(no subject)
I've an urge to write more about my visit to the Bishop's House (http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/museums/bishops-house/home) in Sheffield this weekend than just a passing Facebook update, so here goes.
Most people know I've got quite an interest in genealogy, but possibly don't realise to what an extent it goes. I consider myself an advanced amateur at it - I've not only hacked away at various different lines within my own history, but regularly take on research work for friends. I adore the challenge, and the thought processes involved, and the puzzle-solving element, but also poking at documents and records, and exploring aspects of social history.
This interest started in childhood really, when I had to ask my grandparents about their relatives for a school project, but with the advent of the internet I've been able to start poking at the history from my desk. And poke and poke I have. Starting a bit before the Who Do You Think You Are boom, with a bit of initial help from my stepfather-in-law, I've done quite a whirlwind journey into my maternal grandmother's history.
This was a side of the family we knew very little about, past a couple of names. That family hadn't been talked about in my grandmother's home when she was growing up, for a number of reasons that we now understand after doing the research.
Once I found this great great grandfather of mine, Alfred Maurice Blyth, the journey really took off. Every turn over of the records was like treasure trove. I kept delving and bring up new pearls, revolations that practically blew my head off. It was like being caught in a strong breeze, with objects rushing past at dizzying speeds, and I could reach my hands out and touch them.
We found an incredibly prominent Scottish family, some of whom have their own wikipedia pages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Blyth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Blyth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Blyth_II - with a civil engineering company that still continues today. We also found missionaries, reverends, bishops, artists, lawyers, wannabe politicians, golfers, willing emigrators to Australia when it was still largely a penal colony, the wife of a German baron, and a good portion of black sheep. And there's even supposed to be a link back to Charlemagne on a female line way back in time.
Which leads me to The Bishop's House. My family supposedly built it. And if they didn't actually do the construction, they definitely lived there. One of the lineage books links me back directly to William Blyth, who was known to have owned the house until his death in 1631.
I've known it was there since I bumped into someone online years and years ago who had a copy of the lineage book of 1893, which is now held by the Sheffield museum service. But Sheffield is such a long way away that we'd not managed to visit until now. James' party this past weekend was all we needed to plan to go.
So, on Sunday I went and stood in a house that belonged to my family more than 500 years ago.
I walked the same floors, touched the same walls, looked out of the same windows. And held back a few tears as I felt very overwhelmed.
You see, I'm quite a tactile person. Sensation, particularly in the hands, is a very important part of how I experience life. I love the cool smoothless of glass beads, the trickle of rocailles over my fingers, the fluidity of fabric as it skips my fingertips, the squidgyness of soft wool as it trails over my palms when I'm knitting. I love to hold handfuls of flour and feel it squeak, and I can never resist popping the buds of fuschia flowers for that dash of silk petal and soft burst of air.
I might be a document junkie, a research-a-holic, a puzzle solver, a relentless historian, but Sunday's experience at the Bishop's House brought me something tangible, something I could run through my fingers and connect with. And that knocks all that research into a cocked hat. I have no way of knowing just what genes and traits from those people of 500 years ago survive in me. Probably not a lot. I cannot imagine at all what their life was like in that house, past a few fleeting images provided by the well-thought-out museum.
But I feel as if I've stretched out into the past, and touched them somehow by visiting their house, and made the whole genealogy experience far more real than it can be on pieces of paper and computer images.
I am very lucky to have this as my past, and not page after page of farm labourers (they appear on other family branches). And so grateful to my forebears who did so much research in the 19th century.
The author of the book finishes his preface with:
"I am indebted to a great many relatives, particularly to Edmund Kell Blyth, and to some strangers, among whom I desire especially to mention the Rev. G.W. Hall, Vicar of Norton, for kind assistance and considerable trouble taken to enable me to make the notes as complete and correct as possible.
If they are acceptable to my relatives, and to others who may come after us, I shall have accomplished the object I had in view."
Hell yeah!
Most people know I've got quite an interest in genealogy, but possibly don't realise to what an extent it goes. I consider myself an advanced amateur at it - I've not only hacked away at various different lines within my own history, but regularly take on research work for friends. I adore the challenge, and the thought processes involved, and the puzzle-solving element, but also poking at documents and records, and exploring aspects of social history.
This interest started in childhood really, when I had to ask my grandparents about their relatives for a school project, but with the advent of the internet I've been able to start poking at the history from my desk. And poke and poke I have. Starting a bit before the Who Do You Think You Are boom, with a bit of initial help from my stepfather-in-law, I've done quite a whirlwind journey into my maternal grandmother's history.
This was a side of the family we knew very little about, past a couple of names. That family hadn't been talked about in my grandmother's home when she was growing up, for a number of reasons that we now understand after doing the research.
Once I found this great great grandfather of mine, Alfred Maurice Blyth, the journey really took off. Every turn over of the records was like treasure trove. I kept delving and bring up new pearls, revolations that practically blew my head off. It was like being caught in a strong breeze, with objects rushing past at dizzying speeds, and I could reach my hands out and touch them.
We found an incredibly prominent Scottish family, some of whom have their own wikipedia pages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Blyth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Blyth and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Blyth_II - with a civil engineering company that still continues today. We also found missionaries, reverends, bishops, artists, lawyers, wannabe politicians, golfers, willing emigrators to Australia when it was still largely a penal colony, the wife of a German baron, and a good portion of black sheep. And there's even supposed to be a link back to Charlemagne on a female line way back in time.
Which leads me to The Bishop's House. My family supposedly built it. And if they didn't actually do the construction, they definitely lived there. One of the lineage books links me back directly to William Blyth, who was known to have owned the house until his death in 1631.
I've known it was there since I bumped into someone online years and years ago who had a copy of the lineage book of 1893, which is now held by the Sheffield museum service. But Sheffield is such a long way away that we'd not managed to visit until now. James' party this past weekend was all we needed to plan to go.
So, on Sunday I went and stood in a house that belonged to my family more than 500 years ago.
I walked the same floors, touched the same walls, looked out of the same windows. And held back a few tears as I felt very overwhelmed.
You see, I'm quite a tactile person. Sensation, particularly in the hands, is a very important part of how I experience life. I love the cool smoothless of glass beads, the trickle of rocailles over my fingers, the fluidity of fabric as it skips my fingertips, the squidgyness of soft wool as it trails over my palms when I'm knitting. I love to hold handfuls of flour and feel it squeak, and I can never resist popping the buds of fuschia flowers for that dash of silk petal and soft burst of air.
I might be a document junkie, a research-a-holic, a puzzle solver, a relentless historian, but Sunday's experience at the Bishop's House brought me something tangible, something I could run through my fingers and connect with. And that knocks all that research into a cocked hat. I have no way of knowing just what genes and traits from those people of 500 years ago survive in me. Probably not a lot. I cannot imagine at all what their life was like in that house, past a few fleeting images provided by the well-thought-out museum.
But I feel as if I've stretched out into the past, and touched them somehow by visiting their house, and made the whole genealogy experience far more real than it can be on pieces of paper and computer images.
I am very lucky to have this as my past, and not page after page of farm labourers (they appear on other family branches). And so grateful to my forebears who did so much research in the 19th century.
The author of the book finishes his preface with:
"I am indebted to a great many relatives, particularly to Edmund Kell Blyth, and to some strangers, among whom I desire especially to mention the Rev. G.W. Hall, Vicar of Norton, for kind assistance and considerable trouble taken to enable me to make the notes as complete and correct as possible.
If they are acceptable to my relatives, and to others who may come after us, I shall have accomplished the object I had in view."
Hell yeah!