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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Delusions of Grandeur

It's surprising how many people 'dearly love a lord' and go to great lengths to find aristocratic or noble connections among their ancestry. And if such connections aren't found the seekers not infrequently resort to invention. This is rather an old-fashioned approach to family history: today most of us are happy tottering after our ag labs, mariners, chandlers and stonemasons.

Others prefer to trace descent from someone with a title, perhaps with a view to inheriting a dormant or extinct title, though that rarely happens. To be fair, there are some advantages in discovering descent from an aristocratic family, or from landed gentry. Usually there are established pedigrees which have been traced previously and which may have been published. e.g. Burke's Peerage. However, it's a mistake to rely exclusively on any published genealogy: it may contain inherent inaccuracies and omissions. Even if your ancestor merely worked for the gentry who owned the land, manorial records could be helpful in finding out more about him.

Common sense is all the family historian needs to steer a straight course: if your ancestors turn out to be illiterate fork grinders from Mangotsfield it's pointless sticking to it, buckle and thong, that they had a so-called 'family crest' or a title.

On that topic, contrary to all advertisements and similar temptations, there's no such thing as a coat of arms for a surname. Avoid these like the plague.

Pietermaritzburg Archives News

Word is that Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository will be back to normal by January 2012. This after a long phase of building refurbishment causing dislocation of regular activities and the removal of all archivalia to temporary storage facilities. The staff have been doing their best under trying circumstances. Everyone, staff and researchers alike, will welcome a speedy return to routine.

Passenger lists as a primary source in SA family history research

The above photo is of a passenger list taken from a handwritten register of arrivals at Port Natal in 1849 i.e. a record made at the time of the event and therefore considered to be primary evidence.
Even at normal size - zoom in for a closer look - the text is by no means easy to read.

Family historians in search of an ancestor's arrival in South Africa clamour for passenger lists. To find an original list mentioning an immigrant ancestor written in a register at the port of arrival is a rare and precious thing. There has been no concerted national effort to index the registers which have survived. In Natal it's fortunate that the European Immigration Registers have been preserved, though they are not all-inclusive. There is also an index (not online) to these arrivals covering from about the mid 1840s to the turn of the century. 

If you're lucky enough to discover in the original register an entry which seems likely to refer to your ancestor, and if you are able to read the handwriting, you should acquire some interesting facts.

From left to right (as seen in the typical example above) the columns of the register show: month, day, name of ship, type of ship, name of master, tonnage of vessel, port of departure, date of departure (that is from the port of embarkation, London in this instance). The passengers' names are written across the width of all these columns (no nice tidy alphabetical lists, if that's what you expected) and continued over the central binding, which has separated slightly (be aware of that when matching up lines of text). Generally, though, the condition of the register is good for its age - over 150 years. Careful handling of these volumes is important.

The arrival date of the barque Washington is given here as 18 July: in fact the vessel reached Natal on 17 July so why does the register offer the following day? The answer is that like many other ships of that era, the Washington had had to wait in the 'roads' (roadstead or outer anchorage) before suitable conditions of wind and tide made it possible to cross the Bar (the sandbank at the entrance to the harbour) and enter the Bay. When compiling our family narrative, which day should feature in an account of the ancestor's arrival at the port? The detail concerning tonnage of the ship often varies from source to source - if you care about getting it right.

In these early volumes (and the 1840s are early for Natal) no personal information such as occupation or age is given for the passengers. This would be one good reason to check newspaper reports at that time for any published versions of a passenger list and to do a comparative exercise.

There could be several versions of a passenger list particularly if the ship was carrying a large group of immigrants as part of a private or government scheme. Mistakes could arise prior to embarkation: passengers might get cold feet at the last minute and decide not to emigrate after all, family members might fall ill, perhaps die. Such names might not be removed from the passenger list - i.e. the list carried on board - before the ship sailed. When the vessel arrived at its destination, the Port Captain would draw up a list of the passengers who landed. The immigration agent would have his own list. By the time the reported list appeared in the press there were likely to be several discrepancies - incorrect initials, misspelled surnames, omissions.

A local newspaper published the passenger list of the Washington twice, because of errors in names shown in the first printing. Yet the first list offered occupations of the immigrants, a useful detail omitted in the second printing and not appearing in the handwritten register's version. Probably the occupations were included in the immigration agent's list made available to the press.

The Washington, because it was one of the Byrne settler ships, is well-documented in other published sources. John Clark's book, Natal Settler Agent, gives detailed lists of all the Byrne passengers and the ships which brought them to Natal. His sources included private correspondence and other documents of Moreland, Byrne's agent. So, if your ancestor travelled on the Washington it's probably not essential to access the original handwritten passenger register: but it is rewarding on some deeper level to see the ancestor's name as recorded at the point of arrival in the country of destination.

For further information on tracing ancestors through passenger lists, use the search facility on this blog or browse the archived posts using the menu at right.

The Natal Witness 18 July 1849: 2nd version of
Washington passenger list.

Update 2012: the eGGSA Passenger List Project is a work in progress and can be accessed at 

http://www.eggsa.org/arrivals/eGGSA%20Passenger%20Project.html

Do descendants really want the truth?

Most family historians would claim that accuracy is high on their list of priorities. Certainly, if at all serious about our topic, we spend time, energy and money in pursuit of BMD, Census and other records, seeking ancestry. Yet after years of pursuing my own as well as other people's ancestors it has become clear to me that not everyone is addicted to the truth. Far from it.

There are thousands of people who really prefer their version of the family history; who are happy to retain the myths and legends handed down from generation to generation and who aren't at all grateful to anyone who discovers that these stories not only have no basis in fact, but give an entirely false impression of the past. 

When offered the truth as confirmed by concrete proof, these descendants are disbelieving, their usual question being a suspicious 'how do you know all this?'.

Frequently, the new evidence is ignored in favour of the anecdotal model which like an old pair of shoes is well-worn and comfortable to slip into. Truth has hard edges. But if we are to expunge its grim realities from the family narrative our descendants might as well read the phonebook.

And how can carefully-conducted research hope to compete with 'what the psychic told my mother about our family history...' ?

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Archival Documents: is their information accurate?

Primary sources - documents or other items created within the same date parameters as the events to which they pertain - are usually of greater value than secondary evidence. The difficulty is that primary evidence has to be interpreted by the historian. These records were made for a particular, generally an official, purpose which had nothing to do with the future pursuit of genealogy or any other academic study. Because of their nature such records require careful attention on the part of the researcher.

There are pitfalls. Some records held at archive repositories may not fall into the category of primary evidence. A proportion of archived material consists of accessions i.e. transcripts, letters, photographs and other items acquired from/donated by family historians or people with an interest in local history etc. These accessions are a different kettle of fish from public records generated for 'official' reasons or for legal purposes. However, even the information contained in the latter documents may not always be strictly reliable.

In the South African context a deceased estate file could be one of the most useful finds for a family historian, and certainly these file types are well worth accessing. Most people view only the Death Notice, which is a great pity because anything worth doing is worth doing properly: all the contents of an estate file should be seen. It's surprising how many helpful clues emerge.

But it is accepted that a Death Notice may contain errors as well as omissions. This is because the details were provided by an informant who may or may not have been the deceased's next-of-kin. Sometimes the informant was a boarding-house or hotel-keeper with no intimate knowledge of the deceased. During the Anglo-Boer War, two Death Notices for the same individual might be compiled: one by the Adjutant of the army or hospital camp where the death occurred and another more informative version issued later. Even the next-of-kin might have had only a sketchy idea of certain facts about the deceased: in the colonies, a spouse could well not remember her husband's English parents' names or even his precise place of birth. There are occasional instances of deliberate disinformation, though not easy to detect a couple of generations later.

Among archived Bell family papers is a letter written by George Cato, a prominent Durban citizen, shortly after the death of  Captain William Bell. If I had relied on the information given in that letter concerning Bell's children, several errors would have been perpetuated on my family tree. This despite the fact that George and William were close friends for about forty years. When Bell as master of the schooner Conch was trading during the 1830s in coastal waters between the Cape and Natal, he and George Cato were associated with the agent John Owen Smith of Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth).



William Bell and the Conch mentioned in the South African Commercial Advertiser, April 1837.
Note that as usual steerage passengers are not named.



Check that Memorial Inscription

Even when carved in stone, family information may be suspect. It's worth checking MI dates and names against primary sources.

After establishing William Bell's place of origin I visited the parish of Bowness-on-Solway and found St Michael's Church where Bell had been baptised and where various other Bell events had taken place. I'd heard there was a memorial stone in the churchyard of St Michael's, commemorating members of the Bell family. I searched for and eventually found this stone, in a reasonable state of preservation. The inscription read as follows:

Erected to the Memory of Elizabeth Bell of Drumburgh who died Feb 27 1867 aged 82 years Thomas Bell, who died Decr 10th 1872, aged 88 years Also their son William who died at Port Natal South Africa, April 3rd 1869 Aged 63 years Also their son John who died at Port Carlisle Decr 17th 1880 aged 63 years Also Elizabeth Bell of Drumburgh Who died December 4th 1906 aged 81 years.’

Elizabeth and Thomas Bell were William Bell's parents. William is mentioned as having died at Port Natal - a useful detail to find in a memorial inscription - but the date of his death should be April 10 1869.

The existence of a brother named John, who apparently died at Port Carlisle in 1880, was news to me. So far the identity of the last-mentioned Elizabeth Bell of Drumburgh remains uncertain.

Finding the stone wasn't the end of the journey, though, as the details shown in the inscription had to be checked. Next stop was Cumbria Record Office, then in the Castle at Carlisle, where I discovered that Bowness parish records began in 1642. The number of Bell families in the area were legion and hours of research were needed to identify the 'right' Bells. It's probable that links between these families will emerge as the search continues.
 


St Michael's Church, Bowness-on-Solway. Bell memorial stone in foreground left.

The parish of Bowness stands on the Solway Firth at the western end of Hadrian's Wall: border country, with Carlisle inland to the east. St Michael's Church is about four miles from Drumburgh, where some Bell family members lived at various dates, and not far from Glasson, Easton and other hamlets associated with the family.

 

Be wary of Secondary Sources

The newspaper report mentioned in yesterday's post, relating the story of Captain Bell's supposed grant of land, is a typical example of secondary evidence. Appearing in the press about 60 years after Bell's death, it is based on the personal memories of one John Chalsty, who at the time of publication was a very old man.

Information of this sort, created long after the events described, cannot be relied upon. Even contemporary press reports - including such items as lists of passenger arrivals, accounts of shipwrecks, and obituaries - do not fall under the heading of primary evidence. Passenger lists given in newspapers were frequently based on third-hand transcriptions and usually contain inaccuracies. If the ancestor was high-profile enough to merit a published obituary (and many were not) it's likely to give a glowing version of his accomplishments which may make his descendant proud but glosses over any less worthy - and possibly more intriguing - aspects. In short, obituaries seldom 'tell it like it was'.

Family trees - in print or on the web - should be regarded with suspicion, as should published family histories, biographies and autobiographies.

Transcripts of original documents (or of copies of original documents) may include errors, no matter how careful the transcriber.

ANCESTOR & DESCENDANT

On the subject of errors, I find the terms 'ancestor' and 'descendant' are often used incorrectly. An ancestor is the person from whom one descends and strictly-speaking shouldn't be applied to past family members in general. A descendant is a person who has a proven descent from a particular ancestor. This seems obvious, but, for example, much as I'd like to claim relationship with Alexander Graham Bell (and perhaps that might be proved at some future date) I cannot refer to myself as his descendant. Terrick FitzHugh points out that someone could not be described as a descendant of the poet John Keats, who had no children and therefore has no descendants. A person descended from Keats's brother cannot refer to Keats as his ancestor nor to himself as a descendant of Keats.