ARE ORDINARY ANCESTORS INTERESTING?

Hearth Tax Record 1670

Often when I have attended our North Sydney Genealogy Help Desk at Stanton Library people will tell me how uninteresting their ancestors are. Often they will say this apologetically. Does it come from people’s natural modesty or from a deep seated conviction about their own ordinariness? ‘There is no one interesting in my family tree’. I find though that it’s always the people who are at the beginning of their family history research journey that say this. People don’t realise just what they will find and how much there is out there to find. The further back in time you research the more ancestors you have and the more chance you will find someone of note. But I write this article not about the interesting ancestors but about the ordinary ones, who I believe are just as interesting.

I think of Robert Ball my G, G, G, G, G, G, G, Grandfather. All I know about him is that he was living on a tiny piece of land called Hides Pasture in Warwickshire, England in 1670 and he had one hearth in his home. I know this from one document. This is a Hearth Tax record from 1670. All it says is Rob Ball. Number of hearths=1. I can find his name mentioned in a couple of subsequent Hearth Tax records but nowhere else.

Of course if all you can find is an ancestor’s name and maybe a common occupation it doesn’t tell you much about them. For women ancestors you typically find less than this. But to me just seeing the name Rob Ball written on such an ancient document by hand in a flowing ‘flowery’ script is magic. He has my surname which has been carried to me through the centuries. All the documented connections I made in my genealogical research from parent to child lead me back to this one name. My surname carried through the centuries.

 

 

The English Hearth Tax was levied from 1662 to 1689. It was a tax imposed by parliament to support the household of Charles II. One shilling tax for one fireplace paid twice a year by every household. There was an element of fairness about it in that richer households had more hearths and they could afford to pay more. It was still very unpopular.  (what tax isn’t). The tax collectors could march into people’s private homes and have a look around…for fireplaces. There were corrupt tax collectors, some people would try to hide their fireplaces (there were incidents of people burning their houses down) etc. Finally at the end the Glorious Revolution in 1688 the new rulers, William and Mary, abolished the tax.

The great things about Hearth tax records are that they are the earliest written record which covered every household in England (except for maybe the Doomsday Book?) and that so many of these records have survived to the present day. There is a website devoted to their study that is a great source of family history information.

 http://www.hearthtax.org.uk/

I actually know quite a bit more about Rob Ball than I’ve told you, but only because I know a lot about his descendants.  There were generations of them living in that same place for hundreds of years. It’s so small that I know anyone named Ball in Hides Pasture was one of my ancestors.  Because I have his son Robert Ball’s will I also know they were all graziers on that land and Yeomen (they owned the land too).  Robert’s will also reveals many things about the Ball family that I won’t detail here. Including that they were very unimaginative at thinking up their children’s names. Robert’s son was named Robert too.

 

 

Will of Robert Ball 1730

 

 

You might say that all I’ve shown is that an ordinary ancestor is only interesting if it is your own ancestor. Maybe that’s true but we all have ordinary ancestors….and if you research yours I guarantee they will be just as interesting to you as mine are to me!

 

 

DISCOVERING NORTH SYDNEY GENEALOGY USING THE FACE OF NORTH SYDNEY DATABASE

 

The White Family outside 6 Napier St North Sydney

 

 

The North Sydney Heritage Centre of Stanton Library has an enormous number of historic photographs in it’s collection.  Over 8,500 of these images are viewable online through the ‘Face of North Sydney’ database. These can be of many subjects; the landscape, both built and natural, or of local inhabitants, among other things. They are often an amazing source of family history information.

I remember once, in my job as a local history librarian at Stanton Library, finding a photo for an elderly man who came in to see our image collection. It was a photo of his grandmother. Not only had this man not ever seen that photo, he had never seen a photo of his grandmother. He was so moved that it brought him to tears.  A moment I will never forget.

Most people researching their own family’s history often don’t realise that there might be images of their ancestors that they can access online through the database of a public library. These will not come up by doing a basic Google search.  The photo database can only be found through the website of the local Council’s library where your ancestor lived.

To search for these photos first find what local Council area your ancestor lived in. Then find that Council’s website and see if there is an image database on that website. It might be connected to the part of the website devoted to that Council’s library or local history. If there is one then search by the ancestor’s name, place of residence etc.  Not every library has their photos online but most do. 

Public libraries throughout Australia are increasingly making their image collections available for anyone to see anywhere in the world. As internet download speeds increase and the costs of creating and hosting an image database become more economical, making photos available for viewing online is becoming a more attractive way to display them.

Through the National Library’s Trove website you can search a number of photo collections from public libraries around Australia as well as the National Library’s own collection. This includes Stanton Library’s Face of North Sydney database. There are also other great image collections online which the State Libraries of each Australian state have. Sometimes museums will also have great image collections online as well. I think of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney in particular.

You can access the Face of North Sydney database through the North Sydney Council’s website. It is one of the Heritage Databases on that site. 

 http://photosau.com.au/stantonpictures/scripts/home.asp

H G Kent's Crows Nest blacksmith shop

AN INTERESTING ANCESTOR: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ONE ANCESTOR MURDERS ANOTHER ANCESTOR

It’s a sad story. Bradbury Ferguson (1801-1853) a hatter from Exeter, New Hampshire was my Grandfather’s Great Grandfather. Not much is known about his origins but it was known that he had a tendency to drink ardent spirits to excess. In the early hours of the 1^st October 1840 in his New Hampshire home after a night of drinking he shot and mortally wounded his wife, Elizabeth Ann, who died shortly after.  He was arrested and spent the rest of his life in the New Hampshire State Penitentiary where he eventually died.

We know a lot about the details of this murder because it happened at a time when there was a lot of debate in the USA as to whether or not capital punishment was a deterrent to crime. The entire court case was published into a book in 1841 and is still in print in a textbook for law students.  This book is also available to view free online.

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=trial&cc=trial&idno=sat2807&q1=bradbury+ferguson&view

In 1837 the New Hampshire State Legislature passed a bill defining what type of murder required the death penalty (murder in the first degree) and gave jury members the right to opt out of jury duty if they conscientiously objected to sentencing someone to death.  The ‘anti gallows movement’ was nationwide in the US at this time. The Reverend Arthur Caverno gave a sermon in New Hampshire in 1835 calling for the abolition of capital punishment arguing that it was not a deterrent to crime, innocent people were occasionally mistakenly executed and it was morally wrong for a Christian to condemn other person to death.

New Hampshire State Penitentiary c.1860

 

My ancestor’s murder provided a test case for these new laws. The jury found Bradbury Ferguson guilty of murder in the second degree and he was sentenced to solitary confinement for 2 years and hard labour in the State penitentiary for the rest of his natural life.

The deliberations by the prosecution, the defence and the judge in the court transcript are interesting to read and provide a great summary of the arguments for and against capital punishment. The arguments seem as relevant today as they were in 1840.

We can only imagine how this all affected his 6 children. The two eldest boys John 13 yrs and William 11 yrs were mentioned in the trial and John was called to give testimony. There had been many years of domestic violence in this family before that fateful night. Some of the details mentioned in the court transcript were truly awful. The younger children like George who was only four at the time probably had no memory of what happened?  George’s census forms show differing birthplaces over the years (Maine, Massachusetts, New York). Even his obituary wrongly said his birthplace was Boston. Was he hiding his past or was he not told the full story?

After the trial the children were given new surnames by the New Hampshire legislature. They all took their mother’s maiden name Frothingham to protect their privacy and they were found new homes. John, my ancestor, went straight to boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy nearby. William, George , Eliza and Ann, and I assume Mary, were shipped off to Gray Maine where most of them are found living with a farmer named Nathan Foster and his wife Betsey in the 1850 census.

George Edward Frothingham

 

George Edward Frothingham (1836-1900) went to Phillips Andover Academy and later graduated from the University of Michigan eventually becoming a renown opthamologist in the US based in Detroit.

William Augustus Frothingham (1829-1896) became co-owner of a shoe manufactory in South Paris Maine, William A.  Frothingham & Co. and a leading businessman and selectman of that town.

John Bradbury Frothingham

 

John Bradbury Frothingham (1828-1881), my ancestor, was trained as an engineer. During the American Civil War he enlisted as a major in Ohio and shortly after was commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel , additional Aide De Camp by General George E Wool whose last act before he retired in 1863 was to quell the ‘draft riots’ in New York City. This was a particularly dark event in US history as you might know. John was mainly associated with the West Virginian 6^th infantry. There is a lot more of his story yet to be discovered.

John resigned 5 weeks prior to Robert E Lee’s surrender in 1865. Shortly after the war he was an aid to Congressman James Monroe Ashley and accompanied him on a couple of visits to Utah to meet Brigham Young (Head of the Morman Church). Ashley was Chairman of of the House Committee on Territories and Utah was still a territory then. There is an account of the second visit, hand written by John Frothingham, which is viewable online.

http://www.mormonism.com/Brigham/

John was the eldest child who had confronted his father on the night of his mother’s murder asked him what he had done and went to his neighbours for help. It was young John’s hunting rifle, loaded for killing squirrels and rabbits that was used as the murder weapon.  It’s not sure how the trauma of this night affected him but his life was a troubled one.  After serving as with distinction as an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, He worked as a civil engineer and lawyer and at one time nominated for appraiser of the Port of New York. In 1881 he was arrested for intoxication on the streets of Brooklyn and he died in police cells that same night from disease of the heart induced by alcoholism.  He had been estranged from his wife and daughter (my grandfather’s mother) for a short time before that. My family owns a letter of reference from a Christian Minister vouching that he ‘is not addicted to the use of spirituous liquors’. To me illustrating how much his drinking had become a problem.

 

New York Times 13 Apr 1881

 

Of the three daughters Eliza Ann married a farmer Bradbury Whittier from Gray, Maine, Mary Caroline married a day labourer Thomas Folsom in New Hampshire, who was killed in the Civil War, and I can find no record of what happened to Ann Matilda Frothingham.

 

 

 

JO HARRIS FROM THE KURINGAI HISTORICAL SOCIETY SPEAKS AT STANTON LIBRARY

Last Friday the North Sydney Genealogy Group and members of the local community were treated to a talk on genealogy by Jo Harris. Jo is an incredibly engaging and entertaining speaker and has an impressive knowledge of family history.  How do you best to approach the subject, how to organise what you find and what are some of the problems a beginner might encounter?  Jo has for many years given talks and lead a workshop on genealogy which is held by the Kuringai Historical Society in the Sydney suburb of Gordon close to where she lives. http://www.khs.org.au/

Jo asks at the beginning of her talk, ‘How many people in this audience have completed their family tree?’ After a prolonged silence when only Stanton Library’s numerous crickets could be heard chirping did she explain how surprised she would have been if anyone had said ‘yes’.  Family history research is never ending. Not only are there more records continuously being made available online. But the further you go back the more people there are to investigate.

Jo said she realised the limitations of Ancestry’s Family Tree Maker program when she had put more than 200,000 names in it and it started malfunctioning.  The record for the largest family tree on Ancestry.com is 260,000 people.

During the talk we saw many of Jo’s own family photos, memorabilia and family trees (the first drafts of these she calls ‘Mud Maps’) that she has created over the years and we were treated to many personal anecdotes of her own family stories and the interesting ways in which she discovered them. Jo’s knowledge is incredibly extensive and she easily answered the diverse questions which our audience asked.

I was amazed to learn that British family names starting with a K, Q or C sound mostly originated from the isle of Man. This Includes names like Kelly and Quayle. Any name that starts with Myle is a Manx name. The talk was full of little genealogy tidbit gems like these.

A brief look on the internet tells me that Jo Harris was named Kuringgai citizen of the year in 2008. She was one of the first women to receive a radio operating licence. She is a well recognized HAM radio operator from her home in Wahroongah and has played an important communication role in a number of community crises. Her enthusiasm, generosity of spirit and intellect are very impressive and an octogenarian as well! If she is giving a genealogy talk in your area…don’t miss it!

(Unfortunately the photos I took of Jo Harris with Stanton library’s camera didn’t come out so I hope the ‘word picture’ I have created here will be enough-apologies)

AN INTERESTING ANCESTOR; AMERICANS WITH CONVICT ANCESTRY

My name is Eliot. I am one of the volunteer helpers at the Genealogy Help Desk Stanton Library, North Sydney. I’m here every Friday morning from 10am to 12pm. This little article is about an ancestor of mine who I discovered has an interesting story.

I am writing here about John Neal (born abt 1632 Scotland died 18 Feb 1704 Berwick, Maine) who was my Great great great great great great great great Grandfather.

Not everyone realises that before English convicts were sent to the sun drenched golden sanded beaches of Australia they were sent to other places around the world including the fetid mosquito ridden swamps of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. No accurate records were kept of the number of transported persons to the North American colonies. Estimates range from 50,000 to 120,000. An American’s ancestor was just as likely to have been a godless ruffian with a ball and chain and a meal of gruel as a pious farmer giving thanks for a turkey dinner with cranberry sauce.  The American revolutionary war put an end to convict transportation. Australia was founded as a replacement destination. A place so lovely that revolt against the mother country was thought unlikely.

 

My ancestor, John Neal (Nieal, Neale, Niel, who couldn’t spell, a trait I have inherited) was a bit different in that his only crime was to have fought against the armies of Oliver Cromwell and lost. He was a Scottish prisoner of war. Thought to be too dangerous to be banished to somewhere as close as Ireland, he, along with 149 other Scottish prisoners were sent to Massachusetts sometime in the early 1650s on the ship ‘Unity’.

Oliver Cromwell

 

The Scottish army loyal to King Charles II, who was recently proclaimed King of Scotland in 1649, was defeated by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650. It is estimated that 6000 Scottish prisoners were taken of which 5000 were marched south to Durham. 3500 of these men died either on the march south or from malnourishment and disease while in captivity. The majority of the 1400 survivors were sent to North America.

John Neal became an indentured servant (read ‘slave’) for 6 years at the Saugus Iron Works along with other Scottish prisoners. The need for iron tools for the new colony was a priority for the Governor John Winthrop who was personally involved in establishing a foundry. The Saugus Iron Works has been preserved as a museum in the suburbs of Boston. The Iron Masters house is the only original building that has survived. The rest of the site was excavated and rebuilt in the 1950s with the support of the American Iron and Steel Institute who consider it the birthplace of the American Steel Industry.

The Iron Masters House

 

Here is a link to the official US National Parks and Wildlife Service film about the site. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=k7rLje_fUh8

Here is the clunky 1950s film about it’s excavation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG5NToCkADk

After his release John Neal was given a grant of land in the southern part of the state of Maine with other Scottish ex-prisoners of War. The town was named Berwick. It is thought to have been named after Berwick-on-the-Tweed a place near to where the Battle of Dunbar took place. Whether this was a name chosen by the Scots with pride or forced upon them as a humiliating gesture by the ruling English elite of Boston is not known.

Unfortunately no personal documents or possessions of John Neal have survived so it’s hard to know anything more about him except to imagine how his life was affected by the historic events of the time.

 

John and his tiny community of Berwick would have been involved in various skirmishes with the Native American tribes who lived nearby. The King Phillip’s War in 1675 was followed by 6 wars over the next 76 years between English colonists, French colonists and the Native American peoples.

 

Although not much is known of John’s specific involvement in these conflicts his son Andrew Neal (my ancestor) gets a mention in the 'JOURNAL OF THE REVEREND JOHN PIKE; A Memorandum Of Personal Occurents'.

Jan. 28. [1703-4.] About 9 or 10 in the morning, the Indians

(to the number of 30 or 40) made an attack upon Andrew Neals
garrison in the Lower part of Berwick,! killed a poor maid, wounded
a Lad who made his escape & was healed, burnt 9 houses, killed many
Cattel, had one of y' own Crew sorely wounded, if not slain, & so drew
off.

Rev Pike’s (1653-1710) diary describes the day to day battles and deaths of various Indian wars during the time of his ministry at Dover New Hampshire as well as the deaths and misfortunes of his own congregation and family. The language to me really evokes the era.

 

1684. — March 22. A prodigious Tyde rising some feet higher y"

the observation of oldest standers (in this place) did great Damage to wharves & ware-houses in Boston § & Pascataqua.

 

Feb. 8, 1684[-5]. An earth-quake was sensibly observed by

many : tho not universally perceived : This hapned Sabbath day four a clock afternoon.

1685. — July 15. Humphry Tiffany & Frances Low travelling betwixt Swanzy & Boston, were slain with Lightning.

 

 

An earthy innocence seems to shine through the pomposity of the language. Very Puritan.  But I digress. It’s a great read and it’s free online at the internet archive website.

If any volunteer helper or member of the public would like to write an article about an ancestor they discovered that they find particularly interesting please contact me and we can add it to this blog. I personally have heard a few really riveting stories from people during our Friday morning Help Desk at Stanton Library and would love to see some of them published here for others to share.

CAROL FOX TO GIVE WRITING YOUR LIFE STORY TALK AT STANTON LIBRARY NORTH SYDNEY

One of the best things about researching your family history is the stories you discover.  Sometimes you find a detailed well documented account of the struggle and tribulations of an ancestor or you might find something very simple, such as a date on a document recording the death of a child.
Sometimes a tiny mark on a page or an empty space can say more than a paragraph of text. These are unknown stories that you are piecing together and discovering for the first time. They are your family stories. They are unique to you.

The ever vibrant Carol Fox is giving a talk on Writing Your Life Story at 2:30pm Wednesday 30^th April 2014 at Stanton Library North Sydney. She has been hosting a course on this subject at Mosman Evening College for the last 15 years. The art of writing your life story takes some skill. Carol’s talk will be based on her own experiences and using examples from her own life. How do you begin? How do you structure and research your story? How do you unlock childhood memories? What is the best way to interview family members?

History is ever changing, as are our personal stories. Historians continuously reinterpret the past as we do as individuals. “What really happened back then?” we ask. As we reinterpret the connections and intertwining of our lives with the lives of our family and our ancestors we better understand ourselves in the present moment.  We create our life story.

There is more to this than you might think and Carol’s engaging ‘hands-on’ session will be very informative. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion. Bring a notebook and pen to take notes.

This is a great opportunity for personal growth and development. Not to be missed.

Free talk but bookings essential

FAIRFAX NEWSPAPER BIRTH DEATH MARRIAGE RECORDS NOW AVAILABLE FREE ONLINE

 

 

 

 

 

 

While attending the North Sydney Genealogy Help Desk last Friday I was told that Fairfax has now made transcriptions of their newspaper articles from 1990 to 2014 freely available on the internet. This includes Birth Death and Marriage notices. Fairfax Media Limited publications include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and others. To search these newspapers you go to the Newsstore website, and do an advanced search, choosing Births, Deaths or Marriages from the drop down menu under ‘Section’. 

http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/newsSearch.ac

This now means that The Sydney Morning Herald can be searched, in it’s entirety, for free from home. Two other websites cover the rest of the paper. One of the State Library’s eresources has the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald from 1955 to 1995. You need to be a State Library member to access this. If you are not a member you can join online, but you have to be a NSW resident.

http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/eresources/browse.cfm?subjects=6165

This eresource database is very good. It has photographed pages of the newspapers which can be searched with keywords (by OCR). Problems I have found with it are that it takes a long time to do a search and the text of the BDM records is tiny. Finding your ancestor’s record on the page needs exceptional eyesight or a magnifying glass.  Printing can be a bit tricky too as it prints chunks of records rather than just the one you want.

Most people know the Trove website covers the rest of the SMH from 1831 to 1955.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/

When you can access the entire newspaper for free you can see how the normal ‘business model’ for newspapers is changing and many are going broke. This certainly makes it a lot cheaper and easier for genealogists.

If you are looking for a death notice these would be your second port of call after visiting the Ryerson Index website and finding  the date and newspaper that your ancestor’s record appears in.

http://www.ryersonindex.org/

Thanks  Joyce Ryerson!

RIP 30 August 2012