Search Results for 'ted marshall'

Gretton Tailoresses of Swadlincote and the Single Journalist Boot Maker Next Door

The Purdy’s, Housley’s and Marshall’s are my mothers fathers side of the family.  The Warrens, Grettons and Staleys are from my mothers mothers side.

I decided to add all the siblings to the Gretton side of the family, in search of some foundation to a couple of family anecdotes.  My grandmother, Nora Marshall, whose mother was Florence Nightingale Gretton, used to mention that our Gretton side of the family were related to the Burton Upon Trent Grettons of Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton, the brewery.  She also said they were related to Lord Gretton of Stableford Park in Leicestershire.  When she was a child, she said parcels of nice clothes were sent to them by relatives.

It should be noted however that Baron Gretton is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, and was created in 1944 for the brewer and Conservative politician John Gretton. He was head of the brewery firm of Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton Ltd of Burton upon Trent. So they were not members of the Peerage at the time of this story.

What I found was unexpected.

My great great grandfather Richard Gretton 1833-1898, a baker in Swadlincote, didn’t have any brothers, but he did have a couple of sisters.

One of them, Frances, born 1831, never married, but had four children. She stayed in the family home, and named her children Gretton. In 1841 and 1851 she’s living with parents and siblings. In 1861 she is still living with parents and now on the census she has four children all named Gretton listed as grandchildren of her father.
In 1871, her mother having died in 1866, she’s still living with her father William Gretton, Frances is now 40, and her son William 19 and daughter Jane 15 live there.
By the time she is 50 in 1881 and her parents have died she’s head of the house with 5 children all called Gretton, including her daughter Jane Gretton aged 24.

Twenty five year old Robert Staley is listed on the census transcription as living in the same household, but when viewing the census image it becomes clear that he lived next door, on his own and was a bootmaker, and on the other side, his parents Benjamin and Sarah Staley lived at the Prince of Wales pub with two other siblings.

Who was fathering all these Gretton children?

It seems that Jane did the same thing as her mother: she stayed at home and had three children, all with the name Gretton.  Jane Gretton named her son, born in 1878, Michael William Staley Gretton, which would suggest that Staley was the name of the father of the child/children of Jane Gretton.

The father of Frances Gretton’s four children is not known, and there is no father on the birth registers, although they were all baptized.

I found a photo of Jane Gretton on a family tree on an ancestry site, so I contacted the tree owner hoping that she had some more information, but she said no, none of the older family members would explain when asked about it.  Jane later married Tom Penn, and Jane Gretton’s children are listed on census as Tom Penn’s stepchildren.

It seems that Robert Staley (who may or may not be the father of Jane’s children) never married. In 1891 Robert is 35, single, living with widowed mother Sarah in Swadlincote. Sarah is living on own means and Robert has no occupation. On the 1901 census Robert is an unmarried 45 year old journalist and author, living with his widowed mother Sarah Staley aged 79, in Swadlincote.

There are at least three Staley  Warren marriages in the family, and at least one Gretton Staley marriage.

There is a possibility that the father of Frances’s children could be a Gretton, but impossible to know for sure. William Gretton was a tailor, and several of his children and grandchildren were tailoresses.  The Gretton family who later bought Stableford Park lived not too far away, and appear to be well off with a dozen members of live in staff on the census.   Did our Gretton’s the tailors make their clothes? Is that where the parcels of nice clothes came from?

Perhaps we’ll find a family connection to the brewery Grettons, or find the family connection was an unofficial one, or that the connection is further back.

I suppose luckily, this isn’t my direct line but an exploration of an offshoot, so the question of paternity is merely a matter of curiosity.  It is a curious thing, those Gretton tailors of Church Gresley near Burton upon Trent, and there are questions remaining.

William Marshall’s Parents

William Marshall  1876-1968, my great grandfather, married Mary Ann Gilman Purdy in Buxton. We assumed that both their families came from Buxton, but this was not the case.  The Marshall’s came from Elton, near Matlock; the Purdy’s from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire.

William Marshall, seated in centre, with colleagues from the insurance company:

William and all his siblings were born in Fairfield in Buxton. But both Emma Featherstone 1847-1928, his mother, and John Marshall 1842-1930, his father, came from rural Derbyshire. Emma from Ashbourne (or Biggin, Newhaven, or Hartington, depending on what she chose to put on the census, which are all tiny rural places in the same area).

Emma and John Marshall in the middle, photo says “William Marshall’s parents” on the back:

John Marshall was a carter, later a coal carter, and was born in Elton, Derbyshire. Elton is a rural village near to Matlock. He was unable to write (at least at the time of his wedding) but Emma signed her own name.

In 1851 Emma is 3 or 4 years old living with family at the Jug and Glass Inn, Hartington. In 1861 Emma was a 14 year old servant at a 112 acre farm, Heathcote, but her parents were still living at the Jug and Glass. Emma Featherstone’s parents both died when she was 18, in 1865.
In 1871 she was a servant at Old House Farm, Nether Hartington Quarter, Ashborne.

On the census, a female apprentice was listed as a servant, a boy as an apprentice. It seems to have been quite normal, at least that’s what I’ve found so far,  for all teenagers to go and live in another household to learn a trade, to be independent from the parents, and so doesn’t necessarily mean a servant as we would think of it. Often they stayed with family friends, and usually married in their early twenties and had their own household ~ often with a “servant” or teenager from someone else’s family.

The only marriage I could find for Emma and John was in Manchester in 1873, which didn’t make much sense. If Emma was single on the 1871 census, and her first child James was born in 1873, her marriage had to be between those dates. But the marriage register in Manchester appears to be correct, John was a carter, Emma’s father was Francis Featherstone. But why Manchester?

I noticed that the witnesses to the marriage were Francis and Elizabeth Featherstone. He father was Francis, but who was Elizabeth? Emma’s mother was Sarah. Then I found that Emma’s brother Francis married Elizabeth, and they lived in Manchester on the 1871 census. Henry Street, Ardwick. Emma and John’s address on the marriage register is Emily Street, Ardwick. Both of them at the same address.

The marriage was in February 1873, and James, the first child was born in July, 1873, in Buxton.

It would seem that Emma and John had to get married, hence the move to Manchester where her brother was, and then quickly moved to Buxton for the birth of the child.  It was far from uncommon, I’ve found while making notes of dates in registers, for a first child to be born six or 7 months after the wedding.

Emma died in 1928 at the age of 80, two years before her husband John. She left him a little money in her will! This seems unusual so perhaps she had her own money, possibly from the death of her parents before she married, and perhaps from the sale of the Jug and Glass.

I found a photo of the Jug and Glass online.  It looks just like the pub I’d seen in my family history meditations on a number of occasions:

The Woman in the Portrait: Catherine Housley’s Mother
“The One I Ruined”

I was living in England at the time of my great aunts deaths in 1983, both Dorothy Tooby and Phyllis Marshall, when this portrait came to be in my possession via their brother, my grandfather George Marshall. There was some damage on the mouth. I mentioned it at work and my boss said he had a friend who could fix it, but when I eventually got it back it was much worse. Since then, this portrait has been known as “the one I ruined”.

This picture remains a mystery, even though we know her name now. She appears to be in mourning. She doesn’t appear to be too poor, or unhealthy. And yet Elizabeth died at just thirty years of age of TB and her children were in the workhouse a year later.

On closer inspection, the portrait could be a photograph that has been painted over, but it’s considerably larger than any of the usual photographs of the time. Is there a possibility that the picture was made later, after her death, in memory of her?  This seems to be the likeliest explanation.

Kate Purdy and the DH Lawrence Connection

Catherine (Kate) Purdy 1874-1950  was my grandfather George Marshall’s aunt, and the mother of George Rushby who went to Africa.  The photo is one of our family photos, and we knew that the woman at the back third from the right was an aunt of my grandfather’s. We didn’t know that it was Kate until we saw other photos of her in Mike’s collection.

DH Lawrence was born in Eastwood at roughly the same time as my great grandmother Mary Ann Gilman Purdy. Apparently his books are based on actual people living in the area at the time, so I read as many of his books as I could find, to help paint the picture of the time and place.  I also found out via an Eastwood facebook group, that he was not well liked there, and still isn’t. They say he was a wife beater, a groper and was cruel to animals, and they did not want a statue of him in their town!

Kate Rushby third from right back row:

Kate Rushby’s story as told by her grandson Mike:

George’s daughter Catherine (Kate) Purdy grew up in Eastwood and was living at Walnut Tree Lane when, at the age of 21, and on the 24 Sep 1894, she married John Henry Payling Rushby who was a policeman in the Grimsby Police. John Henry left the Police and together they bought a public house “The Three Tuns Inn” at Beggarlee. The establishment was frequented by amongst others, the writer D.H.Lawrence who wrote much of his book “Sons and Lovers” in the Inn. In his book he calls the Inn “The Moon and Stars” and mentions Kate. though not by name.

John Henry Rushby had two children, Charlotte and George Gilman Rushby. But a year after the birth of George on 28 Feb 1900, John Henry died at the age of thirty on 13 Sep 1901. He liked to show off his strength to his friends by lifting above his head an oak barrel full of beer. This would have weighed almost 200 kilograms. “He bust his gut” Kate said. He died of peritonitis following a hernia.

Following the death of John Henry, Kate managed the Three Tuns Inn on her own. But a regular visitor to the Inn was Frank Freer who was a singer and used to entertain the patrons with his fine baritone voice and by playing the cornet. He and Kate got married, but he turned out to be a drunk who beat his wife and was cruel to her son. They separated and he died from alcoholism, though he may also have been struck on the head with a beer bottle by a person unknown. She then married Mr Gregory Simpson who fathered a daughter Catherine, and then died from gas injuries he suffered on the battlefield in the first world war.

Despite her lack of men able to stay the course, Catherine became a very successful business woman. She ran the Three Tuns Inn and later moved to Jacksdale where she owned ”ThePortland Arms Hotel”. She travelled extensively to Europe in times of peace, to Africa several times, and around England frequently. She settled in Selston Lane Jacksdale in a large house bracketed by the homes of her daughters Lottie and Cath. She was a strong and tenacious woman who became the surrogate mother of her grandchildren Ann and George when they were separated from their parents by the second world war.

Mike Rushby’s photo of Kate:

George Gilman Rushby: The Cousin Who Went To Africa

The portrait of the woman has “mother of Catherine Housley, Smalley” written on the back, and one of the family photographs has “Francis Purdy” written on the back. My first internet search was “Catherine Housley Smalley Francis Purdy”. Easily found was the family tree of George (Mike) Rushby, on one of the genealogy websites. It seemed that it must be our family, but the African lion hunter seemed unlikely until my mother recalled her father had said that he had a cousin who went to Africa. I also noticed that the lion hunter’s middle name was Gilman ~ the name that Catherine Housley’s daughter ~ my great grandmother, Mary Ann Gilman Purdy ~ adopted, from her aunt and uncle who brought her up.

I tried to contact George (Mike) Rushby via the ancestry website, but got no reply. I searched for his name on Facebook and found a photo of a wildfire in a place called Wardell, in Australia, and he was credited with taking the photograph. A comment on the photo, which was a few years old, got no response, so I found a Wardell Community group on Facebook, and joined it. A very small place, population some 700 or so, and I had an immediate response on the group to my question. They knew Mike, exchanged messages, and we were able to start emailing. I was in the chair at the dentist having an exceptionally long canine root canal at the time that I got the message with his email address, and at that moment the song Down in Africa started playing.

Mike said it was clever of me to track him down which amused me, coming from the son of an elephant and lion hunter.  He didn’t know why his father’s middle name was Gilman, and was not aware that Catherine Housley’s sister married a Gilman.

Mike Rushby kindly gave me permission to include his family history research in my book.  This is the story of my grandfather George Marshall’s cousin.  A detailed account of George Gilman Rushby’s years in Africa can be found in another chapter called From Tanganyika With Love; the letters Eleanor wrote to her family.

George Gilman Rushby:

The story of George Gilman Rushby 1900-1969, as told by his son Mike:

George Gilman Rushby:
Elephant hunter,poacher, prospector, farmer, forestry officer, game ranger, husband to Eleanor, and father of 6 children who now live around the world.

George Gilman Rushby was born in Nottingham on 28 Feb 1900 the son of Catherine Purdy and John Henry Payling Rushby. But John Henry died when his son was only one and a half years old, and George shunned his drunken bullying stepfather Frank Freer and was brought up by Gypsies who taught him how to fight and took him on regular poaching trips. His love of adventure and his ability to hunt were nurtured at an early stage of his life.
The family moved to Eastwood, where his mother Catherine owned and managed The Three Tuns Inn, but when his stepfather died in mysterious circumstances, his mother married a wealthy bookmaker named Gregory Simpson. He could afford to send George to Worksop College and to Rugby School. This was excellent schooling for George, but the boarding school environment, and the lack of a stable home life, contributed to his desire to go out in the world and do his own thing. When he finished school his first job was as a trainee electrician with Oaks & Co at Pye Bridge. He also worked part time as a motor cycle mechanic and as a professional boxer to raise the money for a voyage to South Africa.

In May 1920 George arrived in Durban destitute and, like many others, living on the beach and dependant upon the Salvation Army for a daily meal. However he soon got work as an electrical mechanic, and after a couple of months had earned enough money to make the next move North. He went to Lourenco Marques where he was appointed shift engineer for the town’s power station. However he was still restless and left the comfort of Lourenco Marques for Beira in August 1921.

Beira was the start point of the new railway being built from the coast to Nyasaland. George became a professional hunter providing essential meat for the gangs of construction workers building the railway. He was a self employed contractor with his own support crew of African men and began to build up a satisfactory business. However, following an incident where he had to shoot and kill a man who attacked him with a spear in middle of the night whilst he was sleeping, George left the lower Zambezi and took a paddle steamer to Nyasaland (Malawi). On his arrival in Karongo he was encouraged to shoot elephant which had reached plague proportions in the area – wrecking African homes and crops, and threatening the lives of those who opposed them.

His next move was to travel by canoe the five hundred kilometre length of Lake Nyasa to Tanganyika, where he hunted for a while in the Lake Rukwa area, before walking through Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) to the Congo. Hunting his way he overachieved his quota of ivory resulting in his being charged with trespass, the confiscation of his rifles, and a fine of one thousand francs. He hunted his way through the Congo to Leopoldville then on to the Portuguese enclave, near the mouth of the mighty river, where he worked as a barman in a rough and tough bar until he received a message that his old friend Lumb had found gold at Lupa near Chunya. George set sail on the next boat for Antwerp in Belgium, then crossed to England and spent a few weeks with his family in Jacksdale before returning by sea to Dar es Salaam. Arriving at the gold fields he pegged his claim and almost immediately went down with blackwater fever – an illness that used to kill three out of four within a week.

When he recovered from his fever, George exchanged his gold lease for a double barrelled .577 elephant rifle and took out a special elephant control licence with the Tanganyika Government. He then headed for the Congo again and poached elephant in Northern Rhodesia from a base in the Congo. He was known by the Africans as “iNyathi”, or the Buffalo, because he was the most dangerous in the long grass. After a profitable hunting expedition in his favourite hunting ground of the Kilombera River he returned to the Congo via Dar es Salaam and Mombassa. He was after the Kabalo district elephant, but hunting was restricted, so he set up his base in The Central African Republic at a place called Obo on the Congo tributary named the M’bomu River. From there he could make poaching raids into the Congo and the Upper Nile regions of the Sudan. He hunted there for two and a half years. He seldom came across other Europeans; hunters kept their own districts and guarded their own territories. But they respected one another and he made good and lasting friendships with members of that small select band of adventurers.

Leaving for Europe via the Congo, George enjoyed a short holiday in Jacksdale with his mother. On his return trip to East Africa he met his future bride in Cape Town. She was 24 year old Eleanor Dunbar Leslie; a high school teacher and daughter of a magistrate who spent her spare time mountaineering, racing ocean yachts, and riding horses. After a whirlwind romance, they were betrothed within 36 hours.

On 25 July 1930 George landed back in Dar es Salaam. He went directly to the Mbeya district to find a home. For one hundred pounds he purchased the Waizneker’s farm on the banks of the Mntshewe Stream. Eleanor, who had been delayed due to her contract as a teacher, followed in November. Her ship docked in Dar es Salaam on 7 Nov 1930, and they were married that day. At Mchewe Estate, their newly acquired farm, they lived in a tent whilst George with some help built their first home – a lovely mud-brick cottage with a thatched roof. George and Eleanor set about developing a coffee plantation out of a bush block. It was a very happy time for them. There was no electricity, no radio, and no telephone. Newspapers came from London every two months. There were a couple of neighbours within twenty miles, but visitors were seldom seen. The farm was a haven for wild life including snakes, monkeys and leopards. Eleanor had to go South all the way to Capetown for the birth of her first child Ann, but with the onset of civilisation, their first son George was born at a new German Mission hospital that had opened in Mbeya.

Occasionally George had to leave the farm in Eleanor’s care whilst he went off hunting to make his living. Having run the coffee plantation for five years with considerable establishment costs and as yet no return, George reluctantly started taking paying clients on hunting safaris as a “white hunter”. This was an occupation George didn’t enjoy. but it brought him an income in the days when social security didn’t exist. Taking wealthy clients on hunting trips to kill animals for trophies and for pleasure didn’t amuse George who hunted for a business and for a way of life. When one of George’s trackers was killed by a leopard that had been wounded by a careless client, George was particularly upset.
The coffee plantation was approaching the time of its first harvest when it was suddenly attacked by plagues of borer beetles and ring barking snails. At the same time severe hail storms shredded the crop. The pressure of the need for an income forced George back to the Lupa gold fields. He was unlucky in his gold discoveries, but luck came in a different form when he was offered a job with the Forestry Department. The offer had been made in recognition of his initiation and management of Tanganyika’s rainbow trout project. George spent most of his short time with the Forestry Department encouraging the indigenous people to conserve their native forests.

In November 1938 he transferred to the Game Department as Ranger for the Eastern Province of Tanganyika, and over several years was based at Nzasa near Dar es Salaam, at the old German town of Morogoro, and at lovely Lyamungu on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Then the call came for him to be transferred to Mbeya in the Southern Province for there was a serious problem in the Njombe district, and George was selected by the Department as the only man who could possibly fix the problem.

Over a period of several years, people were being attacked and killed by marauding man-eating lions. In the Wagingombe area alone 230 people were listed as having been killed. In the Njombe district, which covered an area about 200 km by 300 km some 1500 people had been killed. Not only was the rural population being decimated, but the morale of the survivors was so low, that many of them believed that the lions were not real. Many thought that evil witch doctors were controlling the lions, or that lion-men were changing form to kill their enemies. Indeed some wichdoctors took advantage of the disarray to settle scores and to kill for reward.

By hunting down and killing the man-eaters, and by showing the flesh and blood to the doubting tribes people, George was able to instil some confidence into the villagers. However the Africans attributed the return of peace and safety, not to the efforts of George Rushby, but to the reinstallation of their deposed chief Matamula Mangera who had previously been stood down for corruption. It was Matamula , in their eyes, who had called off the lions.

Soon after this adventure, George was appointed Deputy Game Warden for Tanganyika, and was based in Arusha. He retired in 1956 to the Njombe district where he developed a coffee plantation, and was one of the first in Tanganyika to plant tea as a major crop. However he sensed a swing in the political fortunes of his beloved Tanganyika, and so sold the plantation and settled in a cottage high on a hill overlooking the Navel Base at Simonstown in the Cape. It was whilst he was there that TV Bulpin wrote his biography “The Hunter is Death” and George wrote his book “No More The Tusker”. He died in the Cape, and his youngest son Henry scattered his ashes at the Southern most tip of Africa where the currents of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet .

George Gilman Rushby:

Mary Ann Gilman Purdy

1880-1950

Mary Ann was my grandfather George Marshall’s mother. She died in 1950, seven years before I was born. She has been referred to more often than not, since her death, as Mary Ann Gilman Purdy, rather than Mary Marshall. She was from Buxton, so we believed, as was her husband William Marshall. There are family photos of the Gilmans, grocers in Buxton, and we knew that Mary Ann was brought up by them. My grandfather, her son, said that she thought very highly of the Gilman’s, and added the Gilman name to her birth name of Purdy.

The 1891 census in Buxton:

(Mary Ann’s aunt, Mrs Gilman, was also called Mary Anne, but spelled with an E.)

Samuel Gilman 1846-1909, and Mary Anne (Housley) Gilman  1846-1935,  in Buxton:

What we didn’t know was why Mary Ann (and her sister Ellen/Nellie, we later found) grew up with the Gilman’s. But Mary Ann wasn’t born in Buxton, Derbyshire, she was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. When the search moved to Nottingham, we found the Purdy’s.

George Purdy 1848-1935, Mary Ann’s father:

Mary Ann’s parents were George Purdy of Eastwood, and Catherine Housley of Smalley.

Catherine Housley 1849-1884, Mary Ann’s mother:

Mary Ann was four years old when her mother died. She had three sisters and one brother. George Purdy remarried and kept the two older daughters, and the young son with him. The two younger daughters, Mary Ann and Nellie, went to live with Catherine’s sister, also called Mary Anne, and her husband Samuel Gilman. They had no children of their own. One of the older daughters who stayed with their father was Kate , whose son George Gilman Rushby, went to Africa. But that is another chapter.

George was the son of Francis Purdy and his second wife Jane Eaton. Francis had some twenty children, and is believed in Eastwood to be the reason why there are so many Purdy’s.

The woman who was a mother to Mary Ann and who she thought very highly of, her mothers sister, spent her childhood in the Belper Workhouse. She and her older sister Elizabeth were admitted in June, 1850, the reason: father in prison. Their mother had died the previous year. Mary Anne Housley, Catherine’s sister, married Samuel Gilman, and looked after her dead sisters children.

Mary Ann Gilman Purdy Marshalls recipes written on the back of the Gilmans Grocers paper:

tjmarshall (3/6/2008 12:43): Here : Wrick!!!
Wyrick’s documented interests, besides mound exploration and surveying, included geo-magnetism, anomalous boulders, river terraces, beaver dams and sorghum processing. Wyrick is an archaeologist and had access to the site, he could easily place the stone in an area of his choosing and simply “discover” it the next day.
(Newark Decalogue Stone)

State of Marshall VS Vinya Grey
extracts of procedure 5057TP on case of unsolved time-blink that may have interfered with the timeline – Aug. 5th, 2237

— As you are certainly most aware, Ms Grey, local authorities of the T FGF P (Timespace and Further Geodimensional Flux Police) has recently uncovered a case of unexplainable appearance of a new species within the past.
The genetic makeup of this species bears some rather crude indication of human interference, though no official authorization has been recorded on its behalf. Our investigations have led us to believe you may have more than a little to do with this incident, which is, as you are once again quite aware, within the boundaries of decree 5533 on allowed and banned interferences and seeding into the timeline.

— Objection, Judge! Prosecutor Arkandiusz is trying to intimidate my client. No proof has been yet produced that may confirm or infirm these allegations.

— Mmmm… Objection rejected. Please continue Mr. Arkandiusz.

— Shall I remind Ms Grey that the voluntary or involuntary seeding of new species within other areas has most of the time been disastrous, which is the reason of the decree aforementioned. Precedents were numerous even when our ancestors were not even aware of the possibility of time interference. Rabbits in Australia, does it ring any bell?

— Objection, Judge! We are not talking about deadly pests here, we are talking about severely handicapped goats! Jeeze, come on…

— … Do you mean, the Fainting Goats of our annual Fair, Mr Frey?

— Yes, Judge Cornwick.

— Oh, that is most interesting… Well, perhaps after this long introduction you may want to introduce your first witness Mr Arkandiusz, Ms… Beryl is that?

tjmarshall57: hahahaha as if it’s not bad enough with the weeding, now poor girl has blotches all over her face!
tjmarshall57: wedding not weeding
tjmarshall57: do russian wear velis?
tjmarshall57: veils
tjmarshall57: hhhm, blessing by a shaman, plaiting together of the couples hair….(is Becky still blad?)
tjmarshall57: The biggest concern at the wedding is to have enough liquor. A Russian Wedding is an event where everybody must be drunk. No one will be surprised if people drink themselves to unconscious on the wedding – and many do.
tjmarshall57: well, that will appeal to Sean
tjmarshall57: You are probably surprised to find out that a Russian wedding lasts for 2 days!! (Well, at least. Some weddings last as long as a week, and this is something to be proud of and remember for years: it means the couple had enough liquor to go on and on, and enough devoted friends to stay.)
tjmarshall57: The Russian church ceremony is colorful and solemn but the complete traditional ceremony is very long, and as guests and the couple have to stand during the ceremony (there are no benches in Russian churches at all; people must stand during all church services), faints are not rare.
tjmarshall57: right, so a fair amount of fainting and drunkeness then
tjmarshall57: Then the witnesses continue running the wedding, reading jokes and poems, and sometimes asking the new couple questions to make fun of them.
tjmarshall57: Franci will you be my witness, you’d be perfect
tjmarshall57: “Za molodykh!” (“For the newlywed!”)
tjmarshall57: Traditionally money is considered as the best gift, and is given in an envelope. Some time after the beginning of the reception when people start to become drunk the witnesses will ask everybody to give their gifts and one of the witnesses will collect envelopes from the rest of the guests with a tray.
tjmarshall57: Then people have time to dance. First dance is opened by the new couple. After the music starts, there is no exact script anymore, and witnesses can relax a little. They still occasionally announce a toast but do not entertain the guests with jokes and poems; guests by this time are already having lots of fun and are able to entertain themselves.

Movements become quite hectic; some people go out “to refresh”, and at some moment in this movement the bride gets… “stolen”! She disappears, and when the groom starts looking for her, he is faced with a request for a ransom. Usually it’s his buddies who “steal” the bride. A more or less short wrangle about the amount, and he can have his new wife back. But he must watch out – the bride sometimes may be stolen a few times!

tjmarshall57: right, so we have drunkeness, fainting, jokes, poems and insults, and theft and abduction
tjmarshall57: Then there are the bride’s friends – they steal the bride’s shoe. The groom must pay ransom for the shoe too – the guests enjoy watching wrangles.
tjmarshall57: Often guests leave the wedding in such a condition that they cannot remember what happened. If this was the case with the majority of guests, then the wedding was a huge success
tjmarshall57: AHA! This is the key! I will write about it after the wedding, when nobody can remeber anything about it
tjmarshall57: Day two of the wedding:After the meal the bride must “clean” the floor in the room. The fun part is that guests are allowed to mess as much as they want while she is cleaning
tjmarshall57:
tjmarshall57: another part for you!
tjmarshall57: guests on a Russian wedding enjoy it much more than the newlywed couple who are all the time made fools of.
tjmarshall57: The most popular period for wedding ceremonies in Russia was between the Christmas and Shrovetide (a week before the spring fast). This period was called the wedding period.
tjmarshall57: well, the timing is right
tjmarshall57: One of the many superstitions still prevailing among the peasant population of Russia is that, on the occasion of a marriage, the happiness of the newly-married couple is not assured unless the parents of the contracting parties are soaked with water from head to foot. When a marriage takes place in summer this is easily accomplished by ducking the fathers and mothers in the nearest river, but in winter they are laid on the ground and rolled in the snow.
tjmarshall57: who are the parents?
tjmarshall57: Among the Koraks of Siberia a young man seeks for a maiden with considerable dowry in the form of rein-deer
tjmarshall57: oh, well we can have psychoactive reindeer pies, anyway
tjmarshall57: Kovalevsky has well shown that many of the marriage customs of this country are survivals from a primitive and prehistoric age when the woman ruled the household and had more than one husband.
tjmarshall57: hhmmmm
tjmarshall57: it all points to a distant age when the matriarchal system prevailed, and the brother was his sister’s guardian. In Little Russia the brother’s sword is decked with the red berries of the rowan tree, red being the emblem of maidenhood.
tjmarshall57: red fruit sync!
tjmarshall57: no wonder I threw the cherries away!
tjmarshall57: ahahahahha!
franci_free: oh hrllo
franci_free: goodness
franci_free: will need to read back
tjmarshall57: hahahah oh there you are
franci_free: well what a complicated theme
tjmarshall57: haahah well
franci_free: you will have to write about the wedding
tjmarshall57: the key to the whole thing is that everyone was so drunk that nobody can remeber any of it aftrwards
franci_free: hahahah
franci_free: great!
tjmarshall57: thats my angle, I think
franci_free:
tjmarshall57: and s few things fit perfectly
tjmarshall57: the red fruit
tjmarshall57: the time of year
tjmarshall57: the drunkeness, Sean will love that
franci_free: the splotches?
tjmarshall57: well, nobody will remeber that
tjmarshall57: afterwards

Somewhere during the 23 ^rd century

“aaa AAAA AAAAA Tcheeeew !”
…
“Hiiiiii?! Oh Fracking NOOOoooo!”

The shriek had been heard in the whole facility.

Phefia Beryl was the first on the spot where Vinya Grey had been playing so exuberantly with her vocal chords.

— Vinnie? Are you alright?… What just happened?
— Oh, Pheffy… I think I made an awful blunder…
— What do you mean?
— You know, my last experiment?
— The g…
— Yes!
— What?!
— They poofed away…
— Away?… You mean, all of them? Oh bugger…

A few minutes later, Vinya and Phefia were around a white table sucking on straws picked into white and red polystyrenoid balls.

— Vinnie, you look terrible… That last geomagnetic storm had not done very good on your DNA I’m afraid.
— And the worse is that each time I sneeze, I blow up wormholes… I thought it would go better very quickly, but last one was big and lasted long enough to let the whole experimental herd wander off in another time/space and/or dimension…
— Yeah, that’s pretty bad… But wherever they went, they probably will die very soon… Imagine… With their stiff legs anytime they see something frightening, I guess a mere mapgie could easily have them for dinner…
— Such a pity… I was close to doing something great with them… When we discovered these fossilized blue spiders, I knew it was the first step.
— Bwah, this rehydrated frogrog is the grossest thing I’ve ever drunk… But yeah you’re right, the first results were very promising. The spiders venom could provoke very random and deep mutations.
— And all we needed was a little more control on the direction of the mutations.
— Anyway they’re just goats… You possibly can’t have breached a cosmic law with a handful of GOATS…
— Hope so Pheffy, hope so…

San Demangelo, 1848

Elroy was laughing… Hey Joe, Twi! he shouted A letter from Uncle Ernie!

— Uncle Ernie? How’s the old bat doin’? asked Twilight
— He’s sending his greetings for the new year, and babbling about last dead people in the neighborhood. But there’s something funny. He’s saying that he’d just acquired some funny goats. Like popped in, out of nowhere. At first he’d thought of a joke, but apparently no one’s been claiming them. He’d thought them dead, they were a dozen laying stiff on the ground, but when they started to wake up, they went down again like broken dolls. Apparently the magpies on top of the tree had been scaring them. Ahaha… Where does he get such strange stories…
— Well, magpies are scarey, Twilight said meaningfully, with a side glance at Joe…
— Whatever… At least he’d been giving us a good laugh. He’s saying he’s gonna breed the horny beasts, and start a Fainting Goat Fair (or FGF) in Marshall County. Perhaps we could get there next Thanksgiving…
— Depends when the Freak Show’s coming to town, mused Twilight, I hope to see them soon…

Marvin Scrozzezi was considering a script that had been sent to him by his friend.
Betty, his assistant, had insisted that he reads it…

Seeing his current movie, it couldn’t be any worse in any case.
The title of the script cracked him up.

Ogregan, the Origeans

Marvin giggled, almost spluttering his smoking chai on the script.

He started to read the first paragraphs.

FADE IN:
EXT. WOODS
A big humphing man plunges into the woods. Twigs slap at him,
but the sound of gunfires keeps him going. Sheriff Marshall is
taking the lead, but an auburn haired man plunges into the woods
before him, followed by one dark-haired one. They are obviously
brothers. The older one is ELVIN STREWN, he is following his
younger brother with the lopsided hair, JAY STREWN.
JAY is shooting at the fugitive, ALDO MC GALLIGAN, a local
mobster known as the OGREGAN.

Gunfire explodes in trees near the STREWN brothers, shot at them
by MC GALLIGAN, and they dive and roll into hiding under a
palisade.

Interesting stuff, wonders Marvin… That mobster looks like a fascinating character…

Flipping though the script he found page 57 another catching bit of reading…

 DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. PROSPERITY BANK ; SHOT of a Texan bank on a quiet street.
INT. PROSPERITY BANK
There are three customers, male. Enters a MOTHER and her SON.
TELLER#1: What can I do for you Mrs MC GALLIGAN?
MRS GALLIGAN to her SON who is drawing on her dress: ALDO, will
you keep still for a moment, good for nothing!

…

Pfff, Marvin sighed, feeling bored.
Not long after, he was sound asleep, snoring loudly on the comfortable chair.

Ted was quite fond of Ogrean.
Twilight was a bit sorry for the sheriff, for she had thought him a good guy at first,… whatever that means… but obviously he was a bit blinded by the slickness of the slimy condescending Pompousaur.

But something interesting had happened this day, and she wondered how it would change things again.
Apparently, from what she had caught from the scene, Ted had left the saloon in a cold rage, and it was quite obvious that the Pudgeon was a bit distraught… What could have moved the jovial sheriff like that?

When she and Anna were changing clothes behind the scene after the representation, Anna started to talk quite freely and unexpectedly about the accident.

— That Marshall guy is not as silly as he seems…

As she was more talking to herself, Twilight didn’t answer.

— What d’ya reckon? Anna asked more directly
— Oh me? I don’t really know what happened…
— Don’t play dumb with me, girl. You’re smarter than you wanna show.

Twilight took some time to ponder…
— I don’t think that Ogrean tried to bribe the sheriff, not as obviously…
— Yeah…
— Apparently, he started to explain the sheriff who he was supposed to arrest, and that didn’t please him the least.
— More likely, yes. Definitely sounds like him…
— Anna?
— Yes?

Twilight almost wanted to tell her how she did understand Anna and how it must have been difficult for her with that child from Mc Gaughran, but she couldn’t express all of that.

— Terry is sweet.
— Yes he is, he’s a lovely boy. I love him so much despite…
— I know.

When she came back to their ranch, Twilight felt relieved somewhat about what had occurred. Perhaps that this era of heavy cloaked ruthless order incarnated by Ogrean was coming to an end.
She was a hopeless dreamer.

Madame Butterbutt, the saloon landlady and iconic colourful figure, came back to her room in a fury.
She was living above the saloon, in a large room tastefully furnished, with some exuberant objects that she had gathered from her many commercial acquaintances.

She took one of her favourite cigarillos to calm her down.
That Mc Gaughran was such a… she wasn’t at loss for words. But none of them would have been strong or decent enough for the dork that he was. Ooops she smiled, this last one had almost slipped out unnoticed.

Unlike many people in that small town of San Demangelo, she wasn’t fearful of the man. Not of the man himself (she was almost a giantess compared to many women), and certainly not of his threats either, even though she knew what the man was capable of.
She knew well many of his shady tricks, but she also knew things about him that most of the time sufficed to keep him quiet and docile.

Today, she would have almost laughed at him when he had tried to pressure her by threatening to reveal to sheriff Ted Marshall her little trafficking of hallucinogenic toads. Pathetic of him.
That was really nothing, a little commerce she had with some remote part of her family in Guatemala, especially the voodoo witch Nana Del Conda. These were regularly brought to her by the old ambulant quack Myrlin who was selling all sorts of hocus pocus remedies, keeping the potent ones for Madame Butterbutt.

So nothing extraordinary about that… No,… what had brought her in that terrible mood was when the hoity-toity, pompous, arrogant, full of himself f*ckhead, oops she bit her lip again… When that jelly belly mugger had tried to coerce her into pushing the little Twi into his bed.
Repugnant.

When that foolhardy brother El Disperso is storming again into the bar to try to find quarrel and provoke the jelly pig into a brawl, she would perhaps let him have it his own way after all.
Last time her loath of firearms had been directed strongly against the young boy, perhaps also to protect him too… Anyway, he was perhaps right, allowing himself to “float downstream”, from the hate to the anger… and perhaps to hope and joy again.
She started to sound like dear ol’ Abe…