Not Just Ancestors

It's four years ago tomorrow that Dad died. I'm writing this today because someone is about to take the back off my computer ...

The other day I had a note from an Nth cousin about the Ash family. My great grandmother was Elizabeth Ann Ash and she married George Horswill (b1851). There's a photo of her below in an earlier post. I'd always thought she must have missed her family when they moved to the north east but that wasn't the case. Her entire family (she was one of 12 children) moved to Durham. No doubt entire villages moved for the work. Dad always thought they would have heard about the coal mining opportunities as the ships passed through Plymouth and indeed that's how they would have travelled. That's another research line there in the ships' passenger records. My great great grandfather Roger Horswill went back to Plymouth to find his second wife. ie after his first wife had died, not a Mormon thing!

It was a revelation to me that the Ash family had moved to Durham. I immediately thought "I must tell Dad". It's amazing how you forget people are gone.

To many the family tree research looks dull and boring and getting people to join in is like pulling teeth. This is a shame because in another 20 years the people who can't be bothered will have their grandhildren asking "Nana, why don't we have a family tree?" Duh ....

A family tree is more than a list of dead people. It connects you to your ancestors. Not just ancestors - these people are your family and you are who you are because of them. My cousins in Co Durham live there because the family made a momentous decision to moved 500 miles 140 years ago. Finding out more and more brings me closer to Dad as if he's still here.

It's not just dead ancestors either. I've found lots of second, third and "we're sill working on it" cousins, many of them in our Facebook group if you'd like to meet them too. I found a fifth cousins three times removed of John's who worked with my second cousin. Small world ... We all pool research and find whole branches of family this way.

Dad would absolutely love all the work we're doing on the family tree. I wish we could have done it years ago so it could have joined in but the online research methods have really only come into play in the last few years.

So let's do it - join us on the My Heritage tree now: www.horswillfamilytree.com and join our Facebook group. All the links are on www.horswillfamilyphotos.com

Here's a nice pic of Dad:

Royal Heritage? No Thanks!

I cannot abide the "Who Do You Think You Are?" programme. It's pap TV designed to appeal to the ignorant masses. Well, no surprise there, that's what all TV is about!

They make it look ridiculously easy to find your ancestors. Of course it's easy when the professional genealogists do it for you and have access to records not available to the general public. All you have to do it turn up and say "That's fascinating!" But then a film of someone spending hours searching through the census records would not make good TV.

The programme seems to think you are only worthy if you have some foreign or royal connection. My family do not have foreign connections other that the fact that a group went to the USA to find work in the mining industry and in recent years people have moved about the globe as they tend to do. We've been in Devon (Horswills) and South East England (Hills) for hundreds of years.

We have no royal connections. We have some interesting connections (Thomas Hardy, Lord Nuffield, Titanic Survivor Alfred Horswill - more about them later) and a famous footballer (Micky Horswill) but nothing Royal. So no idle rich who have contributed nothing to society. Instead we have hundreds of years of tough manual labour. Women in service to those idle rich at the age of 12. Men - well, boys - at the coal face at 13. There was no pension scheme. They spent their whole life down the mines and that life was often a short one. My great grandfather (Charles Ormond Laverick) died in a coal mine in his forties.

The websites, blogs and Facebook pages of the genealogy companies are full of WDYTYA. I can see why they do it. The marketing teams have to be "out there" with whatever is current discussion. Their websites and blogs need to come up in searches constantly and the sad fact is people not only watch the programme but also want to read about it. This week's discussion mostly consists of inane comments about how wonderful Alexander Armstrong is because his family has royal links. Puhleeeeeeze.... who cares? We grovelled to the monarchy hundreds of years ago. Hello!! We don't do that now! He even seems to be a funnier comedian which is great PR...

We should be proud of the hard work done by our ancestors, not proud of the silver spoons.

Look who I found in the 1911 Census ...

You can make quantum leaps in your family tree with the 1911 Census. That's IF you know what to look for. I hadn't managed to find any of the Williams family (maternal great grandparents) in ANY census so it didn't look good for the 1911 Census.

I used Find My Past to look them up. You can buy credits rather than a subscription which suits me as I don't like too much going out of my bank account when not much goes in. Whilst normally it's good to have more information, with their search system sometimes it's worth just putting in names and a year of birth. It doesn't cost anything to view the overall list.

So, starting with what we know ... I put in Nan's and Uncle Arthur's names and date of birth then clicked to see the household. There was Aunt Kate too so I had the right household BUT I could see the reason I couldn't find them before. Their parents were not Francis and Elizabeth Williams but Henry James and Mary Ann Williams. Digging further back found the censuses showing they were both born in Southampton, which we knew so that was more confirmation. It's back to my roots for me then!

Mum knew her grandmother as Bessie, not Mary. Could this be because her mother was Bess? A lot of families called their children by different names, or a variation. John was "named after Bill". Don't go there ... the name changing in the Mangan family gets ridiculous. George Edward Jubilee Mangan was always known as Sam for another daft example.

For further confirmation of the Williams family I got on to Mum again. When I asked her a few months ago she couldn't remember the names of Nan's older siblings and thought the family had lost touch. I read out the names. I don't always do that as you need to get corroboration without giving the relative any clues but there was nothing to lose here. "I remember George, he worked with his Dad in the brewery. What do you call the people who make the barrels?" A cooper!! And there they are on the census under occupation: Cooper.

If you're a member of the family and you'd like to see full details on the Ancestry tree please join the private site at www.horswillfamily.com and you'll see it on there. Ancestry members: the tree is called Horswill and Hills Families.

The 1911 Census also provided some interesting details of John's family on his Mum's side. I found a John Hipson (John's great grandfather) who was in prison. The only John Hipson in London. I thought I'd better keep quiet about it until Maureen said "Did she find the one who was always in and out of prison?" Mind you, in those days you would go to prison for an offence that wouldn't even get you an ASBO today.

As for the Horswills - I found out what happened to Lizzie Jane. Details on the private site later.

For those interested in the 1991 Census we have a new Facebook group HERE.

I found Grandad Hills and Great Great Grandad Ash!

Yesterday was Dad's birthday (he would have been 85). So it was a good day - I'd say propitious but probably can't spell it - to work on the family tree.

Joseph Hills 1888 - 1947

I'd spent months looking for my maternal grandfather Joe Hills. We knew when he died because Mum was 19 at the time. We knew how old he was when he died so we found his date of birth. However, he was nowhere to be seen in the censuses. Then the lightbulb came on. He was Hill in the censuses and various other documents, not Hills. It's the Horswill/Horswell problem all over again!

I dug and dug and came up with two possibilities for his family. Armed with a list of potential sisters I rang Mum to ask if she could remember any of her aunt's names. Previously she'd said she couldn't remember any (although she remembered he had sisters) because the family didn't keep in touch. She said "There was a Louie and an Ada ..." Yes!! Got him!

Here's the list of his siblings from Ancestry:



The good news is I found a new second cousin, Paul Ainsworth, and he's already joined our My Heritage site and our Facebook group. He is Johanna Hills' grandson. There's also a sad tale. Johanna, who was Ada's twin, died when she was about 36 leaving 4 young children. The two older children went to live with relatives and the younger ones went to a Barnardo's home. Life was very tough when a mother died young.

Now, the Horswill family ...

There's a clever print function in Ancestry which gives you a summary tree. More about various ways to print trees later. John has a really good summary with the whole page filled. I had annoying gaps in mine so I need to find more great great grandparents.

Geroge Horswill b1851 is my great grandfather. He married Elizabeth Ann Ash who was born in 1856 in Northill, Cornwall. Here's a photo of her:
How did we know her name? Because she was on the censuses. It stands to reason then that she must have been on the censuses, living with her parents, when she was a child. Fortunately she is shown as "Elizth Ann" on the 1861 census and not just Elizabeth so she was not hard to find. In some early family trees she is shown as Ann so the enumerator probably realised she had both names and entered both. You don't see this very often.

Her father was John Ash and her mother was Susan Hannaford. Luckily for us there are dozens of Ancestry members researching these families so I was able to find ancestors back to the 1600s.

All these new relatives will eventually be put on the My Heritage tree. Some are there already. If you want to see them now, along with all the evidence, go to our private site at www.HorswillFamily.com and you can see the full Ancestry tree (FREE!)

Cool names from this research:

We have a Hezekiah Webb on the Hills side and a Jemima Trengrove on the Horswill side.

Latest Site Updates and Family Tree News

Site Updates

We now have fancy schmancy drop down menus and more instructions, particularly on how to use the MyFamily group site where you can easily upload and download photos, add comments, send messages etc etc. It's like a private family Facebook!

The page you need is HERE. Instructions with pictures (took me forever to sort that out!)

It's all a question of following the hand. Now you'll have to go and look to see what I mean...

Please join the private site asap.

Family Trees

We have two family tree sites, as you know. They are both growing at an incredible rate. You can join the My Heritage tree and add people, dates, photos etc. In order to see the Ancestry trees (Horswill and Hills Families and Mangan Family) you need to join the My Family site (see above!) and it's on there. There are over 1000 people in the Horswill and Hills Tree and over 300 in the Mangan tree. And we've been working on that one for less than two weeks.

Charles (Chick) Docwra

We've taken Uncle Chick's family back to 1350!!! What a shame he and Kit didn't have any children. I'm sure they would have been impressed.

Did you see our "Morning News" featuring them?

This newsletter personalized with Smilebox

We have a foundling!

Cuthbert Elsdon was born in 1650. He was a "foundling" left at St Cuthbert's Church in Elsdon so that's what he was called.

You can see him, along with the story, on our My Heritage Family Tree. Click on Family Tree then People and search for him. You'll find three people with that name (his descendants) but they give the date. So now you know that not everyone with a place name for a surname was lord of the manor ... It's an interesting tale but obviously one with tragedy behind it. I wonder if his real mother watched him grow up or indeed whether the real mother became the foster mother, as often happened.

His tree stops there!

How is this person related to us? My great great grandfather Roger Horswill had two wives. One after the other, not in a Mormon way! Moses Wilson Horswill is one of Roger's descendants with his second wife. I met him many years ago. I was following his line through the Wilsons and found Cuthbert through another Ancestry member. You can search for Moses Wilson Horswill on the tree and follow the line up to Cuthbert.

Adding Cuthbert Elsdon to the tree has brought us new members who are also researching him. Welcome!

Dad's 70th Birthday Party 30 July 1995

The photos of this party are not too good. I'll be cleaning them up and rescanning them shortly. In the meantime I see plenty of cameras in the pictures so it would be good to have everyone else's photos of this brilliant day.

Here's a Smilebox album for you:

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