There can be very little in genealogy more distressing than coming across family members who died in the Great War.
What comfort could be gained from a name carved on a local war memorial? A grave in another land near to where they fell, would have been too far away for a mother or young wife to take flowers. The thought of a filed filled with dancing red poppies, so lauded in poetry, would have to serve as a reminder. So the war memorial was the nearest thing to a grave that grieving relatives had.
When you find a mother who has lost more than one son to the battlefields, you wonder how they had the strength to go on.
Eric Bogle wrote the lyrics to the famous song Green Fields of France (also known as No Man's Land) in 1976. The words sum up the sadness of those fallen too young.
Well how do you do, Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side?
A rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone that you were only 19
when you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, William McBride, was it slow and obscene?
CHORUS:
Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart are you always 19.
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass-pane
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Well, the sun it shines down on these green fields of France,
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches are vanished now under the plough
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it is still No Man's Land
And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand.
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation that was butchered and downed.
And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe them that this war would end war?
The suffering, the sorrow, some the glory, the shame -
The killing and dying - it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipe lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?
I dedicate this to all in my tree who fell in war, and to those who were left behind to grieve for the soldiers who fought for our freedom from tyranny, in the hope there will be a day we wake up as a race and realise the futility of war and fight no more with our fellow man.
Several weeks ago, I started some research into the family tree of a friend. It was a very direct line that he wanted drawn up, so I started looking. It led me to a place in Brewham, where I found that some of his relatives had been involved in a witchcraft trial there, as both complainants and the accused. At least one family member was executed for witchcraft, although the manner of her death isn't given (it was more likely to be from hanging rather than burning in that period though). Now, here is where it gets interesting. I decided to give my own family tree branches a well earned rest and add some of my husband's family (from an old tree I'd done more than ten years ago) as research has moved on and there are many more sources to look at on-line.
I discovered that my husband and friend shared a set of 4th great grandparents, making them fifth cousins.
Anybody who is researching a family tree will be aware of the times that the lack of progress with certain family lines can infuriate you. Your research seems to come to a full stop, no matter how many different sources you are looking for in parish records, nothing is coming to light.
It can be made more difficult when there is already some faulty research in existence, along with Chinese Whispers of family or local oral tradition.
I'm in the middle of trying to cut through a fog of myths about a distant relative, who, long ago, committed a terrible crime. Lots of sources exist about him, and the events surrounding the case... But what is true and what is not?
That he committed the crime is not in doubt. It is confusing about how he received folklore status and was thought to be a victim, as the brutal way he killed his wife of only a few weeks shouldn't award him that accolade.
The parish records of the time have his birth, marriage and death, but don't show a brother being born to the same parents as him, instead, a first cousin with all the correct details. Unlikely that the record transcriptions would be that wrong. That set my mind on a tangent, and I wondered if fostering was as common in the lower classes at the time. As a foster brother may well be referred to as a 'brother'.
He is also said to have had an illegitimate child, but this isn't recorded either in the parish records and they are full of other examples, so it would have been entered.
It is possible that I will never untangle the history behind the mystery, but it is fun (even if frustrating) to try.
Have you ever started a chain of events in motion that could either be wonderful, or on the other hand, like being immobilised and made to watch a car crash you'd orchestrated yourself?
That is how I feel today, having sent a DNA sample off for autosomal testing. My journey to find my ancestors has been fraught with obstacles since the beginning, and the people I have found in my family tree feel hard won already. I feel a connection to some of them, which strengthened as I've found details about their lives. And now I'm half dreading something on the test leading me in a different direction. All it takes is one infidelity and those names you have started to cherish on a branch of your family tree, may not be yours any more.
On the upside I could find a new connection to common relatives on a side of my tree that is a total unknown.
Strange and unsettling time. All I can do is hope the results are worth the worry.
