Life, Death and Research...

[topsy10]

Hallo Penny your story of your family really lifts my spirits. I only joined this site today and have only just started to search for my very small family. Sadly both my parents were born out of wedlock so that makes it very limiting but just to see the name of my true maternal grandmother and the her possible burial place has given me such joy. It is almost as if you feel you have found real roots! I am so glad to have joined this site as people seem very friendly and helpful. It is not always easy to know where to look for info and often costs money which is ok if you know you have the correct ancestor.
Hope you continue to succed in your searches and look forward to seeing more new posts about your family which is very interesting. I lived near Highgate as a child, in Archway Rd. and went to Hargrave Park School.
Small world isn't it.

[Marie C..]

Penny,
Get the diaries into print. It makes for fascinating reading and is all part of our social history as well as your own. Diaries can be lost, destroyed even by mistake.
My father gave me his diaries jst before he died. My mother told me to burn them(I kept only one) and watched the others burn....... how I wish I still had them.
Make sure yours are kept safe.
And I love the name Raspberry Cottage.
M

[Penny Gallo]

Yes, this is a fantastic site, isn't it! Sorry we're not quite connected Feen - that would have been fun, although I actually arrived on to Brit-Gen by googling my Harston ancestors' name and it came up with Mike Hawkins' posting. It turned out that his wife and I are related, and we have since met up, and are now amalgamating not only our trees, but also sharing bits of info which my great aunt wrote down for me years ago (I was interested in social history even as a child) - I'm a great preserver of letters.

What shame about the diaries Marie - it's like Kilvert's family - but I understand it would have been hard to disobey your mother's wishes. Diaries are very personal, and mine would certainly ruffle a few feathers, and let out a few skellybobs!

I thought Highgate Cemetery was fascinating. As far as I know no-one from the family is buried there, but it is still a marvellous place to go and look at. The volunteers are doing a great job as they are maintaining the balance between it still being quite a wild place and the preservation of the graves with very special scupltures and inscriptions.

to everyone enjoying Brit-Gen.

[Maximilian]

Census is 4th declension Latin (not 2nd, with the -i plural ending), so the plural is technically just "census". As that would look odd in English, "censuses" is preferable, and "censi" obviously always wrong.

On the substantive note, for genealogists, of 19th century census taking in villages, one is talking of cottages with no street numbers, and, indeed, in unmade lanes rather than roads, often with gaps between them. Some of them may have had names, but often long forgotten, even if the buildings survive, and, with all kinds of developments in between, matching the census to modern lay-outs is more than just a jig-saw puzzle.

[Penny Gallo]

Alright, Maximilian - you've made me go and blow the dust off my Kennedy's "Shorter Latin Primer" - 4th declension, hmm: ergo it declines like "gradus" (a step). Thank you for that correction and I do beg your pardon (goodness we do have some erudite people here!)

Even to this day, the inhabitants of the village the Harstons came from argue about the name of the street I used to live on. The postal address was "Wood's Lane", but the other part of Wood's Lane - large posh 1970s detached houses - objected to being associated with us load of plebs in the 19th cottages, so they used to tell me our part was really "Back Lane". As I'd seen the 19th census (plural use there ), I was able to say, "Actually it should be Back Side".

[Maximilian]

Kennedy's "Shorter Latin Primer" - now, that takes me back a bit. In my time, it was not recognised until the L of Latin on the green cover had two strokes added, and then a G put at the end.

Your story of Back Lane reminds me of some people my mother knew called Sidebotham, only that was far too infra dignitatem - so they pronounced it Siddybottome - and everyone else laughed even more.

To get back to the main issue - do I understand that there is variant in the Haston family - Harston as well as Haston?

[TheBluePearl]

.... At the moment I'm trying to delve into the life and death of a greatgreat uncle who died as a Conscientious Objector in Dartmoor Prison. It's interesting to see how far current attitudes differ tfrom those of his contemporaries....

Hi Penny, I found your post very inspiring and heartwarming. You certainly have experienced many different feelings over the years of family research, and the subject you raise about "Conscientious Objector" will probably trigger some more!

I watched with fascination the documentary on Channel 4 on Monday this week called "Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight" presented by Ian Hislop.

I hope you managed to watch it - it certanly made me realise how very brave these men were.

Good luck in all your continuing research, kind regards, Clare x

[Penny Gallo]

Yes, I did watch Ian Hislop's programme, and of course it was RICHMOND, not Ripon as I said, where the CO drew so touchingly on the prison wall. I wonder how many other men changed their minds once out there amongst the carnage. When working in museums, I was once told by a visitor about the drawings of a lace-designer who served in France in WW1. "I can see from the drawings WHY he was a Conscientious Objector in the Second World War", the chap told me.

Yes, the family name was originally Harston. From at least the early 18th century they lived in various villages in the Vale of Belvoir. My ancestors were well enough off to have left a Will (now in the Nottinghamshire Archives) dated 14 April 1791 leaving "seeing glass, silver spoons, salts, and Child-Bed linnens" but it all went pear-shaped perhaps because of the great number of children. There was clearly a bit of family disagreement as well, as some children were cut off with the proverbial shilling. Most of the Harstons were Ag Labs by the 1840s, and with the agricultural recessions of the 1850s and the local Vicar saving the Sacrament Money hoping to buy some plate for the church rather than help the poor and needy, they all dispersed. One turns up as a Police Sergeant in Burton-upon-Trent, one in London, one running a shop in Yorkshire, but many of them went off into NE Derbyshire to the new coal mines.

My family ended up living in The Blocks, purpose-built colliery housing long since demolished, off High Street, Stonebroom. Because locals didn't pronounce their "h"s, the family got fed up with being teasingly referred to as "ARSE-ton" and changed the family name to Haston. Others elsewhere continued to be Harston.

[Penny Gallo]

Maximillian, your alteration reminded me of the Nigel Molesworth series by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle. "How To Be Topp" (1954) has its own chapter dedicated to Nigel's study of Latin at St Custard's. "... there are ways of taking your mind from it such as altering shorter latin primer into shortbread eating primer... " My father threw my copies away when I was a child as he said that they were the cause of my brother's poor spelling! I've managed to get 1st editions now of "Down With Skool", "Back in the Jug Agane" and "How To Be Topp": the illustrations were wondrous, and still make me laugh. I don't think 2008 schoolkids would have the faintest idea what most of the books mean. Does anyone else remember these?

[Maximilian]

Nigel Molesworth, I have to say, passed me by - more of a William Brown fan, myself. But I was intrigued that "eating primer" had got into print, and by the "shortbread" addition, which did not go round my school. We did have another variant, however, in that our basic Latin text book, was "Latin for Today", First Course, by Gray and someone or other, which became "Eating for Today", First Course, Gravy and Potatoes. School kids always had their minds on food!

There was also the doggerel:

Latin is a language as old as old can be:
It killed the ancient Romans, and now it's killing me.

More seriously, however, I noted on another thread how lack of Latin confused a researcher, who did not recognise "vide" for "see". Doubtless there are others confused by "conferte", for "compare", or "ibidem" for "in the same place" (and still more by their abbreviations "v.", "cf.", and "ibid."). Yes, Latin still has its uses in many walks of life, not least in genealogy:

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabunt.

(Perhaps at some time these things will help us to remember.)