Family: Visiting the Past

Our fourth day in England saw us on the road to the Cambridge area. It was a baptism by fire for Larry as far as driving. He'd been doing well on the smaller roads we'd traveled so far but now we were taking the major highways.

We got totally flummoxed at Oxford. The roundabouts were plentiful and frequent, the traffic fast-moving, and the signs still unfamiliar and confusing. Being lost is okay if you're seeing interesting things and I know there is plenty to see in Oxford, but we didn't see any of it, just industrial buildings and the like. However, like Bristol, the vortex finally spun us out in the right direction. At this point we were still navigating by map, with no GPS. In the end we made our destination about 2 hours behind schedule, partly because of rain, wrong turns, mostly because of slow, slow traffic. There had been a lot of rain in some areas and even some minor flooding, and with the heavy traffic it was a recipe for accidents and slowdowns.

So we were right glad to find our hotel, the Black Bull in Godmanchester, our base for the next two days. We got our bags in, then we were off again to Sawtry to see family.

The drive was totally worth it when we saw Aunt Grace and our cousins Robert and Julie at the door. Aunt Grace is my mother's sister and she is 95 now, a woman who was a teen during World War II and married a British airman. Cousin Julie is recording stories from her these days and her memory, sharp as a tack, is full of details we would never know without her. A true treasure.

Aunt Grace Swindells

My cousin and gardener extraordinaire, Robert, whose life story could be a book.

We had tea and a short visit, then Julie took us off to Caldecote to visit our cousin Philip's widow Hazel. More tea, some delicious cakes and mince tarts, lots of hugs and conversation, and then we went on to visit the grave of our grandfather, Ernest Thomas Hagger. I wrote a bit of his story in a recent post which you can read here. I cannot explain the connection I feel to this grandfather I never met, but it does me great good to visit his grave and think about this gentle, good man who died far too young.

Such beautiful, tranquil countryside. You would never know that the traffic to get here was backed up for miles, but Julie knew back ways so we avoided almost all of it. She made sure to point out this road name. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Afterwards we went back to Grace's for a fine supper of fish and chips. Truly no one can make them like the English! Grace had served the tea earlier, and now served and cleared up dinner, refusing any assistance. She is an amazing woman--still living on her own and doing most things for herself. We had a good visit with Grace and Robert before finally saying good night and heading back to our hotel. We stopped in the pub for a Guinness for Larry and met some interesting people from Birmingham, ending the evening much later than we expected but very contented and ready for sleep.

The Black Bull, like most inns in England, reputedly has ghosts, but once again our tired bodies slept soundly, undisturbed by any wandering spirits. The next morning we we up early for a breakfast with a young cousin I'd not yet met, and her son and fiance'.  We walked to a nearby restaurant (our hotel served only continental breakfasts and only for guests) for a full English breakfast. It was such a delight to get to know Jenny, and her little son was such fun, very bright and entertaining, but also very polite.

Jenny, me and her son

Back at the hotel, cousin Julie collected us to go off for tea with another cousin, Shane, and his family. Julie's beautiful daughter Christine, was also there. We went to the most amazing garden center. I could have filled suitcases with Christmas ornaments of the most beautiful kind, but I behaved myself. I'd been Facebook friends with Shane's wife JoJo so we knew each other a little bit from that, but it was the first time I'd met my cousin and his family in person. Three energetic children were such a hoot! Very busy, they were, while we visited and talked a blue streak.

Me, Christine and Julie

Shane, JoJo, Larry and me

Julie dropped us at our hotel where we said goodbye to this sweet cousin, and we took off for a quick walk down the street. Godmanchester is full of charming buildings.

But we'd not got far before yet another cousin tooted his horn! This was Les, whom we had stayed with on our last visit to England, and we were off to spend the rest of the day with him, cousin John (who writes By Stargoose and Hanglands blog), and their mother, my Aunt Flo, who was married to my mother's brother, Uncle Ted.

What a time we had! A fantastic lunch with Les (and by this time I was SO full!) of Bubble and Squeak for me and more fish and chips for Larry, Then tea with Aunt Flo, a good walk with John and Les around beautiful Grantchester, more tea (this time with cakes, sandwiches and incredibly sweet tomatoes raised by John).

Me, John and Les with Aunt Flo.

Then an evening in Les' "local", the Green Man pub and visiting with a few of his friends, and finally back to the Black Bull for some solid sleep.

Because Sunday, we would be off to Wales...

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Ghosts of Our Past: The Surprises of Family History

This is Antietam Creek. The photo is from a post I wrote in 2013 about a storytelling trip to several places, including the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. We stopped  briefly to visit a few sites on the Antietam Civil War battlefield which was not too far away in Maryland. At the time it was just an interesting historical location, although the description of this creek running red with blood during the battle chilled my own blood. It was horrible to imagine. I wanted to stay and wander here, to think about the men and the lives lost, but we had places we needed to be so we drove on.

Battle for Antietam bridge, from Wikipedia

Then this summer I learned from my sister Judy, who has been hard at work on our family genealogy and history, that one of our ancestors died at Antietam, and that his blood, along with that of hundreds of other soldiers, ran down this creek when he was killed at the terrible fight at the bridge. Until she found the records in her searches, I had no idea that we had a family connection to this place.

The bridge today is calm and peaceful, yet stories abound of ghosts and hauntings there. It's not hard to understand why. Here is one tale of events at the bridge, from the website Military Ghosts:

"Those who have spent time at the area known as Burnside Bridge on the battlefield, especially those park rangers and Civil War re-enactors who have been at the location after dark, say that there are strange things going on there as well. Historians and experts report that the fighting which took place here in 1862 left a number of fallen soldiers behind and many of them were hastily buried in unknown locations near the bridge. Could these restless souls be haunting the area? Visitors to the bridge at night have reported visions of blue balls of light moving about in the darkness and the sound of a phantom drum that beats out a cadence and then fades away."

The relation who lost his life is a distant one, the son of a great-great--great uncle, but he comes to life in letters that were preserved and posted on Ancestry.com. His allegiance is clear:

If you can read his writing, he congratulates his mother on getting married again :"Did not think that I was A goent to have another Dadey." It is heart-breaking to read this, and to know this young man never got to fulfill his own desire to be married.

Another surprise turned up by my sister in her research (thanking the stars for a sister who is like a terrier dog in digging up--and verifying--these records!) was that our great-great-grandfather Dominick Connelly was a prisoner at Andersonville prison in southern Georgia. (Dominick was a cousin of George Washington Connelly, the one who died at Antietam):

Dominick was one of the fortunate ones; he survived when almost 13,000 other prisoners there did not. Possibly the fact that Dominick had dysentery and was confined to hospital for much of that time actually saved his life.

Dominick was young when he enlisted, about 16; he got sick and was sent home, re-enlisted and was captured and sent to Andersonville, where he was one of a prisoner exchange just before the war ended. He was a musician--a drummer, according to the records--so why on earth he was worth capturing is beyond me.

One hundred and fifty years later my sister Theresa and I found his grave at Arlington National Cemetery. (You can read about our trip here.) 

Another story pulled together from photos, documents and memories has been developed by my cousin Julie in England. We knew our English grandfather was killed when he was hit by a car in 1930, but beyond that we knew little about him. Then another English cousin sent me a copy of a poem that he believed my grandfather, Ernest Thomas Hagger had written when he traveled to Canada as a young man.

Wait. My grandfather went to Canada? Why? When? What for? Questions piled up; I went back to my old photos and posted one of Ernest on our family Facebook page.

Ernest Thomas Hagger, date unknown

That started a flood of information as cousin Julie shared what she knew and asked her mother, my 96-year-old Aunt Grace, what she remembered of her father. Bits and pieces came together into a story of adventure, a young man seeking his fortune in the frontier of northwestern Canada--and also a tale of young love, as he gave up his dream to return to England because his betrothed (my Granny) was not allowed to join him in the Canadian wilderness. We learned much about Ernest (or Thomas as I have always thought of him), of his practical planning, his care for his family, his advancement from farm laborer to farm manager, his foresight in buying a life insurance policy at a young age. He came to life, fully three-dimensional, this man we never had the chance to meet.

I am glad that I got to visit his grave when I was in England in 2013; a circle, in a way, completed.

When I was younger I never thought much about our family history. I never thought that we might have had relatives in the Civil War; I never realized that my great-great-great-grandparents lived at 3254 O Street NW in Georgetown, Washington DC, and that they must have been in an uproar when Booth shot Lincoln at Ford's Theater on 10th Street NW, just a few short miles away. Just like the story of my granny in England and her first husband, these old family stories would have been lost had not people like my sister Judy and my cousin Julie got interested and began asking questions, searching records and looking for documents and related history.

If you've been wondering about your family, start looking now, especially if you have older relatives who might remember names and places, or have old letters and photos that will help you in your search. We almost left it too late, and so much would have been lost.