Mary Jane? Having run through a number of permutations as to what might have caused her to be missing in the 1891 census (a search for her name revealed nothing) I suddenly realised that Bessie J Rogers, born around 1886 must be her; they were one and the same person.

George Rogers I believe was once married to a woman called Sarah and by 1891 they’d had four children together. By 1901, Sarah was, one presumes, dead, and George had married Mary Ann. Whether the other children were hers or Sarah’s I don’t know at this point. I decided to look for an entry for their marriage and eventually I found a possible wedding between a George Rogers and a Mary Ann Pritchard in the last quarter of 1894. What I haven’t been able to find however are any entries for Sarah Rogers’ death.

I have now ordered a wedding certificate for George Rogers and Sarah Hiley (if indeed they were married) and a birth certificate for my great grandmother Mary Jane. At least these should shed some light on what has become quite a mystery.

Hafodyrynys

May 5, 2008 by Nicholas Hedges

A few months ago when I interviewed my Grandmother about her childhood, she talked about the mountain around which she’d grown up in the village of Hafodyrynys, South Wales, not far from Pontypool. Her words about this mountain, which is in fact more of a hill, were very moving, for it was on this hill she played as a child and where she would watch her father as he walked to work in the mine at Llanhilleth. Below is part of that conversation:

“I can see him now because he went up our garden over the road and the mountain started from there up… and he’d go so far up and he’d turn back and wave to us, and if we went out to play, our Mam would say, “you can go up the mountain to play…” but every now and then our Mam would come out in the garden and we had to wave to her to know that we were alright you know… always remember going up the mountain…”

One of my main objectives for visiting Hafodyrynys was to see this mountain and to walk from the back of my Grandmother’s old garden in Rectory Road, up the side of the mountain, and to turn and look down at the house, just as her father had done on his way to the mines, and as she had done when playing. Another objective was to visit the graveyard in which a number of my ancestors are buried. Among those I wanted to find were:

Elias Jones (1882-1929)
Great-Grandfather

Mary Jane Rogers (1887-1969)
Great-Grandmother

Henry Jones (1839-1889)
Great Great-Grandfather

Rachel Jones (1853-1916)
Great Great-Grandmother

Mary Carey (1843-1869)
First wife of Henry Jones

George Rogers (1864-1944)
Great Great-Grandfather

Mary Ann Rogers (1864-1941)
Great Great-Grandmother

As well as being places where one can remember the dead, graves are also important evidence for the genealogist, and as I was to find out in the churchyard at Cefn-y-Crib (a small village between Hafodyrynys and Pantygasseg), the graves of my ancestors both confirmed my research as regards certain individuals, and opened up a new avenue of investigation, which, given my interest in World War One battlefields was to prove particularly interesting.

After visiting the ruins of Raglan Castle, we made our way towards Hafodyrynys and having taken a back road came first to Pantygasseg, a village I knew through my research as being the place where my Great-Uncle amongst many others had worked as a miner. Looking at the census records for the area, almost every man was employed in the mines. The village (which is no more than a single street with houses on one side) also interested me as regards the meaning behind its name, which in Welsh means, ‘hollow in the mare’s back’. This description derives from the shape of the mountain as it appears on the horizon and having researched the theme of ‘distance’ some time ago for an art project, I found it interesting that the village got its name from how it was seen from afar. Pantygasseg is so named through its being a part of (or identified with) the distance.

Standing in Pantygasseg and looking at the surrounding hills therefore, I got the sensation that I had become a part of that distance, or that I was at least closer to it than I had ever been. I was reminded at this point of a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge’ where he writes:

“Is it possible that one believed it necessary to retrieve what happened before one was born? Is it possible that one would have to remind every individual that he is indeed sprung from all who have gone before, has known this therefore and should not let himself be persuaded by others who knew otherwise?”

In Pantygasseg, I was indeed ‘retrieving’ the past and reminding myself that I was not only sprung from all who have gone before, but that I was also sprung from this very place.

Just a few minutes down the narrow road from Pantygasseg, we arrived at the churchyard in Cefn-y-Crib (looking through a Welsh dictionary, I’ve tried to get an idea as to what it might mean, and ‘back of the ridge’ is my best guess thus far). According to my Grandmother , the Cefn was regarded (at least by her mother) as a rather rough place, but it was here that a number of my ancestors were buried in the small churchyard of the ‘Cappel Yr Ynys,’ a Congregational Church built according to the plaque above the door in 1832 (I’ve since discovered that a number of my ancestors also lived here).

It was also to this church that my Grandmother came as a child and so for many reasons it was quite an emotional visit for me and my Dad, who, at each stage of the journey (which was indeed something akin to a pilgrimage) phoned my Grandmother to tell her where we were. The knowledge that we were standing at her parents’ graveside brought tears to her eyes and memories back which she could only know and there was something about this relaying of the journey back to her which was particularly engaging. I knew she’d be sitting in her chair back home and couldn’t help but imagine what she was thinking, what she was remembering about those places in which we were now standing of which I at least had no memory; it was as if we were walking within her memories.

My Grandmother had given us some flowers to put on the grave of her parents, and this, along with the grave of her mother’s parents were the only ones for sure that we knew of.

I’d been struggling to find the date of my Great-Grandfather’s (Elias Jones’) death, but on the side of the grave he shares with his wife, I found it; September 2nd 1929. He was just 47 years of age and died as a result of the coal-dust he breathed in through his work in the mines. With the Rogers’ grave, I had the dates already, but it was poignant to stand next to them (just as it was with all the graves) and realise that the grave marked the end of the path of their lives; a path around this area and it surrounds, which if it had been any different at all would have meant my not being here. I could only stand there by their being in the first place; my coming into being had not only been shaped by them, but also by the shape of the landscape itself, that of which I was now a part.

The next grave Monika found was that of my great great-grandfather, Henry Jones who died in 1889. Looking at the age at which he died and the date of birth I had for him in my family tree, I was relieved that I had indeed got the right man and below his name was – as expected – the name of his second wife – my great great-Grandmother Rachel, who died in 1916. But according to my research he’d been married before, to – if I was correct – Mary Carey, who’d died in 1869 aged 26.

I looked around the graveyard for her grave but found nothing, and it wasn’t until we arrived home later and, again with the help of a Welsh dictionary, translated a few of the words on Henry and Rachel Jones’ grave, that we realised this stone had initially been cut for his first wife Mary. The words ‘Mari. Gwraig [wife] of Henry Jones,’ can be seen at the top along with the date of death (1869) and the age 27 (I’ve since adjusted her date of birth by one year). Also, listed below Mary, is a daughter, Lydia, who died in 1873 at the age of just 4 years. This would put her date of birth at around 1869, the same year as Jacob and the same year as Mary’s death; could it be that Jacob and Lydia were twins and that Mary died in childbirth?

The next gravestone which was to prove particularly interesting was one which began:

“In loving memory of William George, son of George and Mary Ann Rogers, of Hafodyrynys, Died Sep. 3rd 1897, Aged 10 years.”

George and Mary Ann Rogers are my great great-grandparents. I hadn’t got William George listed amongst their children, but I had got the man named beneath, Jonah Rogers. I knew that he had been killed in the First World War, but was intrigued to find on the grave his rank and his regiment as well as the date and location of his death. Again, once home, I looked up his details on the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and found that he’d been killed in Ypres and that his name was on the Menin Gate, places which Monika and I had visited last year and my Dad the year before. Not only that, but given the date of his death, I could trace him to the Battle of Frezenberg Ridge (8th – 13th May 1915), part of the Second Battle of Ypres.

The man below, George, I also had listed. Ruth Hall, who is listed at the bottom of the gravestone I’m
assuming is my great great-aunt Ruth Rogers, the daughter of George and Mary Ann who was born in 1890 and died on April 5th 1925 aged 35 years.

Working on one’s family tree, one is of course deluged with lists of names of both people and places, and it’s only when you stand at the graves of those you have found in the surrounds they knew so well in life, that you can begin to make a real connection, and this connection, in this small churchyard was extremely powerful.

May 1st, the day of our visit, was election day and the annexe attached to the church was being used as a polling station. Having asked whether we might be allowed a look inside the church we were told we’d be welcome to pay a quick visit, and as we stood inside the small chapel, it felt strange to think that as a child my Grandmother had once sat in the pews facing where we were standing. Perhaps all of my forebears buried in the churchyard had once occupied these pews; given the date of the church’s foundation it didn’t seem unlikely. The bible which rested next to the pulpit looked as if it might have been there since that time, and I couldn’t help but imagine the minister reading from its pages as my ancestors listened.

Having left the churchyard, we made our way down into Hafodyrynys, admiring as we drove the scenery and the trees which lined the road. There was something about the trees which particularly fascinated me, they didn’t seem to grow so much as writhe, twisting around themselves, confounding themselves with the fact of their own existence.

Once in Hafodyrynys, we parked the car and made our way towards Rectory Road, the street in which my Grandmother was born, and of which she’d spoken so fondly when we talked a while ago. Having stopped to ask a resident where we might find it (a man who said he knew my Grandmother) we eventually found the rather nondescript row of houses which looked to me as if they’d seen better days.

It wasn’t that they were neglected in anyway, but with satellite dishes on almost everyone, they seemed to all recall simpler times. Perhaps that was as much to do with what I recalled my Grandmother telling me, about how she would play on the ‘mountain’ behind her garden and how her father had walked over it on his way to work in Llanhilleth.

Having found the house in which she’d been born, we walked up an alleyway just a few doors down and made our way to the mountain. I wanted to walk up it and look back down on her garden, imagining my great-grandfather, looking down on his family and my Grandmother looking and waving at her mother as she played. And having walked to the top I did just that, taking in the view of the beautiful countryside, taking in the shape of the landscape which had in the way it shaped the paths of my ancestors served in part to bring about my own ‘coming into being’.

I also reflected on Jonah Rogers, my great great-uncle, and thought about the misery he’d endured in Ypres and the horrors he must had seen, contrasting them with the view from the mountain, the view he must have known so well and dreamt about in all the mud and nightmare of Flanders. Having been in Ypres last year and now standing in Hafodyrynys, I couldn’t help but feel I had fulfilled a dream of his, to leave Ypres and see his home again.

Having followed the directions of a man we’d met on the side of the mountain, we found ourselves not so much lost, as uncertain of where we should be heading. We walked through the second of two gates on a farm which we’d been told to pass through and found ourselves suddenly in the company of a very young border-collie who came bounding down to meet us before heading off again in the direction of the farmer who was at that point having a rest somewhere up a track which rose to our right.

Unsure as to whether we should take this track or that straight ahead of us, we too made our way up to the farmer who proceeded to take us on a tour of his farm. And so, in the company of him and his two dogs, we saw his fields, his sheep and were given some historical and geographical information pertaining to the area which lay all around us. It was as if for a few moments he were the voice young Jonah’s consciousness, recalling to himself all the familiar place names as he sat amongst those that were unfamiliar, colouring in the lush green fields where he could see only mud, and remembering the trees where in his nightmare all the trees had been gunned down, like soldiers shot at dawn.

In amongst the hills and the patchwork of fields, the farmer told us the names of the various hamlets and villages; Penwaen, Pen-Twyn, Glandwr, but the most interesting thing for me (even more than the fact a walking stick made from a Holly Tree will make your hand turn black) was the stile which the farmer told us had not changed in his lifetime. It might not sound an exceptional fact, but it was interesting in that to me, looking at it for the first time, it was just an old, ramshackle stile, but for the farmer it was an abundant source of memories; memories one assumes about people he recalls from his childhood up to the present day, people who had since passed away, who once walked the road we were walking. It served to remind me of how the shape of the places in which we live serve to shape our lives as well as those who come after us, how the most insignificant thing in the world can harbour the most significant memories; and stiles of course help us on our way, it helps us cross a threshold – a theme which recently I have thought about a great deal.

Having left the farmer and made our way back to the car, we visited another of my Grandmother ‘s churches, one in which my great Grandmother Mary Ann Rogers was a preacher (she was also the town midwife). Following this we made our way home back to Oxford, following the footsteps of my Grandmother and her family, who followed her to Oxford in the 1930s, leaving the Valleys so her brother George would not have to work down the mines. From Pantygasseg, to Llanhilleth, even on the farmer’s land, there was abundant evidence of mining, and one was reminded of the strange duality inherent in this beautiful landscape; the threshold between light and dark, play and the harsh reality of hard, dangerous, often fatal work.

Back in Oxford I looked again at my family tree and though I can’t put faces to most of those at whose graves we’d stood that day, I can at least, and more importantly, put them in their landscape, and, furthermore, by walking in that landscape, put myself not only in their shoes, but somehow in their memories.

Waving on the Mountain

December 7, 2007 by Nicholas Hedges

Yesterday I visited my paternal Grandmother and over a period of about three hours, talked with her about her childhood in South Wales and her early years in Oxford. All too often these days we don’t allow the old to speak; too often we try to speak for them, to tell them what they know (what we think they know) talking as if they are foreign and speaking at them slowly and loudly, as if that will help them ‘understand.’ I was keen with my Grandmother (Nana) to get her to just talk, and for her to make connections without my trying to prompt or ask too many questions.

As we get older, our brains lose connections, but sometimes things that may seem forgotten simply require a different map, another means of finding them, the longer way round – a longer path. Talking through events, one often stumbles upon something that leads somewhere else, a new route is found and that which was lost is rediscovered. But if we prompt too much things will remain obscured; forgotten.

Talking with my Grandmother was a very special experience and I wondered as I listened, when it was that she last spoke at length about her past? From memories of her father (who died in 1928), her Grandmother (born in 1864), to her own retirement, she took me on a journey from the mountains of Wales, to a public school in Cheltenham and on to the houses of Oxford, where she worked as a maid in the late 1920s and early 30s. But it was her reminiscences of her father which were particularly moving.

Through researching my family tree, I’ve got to know many of the names of family members, back as far as the beginning of the nineteenth century, but that, along with a few dates is all I know. My Grandmother wasn’t sure she’d be of any use to me in my research, but as I pointed out, her memories are worth their weight in gold. I can find names and dates, but it’s who these people were that matters most, and the only person who could help me was her.

Below is a photograph of my Grandmother’s father (my Great Grandfather), Elias Jones.

Born in Trevethin, Monmouthshire in 1882, he worked as a miner in the pit at Llanhilleth, a short distance away from where he lived with his wife Mary Jane and their five children, Ruth, Lillian (my Grandmother), Doll, Ray and George (one girl, Florence or Flossie, died aged 2 c.1918). With just a photograph, a name, dates and occupation, it’s difficult to surmise what he might have been liked. One tends to assume (unfairly) that miners in those days must have been – due to the harshness of their work – rather dour or surly people, but talking to my Grandmother, it became clear that as regards Elias, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Below are a couple of extracts from our conversation.

On his walking to work:
“I can see him now, because he went up our garden over the road and the mountain started from there up… and he’d go so far up and he’d turn back and wave to us.”
On his being at home:
“I can remember now he would always help our Mam wash our hair on a Friday night… our Ruth would go first, she would wash it and our Dad would dry it and mine next…”
On his death:
“I can always remember the doctor in the room when we realised he wasn’t going to come through, he said ‘don’t grieve for him Mrs Jones, you know what he said to me, “if I can’t work for my wife and children I don’t want to stay.”‘ And he just passed away. “

Just these few, brief extracts tell me a great deal about the man in the photograph; a man who clearly loved his family and who through his working in the mines, succumbed to a disease of the lungs (possibly pneumoconiosis or ‘black lung disease’) at the age of just 42. And the image of him turning on the mountain to wave at his children below is one which will not only stay with me forever, but one I which would like to ‘explore’ in my forthcoming work. I had wanted to draw the outline of the mountain, but I also think it will be necessary to follow the route Elias Jones took, from his house, over the mountain to the pit at Llanhilleth.
Deaths in the mines (as well as deaths as a consequence of working them) were sadly nothing exceptional. And as my Grandmother poignantly explained:

“…when there was a death you know every blind in that street would be drawn, we knew directly we heard of a death the women would draw their blinds down and they would nearly all turn out to a funeral down there… Kind of almost took it in our stride you know, oh dear there’s another one gone, killed in the mines.”

Family Tree

November 20, 2007 by Nicholas Hedges

With both my Grandmothers still with us (both were born in 1912), I’m very fortunate to have living connections with the late nineteenth century. When they talk about their childhoods and youth, they are describing a world which has always seemed completely alien to that in which we live today, and using one’s imagination, to go beyond that world, further back into the past, that place, the world, becomes stranger still. This world, when conceived within the imagination is like a fiction. In a talk I gave as part of my residency at OVADA in May 2007, I stated that:

“…as a child, I liked to create and map worlds; countries which I would build from fragments of the world around me; forests, mountains and plains – unspoilt landscapes. And in these worlds there would exist towns and cities, created from ‘the best bits’ of those I had visited.

These invented worlds became, as I grew up, the ‘invented’ or imagined landscapes of Oxford’s past; landscapes that were – just as they still are – created from fragments, parts of the past which are still extant in the city; old buildings, walls, objects and so on. Between these structures, these fragments, I would fill the gaps, with my own imagination, with thoughts derived from my own experience. The city’s past and the past in general, as it exists within my mind, is then, to use the metaphor of cloning in Jurassic Park, a cloned dinosaur. The extant buildings, structures and objects within museums, are like the mosquitoes trapped inside the amber. They are broken strands of DNA. All that is required is for me to fill the gaps, and this I can do with my own DNA. I am in effect, the frog.”

I will return to the frog later.

All I knew prior to my research, was that part of my family, on my father’s side, came from South Wales and worked in the mines, and that my family on my mother’s side heralded from Reading. My paternal grandfather was always an Oxford man and his family had been in the area for generations. My maternal great-grandmother (born in 1878 and who I can remember) was said to have come from Suffolk and was the daughter of a farmer (Norfolk as it would transpire).

Researching the family tree quickly becomes, not so much obsessive, but rather, compulsive; necessary. The dead, and at that, the anonymous dead, come back to life and make themselves known to you, and, what is more compelling, one feels oneself become more solid, more flesh and blood than ever before; one begins to exist in four dimensions rather than simply three (as if we, in the present, are not really a part of time) becoming part of a network whose strings vibrate like those plucked on an old musical instrument – whose sound, although feint, can nonetheless be heard or even felt. It’s rather like plugging a short-wave radio into the vast network of cables that comprise the national grid, and listening to the distant voices of ancestors telling you who you are; crackling like the damp wood of a fire which will never quite go out.

What has particularly interested me, aside from the obvious personal interest in finding lost relatives (one is also taken aback by the sheer volume of living relatives one must have but which one doesn’t know about), is how the whole project fits in so precisely with what I have been doing with my artwork; finding and identifying with the anonymous dead buried in the traumas of history, placing myself in the spaces of the past which have witnessed the most terrible catastrophes – placing myself, in effect, in the panorama of history itself. Through doing this over the past year, history has become overwhelming, its incomprehensible size as impossible to grasp as the distance of the stars. But through locating myself in the personal panorama of family history, History itself becomes a little less overwhelming; events of the past become known through great-great grandmothers and fathers – they are personalised, and yet, with this list of names and dates and with this new geography of the past, dwelling as it does in the villages of Monmouthshire and Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Oxon, one’s own impossibility is augmented still further. What were the chances of my great-great grandfather, Jabez, meeting his wife Elizabeth (what were the chances of either of them being born) and then having their son Albert? What were the odds against him doing everything he did in life exactly as he did; meeting my great-grandmother Elizabeth and having my grandfather Norman? The further one goes back into the shadows of family history, the less likely and more impossible one becomes, and this heightens, to a dramatic effect, one’s sense of place in both time and space.
Again, from the talk I gave as part of my residency, I stated:

“This metaphor [the frog and the dinosaur] is interesting in that DNA patterns are, of course, unique to everyone. My DNA is different to everybody else’s as there’s is to mine. Therefore, using my imagination to plug in the gaps of the past, means that the ‘past’ will comprise large parts of my own experience; my dinosaur will contain elements of my own being. But although my DNA is unique, it is nonetheless derived from my own past, elements have been passed down by my ancestors from time immemorial. The code which makes me who I am, comprises parts of people I know now (parents and grandmothers), people I knew (grandfathers and great-grandmother) and people lost to the past altogether (great-great grandparents and so on) [people whose names have since I wrote this become so familiar I feel as if I knew them, or rather know them]. What interests me about this, is that, through stating above how ‘my dinosaur will contain elements of my own being’ I can now see that it will also comprise elements of hundreds – indeed thousands – of people, the majority of whom I will of course never know and who have been dead for centuries. I like to think therefore, that ‘my dinosaur’ and my imagination aren’t entirely unique.
The philosopher Henri Bergson says of the past:
‘I believe that our whole physical existence is something just like this single sentence… I believe that our whole past still exists.’
Given that DNA strands are made up of letters I found this quote particularly interesting.”

The further back in time we go, the less unique we become, at least in terms of our DNA, and therefore, our individual dinosaur, that subjective sense of History created from fragments of the past (objects, buildings etc.) is increaingly attenuated; less individual and less subjective, because the ‘DNA’ (our individual selves) with which we plug the gaps is derived from that of hundreds, indeed thousands of people. That very history we are seeking to build inside myself is already there. What is more, the further back we go, with each step and every generation, the wider the family net is thrown and the greater number our number of relatives. Things which happen to other people, things on the news and so on, could be happening to people with whom we share a common past; and indeed, the same is true of events in the past. Separated by time and space, we may in fact be linked by the very fact of existence.