Family history, Snover

Where did all that English DNA come from?

Everyone in the Snover family knew George A Sznarwakowski had been adopted by Anna and John Sznarwakowski in Detroit in the 1910s. The family story had it that George’s last name had been White before the adoption, although there’s no paperwork I can find anywhere that confirms George’s origins. He married Monica Gorzynski whose family were all Polish, and their children, including their second son, Papa – Robert Francis Snover – grew up in Detroit as Polish-Americans. So where did all that (34%) British ethnicity come from?

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Family history, Procktor, Theatre

Wild-&-artsy second cousins – William Thomas Procktor’s great grandchildren

Looking into my 2nd great grandfather’s time in Canada in the 1870s, I filled in a few blanks on my family tree on Ancestry. A couple of the names rang a bell as ones my mother had mentioned, but I didn’t know how these people were related to her. I don’t recall ever meeting them, but in researching the family connection, it’s not surprising that my mother knew of them. It’s not clear how well she knew them, but it turned out she and they were second cousins – all three were great grandchildren of William Thomas Procktor who sailed to Canada in search of work in 1870.

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Family history, Forster, Procktor

Emigration charities and “pauperism” in 1870

Yvonne Mary Forster's ancestors
Yvonne Mary Forster’s ancestors

My mother’s stories about her Procktor ancestors, based presumably only on what her mother had told her, told a story of her great grandfather, a cabinetmaker, being a Quaker pioneer who went to Canada, returning to London when her grandfather was 12. It turns out the real story has no connection with Quakers at all (that I can find anyway).

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Family history, Poulson

In quashing Jeffrey’s teasing, a 66-year-old secret comes to light

Jill & Sven Lindgren
Jill & Sven Lindgren

My lovely husband, Jeffrey, has a vibrant sense of humor, and, after a bout of teasing and joking from him about who was more British, I naively thought I could shut him up by taking a DNA test. From that frivolous (and totally futile) effort, came a completely unexpected series of discoveries – and even more teasing and joking! I should probably start at the beginning…

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Family history, Poulson, Theatre

Two young actors start a repertory theatre

New Theatre Bromley
New Theatre Bromley

Peter Goss, my godfather, and David Poulson, my Dad, met while working as actors in repertory theatre at the Theatre Royal, Bath in August 1954. Both had been in weekly rep for several years, long enough to have some idea about how to produce a play as well as act in it. When I asked my mother, actress Yvonne Forster, whether it was Dad’s youthful good looks that attracted her, she said it was his ability to bring order to a chaotic production she was acting in (in Dartford). In some scribbled notes Dad made for a memoir (which he never completed), he described a performance where he was acting as a human door hinge for a broken part of a set (in between being fired by a furious producer!) – the show must go on…

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Family history, Jenkins, Meredith

William T Meredith and his colorful family

Manus Blake Meredith, 1817-1856
Manus Blake Meredith, 1817-1856

My stepmother Margo’s Mum was affectionately known as “Batty Nan” by her grandsons (Tony & Mike). Rose Fitzgerald Meredith had a colorful family on her mother’s side, but until a week or so ago, I didn’t know much about the colorful characters on her father’s side of the family.

Rose’s father, William Thomas Meredith, born in 1847 in Armagh, Ireland,  was the oldest child of Manus Blake Meredith, an engineer, and his wife Anne. Dicks Grove House, above, where Manus grew up, was the Kerry Merediths’ family home.  Continue reading William T Meredith and his colorful family →

Family history, Jenkins

D’Ouseley’s relative Thomas Wilson of Harold Tower

Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, Scotland
Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, Scotland

Richard Standish D’Ouseley, my stepmother Margo’s great-grandfather, was Collector of Customs in Douglas, Isle of Man, from 1861 to 1872. A prominent citizen in Douglas, Thomas Wilson, who had made his name and apparently a lot of money as a draper with several locations, was reportedly related to Richard D’Ouseley. From around 1860, Thomas Wilson and his family  lived in Harold Tower, the 1833 “folly” pictured above. He leased it, presumably when he retired as a draper (in the 1861 census he is a “Retired Merchant” and doing rather well at age 55).  For a few months in 1871, Thomas Wilson lived at the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, a lunatic asylum, in a truly bizarre set of circumstances.

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Family history, Jenkins

The Cheddar method of Joseph Harding

Joseph Harding, 1805 - 1876
Joseph Harding, 1805 – 1876

“l am satisfied that whether we make cheese at Dalgig among the mountains, at Cunning Park amongst forced grass, or among heather at Corwan, where Mr. Wason is making the desert to blossom as the rose, there is no difference whatever. My opinion is that good cheese can by good management be made anywhere, whether at the Land’s End or Caithness, if it be in the hands of a person who has something in the upper story.” Joseph Harding addressing the Ayrshire Agricultural Society in 1861. Having learned a lot about making great cheese and having tested his theories by teaching Scots farmers how to get equally great results, Joseph Harding’s views were now sought out.

Joseph Harding image credit

It was no small incentive to his first fans, Scots farmers, that his cheese fetched  £80 per cwt versus theirs only £50. Time for a field trip to see if they could improve. In 1854 an article in The Scotsman noted “In no department of farm management is the Scottish farmer so decidedly behind his English neighbour as in the manufacture of cheese.” Continue reading The Cheddar method of Joseph Harding →

Family history, Williams

Beacon: Amos or Alfred, Charles or Cedric, teacher or tram inspector…

My connection with the Beacon family is limited – my great aunt Maisie was briefly married to Cedric Alfred Beacon (1914-1922).  Cedric and his father – Alfred Beacon, or Amos Beacon, or Dr. A. Beacon, or the “Rev. A. A. Beacon, Ph. D., M.A., etc.” are a puzzling and colorful pair, and I wanted to try and put together their story – or at least an outline of it. I believe that some part of their series of unusual transformations is upheaval that was going on in England at the time – a transformation in how children were educated in Alfred’s case and World War I and its aftermath in Cedric’s.

Cedric’s father Amos leaves you scratching your head. If census records are accurate (and this is all self-reported data, so it’s not always correct), a man who was a schoolmaster and for a while ran his own schools, in later life became a farmer, a green grocer and a timekeeper for a tram car company! How did that transition happen? Continue reading Beacon: Amos or Alfred, Charles or Cedric, teacher or tram inspector… →

Family history, Forster

Winifred Adelaide Procktor in Mum’s social history

Winifred Adelaide Procktor 1918
Winifred Adelaide Procktor 1918

I provided an overview of my mother’s social history of her parents for teacher training college in a separate post. This is the detail section for her mother, Winifred Adelaide Procktor. I scanned and converted into text (production note: OCR software is still sadly an almost-success where fixing up errors almost negates the time saved) to improve readability, but the spellings (English versus US) and rather odd sentence structure – more like notes than an essay – I left intact. You’re seeing what my mother turned in – it surprised me to see such ragged work, but possibly she was pushed for time given other coursework.

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