I’ve been doing some genealogy recently, looking backwards through time at where I come from. It’s been a fascinating thing to do, I knew bits and pieces from grandparent’s tales, but you only tend to get the interesting bits that are part of family folklore and sometimes the devil is in the details that are either forgotten or buried through some sense of shame.
I have found the promised connections to a major canal carrying company, Samuel Barlow’s through a Gt Gt Grandmother, a Gt Nan whose Birth certificate states proudly under Birthplace “A Boat, On the canal at Fazeley, Tamworth’ But I’ve also found stuff that was unmentioned beyond whispers of not talking about it because it was too upsetting.
Family members who fought and sadly died in both World Wars, photos seen as a child that I wasn’t allowed to talk about, young men in uniform who would never grow old. Gt Uncles who never had time to create their own family tree branches, it has really brought me closer to who I am, not an easy thing to do. Still searching for international connections, but it might be they are still to come in earlier generations.
As part of the research old census returns have been most helpful, they take a bit of getting used to and you are relying on your ancestors literacy and also the spelling ability of the person recording the details… not always as accurate as you’d think for an official recorder.
The details recorded on the census forms are mainly about individuals, address, relationship, where born and occupation. Every item is a doorway into the past, you can see how many people lived in the houses, small two bed terraced houses with three generations living in them often with 5 or 6 kids. It’s times like that you realise Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was accurate in the description of Charlie’s family situation, people would have been top and tailing on a bed, if they even had a bed. In some cases it was probably sacking full of straw covered by whatever clothes they had to try and keep warm and comfortable. You see occupations handed down from father to son, Brushmakers passed through 3 generations on one branch, cordwainers (posh shoemakers) is a popular one in a branch of my family, white smiths (tin wear makers(plates, cups etc)) was another along with the ubiquitous miners of various materials and Ag Labs or agricultural labourers, women were often silk winders if they weren’t listed as unpaid domestic duties or in quite a few cases domestic servants to other families, often being a servant not to a wealthy family but to another family in a similar situation to their own, the work they did being paid for with board and lodgings seemingly to get them out of the family home and off the family ‘payroll’.
Another part of the census was the districts the people lived in, alongside the more recognisable areas such as Walsall or Walsall Foreign (Explained here on The Bloxwich Telegraph) there was another area often listed on the headers of the census sheets, that of The hundred of Offlow. Now I have to admit I’d not heard of it before, I have heard of the Chiltern Hundreds, that fabled place MPs go to when they want to resign their seat. It turns out ‘Hundreds’ are an ancient way of dividing a shire for military and judicial purposes under the common law (Thanks wikipedia) and Offlow Hundred comes from Offa, the chap with the Dyke and hlaw meaning a mound or high place.
More details on Offlow can be found on wiki here including details of the origin of hundreds under Alfred the Great and Offlows inclusion in the Domesday book.
My reason for this post comes from the great map I found online marking the boundaries of the hundred, it dates from 1610 and many of the place names are still recognisable if a little different.
Its not just the facts it contains but it’s the sheer art that it conveys from the map maker, here was someone who really had a skill, the penmanship is a joy to behold. I love old maps but I dont really know much about them, having found the map I looked up Offlow on wiki where the map was again reproduced as an illustration this time with the maker listed as John Speed. Now I would love to say I leapt from my chair shouting Eureka as the name was already known to me but alas, I cant. What I can say however is that a simple Google soon informed me that he is probably the most famous of British map makers, I think its easy to see why this was the case, if you want more information on him this is a great place to start. If you are feeling flush you could even buy an original map of Staffordshire drawn by his fair hand…or a copperplate of one anyway, they are certainly things of beauty.
The Canalorak 