(no subject)
23 Feb 2006 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatI’ve been thinking of doing a scrap book with some of my family history bits in it, and yesterday, having a day off work and going out for lunch with my daughter, I got a step closer by buying a scrap-book.
So last night I started writing a piece about my mother as a girl, but Word ate it – wouldn’t even let me recover it.
This afternoon I decided to start somewhere else – and I have been scanning some of the old family photos I have in a display on the wall of the staircase, so that I can add them.
So here is a bit about my grandfather Howland’s childhood instead.
My grandfather was his mother’s eldest child, but not his father’s. His father, James Henry Howland, had been married before and had four or five children. His first wife was an invalid, living with her own family, who nursed her and brought up the children. James Henry worked as a farm-hand for the Brew family, and started ‘courting’ Catherine Brew.
The Brew family were not happy about their daughter having any sort of relationship with a married man, and he lost the job at the next quarter-day, when labourers were hired. However Catherine became pregnant and my grandfather was born in November 1889, when his father was 43, his mother 22.
Some 2 or 3 years later, it would seem the first Mrs. Howland must have died, because James Henry and Catherine were married around the time of the birth of their second son.
This was not unusual in the Island at that time – a quick look at the census figures of 1881 shows a number of unmarried daughters and their children as part of households, and comparing birth dates and marriage dates often show children born before the wedding. It was Manx common law, and possibly written law, that a child at the church during its mother’s wedding was legitimised as the child of the groom. Hence an old saying ‘He/she went to church under his/her mother’s skirt’. Apparently women with children by someone other than the groom would sometimes smuggle them into the wedding by the child hiding under the bride’s voluminous skirt, and they were then brought out in sight of the minister and congregation to prove they had been there, and were therefore now the legitimised child of the new husband!
Anyway, my great-grandparents went on to have six children and lived to a good age. In the early years they were still moving from farm to farm, from job to job, as my mother remembers her grandmother telling her of a time when they were hired to work above Laxey, high in the hills, far from the village. The labourer’s cottage had no glass in the windows, holes in the thatch, no nearby water supply, and the only means of cooking was the open hearth. This was about 1895. Catherine had two small children, and a third on the way, and decided this was it – she was NOT staying there, and piled all their belongings back on the cart, to set off back to their home village of Bride – fourteen or fifteen miles away. The journey back must have been very worrying – the day becoming night, and the wheel coming off the cart at one stage. As far as I know, it was a hand cart, piled with their beds, chairs, pots, pans, and children.
It seems it was actually a turning point, as a farmer back in Bride offered them work, and a cottage in good order, even though it was not hiring day, and helped them to obtain the tenancy of their own farm within the next couple of years. They stayed at that farm – Ballaghennie, until their deaths. It is not known what the reaction of the Laxey farmer was, losing his newly hired hand!
The picture shows the family in the garden at Ballaghennie, in the summer of 1899. I know the history of this picture well! In those days a photographer would come around the countryside to take family portraits, and my great-grandfather, by now a farmer of some 30 or 40 acres, decided to have his young family recorded for posterity. However he decided that there was no point in everyone getting all their best clothes on only to be photographed, and the photographer would not work on Sunday, so he was to come on the day of the Church Outing.
Everyone got dressed in their best for this, and the whole village left work for an afternoon, and had a picnic and played sports. The Howland family duly got dressed up, and waited for the photographer. And waited. And waited. He eventually arrived and set everything up, and the children could hear the carts which should have picked them up at the top of the farm road going past, full of laughing singing children, whilst they were still in the garden, missing out on the much awaited treat. This is why the four eldest children (and their mother it must be said!), look either very bad tempered or upset! I think their father may have taken them on to the picnic using their own farm cart and horse, but I am not sure!
The picture shows my grandfather, William, on the right, his brother Tom on the left, Marion, the only girl, Wilfred, the toddler with the lace collar, and baby Daniel. The last of the family, Charles, was born the next year. Isn’t Marion’s hat stunning? Baby Daniel grew up to emigrate to Australia, like so many other Manx men and women over the years.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I have been able to trace the Howland family back over many generations, I got to the 1630s – and they were still living in the same parish – the Howlands have been in Bride for at over 370 years! In fact I have family tree with 13 generations from top to bottom – sometime I must see if I can go back further.
So last night I started writing a piece about my mother as a girl, but Word ate it – wouldn’t even let me recover it.
This afternoon I decided to start somewhere else – and I have been scanning some of the old family photos I have in a display on the wall of the staircase, so that I can add them.
So here is a bit about my grandfather Howland’s childhood instead.
My grandfather was his mother’s eldest child, but not his father’s. His father, James Henry Howland, had been married before and had four or five children. His first wife was an invalid, living with her own family, who nursed her and brought up the children. James Henry worked as a farm-hand for the Brew family, and started ‘courting’ Catherine Brew.
The Brew family were not happy about their daughter having any sort of relationship with a married man, and he lost the job at the next quarter-day, when labourers were hired. However Catherine became pregnant and my grandfather was born in November 1889, when his father was 43, his mother 22.
Some 2 or 3 years later, it would seem the first Mrs. Howland must have died, because James Henry and Catherine were married around the time of the birth of their second son.
This was not unusual in the Island at that time – a quick look at the census figures of 1881 shows a number of unmarried daughters and their children as part of households, and comparing birth dates and marriage dates often show children born before the wedding. It was Manx common law, and possibly written law, that a child at the church during its mother’s wedding was legitimised as the child of the groom. Hence an old saying ‘He/she went to church under his/her mother’s skirt’. Apparently women with children by someone other than the groom would sometimes smuggle them into the wedding by the child hiding under the bride’s voluminous skirt, and they were then brought out in sight of the minister and congregation to prove they had been there, and were therefore now the legitimised child of the new husband!
Anyway, my great-grandparents went on to have six children and lived to a good age. In the early years they were still moving from farm to farm, from job to job, as my mother remembers her grandmother telling her of a time when they were hired to work above Laxey, high in the hills, far from the village. The labourer’s cottage had no glass in the windows, holes in the thatch, no nearby water supply, and the only means of cooking was the open hearth. This was about 1895. Catherine had two small children, and a third on the way, and decided this was it – she was NOT staying there, and piled all their belongings back on the cart, to set off back to their home village of Bride – fourteen or fifteen miles away. The journey back must have been very worrying – the day becoming night, and the wheel coming off the cart at one stage. As far as I know, it was a hand cart, piled with their beds, chairs, pots, pans, and children.
It seems it was actually a turning point, as a farmer back in Bride offered them work, and a cottage in good order, even though it was not hiring day, and helped them to obtain the tenancy of their own farm within the next couple of years. They stayed at that farm – Ballaghennie, until their deaths. It is not known what the reaction of the Laxey farmer was, losing his newly hired hand!
The picture shows the family in the garden at Ballaghennie, in the summer of 1899. I know the history of this picture well! In those days a photographer would come around the countryside to take family portraits, and my great-grandfather, by now a farmer of some 30 or 40 acres, decided to have his young family recorded for posterity. However he decided that there was no point in everyone getting all their best clothes on only to be photographed, and the photographer would not work on Sunday, so he was to come on the day of the Church Outing.
Everyone got dressed in their best for this, and the whole village left work for an afternoon, and had a picnic and played sports. The Howland family duly got dressed up, and waited for the photographer. And waited. And waited. He eventually arrived and set everything up, and the children could hear the carts which should have picked them up at the top of the farm road going past, full of laughing singing children, whilst they were still in the garden, missing out on the much awaited treat. This is why the four eldest children (and their mother it must be said!), look either very bad tempered or upset! I think their father may have taken them on to the picnic using their own farm cart and horse, but I am not sure!
The picture shows my grandfather, William, on the right, his brother Tom on the left, Marion, the only girl, Wilfred, the toddler with the lace collar, and baby Daniel. The last of the family, Charles, was born the next year. Isn’t Marion’s hat stunning? Baby Daniel grew up to emigrate to Australia, like so many other Manx men and women over the years.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I have been able to trace the Howland family back over many generations, I got to the 1630s – and they were still living in the same parish – the Howlands have been in Bride for at over 370 years! In fact I have family tree with 13 generations from top to bottom – sometime I must see if I can go back further.
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no subject
Date: 23/02/2006 08:45 am (UTC)Absolutely!
As for the Australian relatives, Marion, Daniel's daughter, was on the Island about sixteen years ago - somewhere I have a picture of her with my Mum and my daughter. The main person in our family who kept in touch with everyone was my Aunty Phyllis, Marion in the photo's daughter, so we have been less in contact since she died.