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In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
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.
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
The Scottish Connection
My grandfather always used to say we had some Scottish blood because his “mother was a Purdy”, and that they were from the low counties of Scotland near to the English border.
My mother had a Scottish hat in among the boxes of souvenirs and old photographs. In one of her recent house moves, she finally threw it away, not knowing why we had it or where it came from, and of course has since regretted it! It probably came from one of her aunts, either Phyllis or Dorothy. Neither of them had children, and they both died in 1983. My grandfather was executor of the estate in both cases, and it’s assumed that the portraits, the many photographs, the booklet on Primitive Methodists, and the Scottish hat, all relating to his mother’s side of the family, came into his possession then. His sister Phyllis never married and was living in her parents home until she died, and is the likeliest candidate for the keeper of the family souvenirs.
Catherine Housley married George Purdy, and his father was Francis Purdy, the Primitive Methodist preacher. William Purdy was the father of Francis.
Record searches find William Purdy was born on 16 July 1767 in Carluke, Lanarkshire, near Glasgow in Scotland. He worked for James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, and moved to Derbyshire for the purpose of installing steam driven pumps to remove the water from the collieries in the area.
Another descendant of Francis Purdy found the following in a book in a library in Eastwood:
William married a local girl, Ruth Clarke, in Duffield in Derbyshire in 1786. William and Ruth had nine children, and the seventh was Francis who was born at West Hallam in 1795.
Perhaps the Scottish hat came from William Purdy, but there is another story of Scottish connections in Smalley: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Although the Purdy’s were not from Smalley, Catherine Housley was.
From an article on the Heanor and District Local History Society website:
The Jacobites in Smalley
Few people would readily associate the village of Smalley, situated about two miles west of Heanor, with Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 – but there is a clear link.
During the winter of 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the “Bonnie Prince” or “The Young Pretender”, marched south from Scotland. His troops reached Derby on 4 December, and looted the town, staying for two days before they commenced a fateful retreat as the Duke of Cumberland’s army approached.
While staying in Derby, or during the retreat, some of the Jacobites are said to have visited some of the nearby villages, including Smalley.
A history of the local aspects of this escapade was written in 1933 by L. Eardley-Simpson, entitled “Derby and the ‘45,” from which the following is an extract:
“The presence of a party at Smalley is attested by several local traditions and relics. Not long ago there were people living who remember to have seen at least a dozen old pikes in a room adjoining the stables at Smalley Hall, and these were stated to have been left by a party of Highlanders who came to exchange their ponies for horses belonging to the then owner, Mrs Richardson; in 1907, one of these pikes still remained. Another resident of Smalley had a claymore which was alleged to have been found on Drumhill, Breadsall Moor, while the writer of the History of Smalley himself (Reverend C. Kerry) had a magnificent Andrew Ferrara, with a guard of finely wrought iron, engraved with two heads in Tudor helmets, of the same style, he states, as the one left at Wingfield Manor, though why the outlying bands of Army should have gone so far afield, he omits to mention. Smalley is also mentioned in another strange story as to the origin of the family of Woolley of Collingham who attained more wealth and a better position in the world than some of their relatives. The story is to the effect that when the Scots who had visited Mrs Richardson’s stables were returning to Derby, they fell in with one Woolley of Smalley, a coal carrier, and impressed him with horse and cart for the conveyance of certain heavy baggage. On the retreat, the party with Woolley was surprised by some of the Elector’s troopers (the Royal army) who pursued the Scots, leaving Woolley to shift for himself. This he did, and, his suspicion that the baggage he was carrying was part of the Prince’s treasure turning out to be correct, he retired to Collingham, and spent the rest of his life there in the enjoyment of his luckily acquired gains. Another story of a similar sort was designed to explain the rise of the well-known Derbyshire family of Cox of Brailsford, but the dates by no means agree with the family pedigree, and in any event the suggestion – for it is little more – is entirely at variance with the views as to the rights of the Royal House of Stuart which were expressed by certain members of the Cox family who were alive not many years ago.”
A letter from Charles Kerry, dated 30 July 1903, narrates another strange twist to the tale. When the Highlanders turned up in Smalley, a large crowd, mainly women, gathered. “On a command in Gaelic, the regiment stooped, and throwing their kilts over their backs revealed to the astonished ladies and all what modesty is careful to conceal. Father, who told me, said they were not any more troubled with crowds of women.”
Folklore or fact? We are unlikely to know, but the Scottish artefacts in the Smalley area certainly suggest that some of the story is based on fact.
We are unlikely to know where that Scottish hat came from, but we did find the Scottish connection. William Purdy’s mother was Grizel Gibson, and her mother was Grizel Murray, both of Lanarkshire in Scotland. The name Grizel is a Scottish form of the name Griselda, and means “grey battle maiden”. But with the exception of the name Murray, The Purdy and Gibson names are not traditionally Scottish, so there is not much of a Scottish connection after all. But the mystery of the Scottish hat remains unsolved.
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
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:
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
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.
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
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:
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
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:
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
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:
In reply to: The Elusive Samuel Housley and Other Family Stories
Helper Belper: “Let’s start at the beginning.”
When I found a huge free genealogy tree website with lots of our family already on it, I couldn’t believe my luck. Quite soon after a perusal, I found I had a number of questions. Was it really possible that our Warren family tree had been traced back to 500AD? I asked on a genealogy forum: only if you can latch onto an aristocratic line somewhere, in which case that lineage will be already documented, as normally parish records only go back to the 1600s, if you are lucky. It is very hard to prove and the validity of it met with some not inconsiderable skepticism among the long term hard core genealogists. This is not to say that it isn’t possible, but is more likely a response to the obvious desire of many to be able to trace their lineage back to some kind of royalty, regardless of the documentation and proof.
Another question I had on this particular website was about the entries attached to Catherine Housley that made no sense. The immense public family tree there that anyone can add to had Catherine Housley’s mother as Catherine Marriot. But Catherine Marriot had another daughter called Catherine, two years before our Catherine was born, who didn’t die beforehand. It wasn’t unusual to name another child the same name if an earlier one had died in infancy, but this wasn’t the case.
I asked this question on a British Genealogy forum, and learned that other people’s family trees are never to be trusted. One should always start with oneself, and trace back with documentation every step of the way. Fortified with all kinds of helpful information, I still couldn’t find out who Catherine Housley’s mother was, so I posted her portrait on the forum and asked for help to find her. Among the many helpful replies, one of the members asked if she could send me a private message. She had never had the urge to help someone find a person before, but felt a compulsion to find Catherine Housley’s mother. Eight months later and counting at time of writing, and she is still my most amazing Helper. The first thing she said in the message was “Right. Let’s start at the beginning. What do you know for sure.” I said Mary Ann Gilman Purdy, my great grandmother, and we started from there.
Fran found all the documentation and proof, a perfect and necessary compliment to my own haphazard meanderings. She taught me how to find the proof, how to spot inconsistencies, and what to look for and where. I still continue my own haphazard wanderings as well, which also bear fruit.
It was decided to order the birth certificate, a paper copy that could be stuck onto the back of the portrait, so my mother in Wales ordered it as she has the portrait. When it arrived, she read the names of Catherine’s parents to me over the phone. We were expecting it to be John Housley and Sarah Baggaley. But it wasn’t! It was his brother Samuel Housley and Elizabeth Brookes! I had been looking at the photograph of the portrait thinking it was Catherine Marriot, then looking at it thinking her name was Sarah Baggaley, and now the woman in the portrait was Elizabeth Brookes. And she was from Wolverhampton. My helper, unknown to me, had ordered a digital copy, which arrived the same day.
Months later, Fran, visiting friends in Derby, made a special trip to Smalley, a tiny village not far from Derby, to look for Housley gravestones in the two churchyards. There are numerous Housley burials registered in the Smalley parish records, but she could only find one Housley grave, that of Sarah Baggaley. Unfortunately the documentation had already proved that Sarah was not the woman in the portrait, Catherine Housley’s mother, but Catherine’s aunt.
Sarah Housley nee Baggaley’s grave stone in Smalley:
The following stories started with a single question.
Who was Catherine Housley’s mother?
But one question leads to another, and another, and so this book will never be finished. This is the first in a collection of stories of a family history research project, not a complete family history. There will always be more questions and more searches, and each new find presents more questions.
A list of names and dates is only moderately interesting, and doesn’t mean much unless you get to know the characters along the way. For example, a cousin on my fathers side has already done a great deal of thorough and accurate family research. I copied one branch of the family onto my tree, going back to the 1500’s, but lost interest in it after about an hour or so, because I didn’t feel I knew any of the individuals.
Parish registers, the census every ten years, birth, death and marriage certificates can tell you so much, but they can’t tell you why. They don’t tell you why parents chose the names they did for their children, or why they moved, or why they married in another town. They don’t tell you why a person lived in another household, or for how long. The census every ten years doesn’t tell you what people were doing in the intervening years, and in the case of the UK and the hundred year privacy rule, we can’t even use those for the past century. The first census was in 1831 in England, prior to that all we have are parish registers. An astonishing amount of them have survived and have been transcribed and are one way or another available to see, both transcriptions and microfiche images. Not all of them survived, however. Sometimes the writing has faded to white, sometimes pages are missing, and in some case the entire register is lost or damaged.
Sometimes if you are lucky, you may find mention of an ancestor in an obscure little local history book or a journal or diary. Wills, court cases, and newspaper archives often provide interesting information. Town memories and history groups on social media are another excellent source of information, from old photographs of the area, old maps, local history, and of course, distantly related relatives still living in the area. Local history societies can be useful, and some if not all are very helpful.
If you’re very lucky indeed, you might find a distant relative in another country whose grandparents saved and transcribed bundles of old letters found in the attic, from the family in England to the brother who emigrated, written in the 1800s. More on this later, as it merits its own chapter as the most exciting find so far.
The social history of the time and place is important and provides many clues as to why people moved and why the family professions and occupations changed over generations. The Enclosures Act and the Industrial Revolution in England created difficulties for rural farmers, factories replaced cottage industries, and the sons of land owning farmers became shop keepers and miners in the local towns. For the most part (at least in my own research) people didn’t move around much unless there was a reason. There are no reasons mentioned in the various registers, records and documents, but with a little reading of social history you can sometimes make a good guess. Samuel Housley, for example, a plumber, probably moved from rural Derbyshire to urban Wolverhampton, when there was a big project to install indoor plumbing to areas of the city in the early 1800s. Derbyshire nailmakers were offered a job and a house if they moved to Wolverhampton a generation earlier.
Occasionally a couple would marry in another parish, although usually they married in their own. Again, there was often a reason. William Housley and Ellen Carrington married in Ashbourne, not in Smalley. In this case, William’s first wife was Mary Carrington, Ellen’s sister. It was not uncommon for a man to marry a deceased wife’s sister, but it wasn’t strictly speaking legal. This caused some problems later when William died, as the children of the first wife contested the will, on the grounds of the second marriage being illegal.
Needless to say, there are always questions remaining, and often a fresh pair of eyes can help find a vital piece of information that has escaped you. In one case, I’d been looking for the death of a widow, Mary Anne Gilman, and had failed to notice that she remarried at a late age. Her death was easy to find, once I searched for it with her second husbands name.
This brings me to the topic of maternal family lines. One tends to think of their lineage with the focus on paternal surnames, but very quickly the number of surnames increases, and all of the maternal lines are directly related as much as the paternal name. This is of course obvious, if you start from the beginning with yourself and work back. In other words, there is not much point in simply looking for your fathers name hundreds of years ago because there are hundreds of other names that are equally your own family ancestors. And in my case, although not intentionally, I’ve investigated far more maternal lines than paternal.
This book, which I hope will be the first of several, will concentrate on my mothers family: The story so far that started with the portrait of Catherine Housley’s mother.
This painting, now in my mothers house, used to hang over the piano in the home of her grandparents. It says on the back “Catherine Housley’s mother, Smalley”.
The portrait of Catherine Housley’s mother can be seen above the piano. Back row Ronald Marshall, my grandfathers brother, William Marshall, my great grandfather, Mary Ann Gilman Purdy Marshall in the middle, my great grandmother, with her daughters Dorothy on the left and Phyllis on the right, at the Marshall’s house on Love Lane in Stourbridge.
The Search for Samuel Housley
As soon as the search for Catherine Housley’s mother was resolved, achieved by ordering a paper copy of her birth certificate, the search for Catherine Housley’s father commenced. We know he was born in Smalley in 1816, son of William Housley and Ellen Carrington, and that he married Elizabeth Brookes in Wolverhampton in 1844. He was a plumber and glazier. His three daughters born between 1845 and 1849 were born in Smalley. Elizabeth died in 1849 of consumption, but Samuel didn’t register her death. A 20 year old neighbour called Aaron Wadkinson did.
Where was Samuel?
On the 1851 census, two of Samuel’s daughters were listed as inmates in the Belper Workhouse, and the third, 2 year old Catherine, was listed as living with John Benniston and his family in nearby Heanor. Benniston was a framework knitter.
Where was Samuel?
A long search through the microfiche workhouse registers provided an answer. The reason for Elizabeth and Mary Anne’s admission in June 1850 was given as “father in prison”. In May 1850, Samuel Housley was sentenced to one month hard labour at Derby Gaol for failing to maintain his three children. What happened to those little girls in the year after their mothers death, before their father was sentenced, and they entered the workhouse? Where did Catherine go, a six week old baby? We have yet to find out.
And where was Samuel Housley in 1851? He hasn’t appeared on any census.
According to the Belper workhouse registers, Mary Anne was discharged on trial as a servant February 1860. She was readmitted a month later in March 1860, the reason given: unwell.
Belper Workhouse:
Eventually, Mary Anne and Elizabeth were discharged, in April 1860, with an aunt and uncle. The workhouse register doesn’t name the aunt and uncle. One can only wonder why it took them so long.
On the 1861 census, Elizabeth, 16 years old, is a servant in St Peters, Derby, and Mary Anne, 15 years old, is a servant in St Werburghs, Derby.But where was Samuel?
After some considerable searching, we found him, despite a mistranscription of his name, on the 1861 census, living as a lodger and plumber in Darlaston, Walsall.
Eventually we found him on a 1871 census living as a lodger at the George and Dragon in Henley in Arden. The age is not exactly right, but close enough, he is listed as an unmarried painter, also close enough, and his birth is listed as Kidsley, Derbyshire. He was born at Kidsley Grange Farm. We can assume that he was probably alive in 1872, the year his mother died, and the following year, 1873, during the Kerry vs Housley court case.
I found some living Housley descendants in USA. Samuel Housley’s brother George emigrated there in 1851. The Housley’s in USA found letters in the attic, from the family in Smalley ~ written between 1851 and 1870s. They sent me a “Narrative on the Letters” with many letter excerpts.
The Housley family were embroiled in a complicated will and court case in the early 1870s. In December 15, 1872, Joseph (Samuel’s brother) wrote to George:
“I think we have now found all out now that is concerned in the matter for there was only Sam that we did not know his whereabouts but I was informed a week ago that he is dead–died about three years ago in Birmingham Union. Poor Sam. He ought to have come to a better end than that….His daughter and her husband went to Birmingham and also to Sutton Coldfield that is where he married his wife from and found out his wife’s brother. It appears he has been there and at Birmingham ever since he went away but ever fond of drink.”
No record of Samuel Housley’s death can be found for the Birmingham Union in 1869 or thereabouts.
But if he was alive in 1871 in Henley In Arden…..
Did Samuel tell his wife’s brother to tell them he was dead? Or did the brothers say he was dead so they could have his share?We still haven’t found a death for Samuel Housley.
In reply to: Newsreel from the Rim of the Realm
“I’m not ‘aving this treatment, Mavis, I’ve booked meself in for the spirit chew all mender tations session instead. No need to loook at me like that, our Mavis, I aint going all new agey on yer, just thought I’d give it a try and see if it relaxes me a bit.”
“Relaxes yer? Yer int done a stroke of work in years, whatcher on about?” Sha said, nudging Mavis in the ribs and cackling.
“It’s not all about the body, y’ know!” Glor replied, feeling the futility of trying to make them understand the importance of it to her, or the significance in the wider picture.
“I’m listening,” a melodious voice whispered behind her. Andrew Anderson smiled and looked deep into her squinting eyes as she turned to face him (the sun was going down behind him and it was very hard to see, much to her chagrin).
“Tell me more, Glor, what’s the score, Glor, I want to know more…”
Gloria, who knees had momentarily turned to jelly, reeled backwards at this surprising change in the conversation, and lost her balance due to her temporarily affected knees. Instinctively she reached out and grabbed Mr Anderson’s arm, and managed to avoid falling to the ground.
She retracted her arm slowly as an increasingly baffled look spread across her face.
Why did his arm feel so peculiar? It felt like a shop mannequin, unyielding, different somehow. Creepy somehow. Glor mumbled, “Sure, later,” and quickly caught up with her friends.
“Hey, You’ll never guess what, wait til I tell yer..” Glor started to tell them about Mr Anderson and then stopped. Would it be futile? Would they understand what she was trying to say?
“I’m listening,” a melodious voice whispered in her ear.
“Not bloody you again! You stalking me, or what?” Visibly rattled, Gloria rushed over to her friends, wondering why every time that weirdo whispered in her ear, she had somehow fallen back and had to catch up again.
She’d have to inform her friends of the danger, but would they listen? They were falling for him and wouldn’t be easily discouraged. They’d be lured to the yacht and not want to escape. The fools! What could she do?
“I’m listening,” the melodious voice whispered.
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
Sometimes Bob spoke without his lips. Telepathy is what Jane liked to call it. It’s just thinking that other people can hear, apparently.
Bob could hear Jane thinking now and she didn’t sound too pleased. “What’s she doing here?” she hissed in his head.
Jane and Julienne never got on. Well, they used to years ago. Then something happened. Something to do with a fruit cake recipe … Bob could never understand the ins and outs of it. They hadn’t spoken much after that. Jane called Julienne the town gossip.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Bob reaching out for the offshoots.Goodness knows what he was going to do with them. It was Jane who was the gardener.
Clara smirked. “I’ll go and see if Nora is up.”
“No, she’s alright,” said Bob sharply. “You stay here. She’ll just be resting up now. It’s all been quite a shock for her I think.”
“What’s all this?” asked Julienne. “Someone’s had a shock?”
In reply to: The Whale’s Diaries Collection
I hope all this social media as they call it stands the test of time because little things like this are priceless and so few and far between, and someday someone wants to know a little thing like this to paint a picture in their mind. I don’t know if this is one of ours as they say but but he was there too and could even have been one of you or another one of me, the possibilities are endless and the charm of the random snippet is boundless.
“The gallery stairs were honeycombed on
each side by old Jonathan Beniston’s spiked
crutches, and although Jonathan could not
read, he considered himself a valuable
addition to the choir, contributing a sort of
drone bass accompaniment to the melodies. after the style of a bagpipe ” chanter.”Here’s another one I want to include in my book:
Mr. Joseph Moss, formerly a framework knitter of Woodhouse Lane, for several years kept a Diary of the principal events and incidents in the locality: a most commendable undertaking. It is much to be regretted that so few attempt anything of the kind, so useful, and always interest- ing. Besides the registration of marriages and funerals, we have notices of storms, removals, accidents, sales, robberies, police captures, festivities, re-openings of churches, and many other matters. His record begins in 1855, ^^d ends in 1881, Mr. Moss was a violinist of some ability, and was in great demand at all rural festivities. He was a good singer, and sang (inter alia) ” The Beggar’s Ramble ” with his own local variations^ in good style, and usually with much eclat. The following are a few extracts from his Diary : —
” — July. Restoration of Horsley Church. New weathercock placed on spire by Charles, son of Mr. Anthony Kerry, the builder, on the 31st. A few days later, the south arches of the nave fell down, bringing with it the roofs of nave and south aisle. The pillar next the tower had been under- mined by the making of a grave, and as soon as the gravestone over it was moved the column began to settle : a loud shout was made, and the workmen had only just time to scamper out of the building before the roof and top windows and all came down.”
In reply to: The Whale’s Diaries Collection
They found me and locked me up again but I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later. I don’t mind though, I can always plot an escape when I’m ready but the fact is, I was tired after awhile. I needed a rest and so here I am. The weather’s awful so I may as well rest up here for a bit longer. They gave me a shot, too, so I don’t have to wear a mask anymore. Unless I want to wear it as a disguise of course, so I’ll keep a couple for when I escape again.
They gave me a computer to keep me amused and showed me how to do the daftest things I’d never want to do and I thought, what a load of rubbish, just give me a good book, but then this charming little angel of a helper appeared as if by magic and showed me how to do a family tree on this machine. Well! I had no idea such pursuits could be so engrossing, it’s like being the heroine in a detective novel, like writing your own book in a way.
I got off on a sidetrack with the search for one woman in particular and got I tell you I got so sucked inside the story I spent a fortnight in a small village in the north midlands two centuries ago that I had to shake me head to get back to the present for the necessary daily functions. I feel like I could write a book about that fortnight. Two hundred years explored in a fortnight in the search for CH’s mother.
I could write a book on the maternal line and how patriarchy has failed us in the search for our ancestry and blood lines. The changing names, the census status, lack of individual occupation but a mother knows for sure who her children are. And yet we follow paternal lines because the names are easier, but mothers know for sure which child is theirs whereas men can not be as sure as that. Barking up the wrong tree is easy done.
I can’t start writing any of these books at the moment because I’m still trying to find out who won the SK&JH vs ALL the rest of the H family court case in 1873. It seems the youngest son (who was an overseer with questionable accounts) was left out of the will. The executor of the will was his co plaintiff in the court case, a neighbouring land owner, and the whole rest of the family were the defendants. It’s gripping, there are so many twists and turns. This might give us a clue why CH grew up in the B’s house instead of her own. Why did CH’s mothers keep the boys and send two girls to live with another family? How did we end up with the oil painting of CH’s mother? It’s a mystery and I’m having a whale of a time.
Another good thing about my little adventure and then this new hobby is how, as you may have noticed, I’m not half as daft as I was when I was withering away in that place with nothing to do. I mean I know I’m withering away and not going anywhere again now, but on the other hand I’ve just had a fortnights holiday in the nineteenth century, which is more than many can say, even if they’ve been allowed out.
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
Reddening, Bob stammered, “Yeah, yes, uh, yeah. Um…”
Clara squeezed her grandfathers arm reassuringly. “We’re looking for my friend Nora.” she interrupted, to give him time to compose himself. Poor dear was easily flustered these days. Turning to Will, “She was hiking over to visit us and should have arrived yesterday and she’d have passed right by here, but her phone seems to be dead.”
Will had to think quickly. If he could keep them both here with Nora long enough to get the box ~ or better yet, replace the contents with something else. Yes, that was it! He could take a sack of random stuff to put in the box, and they’d never suspect a thing. He was going to hide the contents in a statue anyway, so he didn’t even need the box.
Spreading his arms wide in welcome and smiling broadly, he said “This is your lucky day! Come inside and I’ll put the kettle on, Nora’s gone up to take some photos of the old ruin, she’ll be back soon.”
Bob and Clara relaxed and returned the smile and allowed themselves to be ushered into the kitchen and seated at the table.
Will lit the gas flame under the soup before filling the kettle with water. They’d be too polite to refuse, if he put a bowl in front of them, and if they didn’t drink it, well then he’d have to resort to plan B. He put a little pinch of powder from a tiny jar into each cup of tea; it wouldn’t hurt and would likely make them more biddable. Then the soup would do the trick.
Will steered the conversation to pleasant banter about the wildflowers on the way up to the ruins that he’d said Nora was visiting, and the birds that were migrating at this time of year, keeping the topics off anything potentially agitating. The tea was starting to take effect and Clara and Bob relaxed and enjoyed the conversation. They sipped the soup without protest, although Bob did grimace a bit at the thought of eating on an agitated stomach. He’d have indigestion for days, but didn’t want to be rude and refuse. He was enjoying the respite from all the vexation, though, and was quite happy for the moment just to let the man prattle on while he ate the damn soup.
“Oh, I think Nora must be back! I just heard her voice!” exclaimed Clara.
Will had heard it too, but he said, “That wasn’t Nora, that was the parrot! It’s a fast leaner, and Nora’s been training it to say things….I tell you what, you stay here and finish your soup, and I’ll go and fetch the parrot.”
“Parrot? What parrot?” Clara and Bob said in unison. They both found it inordinately funny and by the time Will had exited the kitchen, locking the door from the outside, they were hooting and wiping the tears of laughter from their cheeks.
“What the hell was in that tea!” Clara joked, finishing her soup.
What was Nora doing awake already? Will didn’t have to keep her quiet for long, but he needed to keep her quiet now, just until the soup took effect on the others.
Either that or find a parrot.
In reply to: The Chronicles of the Flying Fish Inn
Aunt Idle:
You can’t blame me for not updating my diary because bugger all has happened all year. Borders closed, no tourists allowed in. How are bespoke bijou boutique establishments like ours supposed to survive? But we’re still here. Somehow we’ve managed to keep the wolf from the door, but only just barely. I get a bit muddled up these days and can’t remember the dates. Sometimes I find myself living in the past for weeks on end: things change so little around her that it’s easy to do. But what does it matter anyway?
Mater went into a sulk the likes of which I hope never to see again, when her 100th birthday party was cancelled. I thought she might give up the will to live, but oh no. She’s determined now to have a 110th birthday party now. She says the bloody pandemic ought to be over by then. I hope she’s right. She changes her health food and exercise regimes as often as she changes her knickers. Well more often than that, probably, she doesn’t bother much with personal hygiene. She says the germs keep her immune system in good shape. I think the smell of her would keep any plague ridden body well away from her, but whatever works, I always say. At least she isn’t sulking anymore, she’s grimly stoic now and tediously determined to outlive me.
I had some worrying news through the telepathic grapevine about the twins and Pan, they’d gotten into the clutches of a strange cult over there. I’ve got a feeling they weren’t really sucked into it though, I think they needed to use it as a cover, or to keep themselves safe. I say cult but it was huge, took over the entire country and even started spreading to other countries. As if the pandemic wasn’t enough to deal with. I knew they shouldn’t have gone there. There’s been a peculiar blockage with the telepathic messages for ages now. It’s a worry, but what can I do. I keep sending them messages, but get nothing in return.
Ah, well. We carry on as best we can. What I wouldn’t give for an unexpected visitor to brighten things up a bit. Fat chance of that.
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
Nora commented favourably on the view, relieved to have been given a clue about what she was supposed to have noticed. It was a splendid panorama, and Will seemed pleased with her response. She asked if it was possible to see the old smugglers path from their vantage point, and he pointed to a dirt road in the valley below that disappeared from view behind a stand of eucalyptus trees. Will indicated a tiny white speck of an old farm ruin, and said the smugglers path went over the hill behind it.
Shading her eyes from the sun, Nora peered into the distance beyond the hill, wondering how far it was to Clara’s grandfathers house. Of course she knew it was 25 kilometers or so, but wasn’t sure how many hills behind that one, or if the path veered off at some point in another direction.
Wondering where Clara was reminded Nora that her friend would be waiting for her, and quite possibly worrying that she hadn’t yet arrived. She sighed, making her mind up to leave first thing the next morning. She didn’t mention this to Will though, and wondered briefly why she hesitated. Something about the violent sweep of his arm when she asked about her phone had made her uneasy, such a contrast to his usual easy going grins.
Then she reminded herself that she had only just met him, and barely knew anything about him at all, despite all the stories they’d shared. When she thought about it, none of the stories had given her any information ~ they had mostly been anecdotes that had a similarity to her own, and although pleasant, were inconsequential. And she kept forgetting to ask him about all the statues at his place.
Wishing she could at least send a text message to Clara, Nora remembered the remote viewing practice they’d done together over the years, and realized she could at least attempt a telepathic communication. Then later, if Clara gave her a hard time about not staying in contact, she could always act surprised and say, Why, didn’t you get the message?
She found a flat stone to sit on, and focused on the smugglers path below. Then she closed her eyes and said clearly in her mind, “I’ll be there tomorrow evening, Clara. All is well. I am safe.”
She opened her eyes and saw that Will had started to head back down the path. “Come on!” he called, “Time for lunch!”
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
There was a screeching sound in the warehouse.
“Purple & Glitter Alert, Purple & Glitter Alert!” the junior drag-queen in training howled to wake up the troops. “Briefing in Linda Pol’s office, now!”
Linda Pol was busy e-zapping motes and dust bunnies when the last one of them entered and closed the room silently.
She pushed her fancy glasses up her nose and pointed at the screen. “Girdle your loins, ladies! There’s been a potential breach in the timelines at this particular junction point, the Universe may be in grave danger. We need volunteers to go and investigate.”
Someone raised their hand “Can’t we wait until 2021? 2020 was such a nasty year, it is known. Major jinxy vibes. Everything you do goes to poo-poo on this year.”
“Thank you for the history course Bubbles, and glad you volunteered. Anyone else?”
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
The message was scrawled in pencil on a roughly torn off piece of note paper. Bob had to squint to make out some of the words.
Hopefully you won’t need this but put this somewhere safe, just in case. The man i introduced you to today will know what to do.
And then there was a phone number. Bob wondered if the man would still be there. It was nearly 15 years ago and Bob’s memory was sketchy. He frowned, trying to remember. When the receptacle had been unearthed in the bad flooding of that year, he had contacted someone … how he got onto him he can no longer recall … some number from the archeological thingamajigs maybe. The person he spoke to came round, him and another fellow, said he shouldn’t tell anyone about the receptacle. Said it should be put back in the ground. Said it was important. The other fellow, the one he is supposed to call, made sculptures—Bob remembered that because there had been some sitting on the back of his truck.
Bob sat on the side of the bed and rubbed his head. He couldn’t really be bothered with all this carry on. It all seemed a bit crazy now, having to keep the damn thing buried. What’s all that about? And Clara was so excited, contacting her archeological friend and whatnot. Strange girl though, that Nora. He wished Jane were still here. She’d know what to do.
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
Nora moves silently along the path, placing her feet with care. It is more overgrown in the wood than she remembers, but then it is such a long time since she came this way. She can see in the distance something small and pale. A gentle gust of wind and It seems to stir, as if shivering, as if caught.
Nora feels strange, there is a strong sense of deja vu now that she has entered the forest.
She comes to a halt. The trees are still now, not a leaf stirs. She can hear nothing other than the sound of her own breathing. She can’t see the clearing yet either, but she remembers it’s further on, beyond the next winding of the path. She can see it in her mind’s eye though, a rough circle of random stones, with a greenish liquid light filtering through. The air smells of leaf mould and it is spongy underfoot. There’s a wooden bench, a grassy bank, and a circular area of emerald green moss. Finn thinks of it as place of enchantment, a fairy ring.
Wait! Who is Finn? Where is this story coming from that whispers in her ear as she makes her way through the woods to her destination, the halfway point of her clandestine journey? Who is Finn?
She reaches the tiny shivering thing and sees that it is a scrap of paper, impaled on a broken branch. She reaches out gently and touches it, then eases if off the branch, taking care not to rip it further. There is a message scribbled on the paper, incomplete. meet me, is all it says now
The crumpled up paper among the dead leaves beside the path catches her eye. No, not impaled on a branch but still, a bit of paper catches her eye as the mysterious ~ ephemeral, invisible ~ story teller continues softly telling her tale
Finn feels dreamy and floaty. She smiles to herself, thinking of the purpose of her mission, feeling as though it is a message to her from the past. She is overwhelmed for a moment with a sense of love and acceptance towards her younger self. Yes, she whispers softly to the younger Finn, I will meet you at the fairy ring. We will talk a bit. Maybe I can help
But wait, there is no meaningful message on the crumpled paper that Nora picks up and opens out. It’s nothing but a shopping receipt. Disappointed, she screws it back up and aims to toss it into the undergrowth, but she hesitates. Surely it can’t have no meaning at all, she thinks, not after the strange whispered story and the synchronicity of finding it just at that moment. She opens it back up again, and reads the list of items.
Olive oil, wine, wheat, garum…. wait, what? Garum? She looks at the date on the receipt ~ a common enough looking till roll receipt, the kind you find in any supermarket ~ but what is this date? 57BC? How can that be? Even if she had mistranslated BC ~ perhaps it means British Cooperative, or Better Compare or some such supermarket name ~ the year of 57 makes little sense anyway. And garum, how to explain that! Nora only knows of garum in relation to Romans, there is no garum on the shelves between the mayonaisse and the ketchup these days, after all.
Nora smooths the receipt and folds it neatly in half and puts it in her pocket. The shadows are long now and she still has some distance to walk before the halfway village. As she resumes her journey, she hears whispered in her ear: You unlocked the blue diamond mode. You’re on a quest now!
Smiling now, she accelerates her pace. The lowering sun is casting a golden light, and she feels fortified.
In reply to: Twists and One Return From the Time Capsule
Damn these municipal restrictions! Frustrated, Nora looked again at the photo of the inscriptions on the mysterious pear shaped box that Clara had found. She picked up a pen and copied the symbols onto a piece of paper. Glancing back over the message her friend had sent, her face softened at Clara’s pet name for her, Alienor. Clara had started called her that years ago, when she found out about the ouija board incident and the aliens Nora had been talking to. Was it really an alien, or….? Clara had asked, and Nora had laughed and said Of course it was an alien or! and the name had stuck.Nora’s mood had changed with the reminiscence, and she had an idea. She was working from home, but all that really meant was that she had to have internet access. Nobody would have to know which home she was working from, if she could just make it past the town barriers. But she didn’t have to go by road: the barriers were only on the roads. There was nothing stopping her walking cross country.
Putting aside the paper with the symbols on, she perused a map. She had to cross three town boundaries, and by road it was quite a distance. But as the crow flies, not that far. And if she took the old smugglers track, it was surprisingly direct. Nora calculated the distance: forty nine kilometers. Frowning, she wondered if she could walk that distance in a single day and thought it unlikely. Three days more like, but maybe she could do it in two, at a push. That would mean one overnight stay somewhere. What a pity it was so cold! It would mean carrying a warm sleeping bag, and she hated carrying things.
Nora looked at the map again, and found the halfway point: it was a tiny hamlet. A perfect place to spend the night. If only she knew someone who lived there, somebody who wouldn’t object to her breaking the restrictions.
Nora yawned. It was late. She would finalize the plan tomorrow, but first she sent a message to Clara, asking her if she knew anyone in the little village.
