Fearless Females 2013: Day 2: Photo

Post a photo of one of your female ancestors. Who is in the photo? When was it taken? Why did you select this photo? 

This is one of those photos where nobody is quite sure who it is, when it is, and where it is, because they didn’t write on the back.  If it is her, then she is my great great grandmother, Elia ELLIOTT, chr 10 May 1818 and died in 1908...
  

Once again, in honour of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog presents Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.  I know this is really US-centric - but that's not going to stop me honouring my own Fearless Females...

Names which repeat

Have you ever been confused by the same name cropping up again and again in your family tree? I don't mean the surnames - that's part of the reason behind it all! - but surnames coupled with given names.  It can be very useful - after all, it is easier to trace Otho POPHAM and his son, Otho POPHAM - or Archelaus EDWARDS and his son, Archelaus EDWARDS - but how about if the name is not so unusual?

Take, for instance, my great great great grandfather, John ELLIOTT.  Baptised in 1785 in South Pool, Devon.  On This Day, incidentally: he was baptised on 29 January 1785.  His father was also John ELLIOTT.   And his grandfather - John ELLIOTT.  And his great-grandfather - John ELLIOTT.  And his great great grandfather - John ELLIOTT - all in the same small village.  I received a GEDCOM a few years back, where the researchers who had contributed had obviously got completely confused by all these John ELLIOTTs - and the result was such a tangle that it took me months to try and work it out.


And, BTW, the first John 1785 had a son - yes, you've guessed it - called John.  I'm so glad I descend from his sister, Eliza...except she went and married a man called John...

On this Day: 18 January

Several of my ancestors had this day as their special day:


John Henry BLAGDON, born 18 January 1902 in Millbrook, Cornwall.  I remember "Uncle John" (although in reality he was my great-uncle).  No child was ever allowed to go into "Uncle John"'s room, and always had to do the seen-and-not-heard thing around him.  Apparently, he was my Nan's older brother and it was his house; she had been promised it after his death.  He was the son of John BLAGDON and Susan Emma FARLEY.

George EDGCOMBE, my great-great-grandfather, was born on 18 January 1838 in South Milton, Devon.  He married his cousin, Mary Ann EDGCOMBE - their fathers were brothers.

Richard HARLEY, christened on 18 January 1794 in South Pool, Devon, was my 1st cousin 5 times removed.  He was the son of James HARLEY and Deborah GOODYEAR.

Honor ELLIOT was my 7th great-great-aunt, and was christened on 18 January 1678 in Modbury, Devon.  Her parents were William ELLYOTT and Margery BEERE.

On This Day: 21 December

A baptism and a wedding today - in that order because they are different families.  Thomas DUNSTONE was baptised/christened on 21 December in 1752 in Rame, Cornwall - he is my 5 x great grandfather, and eventually his descendants married into the HAYWOOD line.

William EFFORD and Elizabeth ELLIOTT were married on 21 December 1802 in Kingsbridge, Devon, my 3 x great-aunt and -uncle.  I only know William's name and baptismal date, but I have discovered that Elizabeth was a schoolmistress.  I first found out about her from her father's Will (John ELLIOTT, 1748-1823), where she was left £100; according to measuringworth.com's calculator this is worth £76,500 in today's money - a huge sum.  Her father also bequeathed her £20 for her own use: £15,300 (without the "interference" of her husband - this is the wording of the Will). The ELLIOTT family eventually married into the BALL family on my mother's side of the tree.

My question is: where did all this money go?

Thoughts on Thursday: Logical approach to geneaLOGICAL data

I found genealogical treasure at the weekend.  But at the same time: why don't people look at their data?  A GEDCOM was passed to me with thousands of ancestors, yet one man was married 30 years before he was born, and had his first child 130 years after his own christening.  It took me several hours to unravel all the other errors, working from the parish records that I have, and when I did, it became obvious that this particular line came from one small town in South Devon.  Obvious only when tweaked (sigh). 

Thanks to Thomas MacEntee and his recommendation to clip things to Evernote, I was able to go back to the South Hams website  with an online transcription of baptismal records dating back to 1602. 

* Genealogist's Happy Dance in living room*  

Margery BEERE (chr 1640) is my 8th great-grandmother, and she is a new addition to another of my lines which became unbelievably tangled over the years, where each genealogist thought they were right, even if their data didn't actually make sense (boys being sons of their own grandfather, who was in turn married to his own great-grandmother, and so on).  Because I knew it was in such a terrible state, I kept shying away from doing any research at all on this particular line.

But then I gathered up my courage along with my skirts, sat down with the parish records, and added my own logic, and I have made sense of my ELLIOTT line, into which Margery married.  It was nice to have my common sense/logic confirmed by the knowledgeable FamilySearch elves; when the site had a technical glitch, preventing me from entering all this yummy information into new.familysearch, they fixed it by putting the children in the right order with the right parents and linking the right generations without me making suggestions!  So although some might think that I was just another "genealogist who thinks she's right", I had a second opinion who came to the same conclusion completely independently.

Although I am hugely grateful to have received the initial GEDCOM, I can't help thinking: Why couldn't people have thought through their data logically in the first place?

Why are you doing this?

I read a fascinating post written by Marian of Marian's Roots and Rambles, in which she discussed her three top bits of advice for blogging.

She first asked: what is your goal in blogging? (for instance, to attract clients, share  your knowledge etc).  This made me think.  Why am I blogging? Why am I doing this? is it just to give myself another excuse to beat myself up at the weekends when I realise I haven't posted even once during the previous week?

No, I'm not trying to attract clients.  Nor even distant cousins.  I am happy to demonstrate my knowledge of a particular area, but don't for a moment imagine that anybody reads it.  So why am I blogging?  When I set up GenWestUK, it was just along the lines of "it seemed a good idea at the time", and "everybody else is doing it".  What I found was something quite surprising.   When you have to post about a time, an ancestor, a type of occupation, and so on - it focuses you tremendously!  Although for years I have been warning beginners against the scattergun approach of trying to research all your ancestors at once, I have not followed my own advice.  This sees me "doing family history" like a butterfly, zooming from the same ancestor to another same ancestor - you know, the brickwalls that frustrate you every time.  So many of my ancestors are missing out on my attention.

Blogging has changed all that.  In order to write a decent post, I have been forced to sit down and concentrate on one th (oh, look! a bird) ing at a time.  And this has opened up new horizons for me - gosh, new vistas.  I had never slowed down and stayed in one place long enough to realise that my great-grandmother, Annie Marian BUCKINGHAM, saw the first horse-drawn tram in Plymouth, travelled to Ireland, lived through the invention of the car and plane, then went to Australia! or that a great great grandmother, Eliza ELLIOTT wasn't just a dressmaker- she made fancy frocks out of damask and brocade. 

I look forward to learning more about my forgotten ancestors, now that blogging has made me sit still in one place...

Matrilineal Monday: Eliza ELLIOTT, the mantua maker

Eliza ELLIOTT (1818-1908) was my great-great-grandmother from South Pool, Devon.  A dressmaker on some censuses, on the 1841 census she is described as a "mantua maker".  Intrigued, I looked up a description of mantuas and their makers...

Mantuas were loose gowns worn over a petticoat and open down the front (what a relief, after all those stays!).  They were usually made of damask or brocade and were worn when an occasion required something a bit special.  Although they were loose and open, they were slightly fitted - they just didn't have the dreaded stays.  From Ancestry.com:

"[T]he mantua was constructed from a single length of material, with few if any cuts. Our image of dressmaking is cutting out a variety of pieces from the fabric, some small, then sewing those pieces together. Mantua-making was not at all like this.

One of the things that identifies a true mantua is that it did not have a separate skirt and top. The material was one continuous piece from shoulder to floor. Mantuas fit the figure, yet had a very full skirt. This was accomplished by shaping the material to the body with a series of deep, outward-facing stitched-down pleats that flared gracefully below the waistline.

This single-piece construction with few unreversable actions meant that gowns could be altered for changes in fashion, weight, and ownership. A skilled mantua maker could, literally, disassemble a mantua and remake it into a new garment, saving the beautiful material.

Depending on the current style and the mantua-maker's construction, the rich fabric might be longer in back, almost forming a train. The mantua was not closed at the front (usually just caught at the waist, sometimes belted), exposing the shirt of the lightweight petticoat (you will recall from the earlier article that this could refer to a dress-length garment), which was often of silk. As you can imagine, this allowed interesting and attractive contrast in color and fabric. It also permitted more freedom of movement. I can practically hear the swishing sounds as mantua-wearing women made their social calls.

A stomacher was often worn with a mantua. This was an elaborate, decorated, ornamental piece, shaped in a V to help create the illusion of a slim waist."

Maritime Monday: Keeping it in the family

Throughout the previous generations, the BALL family were agricultural labourers.  Then they made the shift from the land to the sea - and by the time the generations reach my uncle, to the air as well.

circa 1807

John BALL, christened 2 May 1819 died 21 December 1890, started off working the land like his father before him and his father before that.  Then, in his late thirties, he transferred to the sea and was listed as a Mariner in all the censuses from 1851 onwards.  But it didn't end there - he was not the only one.

His stepson, Thomas Damerell ELLIOTT, became a sailor in his early twenties, then became a bargeman in his fifties, and a merchant seaman in his sixties.

circa 1840

Another of John's sons, Benjamin, started at ten years old as a shipwright's errand boy, then is described as a shipwright's apprentice in the 1871 census.  His brother, Charles, was also a shipwright's apprentice, and youngest brother William was a "shipwright's labourer" in the 1881 census, working in the port of Southampton.  There he met my great-grandmother, Bertha DAMERELL, herself the daughter of a merchant seaman who later became a steamship stoker.

The two World Wars managed to interrupt this 'family business', until John's grandson married a woman descended from coastguards, and his great-great-granddaughter married a man descended from shipwrights.

And I have always loved the sea...

Surname Saturday: Elliott

Aha! I have reached the only family where a will exists! (well, one that I have found, anyway - all the rest seem to be ag labs with not even a penny to their name).  John ELLIOTT, my gggg grandfather, was a cooper in South Devon (barrelmaker, among other things), and his will is interesting in that he actually has something to leave.

John had a beloved daughter, Eleanor, who looked after him in his old age.  Because of this, she was left a cedar chest where she used to keep her clothes, a mirror, a dressing-table, John's worktable and the six best hair-bottomed chairs!  and, of course, all the silver plate, plus £100. This is in addition to the £100 that she, her sister Elizabeth and her brother John were all given, which in today's money is about £5,000 - I found this out using The National Archive's excellent currency converter or "what is it worth in today's money?".  He made Trusts for his grandchildren, had land and a house to sell - good grief! maybe there is an obituary for such a wealthy chap...and surely Eleanor got married; after all, she had LOTS of money to attract suitors. 

The ELLIOTTs were interesting for things other than money.  They are the ones that take me furthest back - to 1637, and extend my line briefly into Dorset.  The fierce-looking "Great Aunt Ellen" was actually named Ellen Elliott BALL, and descended from the ELLIOTTs. 

I would like to delve deeper into this family.  Next stop: newspapers for John's obituary.  Tomorrow is Scanfest, so perhaps I will get all my ELLIOTT papers together and use the time to get them scanned...

Will of John Elliott, made in 1820