Fairness in Life

You may wonder how this topic got on this blog. Well, it was deep lesson I learned and have still been learning through family history work. At the end of my first trip to England, Robert and I found ourselves back in London attending the Hyde Park Chapel ward once again. I showed up to church that day, and sorry to say it, was angry.  I was angry that here my best friend in the whole world was going home to get married and I, who was older, was still single. I cried in my heart during sacrament meeting "its not fair!!" It was then I received a very important answer. "Heidi, think of all the work you have done here in England. Think of all these people who have waited for so long. When they lived on the Earth, there was not even a chance for them to be married in the Temple. Would it be fair if you just took all those blessings for yourself and left them without when you have the time, resources, money, know how, and skill to come find them and do their work? Would that be fair?" Well, I had never looked at it that way before.  I had a long talk with Robert outside the hospital on Cromwell road late that night. Fairness is so incomprehensible to our finite minds sometime. A friend of mine recently told me of his oldest brother being adopted and how jealous the other children were of how his father gave him extra attention.  His father had said, "you who have always had a dad, think of it. He has never had one. It is fair."
I remember another night, perhaps a year later, as I sat in the chair on the stairwell at home, crying and curled in a ball. I was about 26 years old and having a pity partyasking the Lord why it was that I was still single. My mother used to listen to General Conference talks as she 'edited videos' that she recorded. She had left one on though she wasn't in the room. Just then, I heard President Faust's voice:

"We want you single sisters to know of our great love for you. You can be powerful instruments in the hands of God to help bring about this great work. You are valued and needed. Other women, even though married, may not be mothers. For those in either of these circumstances, please be assured that the Lord loves you and has not forgotten you. You can do something for another person that no one else ever born can do. You may be able to do something for another woman’s child that she may not be able to do herself. I believe some compensatory blessings will come in this life and in the hereafter to sisters in those circumstances. These blessings and a comforting peace will come to you if you can love God “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” You can still be highly successful in whatever you do as instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work."

It was from a talk entitled "Instruments in the Hands of God" given in October 2005.  I'd heard it just as I'd finished my prayer. I was so astonished by it, I came downstairs, rewound it, and listened to it again.  Compensatory blessings!! I was excited. And relieved. Life is fair.  God keeps his promises with all his children. Sometimes ours are held in reserve so that others promises will be fulfilled too.

Uncle Jerry's Class: Tools of the Trade

If you know Jerry, you know he is not one for saving the trees by using less paper. He's more of using the trees for saving the family trees by using A LOT of paper. We got a lot of handouts. They ranged from dictionaries of old English professions and words to Old handwriting samples, mostly wills,  we had to try to decipher. it can get tricky. He even gave us some British poetry and emphasized the need to understand the culture. One day he was so adamant about knowing the religious background of the people and their faith that his hair, what little he had left, stood straight up and his eyes got very wide as he declared, "you can't do this! You can't ignore their faith!!!" We learned about records available.The book we used was Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Family History and Genealogy by Mark D. Herber. (You can buy it on Amazon for $4).  Government records, or civil registration, is available after 1837 thanks to Queen Victoria. Certificates are expensive but can give great solid names of parents, dates and other clues.  The Church records are incredible. The local congregation was called the Parish. Parish Registers start at different dates, depending on the parish and usually come in Baptisms, Burials, and Marriages. Bishops Transcripts were made when the bishop, over many parishes, came around recorded what was in the Parish Registers, PRs. They sometimes have info that is not in the PRs that we have.  Wills (aka probate), Indexes like Boyds marriage index, and even newspapers are great tools.  Census started in 1841 and progressively became more detailed giving the place of birth, a great clue for linking families when struggling to figure out where someone's parent came from. All of these providing clues as to who these people are and how they are related. The goal was  to use these sources to find families, marry, bury the children, find their children, and marry and bury them. It was like being a detective really and piecing together the clues of the puzzle!

Jerry gave us the recipe for a good tombstone kit. A proper tombstone kit includes:

-A Camera, So much easier than writing every inscription down
-Paper and pen for when you need to write it down. Also good for making maps to show the proximity of graves to each other. 
-Chalk for putting on the graves so to better see the inscriptions (Me and my sisters love this part as we would 'chalk' people's driveways at home to show the love. Here we now chalk people's graves, same basic reason.We just leave the chalk on the graves to be cleaned off by the rain. Yes, the colorful sidewalk kind is my favorite and works great!
-Tracing paper and lead for when you want to trace an inscription. (I only used this once)
-Sturdy shoes for kicking mud and walking around. Stinging nettle is common and so are lots of bugs.
-Some type of shovel or plant clipper would be nice in yards where the plants get unruly.  

 One of the greatest things I learned from Jerry was his method of linkage. When you don't know for sure if a person is the one you are searching for or not, try these for determining your people.  He once said that accountants don't always make good genealogists (that doesn't mean they shouldn't try) because things just don't always add up.  Records are incomplete, sometimes dates are wrong. He gave us five  points of linkage:
1. Name: of course last name is always a helpful clue someone is from the same family. But beyond that, often first names were passed down through the generations, something definitely to pay attention to, especially if the first name is more rare and is the same as your ancestor, then its probably a relative.  Also important, if there are two children in the same family with the same first name, check the burials. The first probably died and so they gave the next child his/her name.
2. Location: It is less likely that someone from far away is the John Smith you are looking for when there is another one from the next parish over. Those Parishes are often only a few miles apart, in walking distance. People did move but it was less likely. At the same time, if you are looking for Mr. John Routh of Cowick, don't mix his kids up with Mr. John Routh of Pollington although they are listed in the same Parish. The little details are important.
3. Occupation: Often, if you were a farmer so were your children. England is big on class status too. So if you find a gentleman you think is your ancestor but the child who you think is the gentleman's and is in your line happens to be a farmer, its stretching it too far.
4. Age: If your ancestors were married in a particular year, look for their christenings about 25 years back for the men and 21 years back for the women. Sometimes children were born illegitimate so going back five years before a marriage and looking for a child christened under the mothers maiden name is a good idea.  Not a hard and fast rule, but not rocket science either. Children take nine months to get here.
5.Date: Similar to Age. Make sure that you aren't linking ancestors in who were born way before marriages or after deaths.

 The number one most fascinating part of genealogy is the stories of your experiences and those you piece together from the tools. The one's Jerry shared were classic! Here's a few samples:


One ancestor on my mother's side was a professional shoplifter in London. She would go into expensive ladies shops dressed expensively so as not to be noticed.  Her husband drove a lackey (kind of like a taxi back in the day carriage). Can you see it now? She would steal the clothes and he was the getaway vehicle.

One time Jerry came across a church yard that was so neglected and overgrown one couldn't even find the entrance. He had to climb up over the bushy fence (sort of a secret garden story!!) While he was in there looking at a grave he took a step back and fell into an open crypt.  He was able to get out. He said, "can you imagine? If they found me there? The newspapers would say: prehistoric man wears plaid shirt!" Well, the best was climbing back over the wall he looked down and saw a very frightened little boy looking back at him on his bicycle. Now that boy has a story to tell.  
  

The signficance of this picture on the blog has many facets.One, its a tree and genealogy is all about family trees, finding who comes from which branch. Secondly, its a tree with branches on one side only, meaning the other is 'lost' for the finding.  Thirdly, I took this picture myself in Sunk Island, Yorkshire, England. Its on the edge of the old parish church property where some of my ancestors worshiped. Chances are, this tree saw them around too.

In the beginning...

It was the summer of 2003. Trying to pick classes for the Fall was tricky. A recently returned LDS missionary and a majorless Junior at BYU I went to the source of where many a good thing in my life started, my mother. Her Advice? "Your Uncle teaches family history at BYU. It would be a shame for you to graduate from there never having taken his class." And that's how it began.  Gerald Haslam, my mother's brother, had been teaching at BYU in the history department for years. The class was England Family History from 1700-present and was an upper division class at that. I'd not taken a single prerequisite. That didn't matter.  Never would a class be more custom fit to a student than this felt to me. Almost all of the examples in class were from Uncle Jerry's research on my mothers line. The class was small, about 13 students, and they all knew I was his niece.  It was a good thing to as no one can laugh at family like family and I spent a great deal of time in that class rolling at my Uncle's wit. The other students joined in after I would start the giggles. I never left that class without feeling higher than if I had just walked off the coolest rollercoaster in the world. 
For my semester research project, easy enough, I went to my Uncle to ask where on our lines I should look.  And that was my first introduction to Henry Flower. Henry was a Cordwainer, aka shoemaker, who lived in Crowle, Lincoln, England. For those of you who don't know where that is, no worries. Neither did I. Its in North Western England. He married a woman named Sarah, had children and died the same year as some of them in 1775. He was from my father's side.  My task? Find Henry's marriage record so that I could know Sarah's maiden name.  Sounds easy enough right? Well, I spent many an hour in Salt Lake City in front of Microfilms searching for any Flowers I could find in the Crowle parish and surrounding vicinity. By the end of the semester, I had a great twenty page report typed up on the Flower Family, but alas  no marriage record.
I have a certain element of determination in my personality which can come as a great element of surprise to people and has gotten me many places.  This was one of those moments. Not to be a quitter where it counted, I came up with a plan. A very exciting plan that filled me so full of glee I can't describe it. Never having left the country, I was going to go to England and find Henry's marriage record. Here I should  also explaine, I have a very special relationship with my father. My mother and siblings will tell you I can ask anything of my dad, probably because I don't. Really though, I am daddy's little girl. Perhaps it is because when I was born, the doctor stepped aside and let my dad deliver me. I was the only child who also wore glasses like he did and had his sweaty hands. Perhaps it was all the extra time I spent with him horseback riding growing up. I don't know why.  But, when I asked him if he'd like to contribute to the genealogy fund that year by sending me, who had never left the country but that was not an issue, to England, he said yes.
This was the start of many a trip, many and adventure, and many a moment of heartache and delight. This blog is specifically written for my family and is  recounting of the many experiences that came about from my initial and continued search for Henry Flowers. May you come to know him and the many others as you read just like I have.