Thinking About the Dark

I recently completed reading Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, by Jane Box.  I have to say I found it strangely compelling, and I finished it with a real sense of regret.  What I found most poignant were the chapters that dealt with light on farms and cities in the 19th and very early 20th centuries.  It is not that anything that the author wrote was not something I was wholly unaware of, but some of it she combined in ways that had not occurred to me.  For example, her writing about the joy that farmers felt when they could actually milk the cows in a barn with light, and not have to worry about the risk of fire or explosion.

Indeed, one of the major reasons our ancestors went to bed early was that there was no light to do anything.  While city dwellers had gaslight to light the streets, their homes were under the the same restrictions as farmers with only candles or kerosene to light their rooms, and in the country night must have fallen like a pall, without even gaslit roads for illumination.

What Brilliant brought home to me (again), is how much we may romanticize the past that our ancestors lived in, glossing over the warts, cuts, smells, and just plain drudgery of everyday life for our mostly rural (and urban) ancestors.  Not that there is not much that was good, but in terms of lights, in the countryside when the sun went down, outdoor life stopped.  Even indoor life slowed greatly.  As the 19th century progressed the quality of the light available improved as kerosene lamps took over from candles, but as anyone who has lived with kerosene lamps knows (as I do), they are nothing when compared to an electric light bulb in terms of safety, steadiness, reliability, and sheer convenience.

We have much to be thankful for.

Back on the Document Trail

So, it's that time again to track down documents from the Halls family.

When I have a document I'm interested in I usually wait until the document that has been banging around in my mind starts banging too persistently, or it strikes me as so important that I have to "Get it now!"

In this case I am ordering a birth registration from England, and the administration papers of a will (also from England).  The birth registration may be that of my gg grandfather William Halls.  The name and place are correct, but the date is wrong.  Until I get it into my hot little hands I won't know for sure.  

The administration papers are those of my gggg grandfather, Philip Halls.   I am kind of surprised about the existence of any documents relating to a will for a couple of reasons, first, it was my understanding that most people did not have enough money or have the property to make it worth creating a will.  Second, the vast majority of wills from Devon were destroyed in Exeter during the Blitz in 1942.  I already have two wills from Halls family members living in Merton between the 1820's and 1840's.  For there to be a papers of a third, is to me, astounding. As to why it exists, it appears that Philip died intestate, and on top of that, if I understand correctly, the value of the estate was in excess of the minimum value required for the records to be sent to London because death duties were to be paid.  Once again, I won't know until the documents come in from England.

Stay Tuned!

Missing Home

I often wonder what it was like for my ggg grandfather Thomas Halls (and his brothers) to leave England and come to Canada.  I don't mean the sea voyage, which I understand could have taken up to three months, I mean adapting to a new land.

In many ways it must have been reasonably familiar.  They had many family members living nearby, as well as other people from Devon, and many of the place names were from England.  Thomas lived in the community of Lambeth, southwest of London, in the county of Middlesex.  London was on the Thames river.  A little further away was the community of Stratford, on the Avon River.  The newspapers would have had both local news, as well as news from England and the Empire.  He would have sent letters back and forth to his brother William, who had remained behind, as well as his sister Charlotte.

All in all, there would have been a great deal of the feeling of home in the areas where Thomas and his brothers lived.  And yet.  And yet it would have been very different.  First, there would have been the wilderness, literally dark, almost impenetrable forest.  The woods would have been full of animals that were large, and often dangerous, animals that certainly would not have been in Devon - moose, wolves, cougars, and bears.  Many other animals had familiar names, but in many cases that would only have drawn attention to their differences, animals like robins, jays, and badgers, and plants like chestnut or beech.

Did Thomas (and his brothers) suffer from homesickness?  Did they regret coming to Canada, or would the freedom to make their mark in the world have made up for the hardships and loneliness?  I don't know, and never can know, much to my regret.

Regardless, all the Halls brothers did well in their new homes.  Their children were successful, their lives were full, and they were successful too.  It was not a story without sadness, and sometimes tragedy, but I think that in the end they did not regret the choices they had made.

Surviving the Heat

On the Thursday, July 21st evening as I began this post I was sitting on my front stoop, trying to stay cool, and doing an ok job of it if I say so myself. There was a very nice breeze, and I had a cool drink, so I felt pretty good.

The temperature Thursday was 34C, and that night it only dropped to 25C, plus humidity for both temperatures. Not at all comfortable, but at least I had a ceiling fan.

This got me to thinking about how our ancestors beat the heat prior to air conditioning. In some ways, in much the sames way as I do now. Find somewhere in the shade, with a breeze. Keep the doors and windows closed during the heat of the day. I can't close the shutters (don't have any), but I could install awnings to keep the sun out. Today I went to the beach with my family, and we all swam. That was nice. We took the car, 100 years ago we would have taken the train, but that is a detail, the broad outline was the same - picnic lunch, bathing suit, beach umbrella, and away we went.

So much for the happy view of dealing with the hot weather. The big advantage we have that our ancestors did not can be summed up in two words - Air Conditioning. When the heat simply becomes too much to bear, we can go to a mall, museum, cinema, or even mostly retreat to the comfort of our own homes. Prior to the 1920's (and the steadily increasing numbers of cinemas with air conditioning) the public had no escape as only the most specialized buildings and workplaces had any air cooling system at all.

Imagine living in a city in 1900 with temperatures in the low to mid 30's, plus humidex. The smoke in the air from coal fired water heaters and cook stoves. The smell of the increasingly common automobiles mixed with the horse dung and urine on the roads, and you live, like most people, in a two to five storey walk-up with no air conditioning or electricity. Add, on top of all that, the formality of the age when in public all the men were expected to wear long pants, a jacket and a hat at the least, and women were expected to were long dresses that went up to the neck and down to the wrists. At the very least one would be less than comfortable. If you were elderly, very young, or had breathing problems, an extended period of heat meant death.

Wonderful and idyllic as the past may seem to us now, it was by no means a bed of roses. While I do not have air conditioning myself, I am deeply grateful for the ability to escape to a mall, cinema, or museum when the heat becomes intolerable.

Google Streetview

You might think that talking about something like Google Street View would have nothing to do with genealogy, but you would be wrong. The range of places that Google Street View has made available to people is staggering. While the coverage varies from area to area, it is still quite impressive.

One of my favourite Street View pastimes is to wander the country lanes of north Devon. You can see old buildings and churches, often the inscriptions on the sides of buildings are visible, as are road signs, addresses and so on.

I took me a while, but I found Barland House in Dolton, Devon, on Google Street View. It's not that the image wasn't on Street View, but that I didn't know exactly where in Dolton Barland House was.

Here is a picture of Barland House taken circa 1900











Here is a Google Streetview picture of Barland House taken in the past few years, but from Rectory Rd.

If you click on the image you can see the sign on the fence in the lower right of the picture, it says "Barlands".

You can find Street View in Google Maps just look for the little gold coloured man in the upper left corner. Not every place has been "Street Viewed" by Google, but lots have. If you haven't tried Street View yet to see places your ancestors lived, you definitely should.

Who's that Girl, or Facial Recognition of Relatives in Old Pictures

I had a brain wave a few days ago, and wondered what sort of facial recognition software might be available for genealogy.

A quick survey of the web didn't reveal anything right away that was specifically dedicated to genealogy, but a couple of options presented themselves. The first was to use Google's Picasa Web albums. Upload your photos, ensure that name tagging is enabled, and away you go. After a few pictures are identified it will start to make suggestions based on previous name tags you have assigned.

The other possible option is Facebook, which automatically tags people in pictures, and there is no reason not to use that ability for figuring out who is who in old picture. Once again, all you need to do is tag the first few occurences of a persoon, and after that Facebook starts doing it for you for any other occurrences of that person.

Finally, there is also an Apple application, iPhoto, that has facial recognition built in.

Personally, I think I like the Picasa Web Albums better. It is in the cloud making it easier to share, it can be synced to your own computer, and because the pictures are web based, they are platform independent. Just make sure that you send the link of the album with the pictures to your cousins and contacts who might be able to help.

Halls in Peterborough, Ontario

A mystery was solved last week when I discovered, quite by chance, the whereabouts of Mary Halls.

Mary was one of the children of Philip Halls and Jenny Smith, and sister to my ggg Thomas. Mary married John Heard in England on April 3, 1842, in Devon. Then they vanished from the English records. I could not find any people that matched who they were, anywhere, that I was comfortable saying "This must be them". I resigned myself to never solving that mystery, and got on with what I could do.

Some time later I was doing a random search for a Halls family member, and a hint came up in Ancestry family trees that the mother of John Heard (junior) was surnamed Halls. based on the family tree, this set me on the trail for census records for family members in the Peterborough, Ontario area. I found that John junior had three siblings, Charlotte, Margaret, and Philip. Philip's death certificate also show that his father was John Heard, and his mother was Mary Halls. The 1851/52 Census of Ontario indicates that John came from England, and that his wife died of fever at age 35, so the birth date was right, too!

Happily portions of the Peterborough Archives are online, and they indicated that Mary Heard was buried in Wesleyan Methodist Cemetery aka Pioneer Park. The burial place makes sense because the Halls family was Bible Christian, an offshoot of Methodism. In addition there was a Charlotte Heard buried in the same place, daughter of John and Mary. Best of all, they both have tombstones. Sometime this spring I will be taking a road trip to Peterborough.

With this find I now know what happened to all of the children of Philip and Jenny Halls. All but two came to Canada. I wonder why?