SCRIVENER AND FAMILY HISTORY

I was rootling about on the web earlier conducting a bit of family history research - trying to find how many UK-based blogsites there were available compared to all the sites based in the US.

One of my searches pulled up a link to this video, a webinar by Lynn Palermo featured on The Armchair Genealogist, and I was soon pulled away from what I had been looking at.

I really love using Scrivener for all my writing - the blog posts and articles as well as the creative writing I produce - so this video was right up my street.

Take some time out and give it a whirl yourself, I'm sure you'll find it of interest too.

For other videos in this vein be sure to check out Lynn's excellent YouTube channel at the link here.

FAMILY HISTORY - SHE LOVED TO SING!

My Auntie Bet just loved to sing.

She had a decent singing voice which was sometimes compared with that of the film actress, Teresa Brewer, whose movies Betty grew to love.

When we would gather at a family party and the beers had been flowing for a little while, someone would always be heard to say ‘Come on Bet… give us a song!’, after which she would stand herself in the corner of the room and sing out one of her favourite tunes ‘acapella’, to rapturous applause.

But she never pursued this talent in any professional kind of way. As far as I know she only ever sang at private family functions, and the odd performance which would take place during a ‘talent night’ in a pub or club. So unlike Teresa Brewer, there is not much evidence of her singing prowess to be seen out there… until now.

The photograph above shows three 78rpm discs which I inherited from my Aunt after she died. I’d found them stored at the bottom of a drawer unit, wrapped loosely in brown paper and lying together, with only one of the discs being kept in a sleeve. As well as all three being covered by years of dust and grime, the surface of one had begun to disintegrate entirely, with black chips of acetate falling away to reveal the metal disc inside it. Indeed one side of the record had been splashed with white gloss paint at some point in its lifetime, so I’m afraid that this record is potentially too far gone to save. The others however, although slightly scratched, are not too badly damaged and play reasonably well. I have each of the discs now stored individually, wrapped in acid-free paper and plastic archival sleeves, and have begun the process of converting them to digital audio.

 https://soundcloud.com/graham-seaman-1/family-archive-my-love-elizabeth-welsh

The audio track above is the first of these, and as the disc showed the least damage of them all, the track has not required much audio restoration to get it to this point.

The song itself is called ‘You My Love’, and is a cover of an original song which had been featured in the 1954 film ‘Young At Heart’, starring Doris Day and Frank Sinatra. The record was recorded live in The Gaumont, Princes Park Liverpool, and features the cinema’s own mighty Wurlitzer organ which was used to accompany her during the song.

The method of recording the sound was both simple and ingenious at the same time.

These were the days just before tape recording equipment became less expensive and therefore popular with the general public, and recordings at that time were being made using discs covered with a thin film of a special lacquer. The engineer would bring the recording equipment out with him during such sessions, and set up perhaps one or two microphones to capture the sound from the different sources (in this case, my aunt’s voice and the cinema organ). The sound would be cut straight onto the disc as they both performed, the recording lathe cutting a groove into the surface of the acetate as the song progressed, and the records could then be taken home and played shortly afterwards.

Betty singing at a talent night at a holiday camp in Morecambe Bay.

Some years ago, before Betty died, I made an initial recording of the tracks and cut them to a CD for her to play at home. It had been done to try and lift her spirits as she had not been well. Her dementia had started to become a real problem for Betty in latter years, and we decided that if we could do anything which would stimulate her memory and perhaps slow down the onset of the disease, then we needed to do it. The quality of the tracks was not perfect, but this didn’t matter for it made her happy to listen to them – this was the first time she had heard the music for many decades. The CD therefore served its purpose and brought back the happy memories and lifted her – if only for a little while.

We played this track during her funeral service in 2011 and I know that it came as a surprise to a few of those people outside the family to hear it, as they had only known her as a frail and infirm woman rather than the fun-loving and vibrant Betty Welsh that we had all known.

So now I’m revisiting this part of my family history, taking each track and digitally cleaning it up using the software I have in my home studio. A few of the others might take a little longer, but i’ll publish them on Soundcloud and on my genealogy blog here as I complete them, along with the other audio archiving I’m currently working on.

Okay. It might be a little bit corny for me to say it, but I think I must.

‘Come on Teresa… move over… just a little bit… and make room for my Auntie Bet.’

FINDING HUGHSON STREET - UK 1911 Census Address Search

The photograph on the left-hand screen below shows my mother, brother and I standing on the step on my Gran and Grandad’s house at 25 Hughson Street, Toxteth, Liverpool. At a guess I’d say the photo had been taken at the end of the 1960’s. I’d spent the whole of my early life living in the house - a simple two-up, two-down dwelling; with a front parlour and a back kitchen, a yard and outside toilet to the rear. And then, when I was seven years of age, we moved up into the ‘leafy suburbs’… and my Mum and Dad’s first rented property of their own in Childwall.

Hughson Street - Census Search

The property in Hughson Street went back somewhat longer however. The rows of terraced properties had been built around the turn of the century, the small neat houses replacing the slum court dwellings which had been situated there previously. The houses had been rented out to tenants, and although I grew up primarily only knowing it as the home of my Gran and Grandad, I found out later that other families had lived at the address before we did.

The details of one of those families is featured in the right-hand side of the photograph.

For my online family history research I use Ancestry.co.uk when looking for information on the UK census records, and although there is no specific address search on the site one can still search for addresses by using the fields ‘Lived In Location’ and also ‘Keyword’. By just using this simple search criteria I found my record relatively easily by entering ‘Toxteth, Lancashire, England’ into the first field, and then the address itself into the second. Although my search did not immediately return the property I was looking for, it did however return one of the other houses in Hughson Street into the search results and I then used the ‘previous / next’ buttons to scroll through the pages to find the actual address I was looking for.

The census for 1911 shows that the residents in 25 Hughson Street were a 39 year-old widow, Elizabeth Flannigan, and her family. She had two daughters living with her in the property - Margaret aged 21, and Lelly Flannigan who was 18. All three of the women had been born in Liverpool.

However, on the night when the census had been taken there were four visitors to the property. Patrick Flannigan (aged 71) was a farmer from Greencastle, County Donegal in Ireland. This was also the birthplace of Edward Flannigan, a 32 year-old joiner, and John Drummond, a 43 year-old dock labourer. Finally there was yet another dock labourer, James Ennorby, who was also visiting and was listed as a widower. Of course, Patrick and Edward were most likely related to Elizabeth (perhaps they were her father and brother). The relationship of the other two men to their host is not known.

On speaking to my mother about her memories of the house during the 1930’s, she recalls that my Gran and Grandad were renting it from the landlord as far as she can remember, but my great-grandfather Peder Ingebretsen - a Norwegian merchant seaman - had also been living there up until he died in 1933. From that point on, the house stayed with our family right up to the 1970’s when the properties within the area had compulsory purchase orders finally served upon them, and the residents (in our case my Grandmother and Aunt) were moved out.

Ancestry - Address Search Criteria

Using the search capabilities of Ancestry in this way has been a most interesting exercise for me, and its been useful to look into the history of a property I can remember so well, and indeed at one time called home. But by ‘walking’ myself through the 1911 census pages in this way, I was also able to find names of other families who my Mother remembered as living in the area later on… such as Thomas and Phoebe Moss of number 21, and William and Annie Black of number 17. This brought her a lot of pleasure as she recounted her memories of what it was like to grow up within the area, and in particular relating to me what she remembered about their other neighbours who lived close by.

All I can say is that it only takes a few minutes to carry out a search such as this. If you have an old property which played a similar role in your own family history, I’d thoroughly recommend you try this method as well!

MIXING BUSINESS WITH FAMILY HISTORY

Combining a business trip with family history research - earlier today I took a visit to St. Mary's church in Haughley, Suffolk. My great-grandfather (x6) was buried here on 11 December 1785.

Robert Layte (born 1708) married his wife of German descent, Sarah, in 1732 and seems to have lived in the small village for the majority of his life as most of his children were born there.

By the time I reached the village after driving down from Liverpool the sun had gone down and I had to have a quick look around the small graveyard assisted by the torch on my phone. I knew the chances of finding a grave with the family name on it would almost certainly be nil, but I couldn't help but have a look for one before I decided to leave. I was wearing jeans and a dark fleece and I soon spotted a couple of the blinds across the road starting to twitch. I suddenly realised the appearance of strange lights seen floating around a graveyard might be the type of thing which the Suffolk constabulary might be called out to investigate, so I got back in the car and made a swift getaway!

I can just imagine the email message my boss would need to send tomorrow morning...

'Dear customer - Graham unfortunately won't be onsite with you today. He was thrown into a Suffolk lockup overnight and they've lost the key!'

Great... just great!

FAMILY HISTORY - CHARLES JOHN LAIT - COACHBUILDER

And another thing....!

Sitting at the desk in my hotel room, checking over various bits of research material I've gathered together, I had almost reached the point of deciding to head off to bed. But before I did I decided to make one final random search to finish off the night…

As the name of my Lait family was fresh in my mind I went for that one, typing just two words into the Yahoo search field of a new browser window - ‘Lait coachbuilder’. The search returned a few interesting references which I took a note of in my ‘things to do list’, but nothing I specifically recognised. In the browser there was the facility to search for images as well as text, and this I did next - amending the search string to read ‘Diss coachbuilder’. I watched in amusement for a few moments as the search returned a great many photographs of car bodies, carts, coaches and buses; all in various stages of disrepair - the majority looking as if they had all seen better days. I scrolled down the page and yawned, almost reaching the point where I needed to pack up the laptop for the night and get off to bed, when my eye spotted something on the page - a small image of an old postcard which had been for sale on eBay in 2012, a street scene… and one which I recognised well.

Mere Street, Diss postcard - 1880 approx.

The location was Mere Street, situated in the small Norfolk town of Diss. It was a photograph of a place I was familiar with, for I had walked ‘virtually’ down the street many times before while conducting my internet research, using Google street view. I had also physically walked there myself on one memorable occasion, taking a small diversion when on my way home from visiting a customer site in nearby Suffolk in my day-job role as an I.T. Consultant.

Cross - Diss, Norfolk.

I’d learned about the location only that same afternoon following a visit I’d made to the small museum in the town. The museum was open but deserted at the time, save for a solitary gentleman who was acting as custodian… sitting quietly by the door, greeting any visitors, and thanking them if they offered any voluntary donations. Diss is a town primarily involved in agricultural pursuits, and so I spent around ten minutes soaking myself in the atmosphere of the place, finding a varied collection of artifacts and memorabilia of a country township which had long since gone. A great many photographs adorned the walls. Old possessions and ephemera formerly belonging to the townsfolk lay beneath dusty glass cases on the tabletops, potentially untouched by humankind for many years. I wandered slowly around the single long room, hardly daring to hope that I would find anything recognisable which would actually connect me to the town, until I spotted two old town directories in the far corner of the room. 

Diss - town directory entries

I opened the books in turn, seeking out any references to any of my forbears, and then I found it - ‘Lait Charles, coach builder, Mere Street’. To say I was overjoyed and excited at finding this information would be an understatement, and my pleasure was further multiplied after the custodian told me that Mere Street was where the town museum was located, and I was actually standing in it!

I followed his directions and left him to explore the location he indicated at the far end of the road. There I found the Mere, a small lake which the street had been named after, and I was amazed to find that the original workshop buildings were still there even to this day. They had now been converted for use as a bookshop, but the former coach-building premises could clearly be seen. I photographed it from many angles, making sure that I took in as much of the surroundings as possible in order to locate it easily in the future. It is therefore not surprising perhaps that I recognised the site from the postcard, as it had become etched in my memory from just that one visit.

Mere Street, Diss - August 2010

Before I left to make my way home I called into the bookshop to see if they had anything on the local history of the town which would help me in my research into my Lait family. There was a book available which gave the history of the town, and I did indeed find another couple of references to my family within it.

Present day bookshop - site of coachbuilding premises (right)

If this example does nothing else, I think it proves the value of going with your instincts when running searches of this kind on the Web, and if the mood takes you then certainly don’t be afraid to make one more attempt before your head hits the the pillow - but don’t get carried away or you just might be still be there in the morning! 

LILIAN MIDWOOD ERLIS - The May Blitz

Right in the middle of one of the most intensive German bombing campaigns to hit Liverpool, the ‘May Blitz’ as it became known - seven consecutive nights from the 1 to 7 May 1941 - took the lives of over 1700 people from the city and its surrounding areas, and injured more than 1100 more. During this time around 680 Luftwaffe bombers flew overhead during the nights, dropping almost 2500 high explosive bombs and incendiary weapons onto the city below.

Unexploded Land Mine - (Liverpool Museums)

Bomb Damage (Liverpool Echo)

My own family lived in Hughson Street in Toxteth, and my mother can still recall the night when the house next door was blown to bits by a German bomb - the occupants of the house escaped injury as they were sharing my grandparents air-raid shelter at the time. I can’t be sure of the exact date when this occurred, but I would imagine that there is a good chance that it happened during this particular bombing campaign. However, I can pinpoint another tragic family event which is directly connected to this period of the Blitz.

Lilian Erlis (b.1923 - d.1941)

Today is the 6th May 1941 - 74 years to the day when 18 year-old Lilian Erlis was tragically killed during a bombing raid which took out the family home at 12 Gaskell Street, Toxteth. As can be seen by the map section below, Gaskell Street was situated just a few streets away from where my own family were sheltering in Hughson, and the record shows that the general area was hit quite a number of times - potentially a consequence of the close proximity of the nearby docks.

Gaskell Street, Toxteth, Liverpool (Godfrey - 1908)

Lilian herself would have been sheltering at home with her family at the time of the air-raid, either inside the house itself or in a purpose built shelter nearby. As well as her mother and father, Lilian had three sisters and four brothers - at least two of the brothers would probably have been away fighting for the British forces - the rest may well have been alongside her at the time the bomb fell. It is also likely that her mother, Frances Midwood Erlis, was also injured during the same raid… my mother remembers well that Mrs Erlis Snr (as she knew her), lost both of her legs during the war and ended up in a wheelchair.

Lilian has been remembered and listed within the lists of civilian war dead by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It is eye-opening indeed to look through even just a few pages of these documents, for it soon becomes clear that on occasion entire families had been wiped out during the raids - and the location of death involved everything from private homes to shops, mills, warehouses and dockland. Perhaps in hindsight, the remaining Erlis family (and certainly my own mother’s family in nearby Hughson Street), were very lucky to survive indeed.

But today - 74 years after the event - I’ll think about the little girl with the tennis racquet, and all those others who perished and were torn from their loved ones in such a tragic way.

As the lady once said... 'Bless 'em all'.

Commemoration (CWGC)

FAMILY HISTORY - HUGHSON STREET, LIVERPOOL 8

HUGHSON STREET - LIVERPOOL 8 (click for video)

This is a short segment of converted movie film showing some of our family in Hughson Street, Toxteth, Liverpool. As well as seeing a few of the family themselves, there are also glimpses of the area around my gran and grandad's house, with Northumberland Street at one end, after passing Prophet Street just seen on the right. Toxteth Street is at the other end, across Park Street which led up toward our school.

The film was shot around 1965 / 1966 and you can clearly see the 'bommies' - those empty spaces where houses once stood before they were blasted by the German bombs which fell during the war. One of them lies alongside our own house, the bomb falling as my Mum and parents sheltered in their bomb shelter, which stood in the yard just to the left of where my grandma was standing in the above photograph. My very existence being saved by a mixture of pure chance as to where the bomb fell, and also a few layers of sturdy brick. 

 Finally there are some shots of the cobbled streets, new housing being built and also our own back-yard - whitewashed to make it look as sparkling as the washing Gran used to hang on the line.  

Mr brother Gary playing my plastic 'Beatles' guitar, and also myself - on the same toy drum-kit I played on March 1st 1966 while sitting in front of their black and white TV, watching a broadcast of the Beatles live from Shea Stadium.

This is just a short glimpse of our lives back then... I only wish I had more. 

I hope you enjoy it...