Italy: From Stranger to Native

Mocked routinely in reference to their wartime episode, this young nation is unfairly maligned for enjoying life and for a culture where ordinary people treat each other with respect and courtesy.

For the first time this week, I feel I can get under its skin, and explore it from a native's perspective.

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This time yesterday I had no idea about the next photograph.  Like a lion closing in on its kill, I now have the whole story trapped in my pretty jaw.  I had never previously thought much of Italy. The grey skies of Santa Margherita La Figueres and its doomy town were enough to put me off forever.  But really, this is because I do not like the seaside.  Introduce me to the mountain slopes and I am fast interested.  I approached this will with scepticism:

'I leave to my niece Alice Barone or her husband Raffaele Barone the residue of my estate' - Edith Taylor

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This lady won't be Italian (example)! Any more than the Corleones are Italian, or Papa John's Pizza, or sodding Dolmio sauce.  Or perhaps more appositely, Ragu.

I braced myself to comb through directories of retired Italian Americans in Florida and outer New York state.  Still no sign of Alice Barone.  Was she in fact, an actual Italian?

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The 1929 shipping record showed: Arthur Taylor, 45, secretary (YMCA), sailing from England to New York giving an address in Rome - that's Rome in Italy to give it the space on the page it deserves.

Subsequent shipping records coughed up the proof that Arthur Taylor of Italy was indeed born in Windermere.  And here he is, we think, outside the property he loved, on the slopes of the Alps.  Not a grey cloud in sight, and definitely no cagoules or misleading palm trees (take note Santa Margherita!).

The very same weekend, I determined to find if cousin Caroline was still living in Italy.  She was preposterously easy to find - as no doubt she intends.  She runs a guesthouse.  The guesthouse contained the most complicated set of directions I have ever seen.  Coming from the other way?  'I can't be bothered to type it all out backwards so follow your nose and call me from the church.'

 The power of three is a well known literary device.  Forgive if my heart isn't in it, at all.  Yes this is the Third Italian Connection.  I would much prefer to go back to the alps, to the first one and find out a lot more about the folks in Pinerolo.  What was wartime like there - why did their only girl go to Sicily and does anyone remember her?  Who were her childhood playmates.  And, yes, if you're still interested here is the third connection.

Sadly the Merifields had no family.  I am sure the Landuccis had a great story to tell - but it isn't mine, quite.

Forgotten Times: Are They Gone?

Ethel Robinson was an unmarried cousin.  I needed to find her death record, and ideally some biographical content.  Maybe this is her after all?

Nearly 70 years after this family left Somerset for Australia, the property names still evoked hamlets and villages within their ancestral county.  Interesting too, that they wended their way to Adelaide's grandest of its many churches.  But small chance the generation today will be able to so neatly integrate themselves with their past.

To my shame I have not yet purchased this book.  It writes in a readable and relevant way about a WW2 hero, an intelligent perhaps awkward young man, whom so many 20th century figures managed to get to know.  He was doomed to be my cousin from the very moment his grandfather downed tools as a grocer in Cumberland and began his long journey to be a minister in India.

Conradi's book wakes up the memories of three of Thompson's cousins: two died in Italy, and the third might have lost part of her reason for living there too.  Here is her peaceful stone in a lovely English setting.  In the book these people are animated again briefly.  In this quiet spot, perhaps it will be possible to remember them once more, far from the mad rushing of nearby towns.

It feels a very long, cold, time since 1855.  A very long time indeed, especially in Ireland, where anything prior to 1865 really is the dark ages.  Somehow this record from donkey-drawn cart days peopled by sons of Cromwell, has trickled down to us.  It is a pretty thin streak of trickle, but as nearly as we can be sure - is my great-grandfather's aunt marrying Mr Brodie.   Ballyporeen is on the road out of Mitchelstown to Waterford, crossing a couple of county borders along the way.

The Brodies were one of the first of our family out in Boston: they had plenty of time to get out there before the Civil War, although I think they did not take advantage of this.  Despite all this, Miss Loretta Brodie features in our family journal from before the war, and was still alive not so long ago.

Rejoicing comes as I finally press the right buttons on Google, and out comes tumbling one of the Brodies' granddaughters, Annie Dwyer Amico, whose obituary shows she has plenty of real children that are a direct link back to the marriage on the Waterford road.

Instagram and Family History

Apple products have never really wowed me.  It's hard to grab text from a webpage now, with an iPad, so I tend to take screenshots.  And I thought maybe to put these screenshots on an Instagram account.  But it's easier, once a month to place them on Google Drive, and then use my PC to put them on a regular hard-drive the old fashioned way.  And maybe go back in and take PDFs of webpages in order to truly capture the text.  (However, text files are among the most unwieldy of the lot, as you cannot control the formatting.)

So, let's hear it for Instagram anyway!  A blurred cheer.  I was fairly sure this lady was my cousin.  I followed her progress as she said she was going to England (an example of the classic 'future in the past' grammatical tense).  I saw her itinerary screenshotted as a Google Map, and there on the route was the rural south of England.  Bingo!

There is no way this west coast jetsetter would have gone to this sparsely-peopled area were it not for a certain great-aunt.  Flicking through the Instagram pages, there she was.  The 4th cousin in California visits the last of the Lowrys in England.  Well, almost the last, as my grandmother is still alive too.  She seemed pretty old when I last wrote in 1992.  This lady put me onto all the rest of the cousins.

If anyone else has used Instagram for family history, let me know...  This is a really stunning photograph, by the way.

Newspapers: Shock and Ordinary

I found two of my relatives were at pivotal points in history.  In 1880, one saw Ned Kelly hang in a Melbourne gaol.  He more than saw him hang, he legitimised it.  In 1970, one (actually a relative on the same branch) re-enacted aspects of the Vietnam war in some quiet Quebec suburb.  His purpose presumably to encourage people not to kill each other.  Both generated plenty of copy for newspapers along the way.

It is the third article that is the most interesting to me.  It is not about young men fighting to get the truth or not to fight, but an older man realising he wants to give even more back to the community.  As I put in the snip - the Washburns have become part of the town life of Jamestown; but when their progenitor, William Smith arrived from England in 1872, he could so easily have disappeared on the vast continent.  Thanks to him sending a photograph, from a Jamestown studio, many years later, we do know he is the same man.  We wish the Washburns well and enjoy reading about the homely nature of our cousins' lives there.  Thanks to the newspaper.

Three Sisters: Fifteen Counties. Lasses from Gunville take on the South.

These are all the counties where it is known the Dibben sisters lived.  I can only count fifteen, but as this is in the space of 1 or maximum two generations, the girls have done very well indeed.

They came from Gunville, in Cranborne Chase, near where Tess of the D'Urbervilles kept poultry for her beloved - that village is named 'Trantridge' in Hardy's chronicles.

The address of Gunville goes back to the will of William Speed of Ansford, 1800 who makes it clear that Mrs Dibben is his sister.  She is quite some way from home, but the whole family were comfortable with long journeys - to markets, to distant churches for weddings.  Her own parents had left their family in Somerset for a rather belated wedding in Dorchester some 30 miles away.

Here are the various places the daughters lived - explaining why it took some time to find them.

• Buckinghamshire - Richard Welford had land here
• Cumberland - Rebecca Dibben journeyed up north with her second husband, a widowed Cumbrian.  Her husband died up there within weeks, and Rebecca returned to Dorset some time later - it is not clear whether she returned immediately or after the birth of her son.
• Hampshire - Abraham Mackreth married here; his mother Rebecca lived here with her third husband John Spragg, market gardener, Ringwood
• Dorset - the Dibben sisters were born or at least grew up here
• Somerset - this is where the Dibben parents married and the eldest child (Mary) was born.  She recalled this fact in her 80s in the 1871 census for Guernsey
• Guernsey - three of the Dibben sisters are documented to have visited Guernsey, two had children there, and one died there
• Sussex - three of the Dibben sisters died here, the eldest one had her eldest child here 70 years previously.  The key draw in Sussex must have been Buggins's Bathing Bath-house in Brunswick, Brighton.  This was technically in Hove and run by Rebecca Dibben's son-in-law, Henry Buggins
• Middlesex - Jane Dibben married her second husband here and possibly lived with her husband in Chancery Lane; she certainly lived briefly at Ashford, Middlesex in a census.  Rebecca Dibben's granddaughter and alleged granddaughter were both born or baptised here.
• Surrey - Jane Dibben's two children were born in historic Surrey (Stockwell and Newington), one was baptised at St Matthew Brixton where the massive nightclub now is (in the crypt).  Later, in 1851, her niece Rosa from Guernsey would be working here as a nursery nurse - in the town of Reigate, before emigrating overseas.  Finally, Jane's eldest child Ellen would ultimately die in this county, in Putney, in her forties.
• Wiltshire - Jane Dibben lived here with her first husband in the market town of Marlborough.  Her eldest sister is stated to have had a child here, too.  Though he was a seafaring man, and it is not a seafaring county.
• Devonshire - Mary Dibben had at least one of her children here, Elizabeth in Plymouth in about 1820.  It has strong seafaring connections
• Herefordshire - Rebecca Dibben's daughter Rebecca Cox found work as a nurse in this county, and married here in 1852 at Little Hereford to the bathing house proprietor of Hove, and it is this marriage which causes many family member to come to Sussex.
• Hertfordshire - Jane Dibben settled here with her second husband, barrister Richard Welford.  It is likely he commuted into London.  He had his own large stables at Goff's Oak House.  His previous residence in the county was at Northaw Downs.  Jane's elder daughter married here at pebbled St Mary Cheshunt
• Kent - this is where Jane Dibben's only surviving child made her home
• Warwickshire - Jane Dibben went to live in isolated Allesley, outside Coventry after her husband become district judge.  Although he retired here, and her daughter married here, she left for Brighton immediately after his death.

Plus:

• Cheshire - this was the home of Rebecca Dibben's son Abraham's in-laws.  He stayed with them briefly, but the marriage broke up

There was actually a fourth sister, but she is not as exciting as the others.  For starters, she actually gets married in the local church - none of her other sisters do that.  In fact all the other sisters have missing marriages.  Also - she never branches out on her own.  She does visit her sister in Guernsey and of course end up in Sussex, but she is not the trailblazer.

 

  A family history video story has been uploaded to YouTube.

Everything but the Pit Yakkers: Counties Occupied by a Somerset Farming Family

Have you ever dreamt of your descendants occupying the whole of England?*

With scarcely any artistic licence, the Hutton family from Ditcheat, Somerset, stand out for me as having occupied every single English county (bar one - clue is the accent) since the original couple married in 1788.  As you'll see the majority of these counties were populated within three generations (number in parentheses) and by folk of the actual name Hutton.  These were offspring of the eldest son, by and large, William.  Several sons and grandsons managed big estates, which accounts for a new jumping-off point for the next generation.

I have left in Nottinghamshire, as surely somebody from the Warwickshire or Leicestershire families popped across the border at some point or other.  This post will self-destruct by 2016 if I haven't found a Nottinghamshire Hutton by then.

I have included counties if someone was documented to have lived there, or if a vital event took place there.  Weak counties so far include Bedfordshire (1881 census only) and Cumbria (where a birth happened in 1918).

The list of ceremonial counties are minimised to include all the amalgamated counties of 1974, but none of the new ones that were introduced the same day *wink*.  A poncier definition might be - all current ceremonial counties are included, except where these were wholly contained in one or more pre-1974 counties.

Bedfordshire - Harry Hutton (3)
Berkshire - Arthur Alford (4)
Buckinghamshire - Pat Haill (5)
Cambridgeshire - Henry Plaister (2)
Cheshire - Martha Preece (4)
Cornwall - Dawn Cossey (5)
Cumbria - Gladys Hutton (4)
Derbyshire - Alfred Moody (3)
Devon - Richard Plaister (3), David Hutton (5)
Dorset - Mary Hutton (Beck) (4)
Durham (Co) - 
Essex - Francis Price (3)
Gloucestershire - Emily Plaister (2), Reginald Hutton (4)
Greater London - Jane Hutton (1), William Plaister (2), Evelyn Hutton (3)
Hampshire - Elizabeth Hutton (Morrish) (1)
Herefordshire - Thomas Hutton (3?), Annie Griffin (4)
Hertfordshire - Annie Price (3)
Huntingdonshire - Mary Plaister (3)
Kent - Edmund Hutton (3)
Lancashire - William Preece (4)
Leicestershire - Philip Hutton (4)
Lincolnshire - Jane Chippett (2)
Middlesex - Mary Chippett (2)
Norfolk - Alfred Morley (5), Molly Snelling (5)
Northamptonshire - Robert King (3), Philip Hutton (4)
Northumberland - Anthony Beck (5)
Nottinghamshire - surely somebody!
Oxfordshire - Maurice Hutton (4)
Shropshire - Thomas Hutton (3)
Somerset - Robert Hutton (2)
Staffordshire - Nellie Moody (4)
Suffolk - Mary King (3), John Preece (4), Ernest Hutton (4)
Surrey - Henry Hutton (2), Arthur Barlow (3)
Sussex - Ellen Hutton (4), Herbert Hutton (4)
Warwickshire - Ellen Hutton (Pullen) (2), Albert Tilling (3)
Wiltshire - Elizabeth Hutton (Preece) (3), Robert Hutton (3)
Worcestershire - William Kingston (5)
Yorkshire - Ethel Snape (4), Ronald Heard (5)

*It is hard work creating catchy first-lines

The Something, The Baker, the er- Mint-cake Maker?

Everyone knows the fiction: get within a dilating pupil of a mountain and you need ridiculous amounts of sugar.  Now!

Considering the last relative in Windermere was a mint-cake millionaire, how come we never saw a single SLICE.  Or even a photograph of someone else eating a slice.

My aunt writes:
'I was fascinated by all the family news but it has stretched so far that I can only really grasp the Aireys and the Bagshaws. I remember my mother visiting her Atkinson relatives when staying with Auntie Louie who had a parrot.'

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Now she gets down to business:
'They went to see the mint cake being made at the factory and my mother having the sweet tooth that you have correctly shown as running through the family, even to its outer-most edges, was disgusted when they were not given a sample or better still a few whopping slabs of the mint cake. Atkinson's meanness was legendary!'

The Atkinson brothers had married into the Aireys (twice in fact). They were based in Windermere, apparently, but this is the first I'd heard of them.  In fact, I'd never heard this story before, which seeing as it is about the absence of sweets, rather than sweets themselves is perhaps not surprising.  Stingy sweetmakers not being our finest family product.

Rivalling the claim for best family product is our excellent sweet tooth.  My dentist hasn't seen me for years as he says there is 'no point'.  His busy accounting software beeped several times when I came in - perhaps it knew there was no money to be made here.  Five generations of eating baked northern goodies have kept the plaque-monkeys at bay!

There is a business called Country Confectionery in Bowness, which seems to be run by the Atkinsons.  It is quite a small shop, but doubtless does a good trade and the above comments concerning 1940s Atkinsons are in no way meant to apply to the current ones (phew).  The Kendal Mint Cake by a rival company dwarves the shop in the above illustrations, doesn't it.

Umpteenth cousins Ken and Lorraine couldn't resist calling into a great cafe in Ambleside when they visited.  Lots of cakes were consumed.  In fact, Ken's Whiteheads were bakers who got ousted from their property in town by the more money-grabbing Airey cousins.  Presumably the Whiteheads actually let people eat some of their produce.

Our childhood family holidays centred around amazing moments when Eccles cakes, lardy cake, cream horns, mint humbugs - or our favourite calling point - a sweetshop on a hill in Guildford, all came to fruition and waxed their lyrical bounty.

Sketches of rural Somerset 1860s by James West

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There are more like this. This may be in Butleigh or Glastonbury.