This is part of a series of essays titled “Honoring the Ancestors” about reconnecting to those that came before us. You can start the series here.
I’ve been diving into a few different individuals in my family tree, building a story about each of their lives with as much detail as possible. The first pass is always just the standard stuff - birth, immediate family, marriage, children, death - ancestry.com makes these easy. It’s the second pass where the stories become richer. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who you’re looking at - in looking for a “Richard Leighton” in England in the 1800’s I knew it definitely wasn’t Sir Richard Leighton, nor was it the one convicted of beating his wife - but when you find the right person it becomes fun.
The Castle Inn. The 1861 England census information for some Leightons showed a little extra snippet of information: “Castle Inn”. That detail allowed me to look for whether the inn still existed, find old photos of it, and ultimately to see it in its current state on Google’s Street View.
Great stuff: now I can put that part of the story in the context of a real place today, ie. one that hasn’t become a parking lot. From the real estate sign on it I could just go back and rent it like they did. (The census and birth information also detailed fraternal twins in the family, which showed up in a later generation and is known to be passed down through our genes.)
“Malleable Ironfounder”. A huge part of adding this second pass of details comes from newspapers.com as part of my subscription to ancestry.com. It makes the thing a little more expensive but pays off in spades. It allows you to search for the combination of a specific name and date range, and then you can narrow the search geographically. In this case I was able to first narrow to England, then the correct Borough, then the correct town. For this ancestor (a 2nd great-grandfather) his obituary said that earlier in life he started a business of his own before working as a salesman for the local coal mine. Further down the results I found this advertisement in The Walsall Observer:
This leapt off the screen at me and I quickly shared it with Minette. Our own son, who carries on the Leighton name, went to school to train in metalwork and smithing. In Minette’s words, “it’s literally in his blood”. Throughlines indeed.
A good Protestant turnip? I had been actively looking for more information about a Methodist minister in the family (also a 2nd great-grandfather, this time on my father’s side) who found his way into many newspaper articles from the Canadian Maritimes. He appears to have been the beginning of 6 generations straight of university graduates on that side of the family. In this case some more persistent Googling provided me with a funny anecdote: this was the second funny story I found about the Reverend.
I’m reminded of a rather good story concerning [Mr. Duffy] and the late lamented Rev William Dobson DD. The latter was for some time pastor for the First Methodist Church, living in the parsonage where the Heartz Memorial Hall now stands. Between Dr. Dobson and Mr. Duffy a very warm friendship existed and many a merry quip passed between the two, for Methodist Minister and a very devout Roman Catholic. The story tells how Dr. Dobson stepped into Duffys shop one fine morning and asked “Duffy, can you give me a good Protestant turnip?” The other replied “Faith I can” and going to the cellar soon returned with a very horrible specimen, full of hairs, cleavages, and divisions and placing it in front of his reverence said “There ye are” Dr. Dobson responded with “Duffy you had me that time.”!
— From Benjamin Bremner, An Island Scrap Book - Historical and Traditional, published by Irwin Printing, Charlottetown: 1932, page 109
Having read some of the his sermons - thoughtful, didactic, pious - it’s fun to see a humorous side. That certainly has persisted in the family. Preaching and enjoying turnips … a little less so.
Throughlines. It’s easy to say “I’d like to write some of the stories of my ancestors” but harder than it sounds. It’s a gradual discovery of windows onto the past, peppered with little endorphin hits as facts appear and the occasional “a ha!” moment when something connects the past to the present. These themes are key to the process of reconnecting to our ancestors as they show us the real world wisdom and path that are part of our makeup - certainly from a psychosocial perspective, presumably from an epigenetic one as well.