For the Record - Put It Straight

 One glorious summer afternoon, a few years ago, my husband and I were on my ancestry trail in Manchester's Southern Cemetery. I had done some groundwork online and had a print-out map of the burial grounds with my family members plot details marking locations.

There can be lots to learn from headstone inscriptions, things not recorded elsewhere. I took time to make notes, take photographs and have a silent word with my dear departed ones. There are some interesting folk in my bloodline and this cemetery has four if not five generations of my paternal line. How handy for me that they are all in the same place. It makes adding branches to the family tree so much easier. All was going well until I couldn't find my four-greats grandfather, Benjamin. The number for his resting place was a multiple burial pauper's grave with a list of names which didn't include him. This couldn't be it. From my genealogy discoveries, I knew Benjamin to be a successful,  wealthy man with no suggestion of hard times at the end of his life. It looked like the end of my journey - until we realised that the cemetery records office was still open. I went to ask for help.

If ever I had a lucky day, this was it. Someone checked online and got the same information I had, which was clearly wrong. Within minutes, I was sitting at a desk with a huge register in front of me, in awe of the beautifully hand-written burial records in magnificent copperplate. With Benjamin's full name, date of birth, date of death and interment, I found his grave number straight away. Online details end with an E, in the register with a K. I could see what must have happened when the details were transferred to digital. The style of writing had a flourish on the capital K which could easily be mistaken for an E. I mentioned my possible discovery to a staff member.

With the revised details, I found Benjamin's resting place, complete with a headstone befitting the gentleman I considered him to be. I went back to thank the office staff and tell them my findings. They thanked me - had I not queried Benjamin's grave, the error might never have come to light.

My poem:

I'm really having fun in here,
Line after line it seems quite clear,
Data input made a mistake.
Let's put it right for all our sakes.

Please can we put the record straight?
It's all gone wrong on column eight
And what's been listed as an E
Is actu'lly a K, you see.

I wish I had all afternoon,
Sadly, I have to go home soon,
But now you know what has gone wrong,
You can put Ks where they belong.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, keep safe, Pam x

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Answers - Who Am I?

Over the last few evenings I’ve been searching my ancestry for possible answers. I was able to confirm to another family member that the details he’d passed on to me of a young man killed in action during WW1 was one of us, but I couldn’t leave it there. My ancestors had massive families and there are many brothers and cousins likely to have been involved in the conflict.  It is on-going and taking me in many directions, enough to give me a headache and a fear of forgetting what my hand-written notes mean. And, to keep me on my toes, eldest sons are often named after their father.

With the use of websites I started to research my family tree in 2004 when I was housebound, recovering from illness.  It gave me something to focus on and took me on a fascinating journey of discovery. I’ve learnt a lot about my background through the lives of past generations.  I wish such information could have been so readily available thirty-plus years ago when my father was alive.

Dad knew very little about his mother’s family. My Nanna Hetty was orphaned when she was a baby. I’m still unsure if she was formally adopted or just taken in by the people who raised her, it was 1896, but I have found details of her birth family and obtained marriage and death certificates for her parents. I have the answers my father always wanted.

Up to now I’ve been able to track my ancestry back to around 1810, some of which is backed up with birth, marriage and death certificates and information from census records. I know who they were, where they lived, what they did and how they died. If only I could find out what their personalities were like or what made them tick.

 

I found this poem by Sandra Osborne:

Answers

How many souls
Have come and gone
Before me?

How many had
The same questions?
How many
Found the answers?

And if they found them,
Then why does my soul
Long for the reasons
For their deaths,
For their lives,
The reasons for mine.

And if I should find them,
Will I have the wisdom
To know them as answers,
Or will I lack the understanding,
And see them as questions.

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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Future

FUTURE
noun
a period of time following the moment of speaking or writing; time regarded as still to come.
"we plan on getting married in the near future"

adjective
at a later time; going or likely to happen or exist.
"the needs of future generations"

What will happen to me?
What will happen to them?
Tell me ghost of Christmas present
what will happen to Tiny Tim?

Seconds becoming minutes
Minutes turn into hours
Days, months, years are all ahead
In this future of ours

Of things to come
Of intention we mean
Time yet to waste
We plan and plot and scheme 

But what future can we look forward to
Racing towards us fast
This world is set for self destruction
Unless we learn the lesson of the past

We can all live in the utopia
Built by our won fair hands
Start by living the life you want
Rather than the media’s out of tune band

But remember you cannot change everything
Residing under this sun
So sit up, straight back, start taking notice
The revolution stars in the mind of just one

REVOLUTION
noun
a forcible overthrow of a government, ideology or social order, in favour of a new system.
“I started to think differently, I had a revolution of my own mind.”

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