Relationships that survived: despite moves, name changes and time passing...

In May 2019 I made a list of stories, snapshots and situations within the family that demonstrated the longevity of the nature of kin. In this day and age we may be in a tearing hurry to leave all that cousinhood behind, but ties remained then.

Into this blog I will be adding in my 'shuttering down' theory. It's a little complex and has some sketches, so might be a separate entry. Meanwhile, for the archive, here are the connections I found:

The Indoes taking in sister Jane Chappell, suddenly widowed with children in 1871 in Somerset.

The Thompsons in Westmorland, having their "wife's cousin" visit in 1871 in Westmorland.

Martha Bell having her niece's illegitimate child to stay in 1939 in Haltwhistle (born 200 miles away!). It was this entry that prompted the entire blog.

Grandpa being photographed with all the "olds" including Great Aunt Maggie and her daughter up from Cornwall, 1920s South Wales.

Granny's granny (Nellie Smith) mentioning her cousin Margaret in a letter in 1921. Margaret was living in Hildaville Avenue, Westcliff-on-sea with Nellie's aunt.

J. H. Brown of Belfast apparently keeping in touch with his second cousin, Daisy Skinner, who had the two hotels in Bexhill. I have a note to locate him in the 1939 Register.

John Francis leaving some money to his great-nephew James Weeks who had lately arrived in the North Shields area in the 1880s. That caused some scampering about to identify the nature of That relationship.

Gwenllian and Mary Williams, naming their sons Anthony after their late brother, helping to prove the family connection. Mary went a step further and named another son after her uncle Powell. We are just outside Neath in the early 1800s.

Florrie Jones finding a home with her cousin Lilla's granddaughter Edna in Southampton in the 1950s.

Mrs Cocker sending photographic postcards from her home in the Peak District to her cousin's granddaughter on the occasion of her wedding in 1930 in London (my grandparents').

Emma Longden sending a postcard from Sheffield in 1912 to her second cousin Ann in Manchester mentioning a further second cousin (Florrie).

Isaac Ridgway and his second wife finding a home with his first wife's nephew Tom in Sheffield around the time of World War One.

Cathie Drummond travelling from Glasgow to Haltwhistle and then on to the Dales to visit her great-grandmother in around 1890. (As a girl of five she would be accompanied by family members.) And yet my grandmother born 20 years later never met the good lady, OR her daughter (missing out twice over). And then some folk remembered stories of the mother of this great-grandmother, born 1789.

Annie Gibson travelling to the home of her childless aunt Margaret Atkinson, across the Pennines, in 1844 from South Shields to the shores of the Lakes.

William Exton Treasure taking care of his elderly grandmother, Martha, and going to visit her brother uncle William Haine. These folk died in the late 1890s.

Elizabeth, Mrs Grist, being surrounded by at least four of her young grandchildren at the sunset of her life, in 1841 on the Somerset/Wiltshire border. (Her younger sister, my forebear Mary, had already passed on, so does not feature in this peculiarly useful census.)

The Brodies of South Boston staying in touch (somehow) with their second cousins in county Cork. They were organised ladies, working as telephonists and all in the charge of the youngest, who outlived them all and organised the beautiful gravestone. This contact spans the entire twentieth century.

My maternal grandfather who knew so many of his second cousins in the community in South Wales (1930s).

The Dibben girls who were emphatically in contact with one another, even as they rampaged across a dozen counties and married in places where there was either no index, or frankly, no marriage. I think they mopped up the soldiers left over the from the Peninsula War in the Napoleonic era. (link)

Percy Chappell the aunt who named everyone in her Will, including her late cousin Rosa's eldest daughter, 1930s Somerset.

Ellen Oliver formerly Charlton, whom I could not place on the tree at all, yet lived in a household full of Gibsons on the banks of the Tyne at Crawcrook in 1861. She was aunt and grandmother to them.

Reviewing these, I had expected a lot more incidences on the maternal side, which is where I had been researching for longer. Or, as I note, there was the triple whammy of (a) having more time aware of them (b) more consequences having developed from my initial contact and (c) more people were alive at the time of this research giving me a deeper window into the past (or fewer truncated memories).

Having said that the above examples were fresh in my mind when I wrote them. I could probably name a dozen similar such in my Somerset farming folk or perhaps my Cornish mining folk (both maternal), but as they've sat on my tree for nearly 25 years I cannot claim these any longer as a 'discovery'.