Coal miner to future Queen : Kate Middleton's family tree

The BBC have an interesting infographic showing the comparative family trees of the royal couple ahead of their marriage in a few days. Kate Middleton's family tree is interesting as on one side of her family are coal miners and general labourers up until the end of the First World War and manual workers up until the mid part of the 20th century.

It should be noted though that this isn't that unusual. The 1920s saw a great social upheaval with many families moving up (and down) the "social scale".

• Kate Middleton family tree

Who is down there?

A few weeks ago we located the grave plots of my Uncle Roderick and Great Grandmother at Witton Cemetery in Birmingham. What we asked the Cemetery to do though was to check the records and confirm who was in the plots. We thought both had 2 occupants.

It was confirmed that this plot contained my Great Grandmother Rose Ellen Grant and also George Henry Walter John Grant . Both passed away during World War 2.

The second plot details showed however how old hand written records can be troublesome. Uncle Roderick was listed as Robert Roderick (middle name first) and my Great Grandfather Stephen Morris was listed as being Stephanie!

Taking back the family origins a lot further

Previous family history investigation has been along my grandmother's mother's line delving into the Morrises and Genners which of course took the family history trail to India. As recounted in the comments to this post the trail goes cold in the early 19th century. Next step is to investigate my grandmother's father's line, the Grants. Luckily some other family members have already been investigating this.

My uncle has given me a copy of a family tree taking the Grants back to the mid-17th century at least. The family seems to have come from around Eynsham in Oxfordshire (the earliest known ancestor appearing to be a Francis Evans born in 1654 who married a John Grant). The Genner/Morris line come from Gloucestershire so that firmly puts my roots in the south midlands anyway.

Lost John Ford movie unearthed in New Zealand

"An extraordinary collection of 75 early American films, including several that had been considered lost to history, have been discovered in New Zealand and are being returned to the US.

The cache includes the only copy believed to exist of a late silent movie by one of the giants of American film-making, John Ford, as well as several works produced between 1910 and 1920 starring important female actors such as Clara Bow and Mabel Normand..."

Talking of movies recent family history research by my Uncle indicates that i could be related to Cary Grant. Personally i am sceptical but it would be nice if it was true!

Locating the graves of ancestors

Today i went to Witton Cemetery in Birmingham to help my Mum and Uncle find a couple of graves. One was of their oldest brother Roderick Grant who died in 1935 while still a child and the other that of one of their grandmothers.

They had not visited the site for decades and had no idea where the graves were but thankfully the staff at the cemetery were able to quickly tell us roughly where the graves were located. It was still not the easiest thing in the world though to find the graves. Although every grave plot is numbered the number is only displayed in a headstone and not all headstones have a visible number. A lot of graves are not marked by any headstone including that of Roderick's. Luckily the grave next to Roderick's was numbered so we could find were he was. In the photo below he is under on the right.

We think my great-grandfather Stephen Morris was buried here too though will need to get the cemetery staff to look up for us, they said there was someone else buried in the plot. The next grave to look for was that of my great-grand mother Rose Eleanor Grant and that was much easier to find (once we knew what to look for). Like Roderick's her grave is unmarked.

I also managed to get my hands on a family tree for the Grants which will very useful for continuing family research (well just on loan but i will get it copied).

Families on the brink of war

"A genealogist's challenge under the Freedom of Information Act could unlock records providing a unique snapshot of UK families as World War II broke out..."

Specifically he wants the release of the 1939 National Registration of the UK which was a census-like survey taken at the beginning of the war.

Operation Pied Piper

As well as being the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 2 today also marked the 70th anniversary of Operation Pied Piper, the mass evacuation of 1.5 million children, mothers, pensioners and vulnerable people from the cities to the perceived safety of the countryside. My Mother was an evacuee so i decided to see what she could remember of the time.

Not everyone was evacuated in September 1939, Mum doesn't think she was as she could remember sheltering from the German bombers so it was perhaps in 1940 when she, aged 5, and some friends were among children evacuated from Birmingham and sent into the countryside. She ended up in a hall somewhere near Coalville and Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire. Her older brother had gone elsewhere but Mum was told to "stay with Brenda" and so she went off with 4 friends to stay with the Rileys in a farmhouse near Donisthorpe.

The experiences of evacuees differed greatly, some were very well cared for while others did not have a good time. My Mum's experiences were "OK", most of the family looking after them were nice though there was some "spite" from others.

Whether that is why they decided to run away back to Birmingham, as happened when my Mum's elder brother joined them, is unknown. They sneaked away from the farmhouse and got on a bus for Birmingham. My Mum being told to not admit she was 5 so she wouldn't have to pay the fare! When they got back to Aston they were immediately spotted and then sent back to their evacuation house after no doubt a talking to by the police!

Mum's Mum came to visit them when she could though later on they got a cottage near to the Riley farmhouse and lived there for some time before returning to Birmingham once the threat from bombing had lessened, perhaps in 1942.

Start writing family history

I still have not decided on next year's course but i am considering a "filler" course to tide me over in the 3-4 month gap between AA312 and whatever i do next year. A173 is what i am considering, it is a short course (so has no bearing on my degree though the 10 points can be kept in the bank i guess for another day) to help "you to interpret and write about family history". I need to get my family history research project back up and running. I've dropped the ball on this this year.

The ghost of Dr Edward Jenner?

This photograph purports to be of the ghost of Dr Edward Jenner, the pioneer of smallpox vaccination. It was taken in his former home and appears to show a mysterious figure sitting in a chair.



Of especial interest to me because my Nan always said she was related to Dr Jenner, i have found though that her ancestors were called Genner but they do appear to have been from Gloucestershire (like Dr Jenner) and its of course possible there was a relationship somewhere in the mists of time, name spellings did vary until fairly recently.

Village photograph triggers police murder hunt for missing teenager - 80 years late

The case of a servant girl who went missing is now being treated as murder by the police, 83 years after she went missing. 16-year-old Emma Alice Smith disappeared on the way home from work in Tunbridge Wells in 1926. She was reported as missing but no trace of her was ever found and everyone apart from her family lost interest.


Waldron village 'stool ball' team, Emma is top left

The case has come to light again after Valerie Chidson began to research into Emma's disappearance after seeing her in a photograph and she wrote a short film based on Emma's story called Finding Esther.

Afterwards Chidson was told by a relative of Emma that they had been told Emma had been murdered and the killer had made a deathbed confession to Emma's sister, who is now deceased. Chidson persuaded Emma's family to go to the police and they have now begun an investigation. Their main aim is to locate Emma's remains so Emma can finally have a burial.

Unfortunately as the deathbed confession took place in 1953 the investigation will be difficult but they think they may have been murdered near to Waldron or Horam and her body disposed of in a pond.

A look at the 1911 census

I have taken a look at the 1911 census which was put on-line yesterday. I did a search for my Grandmother who was just 5 at the time. The occupations of her siblings as listed on the census was interesting. I knew my Great-Grandfather was a miner but it was interesting that his two eldest sons living in the house were "rubber workers". I assume this means they worked in a tyre factory! I live, literally, a rolling tyre journey away from Fort Dunlop, who knows maybe they worked there.

My Grandmother's eldest sister Amy lists her occupation as "painter". I assume she didn't mean a house painter (or maybe it was, how common was that for a woman in 1911?) so maybe she was a painter in a factory. As with most of my family history research so far all i seem to find are more questions rather than that many answers!

1911 census goes online

The British 1911 census has been digitized and put on-line. The 1911 census was not originally intended to be made available until 2012 but a Freedom of Information Act request has seen it made available a few years early. When the 1901 census was made available it crashed the servers though at the moment the 1911 one seems fine, of course i am writing this at 8:20am!

The American connection

As i mentioned before my Great-Grandfather Stephen Morris was listed on someone's family tree on the Ancestry.com website. What is interesting is that Ancestry user was in the USA and looking at the full family tree it does seem i have some American relatives i never knew of before. Stephen's son Albert (hence my Nan's brother) had a daughter who married into the Read family from Staffordshire and their son is married to someone from the Hays family who hail from Alabama, USA so perhaps Mr Read (or his parents) emigrated to the USA. Unfortunately the website does not give details of living people (for identity security reasons no doubt) so i don't know the names of these fairly distant relatives.

Family tree builder

As i am continuing to investigate my family tree (which very quickly became too large to write on 1 sheet of A4 - and i haven't even started with my Dad's family yet) i need to get some software to create and manage my family tree for me, i am trying out MyHeritage's Family Tree Builder which is free. There are some online tools too but i haven't tried them yet.

Getting to a dead end with the Genners for now i have started on the Morrises. Interestingly my Great-grandfather Stephen Morris is listed on Ancestry.co.uk as having died in 1920. Which is a bit odd as he looked after my Mum as a child, when my Nan was ill (and ironically enough was in a convalescing home a stones throw from where i now live) which either meant my Mum is a lot older than she claims or the site is wrong. My Mum has his burial card and he actually died in 1949, i can't quite see how the site has come up with this 1920 figure though he is in someone else's family tree they have set up on that site so maybe they just got it wrong?

Beginning to research my family tree

My Dad started the genealogy thing a few years ago and i have always been meaning to join in the effort and try and get going with it. Unfortunately he died before i got the chance, anyway now my current OU course is over (exam result in December) i thought i would finally get started. Luckily my Nan's sister's son-in-law back in the 1970s hired a researcher to look into this already so i got a head start with some old census results and my great-great-great-great-aunt's baptism certificate (actually not 100% sure i put all the greats in there, my papers are at home) which is interesting as she was baptised in Jackatalla in India which nowadays looks like this.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Richard Genner was a private in the 84th Infantry regiment serving in India, i'm assuming this is the 84th Foot (York & Lancaster) Regiment which was in India at the time. A few years later my great-great-great-great grandmother Mary was, according to the 1861 census, living in Kings Stanley, Gloucestershire married to a retired sargeant Thomas Butler. I'm assuming Richard died in India (divorce is a possibly but pretty unlikely i would have thought considering the time) and Mary re-married Thomas, perhaps in the same regiment. The regiment fought in the Sepoy rebellion and lost a lot of soldiers.

To go back any further i'll need to try and get Richard and Mary Genner's birth certificates though this could be problematical. Anyway a trip to the archives at the British Library must be planned for next year. Now to explore some other branches of my family tree.