The Butcher, the Boxer and a friend of the King.

My half uncle, Tony Brown, sat in the Green Man in the sleepy Herefordshire village of Fownhope. He was looking at a picture on the wall set above bottles of …

A murder in the family.

Family history research occasionally uncovers surprises, some more welcome than others. I remember my mother telling me about a suicide of one of her uncles, her mothers brother. She said …

Tom Spring. Who?

Being involved in discovering your family history is rewarding and very often surprising. I have been working on the family history of my mother’s half brother, Tony Brown – they …

Genealogical research: Edna Packwood nee Harris of Birmingham B1920.

Edna Packwood nee Harris Timber Corps 1943

My late mother, Edna Barton (seen here on left in her Women’s Timber Corps Uniform). Her maiden name was  Harris (but was widowed previously so also known as Edna Packwood).

From her service record, I discovered:-

1. She joined the Women’s Land Army (WLA) in 1942.

2. She was transferred to the Women’s Timber Corps (WTC) 28.1.1943

3. She left shortly after her basic Timber Corps training 23.4.1943. Her training took place at the training camp in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

It has always been a mystery why she left and what she did afterward, that is before she met and married my father in late 1945.

Is there anybody out there who can throw any light on this matter in any way at all?

Any information on the Women’s Timber Corps in Bury St Edmunds would be great?

I must put this down…

“M’s” mother – Annie’s -Grave. Buried with her husband and some of his family.

I’ve been immersed of late in another search into the past. Sue’s aunt by marriage, “aunt M”, now 83, was adopted as a baby. All we knew was her mothers name and the fact that she had returned from Canada when aunt M was just 3 months old.

The ultimate, long stretch objective was to discover who aunt M’s father was. People in the family, particularly aunt M’s grandson, wanted to know where they came from.We started the search with just a name, Annie Martin, and a simple fact: ‘aunt M and her mother came back from Canada in 1930′ From that simple beginning we discovered a tale uncovering:-

• a family of miners and domestics from North Wales some of whom moved to Durham,
• relatives going back to the mid 1700’s,
• a millionaire umbrella manufacturer from Manchester,
• a 70+ man taking advantaged of his domestic servant and fathering 3 children with her, one of whom was aunt M’s mother,
• disappearing money  and property equivalent to over a Million pounds today,
• a peep behind the curtains of life in a Victorian seaside town,
• family emigration to Canada,
• the effects the great depression of the 30’s made on the family,
• a widow who did well for herself and her family in Toronto, Canada,
• the internal migration of a Cornish family to booming Manchester of the 1800’s,
• love and loss in Lancashire,
• aunt M’s mother marrying and having 2 children – aunt M’s half sisters,
• lifelong spinster and bachelor-hood in Lancashire,
• a brace or more of illegitimate children,
• adoption out of the family and inwards too,
• and finally, at the end of the line, bureaucratic difficulties surrounding aunt M’s mother’s grave .

We finally found aunt M’s mother, deceased of course but we also found aunt M had 2 half sisters both sadly dead. The last one, “J” , only passed away in November 2013. At the time she was looking into her family history too. It’s a tragedy we didn’t start this earlier.

Aunt M also had 2 uncles she knew nothing about. We revealed their lives in Canada and discovered one returning back in the UK and making a life in the Greater London area.

But best of all we discovered the best friend and end of life carer of aunt M’s half sister J. We travelled to the coast in Lancashire to meet her . We returned with a suitcase full of letters and pictures including some of aunt M’s mother. We also found aunt M’s mother’s grave.

Sadly we never found any sign of aunt M’s father; not even gossip. Perhaps we never will but the secret is out there in Canada somewhere. Maybe he will come to light.

We have a couple of research “hooks” dragging in the Canadian ancestry waters  hoping for a bite and we have a lead on a possible ‘living’ relative of one of aunt M’s newly discovered  uncles. So the search is not totally closed. It’s now more wait and see.

Update 9th Feb 2014.
We have now discovered a living cousin of aunt M. He lives alone in London. He has shone a light into the past showing stories of his dad, a jockey, riding horses and winning races in Canada, America and France. Stories of how a solicitor committed fraud against the family cheating them out of their inheritance and being jailed for it. And he has sent lots of pictures, some from Canada.

This research has been an adventure. One which has captivated, consumed even,  for over a month and one which must now be put down.

2 and 2 do not make 22.

A couple of years or so ago I had my DNA tested by a family history society group specialising in the Barton name.

It’s was carried out by an American organisation who specialise in doing this for any name group who band together to set up the process.

I leaned that I was loosely a quarter Irish (my paternal grandmothers family), a quarter Scots ( I think my maternal grandfather was of Scots origin) and the last half was shown to be English. There were of course smaller elements involved as the grouping went back thousands of years. Fascinating.

What I didn’t get was any “direct” relationship with the existing names on the Barton database. All of the families who had been tested up until then had no direct links with me.

A couple of years after testing I discovered a tentative connection with a Barton in the antipodes, Australia I think, who was not directly related but had some sign of a connection. We exchanged a few e-mails but couldn’t see any connection.

I opened my e-mail this rainy Sunday morning to find an e-mail from one Michael Barton ( I have a cousin called Michael who I have not heard from for 45 years. I thought it may be him) asking me about family history.

It wasn’t my cousin. It was a man whose e-mail address lead me to think he is in America. He tells me we are a direct match according to the same test I took.

Although the e-mail didn’t give much information – I hope to get more later – what it did say was his family had connections in Bristol.

A few weeks back I discovered one of my Barton’s, a John Barton, was born in the Bristol area in 1811. He moved to, married in and died in Birmingham. I suspect it is him.

However Sue keeps telling me I jump to conclusions. I am so keen to see connections that I make sweeping assumptions, 2 and 2 making 22 if you like. I know I am often wrong and am consequently crestfallen when my little construct is thrown in the “wastebasket of dreams” icon on the Mac.

So here we go again. There is however one large difference in this case. It’s not guesswork that we may or not be related. We ARE related. Science says so. We just have to figure out how.

Here’s to the chase. Should be fun.