Names

I once worked for a year for the local office of the Department of Work and Pensions, the Records department. It was pretty routine and I spent my day filing large folders of personal information on long racks of shelving.

For someone interested in names, though, it was fascinating. There was the usual character who had changed his name to Elvis Presley – ever town has at least one – as well as problems deciding which part of a Muslim or Sikh name counts as the surname and the frequent mixing up of ‘Macs’ and ‘Mcs’.

I found somebody once whose surname was ‘De La Pole’. I informed my colleagues, who by now were used to my eccentricities, that if Richard III had not killed at Bosworth, murdered as I see it, the throne of England might have passed to the De La Pole who was the son of Richard’s sister.

I used to say that the records were a marvellous resource for students researching surname distribution throughout the country. And the section devoted to Retirement Pensioners would have been useful to anyone interested in the changing fashions in first names. I remember all the seventy year-old women called Rose, Pearl, Doris, Iris, Mavis – flowers, jewels, birds, nymphs, etc. And of course, names from the Bible were once very popular.

I think perhaps the most popular woman’s name seventy years ago was ‘May’, but oddly seldom as a first name. I was usually added to another, Daisy May, Sarah May, Laura May, etc. (Pause for ribald jokes).

I was thinking about this when I was perusing one of the charts Susan sent me.

I was particularly intrigued by Thomas and Ruth (b 1794 and 1795).

Apart from names, I noticed first that Thomas seems to have been a posthumous son, born (or baptised?) in 1795, the year after John died.

Thomas, unlike his father, lived to a ripe old age, as did his wife Ruth, 87 and 79 respectively. Maybe this is because they were country folk, plenty of fresh air and hard work, partly protected from the diseases of the towns. No doubt their food was plain and simple, with plenty of vegetables, if not fruit. Lincolnshire people, however poor, have usually had plenty to eat.

I wonder if they were even then god-fearing people, forswearing drink and tobacco, although I find it difficult to imagine Thomas without a pipe.

And then there are all those children, the last, Samuel being born when Ruth was 46. Another lesson there in longevity, perhaps. Samuel himself lived to be 80. He and his father spanned three centuries, just.

It’s interesting that they had two sons called Joseph. I assume this is because the first died. I hadn’t noticed people doing this before except in mediaeval royal families. I think Edward III lost children and later gave their name to another child. As I recall, he and also King John used to use the same names for their illegitimate children, so that they had two or more families growing up in parallel.

The names Thomas gave to his children are all pretty standard for the times and are not uncommon today. I wonder if Princes William and Henry will lead a revival of those names, which oddly were the names of Thomas’ first two sons. His daughters were Sarah, Susanna and Ann, names still in use, with variants.

Only Cornelius is intriguing. I wonder if anyone knows why it was chosen. Did Thomas like classical history and read about the Punic Wars? Has it been passed down like so many Hundleby Christian names?

Note: Susan tells me that the name 'Cornelius' seems to have been introduced as a Hundleby name from Ruth's family, the Bradleys, as were Susanna and Nathaniel, both Biblical names. But no-one seems to know why Cornelius was chosen originally.

Away from Thomas I notice a use of mother’s maiden names being used as forenames. Bennett Warren Hundleby, for example, and Stanley Truman Hundleby sound very American. I named my own first son, James, Barrett, after his mother, but that was done in conscious imitation.

Interesting link:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=184

Luke's family

Roger talks about widening the gene pool, so here's a little background to my husband's family. Luke's father Max Hundleby (author of 'The German A7V Tank') was born in Hogsthorpe, Lincolnshire.

Max's father, William Henry Hundleby was a third generation Lincolnshire thresher. As well as being threshers the family designed and built their own elevators. Max went to University in Hull to study engineering, and met his wife Mary, who was born and brought up in Normanton, South Yorkshire. The couple settled in Lancashire where their two sons Luke and Giles were born and educated.

Luke married me, the daughter of a Shropshire man and a Yorkshire lass, whilst Giles married Kathryn, who comes from the Bristol area. How about that for branching out across England? Giles is an engineer as well, so one could say that the engineering gene has survived five generations and the move away from Lincolnshire.

Last time I blogged I talked about the dangers of Lincolnshire's roads. I have to say that the dangers are real. There are usually about a hundred people killed every year in accidents, usually through sheer idiocy. A few years ago my cousin's husband was killed on Christmas Eve by someone pulling out onto a main road and more recently my wife's nephew was killed when the man giving him a lift decided to overtake on a bend and hit a lorry head-on.

At least three of my mother's brothers had serious motorbike accidents, one of them almost fatal. It's one of my earliest memories, my mother's father appearing at the house to tell us about Uncle Dick. It's funny, it was always my father who was needed when there was a problem of some sort.

I wanted to talk about widening the gene pool as well, especially my own contribution.

My first wife was Shirley, Shirley Anne in fact, named so because her father was a fan of Shirley Anne Field, perhaps best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Shirley's father was Bill, son of a Lt-commander in the Royal Navy. I don't know whether was a regular sailor, but he certainly served in the Navy during the war. I believe he sailed in The Hood, but fortunately was transferred before she met The Bismarck. It seems that he met my mother-in-law while stationed in the Navy base at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, for she is an Orkadian. Incidentally, Orkadians are not Scottish, whatever region of the UK the civil servants place them in, and always vote against 'Scottish' independence or devolution when given the opportunity. It's back to the Viking heritage.

My second wife, Carolyn, is the product of a Lincolnshire woman (surname Louth) and Cecil Bower. She met Cecil in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the war. Cecil, obviously named after Rhodes, had grown up in Mozambique. His family's name had originally been 'Bauer', having come from the Alsace-Lorraine region on the border of France and Germany. During the First World War they anglicised their name, just like the Mountabttens (from Battenberg) and King George V himself.

Not a bad mix, in all.

Lincolnshire comes in for a lot of bad press. Not only are its roads are among the most dangerous in England, it has also been voted (unaccountably) the fourth most unattractive county in the land. Grantham is famously the most boring town and Boston has the fattest, the laziest, the most racially bigoted and most promiscuous population in the country.

It's also a common calumny on Lincolnshire folk that we - how can I put this delicately? - that we,when marrying, do not take sufficient steps to broaden the gene pool. Only the other day, I heard this repeated on a blog written by a football supporter who is working his way through all the other sides in his own team's division, including Lincoln and Boston. To be fair, he said the same thing about Cambridgeshire.

Well, it's not true of my family.

My father, Ernie, came from Butterwick, five miles north of Boston off the Skegness road. My mother was born in Fishmere End, which is somewhere near Kirton, five miles south of Boston, on the Spalding road.

Fishmere End is not a village. It's an area on the map and consists of vegetable fields, the odd house and a dyke (in Lincs that's a drain, not a mound as in Holland or a levee as in the US). Before WW2 it was the kind of area where the boys were let off school in the autumn term to help with the harvest.

My mother's father was called Walter Moses and worked for a local farmer. I think he reached the rank of foreman because the 'tied cottage' he lived in was, to my young eyes, a real farmhouse, complete with barns and greenhouses. The barn was full of items which served my grandfather in his on-the-side buying and selling business. He was a short but rather fearsome man, with a thick leather belt, which he was not afraid to use on his children when they strayed from the straight and narrow.

He also drank his tea from his saucer and seemed to strain it through his moustache as he did so.

He served in the artillery in the First World War and once gave me his tin hat. Being a silly little boy, I didn't take care of it and a precious family heirloom is now lost.

He had five sons: Walt, Joe, George (known as Podge), Dick and Frank. They all went on to agricultural work and lived in villages like Wrangle, Heckington and Donington. They were all typical south Lincolnshire men, taciturn, close and hard. My first wife could hardly understand a word they said, partly because of their broad accent, partly because their pipe never left their mouth.

Their education was poor and my father would often be asked to write letters for them or fill in their tax returns. But they were no fools. When it came to money they were very shrewd. And they would have nothing to do with credit. I remember that when my grandfather retired, my father persuaded him to buy a bungalow. He accompanied him through the whole process and when the solicitor asked him about the method of payment, my grandfather produced a wad of notes from his back pocket and counted out £1,000 in notes. That was in 1964.

My mother's sister, Nellie, was to my young eyes, very glamorous. She married Leslie Henshaw, the brother (I think) of Alex Henshaw, well-known as a pre-war aviator and Spitfire test pilot. He ran a holiday park near Mablethorpe (Trusville). When they married he renamed Nellie as Lynn.

I've often wondered about the name 'Moses'. My mother used to tell me, when I was growing up, that it was a good thing we'd won the war. Whatever my mother's origins I always like to claim Jewish blood, along with the Viking strain. When you are known as a librarian,you need something exotic to boast about.

I'll write about my own attempts to widen the gene pool next time.

Canadian Connections

How did Hundleby members get to Canada and why.

Ellen Hundleby, daughter of Samuel the Preacher was born in Hemingby 14 May 1879. She married Valentine Edmund Mackinder on Dec. 25, 1899 at Horncastle. They had the following children: Frederick and Edmund, identical twins born Oct. 23, 1900 at 41 North Street, Horncastle; Nellie born 3 March 1903; Grace born 4 March 1906 died 22 Oct. 1906; Kathleen born 3 Feb. 1908.

Ellen was not that healthy a person and in 1909 the Doctor recommended that they find a drier climate. As Valentine had a friend, Joe Walkey, who had been an apprentice butcher with him, they decided to come to Canada to Cranbrook, British Columbia where Joe lived. They had considered South Africa and Australia but chose the wettest and dampest place!

After a very stormy 8-day crossing on the S.S. Laurentic, the family arrived in Quebec City on Oct. 23, 1910 the twins' 10th birthday. They then took a 5 day trip across Canada by train. Life was not easy for them, and their daughter, Kathleen, died 15 Nov. 1910 in Jaffray, B.C. The doctor listed her death as from Marasmus, which was basically malnutrition due to a protein difficiency in the diet.

They then moved to Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, becoming part of the group of first homesteaders on the townsite, Valentine building his Butcher Shop on 2nd Ave and homesteading 5 acres further out. They lived in a tent. Ellen, however, was diagnosed with T.B., so they moved again to Kamloops in the interior of the Province in the year 1918. This is a very dry semi-arid desert area. However, it was to be too late for the improvement of her health. Ellen died in Kamloops 17 Dec. 1922.

Haslet: a recipe

The haslet is one of Lincolnshire's most characteristic dishes, along with its sausages, pork pies and stuffed chine. The quality of such products is how a pork butcher in Lincolnshire is judged. I plan to visit Boston in the new year and will make a point of seeing if Bycroft's is still going. This shop was renowned for its meat and you could never go past it without seeing a long queue of people waiting to get in.

Here is a recipe for a basic haslet:

Ingredients:

Pig's liver (3/4 lb)

Belly pork (3/4 lb)

Onion, large

Bread crumbs (3 oz)

Mixed herbs (1 dessert sp)

Sage and onion stuffing (1 pkt)

Egg, large, beaten

Salt and pepper

Instructions:

Mince pork and liver, keeping rough texture. Traditionally, use old-style mincer.

Fine chop onion.

Put in mixing bowl, with all the other ingredients.

Mix by hand.

Divide into 2 loaves.

Place on baking tray.

Cook at gas mark 6 (200 C) for about 3/4 hr. Adjust for fan oven.

Notes:

As with sausages, the secret is in the herbs, and this recipe is merely basic. Mixed herbs and packeted sage and onion is obviously a short cut. This is where experimentation and personal taste come in. I wonder if a little apple sauce might enhance it.

The family chart that Susan sent me made me realise just how ignorant I am of my grandfather's family. I notice there are no dates of death and I am ashamed that I can't supply them.

So, Grandfather Henry was one of ten children, and had two sons himself.

I have a photograph of Uncle Alf (I always called them by the names Dad used), in uniform and moustache, making him look a lot older than the 25 or 26 he must have been at the time. At least that was my first impression. Looking at it again I wonder if he didn't get out his old WW1 uniform for the photo. He's standing with a cane and I'm sure he wasn't an officer. I'll bring it to the convention,where I'm sure someone can identify rank, regiment, etc.

It was Alf who left my father the money to buy our first house, and that was when I was four or five (ca 1954).

Aunt Lou (Lucy) was still alive when I was about 10, I think. She was in a nursing home (Woodhall?) and we would visit her sometimes on a Sunday afternoon. She must have been getting on for 90 by then.

Aunt Nell was someone else we used to visit around this time. Nell was widowed by now. I remember it was out in the country somewhere, and Tattershall Bridge sounds right. I can't say I enjoyed these visits. Aunt Nell was nice enough, but I had nothing in common with her. Older people seemed so ancient in those days. More than that, there seemed such a gulf between country life and the town life I was used to. Aunt Nell's home was pantries and sculleries, rag rugs and sterilised milk, old photos and nick-nacks. As she and Dad chatted, they might have been talking a foreign language.

Cousin Walter, as he was always called, was Uncle Joe's son. Profoundly deaf from an early age, he attended a special school somewhere, where he learned to talk (after a fashion) and lip read. I was always amazed at how well Dad and Uncle Ron would chat to him so fluently. I saw him only rarely and found it very difficult at first, but after a while it became easier.

I have a photo of my father, Ron, Walter and the other cousin, Nell's son (I assume, whose name I don't know). I guess he was the father of Frank Lamyman, who was often round at our house. Dad used to give him lifts in his lorry to London, when he was studying there. I've a feeling that Frank has died.

And that is about the total of my knowledge. Sad to say, that whole generation has passed. Ron's widow, Kathleen, is still living in Boston. I hope to bring her to Horncastle next year.

Merry Christmas.

Hello from Suzanne

This is my first time as a 'blogger' too. For Roger's benefit (Evelyn, Susan and Janet all 'know' me now!), I was born in Hull, Yorkshire. My grandfather, known to one and all as "Dadda Jim" as that is what my brother called him) was James Ernest Hundleby, b 1884, d 1984. He was a lovely man and very patient with us children.

His father was William Hundleby, b 1851 in Wormegay, Norfolk, and he died in 1908 in Hull. He lived near and was a great friend of Mary Elizabeth (Polly) and Albert Adkins and his son, James Ernest, married their daughter, Mabel. In fact, William is buried in their family grave.

William was a joiner and undertaker (and, my mother, Grace, nee Hundleby, who is now 90 years old, insists, although I can find no evidence, that he was a publican too at The Falcon in Neptune Street. If anyone can help with this I would be very grateful). His father was William Hundleby, b. 1819 in Ashby, Lincolnshire. He moved to Wormegay in Norfolk and married Amelia Emily Nurse (Emily). Unfortunately, he contracted Typhoid Fever and died there in 1854, leaving his wife with three young sons.

I have been playing a small part in the organisation of the Hundleby Convention next year by sending out invitations and receiving the all important cheques! My husband, Tony, and I are really looking forward to meeting everyone in Horncastle in May.

Message from Susan Hundleby

Thank you Roger for setting this system up for us. This is my first time as a Blogger too Evelyn. I have had to sign in as Roger because I didn't have a password for my e-mail address; Roger please advise what we should use. I am looking forward to meeting everybody on Sunday May 6th 2007 at the convention.

Susan Hundleby

Childhood in B.C.

Hello again from Evelyn. I guess I am 5 years older than you - born in 1944. Used to tease Dad that I was a furlough baby which made him blush. Dad and his brother, Fred and Ed were the twin sons of Ellen Hundleby and Valentine Mackinder. They were born in 1900 and lied about their age in order to join WWII. However, both remained in Canada, my Dad being a Heavy Duty Mechanic and Bandsman.

We always had central heating, Roger, but when I grew old enough and the others had left home I happily went to the basement bedrooms which Dad had built for the older ones and which were not heated. We lived in Cranbrook in the East Kootenays where the temperatures could go to -25F and I used to wake up with frost on the quilt from my breath. It was a mad dash up the stairs, across the enclosed sun porch and into the warm kitchen where Dad had the pot of porridge bubbling on the stove before he left for work.

Anyway, what more news from the two contacts you had from the publicity. The graves in Hemingby will be my Great-grandfather Samuel, his wife Elizabeth and probably some of his children who stayed there in the agricultural machinery business and threshing. I would love to go there when I come in April/May.

We had winds of up to 157kph last night. We are fine, but two trees at our old house blew over and put a large hole in the neighbour's roof. Glad we don't have to pay.

Evelyn

Roger's early years

I don't want to turn this Hundleby blog into an autobiography, but thinking about family history has made me nostalgic. It may be of interest if I indulge myself and reminisce.

If my calculations are correct, I was conceived in Matlock, Derbyshire, but that's probably too much information. I was born above a baker's shop in Kirton, Lincs. No maternity hospitals then for the likes of us, nor for my sister, Janice, who was born two years later. By that time I think we may have been living in Stickney.

My grandfather, Henry (Harry), died before I was born. He was a farmer in the Butterwick area. Whether he owned his own land, I don't know, but I do know he was his own boss,because my grandmother was appalled when, after the war, my father, Ernie, and his brother, Ron, went to work for others. She considered this to be going down in the world.

She died soon after I was born, and so I have no memory of her. I do have a few letters that she wrote to my mother, Doris, after I was born. I might publish them here some time.

I also have some letters written by my mother and father to each other during their courtship. I have never read them, because it seems too intrusive, even sixty years later.

My grandmother may well have been right about her sons leaving the farm, because, according to my mother, we were very hard up in the early years. In Sibsey (about 10miles from Boston), my father used to sell firewood from a horse and cart and food was in short supply. But by the time I was five things had taken a turn for the better. Dad had got a steady job, probably lorry-driving for Firth's of Kirton, though that may have been later, and he received a legacy from his Uncle Alf. This was about £1,000 and enabled Dad to buy a bungalow in Wyberton West Rd, Boston.

Like so many houses in the area, there was lots of land, even though the house itself was small. It had two bedrooms, a dining-room, a kitchen and a front room. This was supposed to be a drawing-room, parlour, lounge, what you will, but we called it 'the room' and it was rarely used. It contained a three-piece suite and the best china, again rarely used. Only when my sister and I grew too big to share a bedroom did the room serve a useful purpose when I was moved in.

Outside was a small brick building, containing the toilet, the coalshed and the wash-house, complete with 'copper' (boiler), 'dolly tub' with a big stick for mashing the washing, and a mangle. Hanging somewhere was an aluminium bath which was carried into the kitchen once a week to be filled with laboriously boiled water on bath night.

No central heating of course, just an open coal fire in the living/dining room which Dad had to light, with much swearing, every morning. Many a time he would set a newspaper on fire when he spread it across the grate to 'draw' the fire. And sometimes he would give up and use a drop of paraffin. My father would, of necessity I suppose, have a go at most things, but he did lack a certain something in practical matters. I remember that once he borrowed some rods and tried to sweep the chimney. Oh dear!

To a child, the lack of heat, apart from a hot-water bottle, made bed-time an ordeal. I'm sure getting up was even more difficult then than it is now. But the one thing I miss is the frost on the windows on winter mornings. We were told, of course, that during the night, Jack Frost had painted them.

The land behind the bungalow was probably 150 yards long, room for a kitchen garden, and orchard and a penned off area where we kept chickens, geese (vicious birds who got their just deserts at Christmas) and sometimes pigs.

The memory of the pigs brings to mind an odd event and I wonder if it still occurs. Was it called a 'pig-killing party'? The pig would be professionally slaughtered and butchered and then friends and family would congregate to carve it into chops and joints and meat for sausages, haslets and pork pies. How all this pork was preserved I don't know. We didn't have fridges, let alone freezers. Salt?

When it was all done, I was given the pig's curly tale and told to put it under my pillow for luck. I did as I was told and I would say it worked reasonably well.

Roger Hundleby

Hundleby B.C. connection

Hello Roger: What a great idea. This is my first time as a 'blogger'. I read the newspaper article on-line and the 5 W's were there, so from that point of view, it was a success. I used to deal with the Press a great deal in my working life and always found it useful to give them a one-page sheet summarizing the details which they could then refer back to as they wrote the article. It would be useful, if you are doing any more papers, to mention descendants from both the male and female lines of the Hundleby name, as, of course, we are all not Hundlebys now.

Regarding the Convention next May, I was thinking of going to Lincoln for 3 or 4 days before the date to do some research at the Archives. My sister and I were in Lincoln for 4 days last September and stayed at the Carline Guest House on Carline Road. What a shame we did not know of each other's existence. I do now have a much better idea of what I wish to search for. I will then take the train from Lincoln to Spalding and stay with Janet and Brian for the Convention Weekend.

Our weather on the idyllic West Coast has been anything but this last month and a half. We had a windstorm on Monday which tore off 4 or 5 shingles from the roof. That has now been repaired but we have another storm on the way which is supposed to be packing 100kph winds with it. This is not our usual weather at all!

Hope this gets on the site O.K.

Evelyn

Distant Cousins

The internet is a wonderful thing.

When I finally decided to fork out my £30 a month to ntl nearly a year ago, the first Google search I did was for my own name, Hundleby. I was looking for Prime Ministers, poets, winners of the VC and Olympic gold medals. All I found were thousands of references to estate agents in North Lincolnshire, parish council meetings and a fishmonger in Manchester.

But I scrolled down and down, and down, until I came to a date and a name that seemed familiar: Samuel Hundleby, 18 hundred and something. An old enquiry from Evelyn. Frankly, I was more excited by the fact that I could so easily communicate with someone on the west coast of Canada than by family history.

Now, as a former librarian, living in Lincolnshire I had no excuse for neglecting to research my family tree. After all, I worked in Lincoln Central Library, with its local studies department, and the Lincolnshire Record Office was across the road. But all I ever did was scan through the censuses back to 1851 and jot down the names of fathers and forefathers from Thomas Hundleby (b 1794) onwards.

According to my notes, Samuel was the brother of my great-grandfather, Henry, probably his twin, and Thomas was his father. I e-mailed Evelyn to inform her of this momentous fact. She politely pointed out my error; that, in fact, Samuel, despite being born in the same year (1842), was Henry's uncle and Thomas his grandfather. Henry appeared to have been born out of wedlock to Thomas' daughter, Sarah, who died the same year, aged 20. Henry was brought up as one of the family and given the surname Hundleby, which passed down along with the forename Henry, to my grandfather, 'Harry', my father 'Ernie', myself and my own eldest son James.

I made contact just in time. Otherwise I may never have known about the Hundleby Convention next year. About which more soon.

Roger Hundleby