Last year my Mum got her DNA test results, or more accurately her brother's in order to get both male and female lines. It turns out that my Granny's side of things is far from dominated by the Yorkshire heritage she proudly lay claim to, but instead is a mere 9% English and the largest component 28% Yemeni. Probably just as well she's long gone, I don't think she'd be very impressed with that result!
I realized when discussing this with a fellow genealogist recently that I knew next to nothing about Yemen other than it currently being in a civil war mess. How on earth could we have ended up with such a large percentage of that bloodline? Were there British connections with the area? Well a quick look at Wikipedia the other day highlighted a gaping hole in my historical knowledge and I discovered yet another example of British colonialism in the Aden Protectorate. Well I guess it was appropriate enough reading for Waitangi Day.
I didn't get that far though as it was time to head down the road to see Phyllis and I've still yet to get back to reading more, but I mean to. I'm really intrigued as to which branch(es?) of the family connect to there. How did they end up in Britain? It could be through the East India (shipping) Company base in Aden, but given the rather turbulent history of the region it's not impossible they were refugees, a sobering thought given the current state of the world, and the USA restrictions on refugees from Yemen. There but for the grace of god....
We already knew we had a family history of emigration from the UK out around the world, not to mention extensive migration around the British Isles, but now we have a new chapter of immigration to explore. Given our apparent lack of ability to stay in the same place for more than a couple of generations I wouldn't be at all surprised to find nomadic roots near the surface on all arms of the family tree, not just Granny W's!
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2017
Saturday, September 10, 2016
happiness is....
... a new rotary cutter blade!
It's amazing how much easier cutting patchwork pieces is with a sharp blade. But each time the blade gets nicked, and/or starts to dull I end up persevering with it long past the point that makes sense. Especially when I still have a spare in the cupboard!
Getting hold of replacement blades hasn't always been easy though I have to say. When I first emigrated here I discovered that the brand I have wasn't available here, and the nearest equivalent had a different shaped hole in the middle so couldn't be substituted. So I eeked out the blades I had with me for as long as possible and stocked up on return trips to the UK. Finding new ones is now much easier, not only can you buy just about anything online these days, but the brand I have is now imported. Sure I can't get the ones I want here in Kaitaia, but I go to the main cities often enough to be able to stock up if I don't want to pay postage (and it gives me a good excuse to visit the quilting shops!). But still that mentality of having to make do with a dull blade is a hard one to break (it never once occurred to me to buy another rotary cutter of the brand that was readily available!).
I've read a few articles and listened to an essential oils conference podcast recently that have mentioned inherited emotional DNA, and how emotional trauma is passed on down generations who can find themselves with a seemingly irrational fear of something, or habits like hoarding. The expression 'the fruit never falls far from the tree' has long been used to describe such hereditary traits that science is only just starting to be able to explain. The endless debate of nature vs nurture has developed an additional twist. Is my squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of something even to my own disadvantage due to my many experiences of living within a tight budget? or some deeper ancestral experience of living with a scarcity of resources? With Scottish and Yorkshire ancestry (amongst others) it is perhaps unsurprising that there might be an element of 'short arms and deep pockets' in me; but perhaps those traits are due in turn not to simply being 'tight wi' tha brass' but from a past of shortage, after all both populations are also known for their friendliness and looking after their own which doesn't really stack up with the image of being penny pinching.
A friend of mine has recently been posting on Facebook about her DNA test results which include all manner of health indicators, and as I type my Mum is waiting to get her DNA results which hopefully will tell us more than we already know about our ancestry. So it probably isn't surprising that my mind managed to make the jump between dull blades and DNA! But it also fits in with some work I've been doing on counteracting thinking errors (primarily shoulds/oughts and mind reading!), and this too was echoed in another of the conference podcasts I listened to, often the ability to name an issue goes a long way to being able to deal with it. It is much easier to break a habit that appears to make no sense when you can identify why you do it that way in the first place, once you've identified the thinking error/issue behind it you can start finding a positive way forward instead.
So when my currently nice sharp rotary cutter blade starts to dull I need to remember to tell myself it's more important to change to a sharp one that won't stress me out when trying to use it, rather than dwell on that fact that I didn't used to be able to get a new one easily and so I ought to 'make it last'! Now if I could just get a round blade sharpened I'd be even happier....
It's amazing how much easier cutting patchwork pieces is with a sharp blade. But each time the blade gets nicked, and/or starts to dull I end up persevering with it long past the point that makes sense. Especially when I still have a spare in the cupboard!
Getting hold of replacement blades hasn't always been easy though I have to say. When I first emigrated here I discovered that the brand I have wasn't available here, and the nearest equivalent had a different shaped hole in the middle so couldn't be substituted. So I eeked out the blades I had with me for as long as possible and stocked up on return trips to the UK. Finding new ones is now much easier, not only can you buy just about anything online these days, but the brand I have is now imported. Sure I can't get the ones I want here in Kaitaia, but I go to the main cities often enough to be able to stock up if I don't want to pay postage (and it gives me a good excuse to visit the quilting shops!). But still that mentality of having to make do with a dull blade is a hard one to break (it never once occurred to me to buy another rotary cutter of the brand that was readily available!).
I've read a few articles and listened to an essential oils conference podcast recently that have mentioned inherited emotional DNA, and how emotional trauma is passed on down generations who can find themselves with a seemingly irrational fear of something, or habits like hoarding. The expression 'the fruit never falls far from the tree' has long been used to describe such hereditary traits that science is only just starting to be able to explain. The endless debate of nature vs nurture has developed an additional twist. Is my squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of something even to my own disadvantage due to my many experiences of living within a tight budget? or some deeper ancestral experience of living with a scarcity of resources? With Scottish and Yorkshire ancestry (amongst others) it is perhaps unsurprising that there might be an element of 'short arms and deep pockets' in me; but perhaps those traits are due in turn not to simply being 'tight wi' tha brass' but from a past of shortage, after all both populations are also known for their friendliness and looking after their own which doesn't really stack up with the image of being penny pinching.
A friend of mine has recently been posting on Facebook about her DNA test results which include all manner of health indicators, and as I type my Mum is waiting to get her DNA results which hopefully will tell us more than we already know about our ancestry. So it probably isn't surprising that my mind managed to make the jump between dull blades and DNA! But it also fits in with some work I've been doing on counteracting thinking errors (primarily shoulds/oughts and mind reading!), and this too was echoed in another of the conference podcasts I listened to, often the ability to name an issue goes a long way to being able to deal with it. It is much easier to break a habit that appears to make no sense when you can identify why you do it that way in the first place, once you've identified the thinking error/issue behind it you can start finding a positive way forward instead.
So when my currently nice sharp rotary cutter blade starts to dull I need to remember to tell myself it's more important to change to a sharp one that won't stress me out when trying to use it, rather than dwell on that fact that I didn't used to be able to get a new one easily and so I ought to 'make it last'! Now if I could just get a round blade sharpened I'd be even happier....
Friday, October 30, 2015
roots
I've been doing some research into the family of my maternal grandmother, whose surname was Cox. Having never really come across the name much I was somewhat taken aback by just how common it was in the part of Gloucestershire they come from (near Stroud, should you be interested!). If that wasn't enough it appears that just about every family in the village had a daughter who was either born Ann Cox or became Ann Cox through marriage, which made tracing my Great x3 Granny even more complicated!
The menfolk have somewhat less common names; Laban, Benjamin, Ira & Reuben. So that should've be easier right? Yeah right... how can people simply disappear for a couple of decades? Or appear in a census as very much alive thank you but not appear in any Death records? Well not that we could find at first, leaving a conundrum - Laban must've died somewhere otherwise he'd be 190yrs old by now, and much as the idea appeals I didn't think we had Time Lords or Immortals in the family.
So in an attempt to make sense of some of what was going on I started looking at the bigger picture; how come so many people from Bisley, Gloucestershire ended up in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire around the mid 1800s, and who were they?
After trawling through the census records from 1841 (the first one done) to 1891 for the district I started tracking various families and individuals over the years. I've no idea (yet...) how many of the Cox families listed are related to me, but I found myself getting quite emotionally involved in their histories. Having studied this period for my Social & Economic History A Level, plus having read a fair amount of historical fiction set in this era, I know a reasonable amount about it. However it was one thing learning about it in an abstract fashion, and quite another following the lives and deaths of real people, especially when they might be related to me. It was sobering to see how many children simply didn't make it from one census to the next, ten years later. The oldest person I recorded was 75, and few got to more than 60. Children as young as 7 and 8 had occupations listed next to their names in the 1841 census, and the designation 'pauper' was next to several names. One was living in the workhouse and another the local orphanage, several were servants in later decades and the earlier ones were full of weavers and spinners of both wool and silk, workers at various stages of the walking stick manufacturing industry (stick cutters, varnishers, polishers and bone carvers). Watermen (whatever that may mean!), railway labourers and agricultural labourers made regular appearances but the trade that cropped up again and again was stonemasonry, and that is what took sometimes just the menfolk, but sometimes entire families, up to Halifax.
According to a local history website, the district had had a lot of textile small scale industry, both wool and silk. The industrial revolution hit the area hard in the mid 1830s and many were left out of work. I've not yet figured out what the stonemasons were all working on until the 1850s that kept them in the area, but in the 1851 and 1861 census returns there are several families where the 'head' of the household is absent and the wife listed as 'wife of a stonemason'. Family tradition has it that Halifax Town Hall was built by members of our family (plus a few hundred others no doubt...) and that seems to be born out by the number of stonemasons from Bisley, including a few Coxs, who appear in the Halifax census returns in 1861.
Eventually the mystery was solved, it turned out that there weren't two Labans in the Bisley area about 10yrs apart in age, but just the older one, and someone had stuffed up (made up?) his age on a subsequent census entry. It turns out that his son Benjamin, my G.G.Grandad was from his second marriage, and the other Coxs they are later listed as living with in Halifax are from the first marriage. The reason it was all confusing is in the earliest census returns Laban is listed as living with his first family, and in the later one in Bisley he's just with his younger family, the older children being at a different address.
So it appeared that alas, no Time Lords in the family after all. Well that was until we started trying to research Benjamin's wife Janet who appears in the marriage register, several census records and the death register, but is conspicuous by her absence from any birth registers or census returns from the part of Scotland where she was supposedly born and spent her childhood! I'm reasonably certain she didn't die from having her head lopped off with a sword though as that would've caused quite a stir in Halifax in 1917, so that at least rules out her being an Immortal! Seems we're stuck with invisible for the time being instead.
A bizarre twist to the tale has been in relating some of these research challenges to long standing friends I've found that two of them also have Cox ancestry in the family from that part of Gloucestershire! I know it has long been said that Quakers makes the world a smaller place, but I wasn't expecting to end up potentially related to people I've known over half my life who also happen to have made their home in Aotearoa NZ!
The menfolk have somewhat less common names; Laban, Benjamin, Ira & Reuben. So that should've be easier right? Yeah right... how can people simply disappear for a couple of decades? Or appear in a census as very much alive thank you but not appear in any Death records? Well not that we could find at first, leaving a conundrum - Laban must've died somewhere otherwise he'd be 190yrs old by now, and much as the idea appeals I didn't think we had Time Lords or Immortals in the family.
So in an attempt to make sense of some of what was going on I started looking at the bigger picture; how come so many people from Bisley, Gloucestershire ended up in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire around the mid 1800s, and who were they?
After trawling through the census records from 1841 (the first one done) to 1891 for the district I started tracking various families and individuals over the years. I've no idea (yet...) how many of the Cox families listed are related to me, but I found myself getting quite emotionally involved in their histories. Having studied this period for my Social & Economic History A Level, plus having read a fair amount of historical fiction set in this era, I know a reasonable amount about it. However it was one thing learning about it in an abstract fashion, and quite another following the lives and deaths of real people, especially when they might be related to me. It was sobering to see how many children simply didn't make it from one census to the next, ten years later. The oldest person I recorded was 75, and few got to more than 60. Children as young as 7 and 8 had occupations listed next to their names in the 1841 census, and the designation 'pauper' was next to several names. One was living in the workhouse and another the local orphanage, several were servants in later decades and the earlier ones were full of weavers and spinners of both wool and silk, workers at various stages of the walking stick manufacturing industry (stick cutters, varnishers, polishers and bone carvers). Watermen (whatever that may mean!), railway labourers and agricultural labourers made regular appearances but the trade that cropped up again and again was stonemasonry, and that is what took sometimes just the menfolk, but sometimes entire families, up to Halifax.
According to a local history website, the district had had a lot of textile small scale industry, both wool and silk. The industrial revolution hit the area hard in the mid 1830s and many were left out of work. I've not yet figured out what the stonemasons were all working on until the 1850s that kept them in the area, but in the 1851 and 1861 census returns there are several families where the 'head' of the household is absent and the wife listed as 'wife of a stonemason'. Family tradition has it that Halifax Town Hall was built by members of our family (plus a few hundred others no doubt...) and that seems to be born out by the number of stonemasons from Bisley, including a few Coxs, who appear in the Halifax census returns in 1861.
Eventually the mystery was solved, it turned out that there weren't two Labans in the Bisley area about 10yrs apart in age, but just the older one, and someone had stuffed up (made up?) his age on a subsequent census entry. It turns out that his son Benjamin, my G.G.Grandad was from his second marriage, and the other Coxs they are later listed as living with in Halifax are from the first marriage. The reason it was all confusing is in the earliest census returns Laban is listed as living with his first family, and in the later one in Bisley he's just with his younger family, the older children being at a different address.
So it appeared that alas, no Time Lords in the family after all. Well that was until we started trying to research Benjamin's wife Janet who appears in the marriage register, several census records and the death register, but is conspicuous by her absence from any birth registers or census returns from the part of Scotland where she was supposedly born and spent her childhood! I'm reasonably certain she didn't die from having her head lopped off with a sword though as that would've caused quite a stir in Halifax in 1917, so that at least rules out her being an Immortal! Seems we're stuck with invisible for the time being instead.
A bizarre twist to the tale has been in relating some of these research challenges to long standing friends I've found that two of them also have Cox ancestry in the family from that part of Gloucestershire! I know it has long been said that Quakers makes the world a smaller place, but I wasn't expecting to end up potentially related to people I've known over half my life who also happen to have made their home in Aotearoa NZ!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
pootling along
How come it is October already? In fact how come it is Term 4??? That means it is (dare I say it?) nearly the C word... (yeah okay so I wussed out). It also means the best part of a year has gone by since my redundancy kicked in late November last year. Whilst back then I had no idea quite what I'd be doing by now, I certainly wasn't expecting life to look like it does!
I had the feeling back then that big changes were in the offing, and I still have that feeling that they are still around the corner, it is just turning out to be a much bigger corner than I had originally anticipated. On Monday I started doing the lunch cover post at the other kindergarten in town. My contract is just for the term which suits me. It means I get to top the bank account back up a bit ready for the summer which amongst other things includes my parents coming over from the UK to visit - 7yrs after their previous trip out here. But it doesn't tie me down long term which feels right. The kids are great and I've already got two who greet me with big hugs and smiles each day and it is only 5mins walk away which are definite pluses but I've got used to having a lot more flexibility in my week and I'd like to find a way to keep that longer term.
I was reading Eleanor's post the other day which resonated strongly in terms of wondering what the 'next big thing' is and whether actually the big thing isn't and that the little things right here and now are what I'm supposed to be doing and life isn't actually in some kind of holding pattern waiting for the runway to clear after all. Which is what Kate in her wisdom pointed out to me when we were chatting online last week 'pootling along' is life!
In some ways this year has been reminiscent of being a student back in my late teens/early twenties. Okay so in theory I was supposed to be studying full time but instead I was more of a full time Young Friend who went to lectures rather than a full time student who went to YF events! As it turned out this stood me in far better stead in life than studying harder would have so I can feel justifiably vindicated in my decision making. The analogy with this year is that I've only really been making a token effort to 'earn a living' and meanwhile have had time and energy to put into not just Quaker things, but also my local community by volunteering at the library again and getting involved with Time Bank.
On top of this the house and garden are in good shape, my pile of sewing UFOs* (or from a more positive perspective PHDs**) that have been hanging around for some time has almost been got through (although there are plenty new ones in the pipeline!), I've actually managed to do some Family History research rather than just turning up at the Genealogy meetings once a month full of good intentions and I feel like I've made some more progress towards living a more sustainable life, like Aletia it is something I've been consciously working on for years (another blog post methinks!).
I've even had enough spare brain capacity to start thinking about other ways in which I can serve Quakers as I've found myself increasingly drawn back to Outreach since the World Conference in Kenya last year, especially reading about Quaker Week in Britain. Oh and then there is the not so small matter of looking after Phyllis whilst she recouperated from her fall and hip replacement and the lesser level of ongoing care and support!
So whilst it has felt like I've just been pootling along I guess I have actually achieved quite a bit this year. It just takes some adjusting of the the mind to acknowledge things I do for pleasure as currently being the major tasks in life for me right now rather than being things that get fitted in around paid work. If only it were financially sustainable long term I could happily get quite used to it!
* UnFinished Objects
** Projects Half Done
I had the feeling back then that big changes were in the offing, and I still have that feeling that they are still around the corner, it is just turning out to be a much bigger corner than I had originally anticipated. On Monday I started doing the lunch cover post at the other kindergarten in town. My contract is just for the term which suits me. It means I get to top the bank account back up a bit ready for the summer which amongst other things includes my parents coming over from the UK to visit - 7yrs after their previous trip out here. But it doesn't tie me down long term which feels right. The kids are great and I've already got two who greet me with big hugs and smiles each day and it is only 5mins walk away which are definite pluses but I've got used to having a lot more flexibility in my week and I'd like to find a way to keep that longer term.
I was reading Eleanor's post the other day which resonated strongly in terms of wondering what the 'next big thing' is and whether actually the big thing isn't and that the little things right here and now are what I'm supposed to be doing and life isn't actually in some kind of holding pattern waiting for the runway to clear after all. Which is what Kate in her wisdom pointed out to me when we were chatting online last week 'pootling along' is life!
In some ways this year has been reminiscent of being a student back in my late teens/early twenties. Okay so in theory I was supposed to be studying full time but instead I was more of a full time Young Friend who went to lectures rather than a full time student who went to YF events! As it turned out this stood me in far better stead in life than studying harder would have so I can feel justifiably vindicated in my decision making. The analogy with this year is that I've only really been making a token effort to 'earn a living' and meanwhile have had time and energy to put into not just Quaker things, but also my local community by volunteering at the library again and getting involved with Time Bank.
On top of this the house and garden are in good shape, my pile of sewing UFOs* (or from a more positive perspective PHDs**) that have been hanging around for some time has almost been got through (although there are plenty new ones in the pipeline!), I've actually managed to do some Family History research rather than just turning up at the Genealogy meetings once a month full of good intentions and I feel like I've made some more progress towards living a more sustainable life, like Aletia it is something I've been consciously working on for years (another blog post methinks!).
I've even had enough spare brain capacity to start thinking about other ways in which I can serve Quakers as I've found myself increasingly drawn back to Outreach since the World Conference in Kenya last year, especially reading about Quaker Week in Britain. Oh and then there is the not so small matter of looking after Phyllis whilst she recouperated from her fall and hip replacement and the lesser level of ongoing care and support!
So whilst it has felt like I've just been pootling along I guess I have actually achieved quite a bit this year. It just takes some adjusting of the the mind to acknowledge things I do for pleasure as currently being the major tasks in life for me right now rather than being things that get fitted in around paid work. If only it were financially sustainable long term I could happily get quite used to it!
* UnFinished Objects
** Projects Half Done
Saturday, August 17, 2013
herd mentality
Okay so it has been a while, which inevitably leads to the 'where do I start?' feeling that in turn means more procrastination and not getting a 'to it'....
A while back I had a half written post in my head inspired by the line in Ice Age - after Manfred save Diego's life Diego asks 'Why did you do that? You could've died trying to save me' to which Manfred replies 'That's what you do in a herd: you look out for each other.' The fact that the 'herd' in question was a woolly mamoth, a sloth, a human baby and a sabre tooth tiger proving the point that the 'herd' is what you make it. I'd been watching the Ice Age films with my self-appointed nephews whilst visiting them on the South Island. From there I went to see F/friends in Christchurch and one of my elderly relatives (2nd cousin once removed if we're going to get pedantic about this!). The concept of family, and who you can turn to, rely on etc - especially when you're an ex-pat - was a recurring theme of conversations the whole trip.
Before I set off a friend had sent me some audio books which were great for travelling as I get travel sick if I read when things get bumpy which summed up most of the flights and bus journeys! I got stuck into Nathan Lowell's Trader Tales series where again the prevailing sense of family is being something you make out of those around - in this case (space)shipmates. Not the whole crew necessarily, but those, who when push comes to shove, have got your back.
I've been doing some family history research and it never ceases to amaze me just how big our extended family is. I joke about being related to half the Canterbury Plains which at first glance seems something of an exageration, until you think about how few people live down there and how many I'm related to one way or another! Even if it is at 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousin level etc. Yet despite all these relatives (many of whom I've never met admittedly) my Kiwi 'family' bears far more resemblance to the Ice Age herd or the Solar Clipper crews - people who life has thrown me in with one way or another, whom when push comes to shove are the ones I turn to, and its those self-appointed 'nephews' who I miss the most.
A while back I had a half written post in my head inspired by the line in Ice Age - after Manfred save Diego's life Diego asks 'Why did you do that? You could've died trying to save me' to which Manfred replies 'That's what you do in a herd: you look out for each other.' The fact that the 'herd' in question was a woolly mamoth, a sloth, a human baby and a sabre tooth tiger proving the point that the 'herd' is what you make it. I'd been watching the Ice Age films with my self-appointed nephews whilst visiting them on the South Island. From there I went to see F/friends in Christchurch and one of my elderly relatives (2nd cousin once removed if we're going to get pedantic about this!). The concept of family, and who you can turn to, rely on etc - especially when you're an ex-pat - was a recurring theme of conversations the whole trip.
Before I set off a friend had sent me some audio books which were great for travelling as I get travel sick if I read when things get bumpy which summed up most of the flights and bus journeys! I got stuck into Nathan Lowell's Trader Tales series where again the prevailing sense of family is being something you make out of those around - in this case (space)shipmates. Not the whole crew necessarily, but those, who when push comes to shove, have got your back.
I've been doing some family history research and it never ceases to amaze me just how big our extended family is. I joke about being related to half the Canterbury Plains which at first glance seems something of an exageration, until you think about how few people live down there and how many I'm related to one way or another! Even if it is at 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousin level etc. Yet despite all these relatives (many of whom I've never met admittedly) my Kiwi 'family' bears far more resemblance to the Ice Age herd or the Solar Clipper crews - people who life has thrown me in with one way or another, whom when push comes to shove are the ones I turn to, and its those self-appointed 'nephews' who I miss the most.
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