What sparked my interest in family history? Having spent years as a child half-listening to my father’s endless tales of life in Cocos during WW2, it took a monumental event to awaken the latent interest in history. Any interest in things historical had been completely destroyed by the unimaginative way history was taught in my grammar school – to such an extent that I dropped the subject at the first opportunity!
Then, in December 1983, my father-in-law of 8 years died in his sleep, leaving my mother-in-law as a widow in the he large family home. She decided that she would like to live in a smaller, modern house, so we set about the task of removing two generations (or so we thought) of items from the loft. The house had previously been owned by my grandfather-in-law; (Grandpa) a man who was widowed young, who went on amazing independent trips to Africa in his 70s and as we found out later, had evidently over the years, had been a repository for all things connected with his ancestors!
The boarded loft contained all the usual things, including old picnic baskets, a train set still set out on the board, boxes of books and old toys and games. But as we worked our way further back, we came across things that neither my mother-in-law nor my husband had seen before. When they had moved into the house on the death of ‘Grandpa’ they had also inherited an amazing array of cabin boxes, cardboard boxes and a trunk, but as is often the way, other things were just added to the pile and the older boxes were forgotten about! We set about the task of looking though and removing the boxes and trunk from the loft; little did we know what a treasure trove we would find!
A few days prior the discovery of the boxes and trunk, I remember to my eternal shame, that we burnt, a bagful of letters, keeping the envelopes simply because they all had Penny Reds on them! I’ve since realised that they were the letters from Great Grandpa to his then fiancée (later wife). Oh how I wish I could turn back the clock; my only excuse is that we were young and Grandpa obviously didn’t know about them either, otherwise they would have been in one of the main boxes.
I opened the trunk; it was stuffed full to the brim. At the top was a framed sampler from 1859 and several rolls of tissue paper. I unrolled those to reveal 4 more samplers, unmounted and unframed; the oldest was from 1812.
Then, in December 1983, my father-in-law of 8 years died in his sleep, leaving my mother-in-law as a widow in the he large family home. She decided that she would like to live in a smaller, modern house, so we set about the task of removing two generations (or so we thought) of items from the loft. The house had previously been owned by my grandfather-in-law; (Grandpa) a man who was widowed young, who went on amazing independent trips to Africa in his 70s and as we found out later, had evidently over the years, had been a repository for all things connected with his ancestors!
The boarded loft contained all the usual things, including old picnic baskets, a train set still set out on the board, boxes of books and old toys and games. But as we worked our way further back, we came across things that neither my mother-in-law nor my husband had seen before. When they had moved into the house on the death of ‘Grandpa’ they had also inherited an amazing array of cabin boxes, cardboard boxes and a trunk, but as is often the way, other things were just added to the pile and the older boxes were forgotten about! We set about the task of looking though and removing the boxes and trunk from the loft; little did we know what a treasure trove we would find!
A few days prior the discovery of the boxes and trunk, I remember to my eternal shame, that we burnt, a bagful of letters, keeping the envelopes simply because they all had Penny Reds on them! I’ve since realised that they were the letters from Great Grandpa to his then fiancée (later wife). Oh how I wish I could turn back the clock; my only excuse is that we were young and Grandpa obviously didn’t know about them either, otherwise they would have been in one of the main boxes.
I opened the trunk; it was stuffed full to the brim. At the top was a framed sampler from 1859 and several rolls of tissue paper. I unrolled those to reveal 4 more samplers, unmounted and unframed; the oldest was from 1812.
I didn’t recognise the names on the samplers as being connected to my husband’s family, so I rewrapped them carefully, closed the lid of the trunk and decided that one day I would track down the history of those samplers. I didn’t look further down the trunk for several years The boxes and trunk were duly moved to our new house. The boxes went into the roof and the trunk was placed under a table in an alcove of the utility room. There it stayed; e had two small children and a new house to sort out; in addition, soon after the move, I started work as an IT lecturer, so there was never time to investigate further But the contents of trunk and particularly the framed sampler were never forgotten; a few years later, we needed to decorate the utility room, so the trunk was moved out into the main part of the house, the lid opened and the samplers carefully removed. For the first time we looked deeper into the trunk and discovered a cornucopia of items, including several amazing Victorian photo albums, some with names added in a hand that was unmistakably Grandpa’s.
It was obvious that the photos pre-dated him; upon further examination I discovered that one was his father’s album and one was his mother’s album. Several other albums with photos dating back to about 1860 had no indication of their owners to, but Grandpa’s annotations, though sparse, made it clear that they were all family. Several other albums with photos dating back to about 1860 had no indication of their owners to, but Grandpa’s annotations, though sparse, made it clear that they were all family.
Again, I still didn’t explore to the bottom of the trunk; I was just overwhelmed by what we had found. It was to be a further decade before I did everything went back into the trunk, but during that time, I took the samplers to Witney Antiques, who are specialists in cleaning and mounting samplers. I had by this time decided that I would display them all on the wall of my dining room. Twenty years later, I have had them reframed and they are behind UV glass, but they are still on the wall. A few other textile gems and pictures have also joined them – all from the trunk!
It was obvious that the photos pre-dated him; upon further examination I discovered that one was his father’s album and one was his mother’s album. Several other albums with photos dating back to about 1860 had no indication of their owners to, but Grandpa’s annotations, though sparse, made it clear that they were all family. Several other albums with photos dating back to about 1860 had no indication of their owners to, but Grandpa’s annotations, though sparse, made it clear that they were all family.
Again, I still didn’t explore to the bottom of the trunk; I was just overwhelmed by what we had found. It was to be a further decade before I did everything went back into the trunk, but during that time, I took the samplers to Witney Antiques, who are specialists in cleaning and mounting samplers. I had by this time decided that I would display them all on the wall of my dining room. Twenty years later, I have had them reframed and they are behind UV glass, but they are still on the wall. A few other textile gems and pictures have also joined them – all from the trunk!
- Other gems that eventually emerged from the trunk and boxes include:
- books of postcards between Grandpa and his fiancée Alice (later Granny)
- parcels of letters going back to the early 1800s
- countless pieces of memorabilia, for example mourning lockets and a ceremonial truncheon
- travel diaries for three trips to Africa in the 1950s plus albums of photos and reels of 16mm cine film
- carousels and boxes of 35mm slides
- a professional family history tree that someone had commissioned about a family that I hadn’t realised was connected to ours!
So I guess I should acknowledge that the catalyst for my interest in genealogy wasn’t actually anyone in my family, but someone who I never had the privilege of meeting – my grandfather-in-law (Grandpa) Horatio Thomas Barrett Lambourne, known to everyone as simply Barrett!
Thank goodness Barrett was an inveterate hoarder, with a capacious loft in his big house! I really don’t think he knew the social history value of the contents of the trunk; in fact, I’m not even sure he looked in it, which maybe just a well! There will be more on Barrett another time…