St Helena descendants

Alice Armstrong photographed on her wedding day, 18 July 1910, St Michael's Church, Observatory.

Born Alice Mary Harriet Weston on St Helena on 27 February 1885, she was the 2nd child of George Weston, a Corporal in the Royal Engineers, and Ann Maria Sim, born Bagley on the Island in 1859 and widowed in 1881. Ann Maria married George Weston in St John's Church, Jamestown, 8 August 1882.

Descendants of the Saints: St Helena Heritage

Many St Helenians came to the Cape shortly after the abolition of the slave trade in 1832 because there was a shortage of labour in the Colony. 

Between 1873 and 1884 the Cape government shipped 22 232 St Helenian immigrants to the colony. The  Emigrants Advice Office was established in London in 1887, through which financial support was provided by the government to employers of artisans and domestic labour. The newcomers from St Helena moved into relatively empty areas east of the city such as District Six and Woodstock. These became overcrowded before the turn of the 19th c.

St Helenians integrated with various South African communities - European, African, Malay, Khoi, Chinese - and the local freed slaves, as well as slaves who had been liberated by the British Western African Squadron from slaving vessels which were still trading illegally after the abolition of slavery.

The South African St Helenian Heritage Association was founded by Merle Martin. The Association's mission is to promote awareness, preserve and protect St Helena Island Heritage in South Africa. Merle is compiling a list of descendants whose ancestral lineage can be traced back to St Helena Island:

'My aim is to get people to come and tell us their stories. I was always interested in searching my family tree. I've heard so many people say they have ancestors from the island. My paternal grandmother was from the island. Our motto is: We do know our roots.'

Merle mentions: 'My research has shown that St Helenians arrived in the Cape from 1795 until 1949 when SA barred St Helenians from entering. Also, note that that the total of 22 232 immigrants stated above would have included mostly temporary residents of St Helena who were freed off slaving vessels.'

Anyone wishing to know more or to share information is welcome to contact Ms Martin by email:
saint.helena.island@gmail.com or phone 021 7018422
 
Read descendants' stories at
Rediscovering St Helena: a Gathering of Saints in Cape Town   www.archivalplatform.org/blog/entry/rediscovering_st/    
 

Alice Armstrong with her eldest son Jack  aged about 2 or 3 and her mother Ann Maria.
The person on the right is not identified.

Pruning the Family Tree

Did you know that implexion is the term for the ‘pruning’ of a family tree in earlier generations? Coined by  Cecil Humphery-Smith OBE over fifty years ago, to describe why we do not have more ancestors than the world’s population at that time, it simply means that an individual can appear in more than one position in the tree.

Robert C. Gunderson also called it ‘Pedigree Collapse’. In twenty generations, an individual would have 220 ancestors, but the more generations back, the less likely it is that there were enough people alive - unless some of them were the same. Instead of a binary tree, the result of pedigree collapse is a directed acyclic graph. Many genealogists find cousin marriages in their trees, often to such a distance that the couple themselves did not know they were related, yet it reduces the number of ancestors in the tally.

The effect can be particularly strong in isolated communities such as islands, persecuted communities, and within royal families. Indeed, some members of royal families, such as Alfonso XII and Charles II of Spain, have been shockingly inbred, to the extent that Charles II was likely to have had more copies of the same genes from each parent than if they had been brother and sister. That resulted in genetic disorders because there was no ‘good’ copy of a gene to counteract the ‘bad’ copy. For the rest of us, of course, pedigree collapse is a natural phenomenon that has no harmful effect- beyond depriving us of the occasional branch to hunt.

[Extract from IHGS Newsletter July 2011]

Queen Victoria's family tree


Queen Victoria, who married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was the last British monarch of the German House of Hanover. Her son, King Edward VII, belonged to the same line as his father. Victoria was also the grandmother of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Hence, she is the great great grandmother of both Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II.

       WINDSOR FAMILY TREE :  http://www.royal.gov.uk/pdf/Windsor%20family%20tree.pdf

Accuracy in Family History Research

A quote from the Society of Genealogists Exhibition catalogue of 1937:

It is of importance that individuals should be encouraged to study the history of their own families: not in the boastful and snobbish spirit which produced such a spate of false pedigrees in the nineteenth century, but on the scientific lines of modern genealogical research which demands proof of every statement and the recording of every fact, whether pleasant or unpleasant, for whatever view may be held on the merits of such research, all will agree that unless it be conducted with accuracy it is entirely futile.

Grimaldi of the Natal Police

When a collector acquired two campaign medals awarded to S Grimaldi of the Natal Police, it was the beginning of an absorbing search for information on a man who had blood ties with numerous aristocratic families of Europe - yet was at one stage of his career a Collector of Dog Tax in South Africa.

The medals were a Queen's South Africa medal for service during the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902, and a Natal Rebellion 1906 medal, both named to S Grimaldi, Natal Police. The collector takes up the narrative: 
 
Part of the fun of phaleristics is researching the recipient of the medals collected and discovering something of their life story ... I wanted to find out as much as possible about Sergeant Grimaldi. The World Wide Web and search engines became my initial source. Searching on GRIMALDI produced a host of links to Italy, Monaco, actors, clowns and other famous people.
 
Searches on NAAIRS, the South African National Archives online index, brought up seven references to the surname. A South African researcher was able to trace Grimaldi's career in the Natal Police through the enlistment and order books of this unit preserved in Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, as well as retrieving some reports written by the man himself.

At this stage I knew when and where Grimaldi was born and some details of his service and his appearance. Due to this information I believed him to be Australian and born in November 1867. However I wanted more details, such as did he marry, when and where did he die, did he have any children? So back to the web and now the fun really began, I went on a virtual tour from the Australian outback, to the English countryside via the South African veld, with the occasional detour to Monaco and Italy.

Using various surname and other sites, the following was established:

Stacey Grimaldi, born Swan, WA [Western Australia], 1867, two elder sisters also born in this area. His mother and father were English. These details came from the Church of the Latter Day Saints. I tried a further search using this utility against England and the UK. Further details were revealed, as this searched the 1881 census. I now knew Stacey and his family were back in England in 1881, his dad was a curate in Devon, Stacey himself at Probus School, Probus, Cornwall. Also there were four more siblings that I was certain of and possibly a further brother who was at Christ's Hospital School then in London before later removal to Lancing in Sussex.

Now I had some geographical data I searched the web for Probus, York and Guildford in WA, Greenwich, Pietermaritzburg and other places in the UK and SA. From these searches I obtained photographs of Probus School, the Police Station in PMB where Stacey had worked, maps of Western Australia and South Africa at the time he would have lived there. The 1881 Census return had proved productive so I tried the 1901 census ... This gave more details of the employment of Stacey's relatives. Further refined searching using both first and surnames produced some very exciting results. I was able to ascertain that Stacey's grandfather was also called Stacey (1790-1863) and was a genealogist and had published books on the subject. He also was a lawyer and has a room at the Law Society in London named in honour of him. Stacey's (1790) father was William Grimaldi, a miniature portrait painter and examples of his work are available on the web. A portrait of him by his daughter-in-law is hanging in the National Gallery, London. Both these Grimaldis are titled as Marquis and at one stage I thought my Natal Policeman might even have been the 11th Marquis, however I later discovered Stacey (1790) had two sons earlier than my Stacey's father, Henry. One interesting fact was that Stacey (1790) had given all 9 of his children (6 sons 3 daughters) Beaufort as their second name. I still do not know where this appellation has come from. There are no Beauforts in the family that I have discovered. I returned to web search engines and even more exciting was the lineage of my Policeman's grandmother Mary Anne KNAPP, whom it turned out was 21st in direct descent from Henry II: her lineage includes a plethora of European royalty.

Tracing William Grimaldi's family tree led to Alexander Grimaldi born 1659 in Genoa, died 1732 London. Other sources show this man as fleeing Genoa in 1684 for London. I had discovered a Genealogy forum and more information on the surname, including other descendants of Alexander in Australia and the USA as well as the UK.

FreeBMD, FreeCEN and other similar web facilities added further detail, as did Australian genealogy sites and sites for individual English counties:

I was able to confirm Henry Beaufort Grimaldi, Stacey's dad, had served as a curate at St. Giles in Sidbury, Devon. I visited my local central library and found Crockfords Clerical Directory, confirming details about Stacey's dad, an uncle and a brother all of whom were clergymen. The main finding in the library however was the microfiche listings of all BMDs in the UK from 1837. Scanning these I found my man had died in Paddington, London in the last quarter 1952. Armed with these details I was able to obtain a copy of his death certificate showing the date of death as 28/11/1952, cause of death and address. I have been unable to discover a marriage in the UK although I know his wife's name from research undertaken at Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository.

An exciting and rewarding journey in search of a Natal Policeman with a famous surname.


Extracts re Stacey Grimaldi by kind permission of Paul Summers.

Grimaldi Family

On 2 July 2011 Prince Albert II of Monaco, born 1958, marries his South African Princess-to-be, Charlene Wittstock, a former Olympic swimmer, during a two-day extravaganza.  Tens of thousands of tourists are expected to flood in to the wealthy enclave (it's the smallest state after the Vatican) to witness the ultimate prince and commoner wedding.

Somerset Maugham famously called Monaco a sunny place for shady people. Run by the Grimaldi family for over seven centuries, the principality is a tax haven: a recent report in the Guardian refers to its 360,000 registered bank accounts and population of 35 000 – the vast majority of whom are foreign expats, many of them British.

All this depends heavily on the stability of the House of Grimaldi, which has a history of tragic events including the death in 1982 of Grace Kelly, wife of Prince Albert's father, Prince Rainier. Perhaps Prince Albert's forthcoming wedding will be the start of a new golden age in Monaco. As with any dynasty, it's essential that a legitimate male heir is produced to continue the line. It's even more important in this case, for without a prince, Monaco would revert to France.*

For a fascinating account of the history of the principality and the rise of the Grimaldi family, including a tree of the princes of Grimaldi, see http://www.grimaldi.org/en/history/monaco.asp

*Prince Rainier changed the constitution before his death so that succession would pass to Princess Caroline and her heirs. The recent marriage of Prince Albert and Princess Charlene may bring a further change in due course.

Kissing Cousins

Cousin is a term bandied about with sublime disregard for precision. This is particularly the case among internet-using family historians: any distant relative who pops up out of the ether is immediately given the epithet 'cousin', no matter what the actual degree of relationship. Such assumptions can produce tricky situations.

A person's first cousin (or cousin german) is the child of an uncle or aunt. That seems fairly straightforward, except that to be accurate the 'uncle' and the 'aunt' must be the person's parent's brother or sister - not merely someone who has been called 'uncle' or 'aunt' yet isn't a blood relative. This presents a problem if you've grown up, as I did, being told to call a large number of adults 'uncle' or 'aunt', many of whom were simply close friends of my parents. Our neighbours - a childless couple who took an interest in me - were naturally 'uncle' and 'aunt', and remained so to me until their deaths by which time I was a married woman with children of my own.

 My paternal grandmother had a whole raft of sisters who should have been regarded as my 'great-aunts' (grand-aunt being the old-fashioned form) but who much preferred me to call them 'aunt'. A real aunt's husband may be called uncle, but he isn't a blood relative, just an 'in-law'. This is not always explained to the younger generation who can't be blamed for the resulting confusion.

Perhaps most people don't much care one way or the other, though these perceived relationships can plunge family historians into deep trouble. It's vital to know the distinction between a first cousin twice removed and a third cousin. The term twice removed indicates a difference of two generations - once removed a difference of one generation, and so on. Second cousins are the grandchildren of a person's grandparents' siblings. Er - yes, I think that's right.

The habit of calling people 'Cousin Helen' etc died out some time ago, which is probably just as well. During my childhood it simply wasn't the done thing for a schoolgirl to call her aunts and uncles by their first names. The current trend is for a child to call almost anyone by their first name - not excluding its own parent.

There are several charts available online to help with working out complex relationships while you're compiling the family tree, for example:

http://homepage.usask.ca/~ijm451/family/mcphedran/cousin.html

Hamilton of Stevenston, Ayrshire

Annie Hamilton nee Gibson b 17 Aug 1882 d 20 Sept 1951
Her parents: Anne Bell and Finlay Gibson.
Her husband: Joseph Hamilton, son of William and Elizabeth Hamilton
of Stevenston, Ayrshire.

'More than kin and less than kind ...'

Was it legal for a man to marry his deceased brother's widow (a situation frequently discovered when digging into ancestry)? Answer: under civil law in Britain, not until 1921 and this law was passed only after lengthy deliberations. If you want the finer fascinating details read Hansard:
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1850/mar/06/marriages-bill

The difficulty stems from moral and religious scruple: in the Old Testament Leviticus xx 21 reads, If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an impurity ... with the accompanying threat that such a couple would remain childless. We might argue that the statement refers to taking the brother's wife while the brother was still living, another far from unusual finding in family history research. Yet the accepted interpretation of the biblical rule has been that marriage between a widow and her brother-in-law is forbidden.

Marriage between a man and his deceased wife's sister was another prohibition, lifted (as far as civil law in Britain was concerned) in 1907.

The Table of Kindred and Affinity included at the front of prayer books set out precisely which of your relatives you were allowed to marry. Kindred referred to blood relatives. Affinity meant relationship by marriage: the basis for this was that a so-called in-law became kin because the bride and groom would henceforth be regarded as of one flesh.

This explains the above taboos.

Nowadays it seems possible to marry just about anyone other than your parent, sibling or child.

Chinese Whispers

Family stories, like the old parlour game Chinese Whispers, do not pass through the generations and emerge unscathed: they are usually embellished, or assumptions are made which have little or no basis in fact. Certainly, in some cases there might be a kernel of truth lurking behind the inherited version and such stories should be explored rather than ignored or simply accepted as gospel.

The incentive for numerous people to begin researching their family tree is that they've heard they descend from a famous - or infamous - historical personage. Frequently the foundation is simply a shared surname - Nelson, for example. The truth is that Nelson had no legitimate descendants, his line being continued through his illegitimate daughter, Horatia. There are descendants through collateral lines.

While on the subject of Nelson, it has become a joke in genealogical circles that if all the ancestors believed by descendants to have served on the flagship Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar had TRULY been on board, the ship would have sunk and history might have been written very differently.



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