A Poem for Christmas

All I Want For Christmas Is A New Surname

Dear Santa: Don't bring me new dishes,

I don't need a new kind of game.

Genealogists have peculiar wishes

For Christmas I just want a surname.

A new washing machine would be great,

But it's not the desire of my life.

I've just found an ancestor's birth date;

What I need now is the name of his wife.

My heart doesn't yearn for a ring

That would put a real diamond to shame.

What I want is a much cheaper thing;

Please give me Mary's last name.

To see my heart singing with joy,

Don't bring me a real leather suitcase,

Bring me a genealogist's toy;

a surname with dates and a place.

(author unknown)

UK Cenus and Paganism

Today is the official day for filling in the UK census. The census is held every ten years in the UK, it collects information about the countries population, this is then used to help plan services in the future, things like housing needs,  schools, roads etc.

I know reading various forums that there has been much discussion about filling the census forms. Some see it as a breach of privacy or wish to rebel against it because they think it is some sort of civil liberty infringement. Others just think it's a waste of time and feel aggrieved at having to fill in a form that does look on first sight to be quite long.

I'd like to answer a couple of those points. First it's really not that long or difficult to fill in, you can either fill the form sent to you and post it off or do the form online. It is 32 pages long, a big deal has been made about that in the media. Yet most households will not need to use all of the form. The first couple of pages contain information about the form and a box to sign as a declaration that all the information you have given is correct to the best of your knowledge. You then have 2 pages to list the people living at the address, up to 3 people per page, this amounts to a simple name and ticking what relation they are to the head of the household. Next is 1 page of house hold questions, then you have 4 single pages of questions which are repeated for each member of the household, the majority of these questions are multiply choice tick box answers and some will be by passed as they will not apply. In my two person house hold I had 10 pages to fill in and the declaration box to sign, hardly a big task.

As to the questions themselves, they are hardly asking for top secret information. Most of the information I'm sure the government will have scattered already across various departments. Lets face it, due to sites like face book many of use give far more personal information away on those sites and never even think about it. Every supermarket you have a store card for has probably more detailed information on you than this is asking for.

The one question that has provoked the most comment on the Internet and media in general is the one about your choice of religion. This question is entirely voluntary, if it offends you in any way, miss it out.  If you wish to answer it, then do so with what ever you feel is most appropriate to you. Anyone who is thinking of putting something down like Jedi Knight, that is your free choice but please be aware it won't make a great deal of difference. It will be counted but any religion that is not recognized in this country, will end up being lumped in with the No Religion group.

OK I'm going to direct this next bit to my fellow pagans. I don't know how many of you belong to any form of pagan groups but many of the pagan organizations are asking their members to use the Pagan - Dash method of filling the census in. This means ticking the other box and then in the box underneath writing 'Pagan - (what every your chosen faith is)' So I will be putting 'Pagan - Heathen'. I know some people will say but I call myself wiccan or druid rather than pagan. The point is if we can show how many of use fall under the pagan religions umbrella, hopefully we can start to get more respect for our beliefs. Once we've got that we can the go on to sort out the finer points of the individual groups, but in the end of course it's up to you. If you want any more info on this read here.

Finally as a simple family historian, I plead with everyone to give up 10 Min's. of their time and fill in the form. I have been so thankful of the forms from the previous years going back to 1841 in tracing my family ancestors. I would like to think that in future years, just maybe someone might be using this one to try and trace me, and just maybe one your own descendants will be looking for you.

The Female Line

I am Jane the daughter of Doreen who was the daughter of Phyllis who was the daughter of Nellie who was the Daughter of Charlotte who was the Daughter of Margaret.

I am also the daughter of Alan who was the son of Elizabeth who was the daughter of Ellen who was the daughter of Emma.

How far can you go back in your female ancestral lines? How much do you know about their families?

Most family history researchers concentrate on the male line and with good reason. The men in a family are often so much easier to trace, they were thought of as the head of families on the census, the breadwinners of the family, went to wars, won medals, but does the same not apply to the women. The answer is of course it does, but women are often only listed as mothers or wife on the documents the family historian will reach for, it can take more digging (and a lot more time) to find out about the lives of your female ancestors, but the effort is so worth while.

Our female ancestors bore the children, raised them, and told them the family stories. The looked after the old and sick, kept the family together, wrote the letters and cards and store these away with precious photos. They were the ones who knew the family secrets and who married who. They also worked outside and inside the home, my grandmother Phyllis in service, her grandmother Charlotte worked in the mills. Great great grandmother Catherine on my father’s side worked until her 80’s as a pillow lace maker, an occupation at the time which would have brought more money in to the family then her husband’s job as Agriculture labourer, she was the families bread winner. And the women worked and served in wartime, my grandmother Elizabeth was in a munitions factory, in WW2 and I remember her stories of her hiding in allotments when the zeppelins came over in the WW1. All these women and their lives deserved to be remembered and their stories preserved but so often they are the strong but invisible roots of your family tree.

Looking for them and there stories may take a bit more time, the starting point is the documents that show them as wives and mothers but then you need to become a detective. Women often changed their surnames they start mainly with their fathers names, then that changes to husbands if they separate does she return to her maiden name or keep her husbands, remarriage will bring another change or even taking the name of a man without marriage is not something that is modern, nor are children born out of marriage a new phenomenon.  Where did they come from? What were their lives like? Their sisters who did not marry or have children will have been airbrushed out of history in most cases, find them, give them  life and a voice again by writing down their stories. They are part of you.

I have always said that I came from a long line of strong minded determinded bunch of women, I'm proud of my female ancestors.

Catherine

Nellie

Phyllis on right with her sister Irene

Elizabeth with my dad

My mum. Doreen

  

If you would like to look further in to your research of your female line, an excellent book to help is 'The Female Line' by Margaret Ward. 

Mental health and the census

From 1851, census returns have a column to note whether a person was deaf, dumb, blind or lunatic but after 1871 there was a separate record of those who were lunatic, imbecile or idiot. When you are using census returns, it is always worth checking the parish workhouse, prisons, hospitals and asylums in the area where your ancestors lived to see whether a member of the family might be there.

Distinctions were made between the different types of mental state:

A lunatic had periods of sanity.
An imbecile was someone who had, later in life, become demented.
An idiot was mentally handicapped from birth.
A moron had a mental age of 8-12.
A cretin had mental retardation caused by thyroid deficiency.

The words have, over the years, lost their medical connotations and become terms of abuse, but they were originally used as a fairly precise definitions. They will help you to understand how members of your family were afflicted.