The Silver Bowl

Olena of Brooks Brothers

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:39:00 +0000

If there were something like an autism spectrum that could be used to describe people’s approach to clothes shopping, I know where I would stand – at the place where eye contact is avoided, where there is an inability to speak, as well as a compelling desire to flee. I only barely fall short of rocking back and forth, and smacking my face. I usually retreat to a bookstore for safety. My friends know this about me. It often takes a posse of them to get me tarted up for a special event.

Years ago, I expressed panic about this handicap to some friends at my book club. I knew that I needed to look swish, maybe even attractive, for a friend’s wedding. The supporting troops rallied. Four of us headed out on the train to Vancouver from Mission. Now, you have to promise us, one of them said, no bookstores today. Meekly, I complied.

God knows how many women’s clothes stores we went into, all around Georgia and Granville, and up and down Robson Street. The one I remember best was Holt Renfrew. My book-club friend, Pam, who often dressed with an eye to brand consciousness, leaned across the counter while Colleen and I riffled through dresses. I overheard her as she stage whispered to the clerk, My friend – a nod towards me – needs help. She lives on a mountain – a second look towards me – and she composts.

True, that pretty well summed me up, at least when it came to dress shopping. As the nattily attired clerk at Holt Renfrew clicked her high heels over towards me, I felt like a deer in the headlights. The next thing I knew I was in my bra and panties in a change room, while one item after another was being thrown over the transom. I came out in one outfit, and was told: red looks good. Another dress had spaghetti straps, not my kind of thing, and later, wearing another, I emerged to gusts of laughter from my friends: migawd, she has hooters.

Things were not looking promising. Hours later, we had exhausted downtown, and were now resorting to the shops on Tenth Avenue, but it was getting late. When we arrived at the last store, I had my hand on the handle at the same time as the clerk inside had just put her hand on it in order to lock up for the day. Even so, she let us in. Fifteen minutes later, we had the perfect outfit, plus shoes to match. We rewarded ourselves with pastries from Bon Tons to eat on the way home.

All of this is a long introduction to Olena. Last weekend, I went to Vancouver on another clothes shopping mission. Colleen, a dear friend who continues to have my back on such matters, was at that very moment on a flight to Mexico. Not very convenient. This meant that this day, I was flying solo. Try Brooks Brothers, she had said. I had confessed to her that I needed to ditch my Roberts Creek T-shirts, fleece vests and yoga pants for something more upscale for an upcoming jaunt to Hong Kong. It was as a result of Colleen’s advice that I met Olena.

I could see at a glance that Brooks Brothers was not going to be in my usual price range (cheap). I was also apprehensive that their size selection might not be up to the challenges of my current level of upholstery, but I bravely stepped forth. Olena greeted me with an outstretched hand: It would be my honour to help you. She was about ten feet tall, dressed like a model, and knew how to glide. Me, I schlumped along in her wake with my backpack holding all my portable computer gear lashed onto a trolley (I could explain, but I won’t), and with an ungainly bag on my shoulder which contained a huge round of bread I had just baked along with various other essentials. In short, I was loaded down with all the detritus that one should not have in tow when clothes shopping.

Olena didn’t blinch. You will need a lightweight outfit, one that won’t wrinkle when you travel. I mentioned to her that I had been told by someone who knew such things I should also have a blazer. I explained that I was going to be giving a speech in Hong Kong. Then a blouse too, yes? And a skirt or ... Slacks, I told her, I am not much of a skirts kinda gal, although ... This blouse here? This will be verra nice on you.

What can I say? The blouse was perfect, so were the slacks which Olena chose for me. Also, the price was fair. The blazer, well, it was a bit too much on the executive side for me, but how could Olena know? Later in the day, I did find a Bianca Nygaard jacket at The Bay, which I think will do the trick, although Kinga thinks I can still go one better because it is too casual. It has a zipper. What the heck. I also have a shawl I can resort to in a pinch.

My recent experience made me think of Jane Jacobs, the world famous city planning visionary, who was often nagged by her mother about her lack of fashion sense. It was one of the set pieces between them, but Jane had her ultimate revenge when it was she, not her natty mother, who was featured on the front cover of Vogue.

Me, I will never get on the front cover of Vogue, and that is OK, but I did get a letter from Olena, and while I know this kind of note is a business thing, I also wanted this blog piece to be a thank you to her, and to all the sales clerks who take people like me in hand, and most importantly, don’t judge.

Olena – Thank you.

Francesca aka Frances Bertha Marion “Daisy” Sexton

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:43:00 +0000

If you were to see Mrs. Noble in 1890, just after the birth of her youngest child and presiding as President of the Ladies Recreation Club of Hong Kong, you would think that the world was her oyster. Always had been, always would be. After all, she was married to the man who had just been appointed Manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the bank whose reputation was head and shoulders above all the other banks in Hong Kong.

The first adjustment to such a picture of a life of ease would be to learn that she was born at sea in 1858. She was the first born child of Capt. John Malone Sexton and Josephine Mary O’Brien, both from Newcastle, Co. Limerick. Her father had been raised by a step father, John Norris, a local schoolmaster. An account, written in 1892 - probably by Nicholas Upton D’Arcy, remembers him as being: about 18 or 19 years old in very poor circumstances. In fact not a shoe to his foot and like Bryan Olinn [a character in a folk tale] had no breeches to wear or very little of it.

Why a schoolmaster’s step son should be so ill attired, is not commented on by D’Arcy.

We do know that John Malone Sexton then did what so many young Irishmen did in the aftermath of the famine: he enlisted in the 90th went through the war and so distinguished himself that he came home a Captain and married Mary O'Brien who was a fine and very clever girl. The army was an effective passport to a brighter future for him.

Military records always make the lists of battles and medals sound so dry: Major Sexton served throughout the Eastern campaign of 1854-55 as Adjutant of the 25^th Regiment from June 1855, including the battles of Alma, Inkerman, siege and fall of Sebastapol, and sortie of 26^th October (Medal with three Clasps, Knight of the Legion of Honour, and Turkish Medal). Behind such lists are tales of daring deeds and personal risk.

In order to inject some life into the lists of such battles, it helps to think of Leo Tolstoy’s Sebastapol Sketches, or Tennyson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade. Think of nurses such as Florence Nightingale tending to the wounded. The men that she cared for could have included Sexton's fellow soldiers, if not him as well. The risks of one of the battles that he fought, this one at Inkerman, is pithily described: Despite being severely outnumbered, the allied troops held their ground, becoming a marvel of each regiment's tradition and tenacity. The amount of fog during the battle led to many of the troops on both sides being cut off, in battalion-sized groups or less. Thus, the battle became known as "The Soldier's Battle". In short, it was all bloody terrifying.

It was after proving his mettle in such battles, that John Malone Sexton, who had left Co. Limerick as a barefoot young man, came back home as a Captain and claimed his bride. She was Josephine Mary O’Brien, the daughter of Myles O’Brien, the local apothecary and member of a successful farming family. Right from the start, John and Mary seemed to be a good fit with British military life in India:

She went to India with the regt and became the most popular and best liked lady in the 90th. They remained there for several years and Sexton got an appointment of £2000 or £3000 a year and became a Colonel and I believe is now a General and commands a wide district in India, and has a large family. Nicholas Upton D’Arcy.

Given the dates of some of the battles that Sexton was involved in, matched up with the fact that Frances Sexton was born at sea, she was probably born early in 1858 - before March. If her father had already returned to India before her birth, and was on the next battlefield before she and her mother could make their way to India, then she may have been born a bit later in the year. This is another one of those places where the kindness of strangers could possibly help me out with a birth date, and/or the pertinent shipping records.

We do know that Frances’ father was active in battle during most of first year after her birth, and often afterwards as well. He served as Adjutant of the 95^th in the Indian campaign of 1858-59, including action on March 30^th leading to the siege and capture of Kotah. Later, he served as a Staff Officer to Colonel Raines commanding the infantry in the battle of Kota ke Serai. In another battle which resulted in the capture of Gwalior on June 20^th 1858, he was severely burnt by the explosion of powder while serving a gun captured from the enemy and turned on them. His bravery was repeatedly recognized in the published lists of honours called dispatches. Later in this same year, he was also active in the siege and capture of Pourie, and was amongst the troops who surprised the rebel camp at Koondrye on December 15^th. No matter what was asked of him, John Malone Sexton was the kind of soldier who put his boots where they were needed.

Not that such devotion by a soldier to military duty is ever easy on those they leave back at home. His wife, like many military wives, was left behind for long periods of time in India. Many families in this community experienced the cycle of the men being on the battle field, away from home, and then returning on a leave. Nine months later, there was often the birth of a child. Not all of these children lived, of course. The tropical climate took its toll.

A second daughter, Myrna – who did live, was born seven years after Frances, in 1865 in India. She was born in Poona [aka Pune], probably in the large British military cantonment to the east of Poona. There may have been other brothers or sisters born in this interval. Again, there are more records to search. Four years later, a third daughter, Grace was born at Bombay. The last child known for sure to be part of this family was George Henry Noble Sexton, born in 1876 in what the British census records referred to as East Indies.

This last known child, George Henry Noble Sexton, was described in HSBC histories as being Frances NOBLE's nephew, but I believe that he was actually her much younger brother. I doubt that there are two boys in census records with the same name, birth place, and birth date.

There is one more possible sister for Frances. In 1881, the Sexton family was holidaying in the Isle of Wight. Mary, the mother, was there with Louisa Noble, an aunt of her son-in-law – George Edward Noble, as well as the baby of the family, George Noble Sexton – who was then aged five. The mystery so far is that there was also a six year old staying with them: Pauline Leonara Sexton [1874-1899]. So far, I have been unable to find the names of her parents. Other than her birth and death dates, all I know is that she was born at St. Leonards on Sea, in Sussex. Again, others may be able to help me on this.

The evidence that she was a sister of Frances is circumstantial. In 1881, Grace SEXTON, age 11 and born in India was a boarder at the St. Leonards-Mayfield, a Roman Catholic girl’s boarding school on High Street, Mayfield in Sussex. This would have been Grace Gertrude SEXTON, Frances’ younger sister, born 1869 in Bombay. I suspect that it is more than coincidence that this is the same school where Pauline SEXTON, at age 16 was a student in 1891.

As for Frances’ mother, Mary Sexton née O’Brien, she died sometime between the 1881 and 1891census, probably in England. It would have been sometime after the family’s Isle of Wight holiday. In the 1891 census, her husband was a widower, living in London with three of their children, and one grandson.

These Noble and Sexton families formed close bonds of both friendship and family connections that endured through at least two generations. Some of the Sexton boys have Noble as a middle name, and some Noble boys have the Sexton name as a middle name. Time and again unmarried or widowed aunts of one family resided with the family of the other. Together, the extended families provided the social glue and professional connections that helped all the inter-related children find their feet as adults.

For example. John Frederick Sexton Noble, the grandson who was living with his grandfather John Malone Sexton, in London in 1891, was hired at HSBC, as his father had been, and as was his uncle, George Henry Noble Sexton. In spite of the generational difference, they were both born in 1876. Their HSBC careers overlapped with Sexton serving in Bombay (1896-1903) and Noble in Hong Kong (1897-1901). The source that had initially described them as cousins was H.D. Sharpin, writing in the 1950s. Given their ages, the confusion is understandable. Still, Sharpin is one of those who had firsthand knowledge of the two young men, and left a brief record in the HSBC archives:

They all lived near each other in “The Lines” on Malabar Hill, Bombay. Sexton and Noble were wonderful at Amateur Theatricals, and were the life and soul of the mess. Sexton was a lad of promise, but while home on his first leave, suddenly disappeared into a Monastery in Ireland and we never heard of him again.

Another one of the sons of HSBC staff who was taken into the Noble family’s care was George Gordon Morriss, son of Edward Morrisss. In 1911, he was 26 years old, already widowed, and staying with Frances and her family. His father had been hired away from the Agra in 1872, after he had served as liquidator of the Agra, and had been an agent in Bombay along with Noble sr., as well as manager of Yokohama where he died in 1890. Frances’ husband had been the executor’s of Edward Morriss’ will.

Looking back on all this, there are a few conclusions worth noting. For starters, even though there may not have been the traditional village available to these families to support them in raising their children, the support of their extended family on two continents was just as effective. Also, that when it came to the success of the men and their male children, their mothers were as critical when it came to forging the connections that underpinned their future successes as their fathers were.

Frances’ latter years:

Sometime in the mid to late 1890s, it seems that Frances left Hong Kong and then lived in England for the second half of her life, a country that was new to her. When they first arrived in London, her husband was in ill health, sick enough that he had to resign his position at HSBC. He continued to serve in a diminished role, suffering from what, I don’t know, but it is likely that the nature of his illness would be described in his death certificate - April 10, 1901.

Frances had married young, at age seventeen, but ended up living in England another forty-four years after the death of her husband. Together, they had four children who lived, and one who died. When and how that child died, I have yet to learn. If any of their ancestors have survived, there may be family letters and such which could shed light on this. There is a son in a family picture that I have posted on the blog piece about Frances’ husband. The name of this boy is unknown to me, and it may be that he was the child who died. If he was, then there would have to be another child who I know nothing about.

Frances’ children lived with her in their early adult years. In 1911, her eldest son was 34 years old, unmarried, and living in their large, seventeen room home at 37 Inverness Terrace, London. He worked as an accountant. One daughter, Mary Josephine, age 22, lived at home until a year later, when she married Lionel John Crossley Anderson, of the HK Shanghai Bank (Penang). Their daughter, Diana Margaret, was born Jan 13, 1918 in Tientsin, China. [NOTE: Lionel may be related to A. Hay Anderson, the Manager of the Agra and Masterman Bank in Hong Kong in 1866. In terms of any connection that this might have to the larger story that I am pursuing, A. Hay Anderson was the manager who released Thomas Jackson from his Agra contract so he could go to work for HSBC.] The one daughter, Kathleen, who was not living at home, had married earlier in the year an optical instrumentation dealer: Edward Ford Callaghan,. They lived not far away at 8 Marchwood Cresent, Ealing W., Middlesex.

Frances died at age 87, at Wharneford Hospital, near Oxford, England. In normal circumstances, I would check to see if there was family nearby that had sparked her decision to move out of London, but 1945 was not a time of normal circumstances. Thousands of Londoners had fled, and many more were still fleeing the city to avoid the nightly bombing raids.

With this in mind, it would be fair to say that Frances’ life had gone full circle. Born and raised in a time and place of military conflict and danger, she had died on another continent in another time and place that was also embroiled in military conflict and danger. Perhaps that moment when she was elected President of Ladies Recreation Club of Hong Kong was one of the calmer oases in her life.

As for the rest of her story, I hope to learn more when I visit Hong Kong in November of this year. I also hope to hear from others, as a result of this post, perhaps people who may have some kind of family connection with her story. As always, I am all ears – and am also open to correction. I don’t claim to have this all nailed down. It is totally open to additions and revisions.

Links of interest:

My blog piece on Frances’ husband, George Edward Noble.

A family tree of the SEXTONs.

George Edward Noble

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 22:43:00 +0000

It was in 2003 when I first saw this picture, one of hundreds found in a family photo album at Gilford Castle. It was one of many that had been passed down by relations of Sir Thomas Jackson. Years later, I learned what Mr. Noble’s initials were from a photo in Frank H.H. King’s history of HSBC. His full name was: George Edward Noble. At the peak of his bank career, he was Chief Manager of HSBC. Since I knew absolutely nothing about him in 2003, the sparse inscription beneath the photo raised a deluge of questions:

Who was the mother of Mr. Noble’s children?

Was she alive when the photo was taken?

Was she the photographer?

When was the photo taken?

What were the names of the children?

When were they born?

Who was the elderly woman? Was she the family amah?

Is it possible that she was George Edward Noble’s mother?

This last question is speculation, but it is not as farfetched as it might seem. We can be reasonably certain that George Edward’s father was John Noble (1799-aft 1871), an East India merchant born in Co. Kent, England. John’s wife is so far only known to me by her first name: Mary-Ann. According to census records, she was born in Lambeth. She was probably the mother of George Edward, but at present I can find no birth certificate that ties her to him, unlike the paper trail of her other children.

It may be that this glitch is simply a clerical error, and George Edward has no birth connection to anyone other than George and Mary Anne. I don’t know if his father ever lived in India, as some East India merchants did – keeping two separate families, one in England and one in India. There are dozens of other people with the Noble surname in and around Bombay at the same time that Noble’s father was active in trade. More research is needed. It should be noted that there were also a number of people with the Sexton surname who lived near these Nobles in Bombay. One of them, Frances Bertha Marion “Daisy” Sexton, became George Edward Noble’s future wife, which is another thing that I will get to.

George’s Older Brother: Henry Noble – Manager of Agra Bank

The young George Edward was not the first family member to be a banker in the Far East. His brother Henry – fourteen years older than George - was manager of the Agra and Masterman’s Bank in Hong Kong in the mid-1860s. He drowned in 1866, age 34, and left a family of three children in Hong Kong, children who were already motherless. Their mother, Catherine Haywood had already died November 15^th, 1865 at the Agra Bank where they lived. She died in the same year that her youngest child was born. I do not yet have a record of the cause of her death, nor the exact birth date of her youngest, but it is entirely possible that the birth and the death were cause and effect.

If the death of his wife wasn’t bad enough, Henry also faced grief on another front. The Agra and Masterman Bank was facing bankruptcy. In fact, it closed its doors a few months after his death, as a result of a bear raid on its assets on June 7, 1866. Perhaps the grief of losing his wife as well as the shaky fortunes of the Agra were part of the reason he had sailed to Foochow [now called Fuzhou], even though The Bankers’ Magazine claims he had gone only for his health:

To add to this unpleasant state of affairs, we had the misfortune to lose our manager, Mr Henry Noble, at Hong Kong, a gentleman highly esteemed by us, who was drowned in a voyage to Foochow undertaken for benefit of his health. The Bankers’ magazine, Vol 26

The trip from Hong Kong to Foochow is about 700 km [434 miles] by sea. Even today, it takes at least a couple of days to sail there. Foochow was a focal point for trade, so Henry would have done business there in the past. After the treaty following the Opium War of 1842, it had become a significant export port, and was central to the exchange banking business conducted at the time by the Agra and other such banks.

The Great Tea Race of 1866, an event that began a few months after Henry’s death, started from Foochow and included five tea clippers fully loaded up with freshly harvested tea, racing towards Britain – a race of some three months duration. Like Hong Kong, Foochow was a place where the cutting edge technologies of the time linked up with the cutting edge ways of doing business within the British Empire. Not all of them were benign or beneficial, especially to those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, but money was there to be made hand over fist for those who had the zeal and the connections as well as the additional resources of character and coin for the game.

Henry Noble’s ship may have foundered and sunk somewhere between Hong Kong and Foochow, but as yet I can find no record of this. The timing of his death, being so close on the heels of the death of his wife and just before the failure of Agra and Mastermans, does make me wonder if depression might not have played a part in his demise. This would not have been something that his fellow bankers would have wanted to include, or even hint at, in their reports. The Agra was shaky enough as it was. It is worth noting that Henry was the manager overseeing Thomas Jackson, the future Chief Manager of HSBC. He must have trained him well.

Henry’s three orphaned children, ages one to five, were raised by family in England. At the time of the 1871 census, the baby of the family, Edith Isabella, was living with her grandparents and a maiden aunt in the town of Clare, Co. Suffolk, England. She was six years old. I don’t know where the other two children ended up living after the deaths of their parents. It seems there was dissention about what would be best for them. A legal case was fought two years after Henry’s death between his father, John Noble, and the great uncle and next friend of the children: Thomas Bridge. Since the children are named in the suit, it probably concerned their needs and/or their assets. Reading this court case is one job that I will have to leave to the kindness of strangers. Regardless of how the case played out, it is still a tale of profound loss and tragedy.

George Edward Noble and HSBC.

In February 1866, the year of Henry’s death, George Edward Noble was nineteen years old, and newly recruited by HSBC. He had started his career at the Shanghai Commercial Bank Corporation of India. It was another of the banks in the region that failed that year. In their case, it was because of over-speculation in Shanghai real estate, and the unauthorized investment of the bank’s funds by the San Francisco Manager in California mining enterprises. Plus ça change

when it comes to the most frequent reasons for bank failures. It was a useful heads up for Noble.

He and Thomas Jackson, who had previously worked at the failed Agra and Mastermans Bank, were hired that year along with a handful of other fresh faced recruits. Of the twenty young men hired locally around that time, there were only nine who lasted more than a decade. More to the point, George Edward Noble and Thomas Jackson both rose to serve in the position of Hong Kong Manager, the top staff position in the bank. There must be something to be said for knowing the lay of the land from a range of perspectives at an early age, including learning about failure.

George’s first HSBC appointment was as Agent in Shanghai. Two years later, he was promoted to Acting Accountant at Hong Kong, a definite step up the ladder. A year after that, 1869, he became the accountant in Bombay. In essence, this meant that he was now in charge of the Bombay office, a post that enable him to cash in on his father’s business contacts. Bear in mind that when he was first appointed to this post, he had only reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine.

I have posted a chronology on my web site that focuses on his various banking appointments, so I won’t go into a great deal of detail here about his professional life. My interest here is in teasing out what we can learn about his personal life, and what insights we may gain about his character. Regrettably, thus far, there is little to go on.

What we do know is that at the time HSBC employees were expected to wait until they had made it to the rank of Accountant, and had also been employed by HSBC for at least ten years before they married. It wasn’t an unusual restriction for its time; it was common enough in other spheres such as the military. Even so, the men used to refer to HSBC as the Heart and Soul Breaking Corporation on account of this restriction. These kinds of policies served the bank’s interest. After all, it was cheaper to house a half dozen junior clerks in a bachelor’s mess than to put up a married couple in a home of their own, even without considering the accommodation costs of the almost inevitable children.

By the time of his marriage, Noble had fulfilled the seniority requirement by serving as Accountant in Bombay, but was about half a year short of the usually expected waiting period for marriage. There is no record of whether his marriage was approved by the senior brass, or whether he simply flew under the radar for a while. His wife, Frances Sexton, was a mere seventeen years old at the time of their marriage, a not unusual age for that time and place. He was twenty-nine.

A year later on October 26, 1876, George was authorized to make what arrangements he wished for new premises to be built at Bombay provided no material increase in rent or furnishing etc. The need for these improvements was likely occasioned by the birth of his son, John Frederick Sexton Noble, a few months earlier on August 7, 1876. A year later, George left on leave, and the next glimpse that we have of him is in Hong Kong.

For several years, he worked as the HSBC Inspector of Branches. This meant that he had to spend a considerable amount of time traveling from branch to branch. He also did a stint taking temporary charge of the Calcutta agency, and later of the agency in Manila. During the time that he was thusly employed, his wife gave birth to a second son. At this point, I do not know how often or for how long he was able to be home with his young family, or whether they traveled with him when he was in charge of managing the agencies in Calcutta and Manila.

In some ways, the traveling demands of such HSBC work were not dissimilar from the military absences that his mother-in-law had experienced when she was the wife of a military man. At least both mother and daughter had the support of significant numbers of friends and family nearby as they raised their children in the British community in Bombay.

The career heartbreak of George’s life was that no sooner had he reached his professional pinnacle than he was decked by the onset of a severe and chronic illness. He had been appointed Chief Manager on January 1, 1889, succeeding the wildly popular Thomas Jackson. By March 27^th 1890, he was so ill that he had to be granted emergency sick leave. There was some hope that he would recover, but four months later, he needed an additional twelve months off work. A year after this, it was clear that his health was such that he could never return to his post in Hong Kong. In spite of this, he was appointed to the HSBC London Committee, a post that he served in until the time of his death in 1901. In 1899, a letter from A.M.Reith to Charles Addis said that Noble was very shaky and “an interview with him is rather painful”.

George was only forty-four years old when he was sidelined by whatever this serious illness was. It had to have come as a shock. His wife, who was only aged thirty-two, had just given birth to their youngest child, Kathleen Louisa, a few months earlier. She was active in the local community, particularly in her role as President of the Ladies Recreation Club of Hong Kong. In the end, his tenure as Chief Manager and their place at the pinnacle of Hong Kong society had only lasted a little over a year.

Unfortunately, George’s tenure also suffered in comparison with his predecessor, Thomas Jackson. He lacked the charm, the royal jelly, that Jackson had in abundance. As H.D. Sharpin, a junior staff member, described him years later:

He seemed rather aloof in general, and not talkative. My only contact with him was pressing him to countersign D/Drafts etc for waiting customers. He was inclined to be lazy about this, and seemed rather bored with the work, I think. I remember once , as I was going in to see him, a lady stopped me and asked if she could see Mr. Noble. I told him a lady wished to see him. He grunted and said “Is she pretty?” from which he got the reputation of being a bit of a gay dog – probably quite undeserved.

Noble was one of those men whose record as a banker did end up being judged more favourably in hindsight. During his brief tenure as Chief Manager, he had been under considerable pressure to exceed what he believed were prudent credit ratings for brokers. Perhaps his ill health was part of the reason that he eventually buckled. Had he been more socially gifted than he was, he might have been cut some slack, and might have been judged less harshly at the time.

With respect to unfairness, there were likely some other ways in which the deck was stacked against him. He and his wife were both Roman Catholic, a faith that still meant exclusion from some social circles. There is also the question I raised earlier, about whether he may have been of both British as well as Indian ancestry. I don’t want to make too much of this, after all, it may be nothing more than a clerical error. If there is more to it than that, then the description of his appearance may have some bearing: G.E. Noble was a fairly big heavily built man of dark complexion with a thick mustache. Further research may prove that he was born in Camberwell or Dulwich, with a mother named Mary Anne who was born in Lambeth in 1807. It is only that I don’t yet know.

PS. One last bit - George's nephew, Henry Haywood Noble (1861-1834), son of George's brother Henry Noble (1832-1866) was executor of George's will. Another instance of the links within the extended family.

Chronology of G.E. NOBLE’s life – career and known events.

Family Tree of George Edward Noble.

An article in the Smithsonian on The Great Tea Race of 1866.

An article in The Gazette. London, Wednesday,September 12, 1866.
Blog piece about his wife: Frances Bertha Marion "Daisy" SEXTON

Life and Death and Art

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:34:00 +0000

I had always thought that Judy Garland had nailed the definitive version of Over the Rainbow. That was until I heard Rebecca Jenkins sing it last night in Sechelt at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the WrittenArts . She was joined on stage with her husband Joel Bakan, who, aside from playing a mean jazz guitar, is also a well known writer, film maker, and law professor at UBC. The band also included their son, Myim Bakan Kline on drums, and Bruce Meikle on stand-up bass.

Their performance triggered a standing ovation, and for me at the same time a powerful memory - but before I tell that story, I want to give a shout out in appreciation of the past four days at the Festival. They were filled with the experiences of both laughter and insight, as well as many moments of profound feeling, all of this thanks to the 24 writers who read and spoke to mostly sold out crowds.

Presenting author, Doug Gibson & Andreas Schroeder, walking along Beach Avenue

This was the 30^th year of the Festival, and the story of how it all started is as unlikely as the fact that it endured. Betty Keller, Maureen Foss, Rosella Leslie and Gwendolyn Southin - four of the original founders and charter members of The Quintessential Writers Group - took us through the grueling first years of birthing the Festival and told us of their unrelenting years of work and worry. Later in the day, I heard of a couple who had actually moved to the Coast because of this Festival. After all, they said, if such an idea could flourish here, there must be a reason. They were right.

Often it is the new-to-me writers who have me on my feet, clapping like a maniac and wishing there were time to hear more. This year it was two emerging writers: Kim Clark and Robyn Michele Levy . Before their session started, all I knew of either of them was that both wrote from the perspective of physical disability: Kim had MS, and Robyn had been diagnosed first with Parkinsons, and then with breast cancer –at age 43, no less.

Any impulse to pity from the temporarily abled - a term I steal from Bonnie Klein – was totally misplaced. These two women are powerful. The riffs of their humour totally blew me away. I can’t replicate it. You had to be there: Raunchy. Sassy. Wise. The only pity that I felt was for those who missed the most irreverent and daring act of the weekend.

I am singling out Kim and Robyn, but I don’t mean to neglect any of the other writers or their presentations. Not for a moment. I will be savouring their stories and insights for days and months to come. One thing I do know is that the next trip to Sechelt will have to include popping into Talewind Books to add to my collection. Plus I will be ordering at least one of Rebecca’s CDs on line.

But back to what I promised at the start of this piece. Riddle me this – as The Riddler said in Batman Forever. In this case, the riddle that I cannot unpuzzle is why Bye Bye Blues, the Anne Wheeler directed movie that starred Rebecca Jenkins, is not available on DVD. I am not the only one who finds this to be beyond ridiculous. Even the esteemed Internet Movie Database agrees with me:

Possibly the best Canadian film ever shot! This warm, real look at WW2 life abroad and on the home front is a visual and an emotional tour de force. The tensions on the home front (husband missing in action; wife living with in-laws) and the inner conflicts gripping a woman determined to be loyal yet needing an identity of her own have rarely been more skilfully portrayed. A must for collectors -- if it could only be made available as DVD or Laserdisk!!!

[My emphasis]

Why do I care about this? Let me share a story.

In September 1990, Sweet Norma Locke – as she was known professionally - was approaching the last of her days, riddled with cancer. Bye Bye Blues had come out the year before, and featured her signature tune: The West, the Nest, and You, Dear. Norma had performed this song countless times from the mid 1940s until the late 60s with her husband and his band, Mart Kenny and his Western Gentlemen.. By the time the movie was released, she was much too unwell to get out to a theatre. What to do? Well, a group of us passed the hat to purchase a limited edition VHS of Bye Bye Blues - the only format available – for the ridiculous price of $200.00.

Later, we viewed it with Mart and Norma at their home, not once, but twice. Not only did it mean the world to Norma to hear herself singing in the movie’s soundscape, but it also thrilled her to see one of their young relations also acting in the movie. Not long after this, Norma passed away.

Last night as Rebecca Jenkins was singing the Bill Henderson tune When I Sing – a tune composed specifically for this movie - I was transported back a couple of decades to that living room in Mission, BC. I remembered Mart telling me that when radio first came to the Prairies, he had realized that he and his band would have to play differently. Without audiences having the visual distraction of seeing him perform, he and his fellow musicians would now have to learn not only to play together but also to breathe together. As I watched Rebecca and her family, the thought occurred to me, Yes, they also know how to breathe together. And this is good.

What else is there to say? Just thanks and unbounded gratitude to Jane Davidson, and to all the artists, the donors, as well as all the willing hands, minds and spirits that made this year’s 30^th Festival possible. Gracias. Merci. Thank you.

Anne Wheeler kindly sent me this years ago - for my composer daughter and myself.

Two Orphan Snaps from France

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:20:00 +0000

OK, so I already did my holiday flypast, but I really have to pick the brains of my readers: What do you do with a fish like this? How do you cook it? More to the point: What is it? This one was in the market in Nimes.

It made me think of Marje - The Trash Heap in Fraggle Rock.

And then I really do have to share a picture of the pile of books that Andreas and I hauled with us from Vancouver, then on to London and then on to Beauvoisin and finally home again. Whew!

Time for electronic reading devices for The Schroeder & The Moi.

Actually, we thought we were quite smart choosing books that both of us would enjoy reading. OK, I knew before we left that he wouldn't be up for The Hongkong Bank in Late Imperial China 1864-1902. Fair enough. It was my second read of it, and I really wanted to reread it all before stopping in at the HSBC archives in London, and I did. On the other hand, I do have to confess that I did not read Farrell's how i got to be this hip nor John Irving's latest. Maybe I should have.

The point is, The Schroeder and The Moi are clearly at what Malcolm Gladwell would call The Tipping Point. In fact, if our pile of books were any higher, we would be at a literal, not merely a figurative tipping point.If we had any doubts, the fact that the left wheel on our luggage bit the dust on Day One of our trip made it excruciatingly clear. The way that you walk when you haul luggage with a gibbled wheel makes people take pity on you. They think you have probably had a stroke. It is a little uncomfortable to have to explain to kind onlookers that it is only the damned books.

That being said, it was a damned good pile of books, and made for a helluva good time with some excellent conversation. Thanks to Anne Enright, Julian Barnes, Muriel Barbery, Barry Farrel, John Irving, David Bergen, Patti Smith, Hilary Mantel, Eric Enno Tamm, and finally, Frank H.H. King - my hero when it comes to crafting readable arcane economic history. You made our holiday even better. All of you.

Research bits on Handsome James Jackson

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:34:00 +0000

This piece includes some of the research bits relating to the previous piece on my blog that described Handsome James Jackson. There is more about his ancestry – the Jacksons of Drogheda on my website. SEE: Jacksons of Drogheda. I have recently updated this page, so I won’t repeat myself here (or at least not too much).

The earliest known ancestor of handsome James Jackson was Richard Jackson of Drogheda (carpenter, sheriff and merchant) a man who seems to have been quite successful. His son, another Richard Jackson, became an Alderman of Drogheda and was also a successful merchant, although a number of pension requests in 1713-1715 lead me to wonder how well he was doing near the end of his life.

One of these two Richard Jacksons, probably Richard sr. had coins made to use in his business which included trade in both Ireland and England. It carried the image of an angel. One of them can be seen in the British Museum, not that I have seen it yet. One of his coins, or tokens, featured a praying angel, and was sold by Christies auctions for £345 in 2000. That is out of my price range. Too bad. I’d love to see what it looks like.

The second Richard, Alderman Richard Jackson, not only was father to the handsome James, but also had a son George Jackson who was clearly down on his luck. Dunton’s book, The Dublin Scuffle, published in 1699, does not mention that James had a brother. What we do know is that by 1727, this luckless George was frequently pleading for money in order to place his two sons as apprentices. It is possible that one of these sons could have been my ancestor, the George Jackson (1718-1782) who was punted off to be a schoolmaster in Creggan Parish.

Looking sideways for clues in a scattershot manner to track down more about this James Jackson, there isn’t much to see so far. There are some deeds to a James Jackson, Gent, of Dublin in 1710 who may or may not have been Handsome James Jackson. I suspect that he might have been the same JACKSON who leased lands in Oxmanowne in 1711 & 1722 and also land at Stephens Green in 1716. I would have to order the deeds and compare the signatures in order to find out. Curiously, in the same time frame there was also a James Jackson, Gent, of Dublin who leased some land in Londonderry in 1716 and as well there was also a James Jackson, merchant of Bandon, Co. Cork in 1720. Either there are a slew of James Jacksons in the same social class, or else there was one who really made the rounds. It may be a mix of both.

The Co. Cork connection may turn out to be significant because of another family story:

... eldest son David [of George 1718-1782], married Margaret Bradford, a violent tempered red- haired woman, who, disgusted at the money being spent to get back the Mt. Leinster property, burnt all the Title Deeds.

The Leinster property was in County Carlow and had been granted to some long-dead JACKSON ancestor in Elizabethan times. A particularly galling part of this story is that apparently, the deeds that Margaret burnt turned out to be only part of the jigsaw, but a significant part. One month after Margaret fed them to the fire, a man from Cork showed up with the other half of the deeds. I haven’t a clue who he was, but the family story is that taken together, the cumulative documentation would have won the case for David. The family would have regained the lands at Mt. Leinster.

So the next question is: Was the man from Cork related to handsome James Jackson?

Handsome James JACKSON of Drogheda

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:32:00 +0000

You can blame my great-great-grandmother Eliza Jackson (1827-1903) for why I suspect that Handsome James JACKSON of Drogheda might provide a clue when it comes to nailing down bits of the ancestral story of Sir Thomas Jackson (1841-1915) of HSBC fame. After all, she was the one who said that our Jackson ancestors were all clever, tall, good-looking people with beautiful hands. She also claimed: We have often been called mad, but never stupid.

Her son, Sir Thomas Jackson, went one step further on this topic, at least according to his daughter, Amy. Apparently, his 2^nd great-grandfather and my g-g-g-great-grandfather, old George Jackson (1718-1782), was not only known for his wonderful skin, but also his extra-marital fondness for women. Whenever any girl living within a stone’s throw of Creggan Parish had a particularly good complexion, the neighbours would comment, Ah. She must be one of George Jackson's.

The legacy of these stories made me sit up and pay attention when I stumbled upon a description of John Jackson, son of Alderman Jackson of Drogheda in The Dublin Scuffle. It was printed in 1699, and written by John Dunton, an eccentric bookseller and even more eccentric writer.

The Dublin Scuffleis a self-published gem. Dunton’s delight in describing himself and his adventures knows no bounds. It is a self aggrandizing polemic with no apologies for excess. It also offers up hundreds of vignettes of the times that make for compelling reading. The title page itself comes across like a verbal jazz riff, while the jumble of typefaces makes it looks as if the compositor had been reduced to scooping up and using whatever bits of type were near at hand.

There are hundreds of snappy and brief portraits in this book, James Jackson, being merely one of them. Before I share Dunton’s description in this blog piece, let me back up a bit. In any detective work, it helps to line up the known facts before plunging on.

This James, who was described so memorably by Dunton, was a son of Alderman Richard Jackson, and also a grandson of an earlier Richard Jackson who also served the Corporation of Drogheda. In fact, to keep us on our toes, it seems as if the elected service of his father and grandfather may have overlapped. The first Richard was mentioned in the Council Book of the Corporation of Drogheda in 1657. He most likely settled there on the heels of the Cromwellian victory in 1649 having gained title to some lands as an “adventurer” rather than a soldier. “Adventurers” were men who had fronted loans to the English Parliament to fund the war. They were then repaid in land that had been seized from the residents and previous owners.

Where James’ grandfather came from, goodness knows, but he was first described as a carpenter. This does not mean that he himself went around with hammer and nails at the ready. In all likelihood, he employed carpenters. My reason for supposing this is that by 1658, he is described both as a sheriff and a mason and is no longer referred to as “Mr.” but as: “Esq.”. He was doing well enough to have a home with seven hearths in The Garr Warde. To give some sense of where he stood in the economic pecking order of the day, only five people in Drogheda had more hearths than he did – and they only had one or two more. I suspect his house was on Lawrence Street.

So, back to Dunton’s description of his grandson, James:

Mr. Wilde told me what a courteous person Mr. Jackson was; and when I came to his father's house, he received me in such an obliging manner, that his favors did transcend report, as much as they exceeded my dessert. Mdm., this gentleman resolves to live a bachelor, which I could not but wonder at; for doubtless Nature meant him a conqueror over all hearts, when she gave him such sense, and such beauty (for he's a very handsome man). His wit sparkles as well as eyes; and his discourse charms as well as his beauty; and I found by a little talking with him, that his mind is none of those narrow ones, who know one thing, and are ignorant of a thousand; but on the contrary, it is so very large, that although it cannot be said Jackson knew everything equally well, it is most certain, he can give an excellent account of all things; but though his soul is enriched with every virtue, yet I thought the most remarkable thing in him was his great humility and readiness to serve a stranger (for I might pass as such, never having seen him, but a minute or two in London). p218

Dunton could almost be suspected of having a crush on James, or at very least some ulterior motive best served by flattery. If all I had to go on was my great-great grandmother’s description of previous generations of Jackson men, I would read Dunton’s description and think no more about it - but there is one more thing which does suggest a link between our Jacksons of south Armagh to those Jacksons of Drogheda:

I have been told that the Corporation of Drogheda placed the Jackson coat of arms over the town hall, in gratitude for the munificent gift old George gave them (I wish he had been sleeping when he did it) but I never had time when passing through, to see if it was the one. A letter from Eliza Jackson to her son Thomas in 1874.

Several questions arise from my great-great-grandmother’s letter:

Was George Jackson ((1718-1782) the donor of the crest or was it his lawyer son George, born mid-1700s and died after 1820, or was it another unknown to me George?

Why was the money donated?

What did the crest look like?

Dunton’s description also raises more questions:

Was handsome James Jackson related to George of Urker, near Crossmaglen in Co. Armagh?

Did he ever marry? If so, are there any known descendants?

In the post that follows this, I will assemble some of my research bits and links to more research that may further this line of enquiry. They will be guaranteed to be boring to the casual readers of my blog, but absolutely riveting to those who enjoy this kind of search.

A Dozen Snaps of France

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:20:00 +0000

I have winnowed the usual indecent pile of holiday snaps down to a dozen. I am hoping that it will be sort of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears - not too much (aka hot), and not too little aka cold).

Our first dinner after we arrived in Beauvoisin - thank you Kevin & Colleen.

This is where I spent countless hours watching little lizards. They are masters of go-go-stop-look and then stop some more-look-look-look. I still have much to learn from them.

Michel & Mirielle run an amazing B&B, and you can meet them in more detail on Colleen’s blog. L-R: Michel and then Dave (a long-time friend of the four of us who joined us with wife, Cheryl), Colleen & Andreas. Here, we are enjoying appies on Michel & Mirielle's patio.

A great deal of our out and about time was spent shopping for food and wine. This was what was left in the Chantilly bowl at the market in Nimes after Andreas bought just a bit to go with our fresh strawberries. The bowl is huge. Trust me.

Cheese selection at the Nimes indoor market. Nuff said.

Spices at a stall at the weekend market in Arles. This outdoor market stretches for at least the equivalent of three city blocks and is at least four aisles wide. Mind blowing.

Salade Lyonnais is also worth a mention. If you want to make it with panache, here is the New York Times recipe: The Secret to a Great Salade Lyonnaise

My version, photographed above, is more in keeping with the style that was served at a casual outdoor lunch we enjoyed in Avignon.The essentials are to make a kick ass green salad, dress it, and then toss it with hot lardons (aka bits of fried bacon), and then to top it with a soft-yolked egg. Easy-peasy.

Occasionally, we combined history with, well, the usual. Eating. In the last decade of the first century AD, the amphitheatre in Arles was built on the north side of the hill, and was carved right into the rock. You can look up the rest of the history if you are curious. Kevin and Andreas are understandably more focused on the food at hand in this particular moment:

And then there was the Pont de Gare. It is one thing to see and to read about the Roman aqueducts in history books, but it is quite another thing to see them in the flesh, so to speak.

Andreas and Colleen just taking it all in. Of course, only the aqueducts that worked are still standing. Even the Romans sometimes got it wrong. Human error and human excellence are both constants.

I could not resist running my hand over this inscription made by a long-ago mason. A way of touching.

Ah, yes, the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque. Lavender is grown by the monks as a cash crop (tourists being another cash crop – and fair enough).

On the less than holy side is the tradition of bull fighting in the south of France. Colleen did a great video The photo beneath was taken by Andreas when he and Kevin took in a bull fight. At these events, the bulls do not get stabbed or anything like that. Here the horses are escorting the bull along the road. Even though the bull cannot be seen, trust me, he is in the midst of it all. This is no bull.

Finally, what does it all come down to? Good times. Fine friends. Thank you Kevin & Colleen.

Photo credit - Colleen Friesen.

Saintes Maries de la Mer

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:27:00 +0000

Last week we sallied forth to a tourist town, but one that is worth the candle. For starters, the seafood at Saintes Maries de la Mer, is exceptional. A bare bones, paper-plate outdoor café named La Cabane aux Coquilles had been recommended to us, and we all agreed that it exceeded our expectations of excellence.

No sooner had a plate of tellines, one of calamari and one of prawns been plunked down in front of us, along with the usual bread and a carafe of Rose, than we were well on our way to a sustained bout of finger sucking bliss.

Tellines

The tellines, which are a clam no bigger than a fingernail, were steamed with nothing more than garlic and herbs. Texturally, they come with a hint of grit, which may sound unpleasant but it acts as a counterpoint that awakens the palate. The calamari, served complete, were the smallest that I have ever encountered, not much larger than the shells of the tellines. Cooked quickly at high heat, the batter was crisp, while the inside remained tender and fragrant with a hint of intertidal air.

From there we threaded our way through the side streets bustling with vendors left, right and centre until we arrived at a counterpoint of coolness and quiet. In a nearby square is a church with a sanctuary honoring Sainte Sara, the patron saint of the Roma.

Inside the shrine.

The many legends of Sante Sara shape shift with such regularity that it is likely that they are rooted in one if not more of the polytheistic religions that were folded into the early versions of Christian mythology. In one version, she was of noble birth and chief of a tribe of Roma people who lived on the banks of the Rhone. She was not only well off, and a leader, but also known as a healer. Another version says that was born in Egypt into the family of Mary Magdalene, and was even present at the opening of the tomb of Christ.

Regardless of where she hailed from, or whether she even existed, one of the most visually interesting stories claims that she had a vision that the three Marys who had been present at Jesus’ death were approaching land and needed her help. One of them, Mary Salome, cast her cloak on the waves to use as a raft. Sara, who in some versions had also been a maid to one of the three Marys, possibly even to Mary Magdalene, stepped on the cloak and prayed both fervently- and also obviously effectively - resulting in the fact that all three Marys made land.

Be this as it may, she was adopted as a patron saint of the Roma, although never accepted officially by the Catholic Church. Perhaps she missed out on canonization because she was black, or perhaps because there were so many versions of her history that they didn’t quite jell – not that the lack of jelling has stood in the way of some of the canonizations of white males.

Unfortunately, a half dozen Roma women descended upon us as we both entered and left the church. I had been forewarned. As they do, they tried to pin a Sante Sara pin on me, so that they could then hit me up for money. They descended like pigeons on a crust of bread. Non, I said in my most crusty voice (bad pun, I know), Non. Obviously, I was insistent enough. They withdrew, but they clustered and clucked and mocked me: Non, non. they laughed amongst themselves, while glancing sideways at me as if I were trash.

When I had been inside the church, I had been enveloped by the scent of incense and candle wax, and the echoes of centuries of time, and I had felt totally blessed. Afterwards, the feeling evaporated. These women may not have taken my money, which perhaps they needed, but they did sully my sense of sanctity. I wonder what Sante Sara in any of her incarnations would have thought. On their part, or mine. After all, we all have choices, and for my part I can at least reframe this experience, even though I am not that enlightened yet. Not yet.

The woman pinned Colleen, but the pin fell into her bag, and although Colleen was a model of charm, it got a bit dicey for a few tense moments.

Still life at Beauvoisin #2

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 09:24:00 +0000

Back to back reading.

I started reading Bring up the Bodies while I was on my way to join friends in the south of France. Choosing this much acclaimed follow up to Wolf Hall was a total no-brainer. Hilary Mantel’s previous novel, which also explored the inner and outer lives of Thomas Cromwell, was a total slam dunk. Pitch perfect. I loved it. The opening of her sequel confirmed that I was once again in trusty hands.

Falcons Wiltshire, September 1535

His children are falling from the sky. He watches from horseback, acres of England stretching behind him; they drop, gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze. Grace Cromwell hovers in thin air. She is silent when he takes her prey, silent as she glides to his fist. But the sounds she makes then, the rustle of feathers and the creak, the sigh and riffle of pinion, the small cluck-cluck from her throat, these are sounds of recognition, intimate, daughterly, almost disproving. Her breast is gore-streaked and flesh clings to her claws

While still on the train down to Nimes, I finished it, wishing it were even longer, and then immediately started Eric Enno Tamm’s: The Horse that Leaps Through Clouds. His opening is no less assured than Mantel’s. It opens with the arrival of an unlikely visitor – at least unlikely to me - arriving for the 75^th birthday of Baron Gustaf Mannerheim, Commander-in-Chief and Marshal of Finland,

On June 4, 1942, Adolph Hitler’s private plane, a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, dropped out of a stormy sky on its descent to an airstrip in Imatra, a picturesque Finnnish town about two hundred kilometers from Leningrad, where Nazi troops were laying siege to the beleaguered Soviet city.

As Tamm recounts, Mannerheim had been given a name during his 1906 trip through Northern China which translates as: The Horse that Leaps Through Clouds. Mannerheim did effectively leap through clouds in misty mountain passes, but straddling the geopolitical divides of his time took much more of his time and attention and is of more consequence. Not that I would have a clue what the Chinese characters for Man Who Is Not What He Seems might be.

In the art of painting, the painter David Milne talks about the dazzle spot, a place that the eye keeps returning to, and in the process of doing so unifies and makes sense of the whole. Mannerheim, in the hands of Tamm, is such a dazzle spot, a place for us to keep returning to as we explore the contested lands that he and Tamm explored, each in their own way and each for their own purposes.

Because I read Mantel and Tamm in such close succession, I found the two books started to talk to each other as I surfed the ups and downs of the aftermath of jet lag. The central characters in the two books could not have been more different in some ways, yet at the same time more similar. Thomas Cromwell, who came to be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer to King Henry VIII had been born as a son of a blacksmith while Baron Gustaf Mannerheim, who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, held on to the silver but had to continually shape-shift the appearance of who he was depending on the ever shifting intentions of the rulers of Russia, Germany and Finland. In spite of the four centuries that separated these two men, I suspect that they would have recognized each other had they met in the flesh, and each would have had the measure of the other in the wink of an eye.

The phrase The Great Game, popularized by Kipling, was coined to describe the political rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in the 19^th century but it is an equally apt fit as a description of the political intrigues of Europe in the mid-1500s. Like the falcons of Thomas Cromwell, any game was fair game to the rulers of the day, and like them, although remnants of flesh may have clung to their talons when they returned to their roosts after a day of conquests, a moment’s worth of preening put all to rights.

As for the outcomes of rule by fear described by Tamm, the still unfolding tragedies of the region include not only the deaths of hundreds of thousands but the death of a landscape. A mere hundred years after Mannerheim’s journey, the Silk Road has become so contaminated that Tamm notes that it could more aptly be named The Soot Road. Not only has the land been so thoughly blackened and blighted, but the rampant unchecked development is messing with the DNA of future generations.

In comparison, the outcomes of the mercenary acts of Cromwell and his falcon-like henchmen are small beer.Sad, but true.

MY RECOMMENDATION?

Read Wolf Hall first, and then read Bring up the Bodies. When you read The Horse that Leaps Through Clouds do check out the accompanying web site for photos maps and much more. SEE: http://horsethatleaps.com/

Still Life at Beauvoisin #1

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:33:00 +0000

Life is easy when the right ingredients are at hand.

Yesterday, the friends who are hosting us at Beauvoisin left to celebrate a birthday with a brief holiday within a holiday. For the next couple of days Himself and The Moi are par nous-mêmes. At least, I think this is how to say this en francais. My French from forty years ago is beyond rusty. Actually, it is an absolute embarrassment. Big time.

Even so, since our friends had already tuned me up on the art of local shopping, I sauntered off the next morning with no lack of confidence.

Sauntering, I should point out, was the operative verb. No brisk walking required. In fact, any striding of that ilk would be entirely out of place in Beauvoisin. Colleen, who like Himself and The Moi is no slouch in the go-go-go department, describes the slowed down demands of their typical day here: Each day we pick up our food for that evening’s dinner and then spend the night cooking, eating and drinking local wine.

The first few days after we arrived, I tagged along with her and Kevin to markets at Nimes, Arles, and Générac, and saw what she meant. After planning the evening menu for that particular day, shopping for food and deliberating over suitable wine pairings – will this particular Gigondas go with tonight’s duck confit, or …? - , and then actually preparing the meal, there was barely enough time to fit in a mid-day nap. Arduous, is all I can say. And that was with three cooks on board who know their way around a cutting board and stove, as well as one dishwasher who mans a mean rag.

For me, one of the allures of staying here, aside from quality time with good friends, is the fact that all essential needs can be met within a five minute stroll. The sausages made by the local butcher are the best I have ever had the joy of cooking, and that is going some. They rank right up there with ones made by my brother Struan. In order to fully appreciate this compliment, what you have to know about Struan’s sausages, is that he grows, hunts or fishes for all his ingredients. These ones from the local charcuterie were that good.

A few buildings past the butcher is the local green grocer. Here, the selection of fruits and vegetables are grouped according to whether they are local, regional, or sourced from further afield. How can you go wrong? All the apricots are local. They are the same ones that I had already seen hanging off the branches in local orchards, and trust me: they are gobsmackingly full of flavour. The only downside is that they need to be eaten over something that can catch errant juices – a plate, a sink, the cobbled courtyard. Not your white slacks.

For our evening meal, using the ingredients shown above, I didn’t do anything complicated. I simply tossed together a ratatouille adding fresh basil, garlic, onion and a splash of rosé. While it was cooking down, I boiled the spuds, fried the sausages, and then deglazed the pan with some of the ratatouille juices, and then poured that over the entire assemblage.

One more thing. Normally, I would salt the water for spuds, but this time I didn’t even bother and none was needed. For me, not even butter was required, although on that score, Himself and The Moi would beg to differ.

So, there we were. Add to this a couple of glasses of Cahors Carte Noir 2009 (bought for a song), and a few fistfuls of baguette to mop up the plate, and there we were. Heaven. Total heaven.

Cavananore – unearthing the tale.

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Photo of Cavananore House taken in 1985,

Cavananore, a townland of some 219 acres in Co. Louth, was occupied at least as early as the late 1600s by a Presbyterian family named Coulter. They were supposedly awarded the land for their valour at the Battle of the Boyne on the side of King William. The land stayed in my family thanks to the will of an Andrew Coulter of Cavananore who died in 1775. His sister, Barbara Coulter (1721-1795), married John Bradford (1705-1789) and their twin sons were executors of Andrew’s will. This is the easy part to follow.

The complicated parts came after Andrew’s death when the initial seeds of a multi-generational family feud were sown. It seems to have started with a land division between John & Barbara’s twin sons: Thomas Bradford (1739-1790) & Samuel Bradford (1739-1818). In the generations that succeeded them, the feud between the two branches of the family became almost biblical.

An early complication was the untimely death of Thomas Bradford in 1790. He mucked things up, as my ancestors often did, by dying before he got his affairs in order. In his case, he died intestate, five days before Christmas. His only son and youngest child, Andrew Coulter Bradford, was just 2 years old., and Andrew’s older sister, Elizabeth - my g-g-g grandmother, would have been about 4 or 5 years old. Elizabeth, their mother, was 32 years old when she was widowed, and had five young children clinging to her skirts. The eldest child was only 8 years old.

Nine years after the death of Thomas Bradford, an agreement defined what portion was due to his widow; how much to the widow of Thomas’ brother-in-law, John Coulter (d. 1774); and also how much of the land and rents were to go to Thomas’ surviving twin, Samuel. In this agreement, rents were to be divvied up when they became due in November, as was the custom. Robert Dickie & John Bailie, a couple of neighbours who were probably also trustees , were to oversee the distribution. However, in such legal matters, the devil is often in the details.

Even though it would be way more fun to let my imagination run riot over all this, I should be careful not to overstate the consequences. At least no one was killed in this dispute, at least as far as I know. For example, it wasn’t as bad as the feuds between the daughters of King Lear, a play about land division and lousy governance if there ever was one. What it did share with the plot of King Lear was the entanglement of countless plots, subplots and counter-plots.

I suspect that envy first divided the two branches of the family when the relative values of the lands on either side of the dividing line became uneven, probably as a result of the hard work and skills of Andrew Coulter Bradford (1788-1847). Andrew was the only son of Thomas, and therefore had inherited the land on the easterly side of the boundary after the death of his father in 1790.

A couple of decades later, in 1809, the main residence on Andrew’s side of the townland was the style of house common to farmers in the area, and was probably the one he was born in. It was a thatched single story bungalow. We know this because he signed an agreement, presumably because he had just turned 21, to take care of his mother and the unmarried sisters who lived with them. This included the helpful description of their home: The House to be Thatched, Tuff coated and white washed and kept as to its outside wants & repair by him.

An 1827 letter from Capt. Eliezer Birch Gilmore (1762-1834) to his half sister, Elizabeth Bradford (1758-1844) the widow of Thomas alludes to the discord that had already deepened in the following couple of decades:

On the other side [of this letter] you have a copy of Andy’s agreement . As I have a great deal of conversation with him on family matters he can give you every information on that subject. So soon as I get matters settled respecting this place I will then be able to determine on our further settlement, at present we are quite undetermined. That gives me real pleasure to learn that Tom McCullagh has at last settled all matters with his Brother in an amicable manner.

A decade after this, in 1837, the Field Book surveys and valuations reveal that the differences between the two halves of the estate had become considerable.

On the western side of the boundary, John Bradford (?-1ft 1837), who was the eldest son of Samuel Bradford (1739-1818) & Margaret Henry (1774-1846), had a house & farm buildings worth £7.5.0.
On the eastern side, Andrew Coulter Bradford, the only son of Thomas Bradford shared with his widowed mother and his sisters a house worth £4.14.0 as well as a house & offices worth £26.2.0.

Already by this time, Andrew’s valuation is close to four times the value of the houses on his cousin’s side of the divide.

When Andrew died in 1847, never having married, one portion of his estate went to his niece Eliza Jackson, the mother of Sir Thomas Jackson. The land was favourably described in the lawyer’s notes of January 16, 1850:

Cavanore & Anahavackey contain jointly about 100 acres & was considered quite a model farm so admirably had it been managed by Mr. Bradford & it was provided with a very fine residence & every article of the best & most improved description necessary for its management.

It is hard to say with absolute certainty, at least based on records found so far, when the current Cavananore House was actually completed. It was at very least occupied before 1847. A inventory done in 1850 as part of the probate of Andrew Coulter Bradford’s will describes the contents of a breakfast parlour, dining room, a drawing room, hallway, 4 bedrooms, a kitchen & pantry. The 22 stair rods indicate a second story. It would have been considered a substantial house for that time and place. Most other houses, even those of reasonably prosperous farmers, were still single story with thatched roofs.

What was it like to be living there at this time? Unsettled, at best. According to the 1841 census there were 13 houses and 63 people residing in Cavananore, but in the decade that followed the population dropped by more than 50%. The 1847 famine came between the two census dates. Not only were lives and livelihoods lost during the famine, but rents dropped in the aftermath, and many previously productive farmers could not hold on to their title. With respect to Cavananore, it was clear there was no longer enough rental income to pay out the bequests of Andrew Coulter Bradford’s will, at least not in the way that they had been stipulated and then interpreted by his trustees.

The front part of the original house remains high on a hill with a commanding view of the countryside. At some point, at least by 1854, it was an L-shaped structure with five windows on one side, and 6 windows on the other.

This is where it gets fun to compare contemporary pictures with old maps. Here is a sketch I did of the outline of the house and outbuildings as compiled from a range of estate maps from the time of Griffiths Valuation in 1854. The house is in red, the enclosed garden in light green, farm buildings in yellow. The portion that I have coloured in brown was where I suspect that the original thatched bungalow stood:

Here is a sketch where I try to imagine the shape of the house, based on merging the look of the contemporary photo of the house with the mid-1850s maps, coupled with information in the 1901 census (as you can see, my artistic talents did not progress past elementary school):

Two events, one of destruction and one of construction, explain why the 1854 map shows the house to be L-shaped while the 1985 picture (at the top of this page) shows a T-shaped house. The destructive event was an extensive fire started by the IRA which destroyed the back section on the right hand side. They set the fire because there was a rumour that the Black and Tans, their arch foes, were about to set up camp there, and they sought to pre-empt this. According to some accounts, the Black and Tans had no such plan. For now, I cannot verify either account. Later, what remained of the house did end up being a place used by the IRA, another one of those twists of fate particular to this region.

The addition that looks like a stub of the T at the back of the house in the 1985 photograph was added in the early 1950s when amenities such as running water, electricity and indoor toilets were added. Before then, Annie Lynch, the widow who lived there with her four boys, had to go to the village for batteries to run the radio. Everything else was run by people power. Her son has told me that the water was pumped, and the lavatory was outside the house in a stone walled structure known as The Sugar House. Clearly the connotation is different than what it would be in Canada where a sugar shack is where maple sugar is made.

If we could time travel back a 150 years or so, we would see Andrew Coulter Bradford’s widowed mother and maiden sisters and nieces living out their natural days. We would see the frequent visitors from Urker and Liscalgot and Shortstone and other nearby townlands who stayed overnight. We would also see the grief in 1874 of Thomas Jackson, the yet-to-be-knighted HSBC banker based in Hong Kong, when his infant daughter died unexpectedly. She died when he and his young wife were enjoying their first visit to Ireland since he had left more than a decade earlier. They were proud to be showing off their young family to their various relations. Baby Edith Bradford Jackson was only four months old when she died. Her memorial in the family grave site at Creggan Church is the only Jackson family memorial that is still legible.

Understanding all of these family dynamics and experiences goes some distance to explaining why Sir Thomas Jackson retained such a keen interest in Cavananore well into the 20^th Century. It was one of the many properties in the area adding up to more than 800 acres that he purchased in his later life and held until his death in 1915. He never returned to live in Ireland, dying at his desk on Lombard Street in London, but a significant part of his heart remained with this land and these people - his people. This was clear right up to the time of his very last posted letter.

SOURCES: There are dozens of sources that buttress the facts in this story. Rather than listing them all, here is a link to a page on my website that I will keep updating: Cavananore

That’s the way the cookie crumbles

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sat, 05 May 2012 14:54:00 +0000

There are some phrases that I totally dislike hearing. Always have. Ever since I was a child, the phrase that earned its rightful place near the top of my personal cringe list was: That’s the way the cookie crumbles. After all, what could be more disappointing than the crumbs of a cookie when you are so close to having the whole thing?

Our amazing Cookie Bearer - with a batch of her hazelnut cookies.

The reason for this intro is that right now I could care less about a crumbled cookie. Instead, my much greater disappointment would be not scoring two tickets to the Ellen Degeneres show between May 15th-17^th. I desperately want one for my youngest daughter, the Cookie Bearer, which also means that I need one for The Moi. She and I are in this gig together.

You see, for Christmas, my husband and I gave her the present of a weeklong stay at the Best Western Plus Carriage Inn in Burbank. Our plan was that I would rent a car, and we would toodle about, and she would be able to visit lots of the places where movies and TV shows are made. The star attraction that we kept returning to wanting to see was the Ellen Degeneres show being filmed. How can you beat that?

As soon as tickets became available for our dates, The Cookie Bearer walked as fast as she could from her house to ours, which is a little more than a kilometer, and got my husband to nail down two tickets for us. The message that completed the transaction said that we would hear about our tickets within two weeks. After we had passed the two week mark, and heard nothing, I wrote to the fan web site. Twice. Still silence. Now, our only resort is the magic number that you call for a limited number of tickets on the day the show is being taped.

Our daughter is an amazing woman. She turns thirty this year, and has confounded all the experts who predicted major doom for her when she was born and diagnosed with CDLS. I will never forget being told that she would only have a 50/50 chance of living past the age of two, and that if she did, that she would be profoundly retarded and autistic. The first years were the hardest, with sleepless nights, failure to thrive, and hospital stays, but she made it through. With her own gumption coupled with the support of others, she even graduated from High School.

She now works part-time at Canadian Tire and lives independently at Roberts Creek Cohousing where she does volunteer work helping the treasurer by writing cheques and paying the bills. All of this is part of a big-time miracle. Even so, it doesn’t mean that life is easy. The nickel and diming of the syndrome costs her in countless ways on a daily basis. What I admire about her is that she faces each day, and takes it as it comes. Whenever I fret about something, she says: Mum, it will all be OK.

Already, in readiness for our holiday, she is checking out the daily temperatures in Burbank, and planning what to pack. As for me, I will probably leave all that to the last minute, fling it all together and hope for the best. Aside from remembering important things like my passport, what I am really hoping for is one of those minor miracles that will cause her heart to soar. I really don’t want to hear ... well, you know. (That thing about the cookie.) Maybe if all our friends send energy into the universe, maybe something will budge, and then on May 15^th (or 16^th or 17^th) when I dial that magic number, I will hear a person on the other side say: Two tickets? Yes. You can pick them up at the door.

Our Cookie Bearer is presiding over a table set with place mats that she made for me for Xmas. Many talents.

PS This piece for my blog has been written by myself, with helpful editing suggestions made by the aforementioned Cookie Bearer.

Imagining a Parish and its People

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:50:00 +0000

I keep trying to imagine, and by this I mean to fully imagine - with smells, sounds, sights and the very feel of it - what life must have been like for the young Thomas Jackson born in 1841, the man who became an eminent banker in Hong Kong.

Who did he run into in his walks around Creggan Parish where he grew up? Who visited his parent’s house and farm? How did they get there – walking, horseback, or in a horse-pulled cart? Who did his parents owe money to, and why? How did life work for a family with a Church of Ireland father and a Presbyterian mother – which people described then as a mixed marriage.

There is little in the written record to flesh this out. One of the most fertile sources is the church records. True, they may be dull as dishwater, and in this case they are sadly incomplete, but with the advent of the internet, hyperlinks, and the generosity of strangers, it is possible to tease out an amazing amount of information. That is, if you can afford to put in the time in the first place.

Interior of Creggan Church. Sir Thomas Jackson Memorial window is at the front.

I have made several trips to the Creggan Parish church, and I hope to make another a year from now. Thomas Jackson’s father’s family had belonged to this church for at least four generations. It is a small Church of Ireland church in a region where most were Catholic. Most Sundays in Thomas’ time, the pews supported the posteriors of only a few dozen souls.His mother also took the children to the Presbyterian Church at Freeduff.

My husband was part of a similar rural congregation in Rosedale, near Agassiz in BC. His Mennonite family emigrated from Germany in 1951 as indentured farmers, and had yet to learn English. Everyone in the congregation was related to him. As a child, he knew full well that it was one thing to have the eyes of God on you at all times, it was quite another matter to have the eyes of this congregation. They knew your misdeeds right down to the last jelly bean. They also knew of your accomplishments, although it was usually the darkness that their collective eyes were drawn to.

A century earlier, when young Thomas scampered around the graveyard after prayers, as he no doubt did, one of the best hiding places was inside the enclosure where the Johnstons were buried, a stone wall that abutted the railed enclosure of generations of Jacksons. I do not know whether the choice of a railed versus stone is meaningful, but the location of these two families, cheek by jowl, is. They had arrived in the region about the same time, had leased and bought land, often one from the other, and had intermarried. The difference was the arc of their financial success.

Late November afternoon - Jackson & Johnston enclosures at Creggan graveyard. 2010.

Thomas’ g-g-g-grandfather was the one who had lost his earlier family lands, probably in Carlow or Wicklow, in a card game. His descendants were equally unlucky, although not noticeably at the card table. The men had a habit of dying while their children were young, leaving widows to run the farm. The Johnston families did not suffer this fate on a regular basis, and as result became well entrenched and well financed landlords. The grave enclosures of these two families, side by side, amount to a familiar tale of rural life. One family prospers; another fails. Hard work only takes you so far.

To get to this church, young Thomas walked over a bridge that spanned the Creggan River just behind the church. The original wooden bridge had been built by his great-grandfather, David Jackson, one of these Jackson ancestors who had died an untimely death. Back then, church tithes funded a mix of purposes that today are more usually the natural turf of a property owner, or else some level of local government. Back then, the wardens of Creggan Parish managed a range of public improvements, including this bridge which like many contracts today, went over budget. We know about this, thanks to the church records. It is recorded that David Jackson agreed to build the wooden bridge for £3, but in 1790, a year later, he came back cap in hand for a further £3.17.9. Plus ça change, when it comes to bridge contracts.

View of Creggan River from the bridge behind Creggan Church.

On my most recent foray into the Creggan Church records, I recorded as many of the collateral names of people related to this Jackson family as I could, hoping to build a more fully fleshed picture of their interrelationships. I am sure that if I knew the half of it, young Thomas would turn out to be related to virtually everyone that warmed the pews in his day, but at least the names that I have noted so far is a start.

Fortunately, a few mysteries have also been solved by this work. For starters, I had a hunch for quite some time, but couldn’t quite prove it, that the COULTERs who lived at Mounthill, and then Shortstone were related to the ones who lived at Silverbridge. Now, I have them neatly like ducks in a row, and have posted a family tree that illustrates just how they are related. There are still other clumps of COULTERs in Armagh and Louth who hail from Dorsey and Annavackey, as well as Carnbeg, so there are still stones to be unturned before we can be sure how all of them inter-relate. Even so, the similarities of faith, geography, social class and naming patterns all amount to a pretty compelling smoking gun.

I am particularly curious about the Carnbeg COULTERs, although they probably did not attend Creggan Parish Church. One of them, Joseph Arthur COULTER, a mere six years older than Thomas, had an amazing life – that is, if the records written a few years after he died are to be believed. Apparently, he accompanied Lady Franklin on her last expedition for her husband Sir John Franklin. That trip was in 1857, and was commanded by Francis Leopold McClintock of Dundalk on a yacht called The Fox. McClintock had a crew of twenty-five on board, as well as seventeen Arctic veterans, and he names them all in his 1908 version of the trip. Unfortunately, there is no mention of this Joseph.

Another bit of Joseph Coulter’s life that also proves allusive is that he supposedly served a stint as Deputy Governor of Vancouver Island. You would think that if he did, then he would show up in the BC Archives, but no cigar. My best bet when guessing which Lieutenant Governor he may have served under would be Hugh Nelson (1887-1892). Nelson was born at Larne, Co. Antrim. Such appointments usually had more than a whiff of patronage about them.

Sometimes even the most dogged researcher can be fairly skilled as both hunter and gatherer and still emerge empty handed, at least in the short run. This is where I really appreciate an approach to writing described by Ursula K Le Guin. She has what she calls: The Carrier Theory of Fiction. You gather up all the bits that appeal to you, just as a wise elder or a magpie might do, no matter whether they are feathers or bits of bark, or records of events and people, and you tuck them into a bag. If you are a medicine man or woman, or even a writer, the contents of this carrier bag becomes over time ever more magical as a result of the proximity of its contents. The whole becomes more than the sum of the parts.

I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.

There is no reason that Le Guin’s notion couldn’t also be applied to creative non-fiction. Personally, I like the way that it matches my own idiosyncratic process of finding and collecting as I try to sneak up on the truth. Perhaps my blog site and website are a digital equivalent of the traditional carrier bag, and by sharing the contents, the power of the magic expands. It is with that notion in mind that I often post absolutely chaotic pages such as Ruminations on early Creggan Church Records. The best that I can call such pages is organized ignorance or if I want to feel a bit more important, my carrier bag.

In this latest piece, Ruminations on early Creggan Church Records, I am trying to figure out the connections between JACKSONs, MASONs, JOHNSTONs and JONES. The links that connect to this pursuit are beneath.

I always appreciate hearing from others if they notice that I am way out in left field, or at very least in need of correction. Heck, like a small boy hiding amongst the gravestones, I also appreciate hearing when I have done something right.

Speaking of mistakes, and with the life of young Thomas in mind, I wonder what he might have thought of the stained glass window erected in his honour that has pride of place as the main window in the church. It has him born at Urcher rather than where he was actually born at Aughavilla, Carrigallen, Co. Leitrim. I can't be totally sure, but he was enough of a rascal, I think it would make him laugh.

LINKS TO SOURCES:

Ruminations on Creggan Parish

Creggan Parish Baptisms, Births, Marriages, and Burials.

Coulters of Mounthill, Shortstone, Silverbridge and Liscalgot.

Pictures of Creggan Parish Church and grounds.

Window in Creggan Parish Church commemorating Sir ThomasJackson.

Monday's Bread

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:08:00 +0000

I was out walking last Monday with the Sisters of Mercy, which is what we call ourselves for reasons lost in the mists of time, when being who I am, I bragged about the bread that I had made earlier in the day. Actually, I was decidedly pleased with myself. I keep playing with this and that when I make bread, even though my poor husband would prefer it if I stuck to something that was closer to white, plain, and unadulterated. Ah, well. Occasionally, I do just that.

This particular batch was a mix of spelt and kamut. I often pronounce the latter with the EMphasis on the wrong sylLABLE. Old dogs, new tricks. KAmut. KaMUT. It is a problem.

When it comes to baking for those with wheat allergies and gluten intolerance, I am also learning that there is a difference, and that one needs to check. Kamut or KaMUT only works for some people and not for others. Same with spelt, which conveniently only has one syllable. Still, Since one of The Sisters wanted the recipe for a family member with some level of challenge with wheat, I decided the easiest way was to share it here.

Fresh out of the oven - before I went on my walk.

This recipe is only an approximation. Since I have been making bread for more than forty years, I am actually rubbish when it comes to being really reliable about exact measurements. Besides, when it comes to bread, going by how it looks counts for more than exactitude. Humidity for one thing can throw exact measurements into a cocked hat. When it comes to non-wheat breads, I find chia seeds really help with the texture. The rest is all to be played with.

Sharon’s KAmut. KaMUT & Spelt Bread

Ingredients	What I did
1 ½ c warm water	Put into my Bosch mixer
1 T yeast	Sprinkle on top of warm water
Kamut flour	Add enough to make it look like thick mud, beat it for about ten minutes with a dough hook, then let it rest for half an hour or however long you like - up to a couple of hours.
¼ c Chia seeds ½ c hot water	Soak the chia seeds in hot water while the above mud is resting. Then add the gelatinous result to the mud, and beat it for a few minutes.
1 T salt 1T sugar 1 T oil Hemp hearts Pumpkin seeds 1 egg	Add these ingredients to the mud. As for measuring seeds and hemp hearts, I just toss in what I feel like, a handful maybe.
Spelt flour	Add to all of the above, ½ c at a time, until the dough pulls away from the side of the mixer, but is not at all firm. Leave it covered for at least an hour, up to 2 hours., Then turn it on to a floured surface, and knead it - only until it isn’t too sticky, but isn’t dry. Plop it into a greased cast iron pot that has a lid. Cover and leave for half an hour, or longer it needed for it to double in size. Preheat oven to 425 F convection, pop the bread in the covered pot into the overn, and bake for 20 minutes. Then remove the lid, and bake for another 20 minutes. Then turn out onto a cooling rack. Set yourself a challenge. Try not to cut into it until it has cooled a bit

After the walk, sliced so you can see the texture.

After getting my heart rate up by walking with The Sisters on our usual circuit, I returned home for lunch and dug into the aforementioned bread. I slathered it with a thin skim of peanut butter, and a generous dollop of my Port Wine Cranberry-Apricot Sauce, so you may as well have that recipe too:

Port Wine Cranberry-Apricot Sauce – great on bread, in plain yoghurt, or with turkey.

Ingredients	What I did
8 whole green cardamom pods	Crush them in a mortar & pestle, & discard skins
3 cups Port Wine	Add to cardamom, and bring to boil in a heavy bottomed non-reactive pot.
1 cup sugar
1 cup apricot preserves
1 cup fresh lemon juice
½ cup honey
2 6-ounce package dried apricots, quartered	Add to above & cook for about 2 minutes.
3 - 12-ounce bag cranberries	Add to above and cook until the berries make a delightful popping sound, and most of them look popped.
1 grated lemon peel from one lemon	Turn off the heat, and add to above.Put into glass jars, and preserve, or eat it all. Whatever.

What else to say? Enjoy.

Struan & Saras farm - It's for SALE

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:19:00 +0000

Last summer, I posted a piece about the incredible veggies grown by my brother Struan and his wife Sara. As it so happens, I am still enjoying last year’s garlic, and it is even still sweet and fragrant. The individual cloves have none of that bitterness that has accompanied some of the garlic that over the years I have chopped, minced, pressed or otherwise had my way with.

Struan in his glory

But to all good things there is a season. Looking back with pleasure, and looking forward with hope, Struan & Sara are now planning to sell this farm. Their longer term hope is to buy acreage about half that size. To be honest, I haven’t a clue how they ever managed over the past several years to run a horse barn, as well as to grow enough vegetables and raise enough chickens, ducks and other fowl as well as sheep and such to feed their extended family and friends. They did all this, and yet still had enough left over to earn thousands from their veggie stand. You would think that they worked at the veggie growing full time, but no such thing. Struan has always had a full time job. It is just that gardening is his passion. Gotta love him.

I recall a decade and change ago when my husband and I sold our mountain top acreage and home in Mission, after having built the house with our own hands and raising our children there. We had put our heart and soul into that house as well as the land surrounding it, but there comes a time. Living on a mountaintop with a quarter mile road to maintain by hand was fast losing its appeal as we aged. Our hope when we listed it for sale was that whoever followed us would cherish it as much as we had. Of course, there are no such guarantees in life.

In Struan & Sara’s case, I hope that that the serendipity of the internet will connect them to someone who will love this land as much as they have. Perhaps, given the less than six degrees of separation that is true in our digital age, a horse-loving, farm-loving person might find the pictures that follow. Perhaps they will then feel their heart jump into their mouth with an impulsive OMG! – and then like any serious dreamer, they will find a way to make their next dream come true. After all, where else can you find a property such as this farm and stable within easy walking distance to local stores and restaurants?

Struan & Sara's house - but there is also a second house on the property as well


Exterior shot of the stable and barn. It has an indoor arena as well as 22 12'X12' stalls.

The indoor paddock is kept neat, and also has a watering system to keep the dust down.


This is taken from the roof of the barn before spring time greening up. The 1900 square foot greenhouse is off the the left behind their home, and the second house is barely visible, but is just right of the middle of the picture.


This is one of Sara's favourite pictures - a view of their outdoor paddock.

NOTE: Struan & Sara do have a realtor: Corrine Stones &Marc Goodwin. However, if someone buys this place as a result of my blogging on about it, then I expect double my usual portion of garlic scapes. Just kidding. Actually, my reward would be if everyone finds their dream. I am kind of a mutt about things like that.

Civil Society and Empire

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:08:00 +0000

I met James Livesay, the author of Civil Society and Empire, when I was on a flight back from Ireland. He was ego-free enough to suggest that I read not his book, but one by a colleague of his: Citizens of The World: London Merchants and theIntegration of the British Atlantic community 1735-1785. After reading and reviewing that book, I tracked down a book written by Jim, ordered a copy, and am glad I did.

Being new to the study of Irish history, I can be counted on to get much of it wrong. The tales of slaughter, first by people on one side of the religious divide, and then by another, can be so riveting that it is easy to lose sight of the progress being made beneath the radar. One such development that I hadn’t clued into, before I read Jim’s book, was how civil society was developed in part because of the need for more tools for managing the British Empire. England was forced to wrestle with what to do with the issue of governing Ireland, while Ireland had to deal with England’s powers over them.

Civil society can be a slippery concept, and like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. It isn’t business, and it isn’t government, and yet both would be hamstrung without it. I see it as a flexible kind of space that business, government and citizens can all inhabit, and where they can all share some degree of power. Some people refer to it as the third sector, an aggregate of institutions such as clubs, churches, labour unions, NGOs, and advocacy groups. Some would also include educational institutions, as well as an independent judiciary, and a free press. Although the concept of civil society is not to be confused with the concept of democracy, it does create the kind of space that often saves democracy from itself.

It would be impossible to imagine life today if the only legal, political and moral space we had to act in was a polarized combination of family-based connections, buttressed by the expectations of inheritance and land rights; and on the other hand, the rights and duties of governments and monarchs with unchecked powers. That was the way that Europe had been governed for centuries, but in a global economy, there also needed to be a space where merchants, legislators, dissidents, or artists could thrive, and where individuals could seek meaningful redress, and also have a voice that could be heard.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment bent their mind around this conundrum, and in the decades that followed, the concept of civil society took root. The need for such a space became urgent in part because of the difficulties of managing the affairs of the ever-expanding British Empire. It was being challenged by the yeastiness of American entrepreneurs and politicians, as well as the special needs of Ireland, and the not totally unrelated needs of the slave trade. In the absence of the buffers and protections of civil society, the best option that the early international merchants had was to hire brothers, cousins, uncles, or whoever else could carry on trade in remote regions and not risk cheating them. After all: Distance was a strong solvent of trust.

Enter the invention of the coffee house. In 1650, an entrepreneur known only as “Jacob” opened the first coffee house in Western Europe at the Angel Inn on High Street, Oxford. Its noveltie was multilayered. A wide range of classes were free here to mingle and exchange ideas and information. Merchants absorbed the latest gossip from sea captains; students threw off the yokes of the received wisdom of their professors and intellectual sociability replaced academic discourse as the focus of many.

England was fertile ground for germinating the seed of a new idea of civilization. The ground had been broken and tilled by the Civil War; old habits and assumptions had been shaken. The collapse of controls on printing and publication in the 1640s allowed a new kind of contestatory print politics to emerge, particularly in the form of the “mercuries”, regularly published newspapers.

The thinking that percolated in the early coffee houses was not unlike that which centuries later would fuel many of the dissidents in Eastern Europe - men such as Václav Havel, Adam Michnik, and the poet Czesław Miłosz. In both instances, men acted as if they were free, and the longer they did that, the as if started to melt away, and new freedoms emerged. The early United Irishmen of the late 1700s were also part of this continuum. Although the freedom did not last, they were initially free to think and act because of the space carved out a century earlier:

Dublin had a newspaper, the Dublin Newsletter, from 1685, through which Dunton [editor of the Athenian Mercury] could advertise his wares. He could conduct his book sale at Dick's in Skinner's Row, circulate the catalog to coffeehouses in provincial cities like Kilkenny and Cork to find buyers, and even conduct a pamphlet dispute with the bookseller Patrick Campbell from the new vantage point of Patt's coffeehouse on the High Street.

Much of what occurred at these coffee houses was practical, not theoretical. One of them became a market for marine insurance. Why not? Asymmetrical information is a well known recipe for exploitation, and coffee house gossip balanced the stories put out by vested interests. By hearing about the latest crop failures in America, shipwrecks in the West Indies, or the price of butter being shipped from Cork, even the smaller merchants could minimize their risks.

Coffee house chat also went hand in glove with the political and social changes that were in play by the end of the 1600s. One of the most effective weapons in William of Orange’s arsenal was not the skills of his pike men, but the effects of his printed propaganda, distributed through the mails and the coffee houses of England and Ireland. By then, it was clear that the informal connections of the coffee shops had begun to be co-opted by various kinds of power brokers, and had become a necessary part of the toolkits of governments and Empires. At the same time, trade and mercantile connections were becoming as valuable as title to land had once been.

As the 18^th Century evolved, the coffee house societies began to be supplanted by private clubs - a new social institution perfectly adapted to the needs of the governing elite in the new British Empire. The atmosphere of such clubs is well known to watchers of period dramas. Their private coffee rooms were “on a large scale, and fitted up in the style of superior splendor to what is usually observed in our more fashionable taverns”. Add in the ever-present smoking rooms, as well as the libraries, and the Morning Room where men could read newspapers and magazines in peace and quiet, and the ruling elite were now well positioned to run the Empire as well as their own interests in the company of like-minded and like-funded movers and shakers.

At this time, social power in Ireland, which had been mostly based on land tenure, was shifting in ways that differed from the economic and political changes in England. Ireland had no coal, or major industries, aside from the linen trade. They had been bludgeoned in the Civil War in ways that England had largely avoided, and as a result a much militarized countryside had become polarized into opposing camps.

Civil society was supposed to be the key that allowed Irish thinkers to understand the complexities of Irish life in a more insightful and powerful manner and so to master them. The surprise of violence in Ireland, particularly of scale, and the re-emergence of old ethnic and sectarian forms of political allegiance confounded all expectations and forced thinkers and practical politicians to reconsider the most fundamental categories they used to explain and guide their experience. The appeal to civil society, which was supposed to end conflict, instead was found to drive it. Eventually all parties had to abandon the classic interpretation of civil society as an understanding of the polity and embrace new ideals.

This tragedy didn’t only hamstring legislators and citizens, it also kneecapped traders. Merchants at the port at Cork may have exported more beef than any other port in the world, and had organized markets for supplying this beef, pork, and butter from the hinterland but they were powerless when they came smack up against the economic interests of the Empire. Catholics were the most disadvantaged. Irish Protestants had no difficulty in negotiating complex identities. Their social position as landowners integrated them into local societies governed by norms of deference, influence, and privilege. These Irish Protestants, people like my ancestors, even used theological precedents to buttress their case:

The biblical image of the justified remnant, set apart amidst danger and providentially delivered, was a powerful representation of the community. It was even capacious enough to be extended to dissenters when the latter events of the Williamite wars demanded interpretation. After the siege of Derry, dissenters could, if necessary, be included within the central mythic narrative identity, while continuing to be excluded from political representation by the Test Acts.

We might think that the equating of religious obligations with commercial actions is a thing of the past, but then again, listen to much of the language used in contemporary American politics. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Then, just as now, the commercial wolf becomes the religious lamb in the blink of an eye. My favourite example from Civil Society is how the 1700s subscribers to the Bank of Ireland were encouraged to invest:

If the universal consent of all civilized nations in all ages has placed charity at the head of the moral virtues; if Christ himself has given at the preference of all Christian as well as moral virtues; let us then try whether erecting a bank here, that will take no higher interest than 5%, will not be the most charitable undertaking that private men can set about, or the Legislature enact into a law.

In writing this piece for my blog, I cannot do justice to all the themes explored in Lindsey’s book. Even so, I should at least mention the chapter on the Black family who lived in Co. Antrim, Co. Down, Co. Armagh, America, and Bordeaux. Their story will be of interest to many of my readers. It also explains why so many Irish traders used the Isle of Man as a smuggling base. The Irish sensibilities and affiliations of the Blacks, and other such merchants, were simultaneously an asset and a liability. They were both rooted, and rootless. One of them, John Black - who died in 1767 – named his home Blamont after his earlier home in Bordeaux. He had it built at Ballintaggart, Parish of Kilmore, Armagh. As I follow his story, I appreciate how his Presbyterian Irish family ties enabled him to prevail in trade for as long as he did.

Stories such as this also leave me wanting to learn more. For example, this John Black recalled: “After the break of Dromore the Irish were coming sparing neither age nor sex putting all of the sword without mercy myself carried in the dark night aboard my father ship”. The convergence of faith and place makes me wonder if he might be connected to a much later James Black (d. 1828) of Woodford, Dromara, Co. Down. James was a chandler who married a niece of Thomas Ledlie Birch aka Blubbering Birch, who was the famous or infamous United Irishman who was deported for sedition. James’ son, Rev James Birch Black, served as a minister at 1st Dromora until he was suspended for drunkenness, and died 5 months later in 1823 leaving a widow and children. A connection here is likely.

All this aside, what matters even more than the particulars of these Blacks, is that their story is one of those that shows us how the fortunes of such Irish merchants rose and fell with the tides of the British Empire, and how such outcomes challenged the thinkers of their time. Fortunately, we are the beneficiaries of their radical thinking, and all because:

[They were]... hopeful that they could describe the life of a modern commercial Empire in a way that would save the local traditions of civility. In order to accommodate themselves to commercial empire they were given to reconsider notions of moral excellence and identity, even of fundamental theology, that had provided the common languages of moral experience for hundreds of years. Their seemingly modest claims for the “common life” or the everyday made them unfit for their old moral and political habitats and drove them to seek to adapt the environment to fit their new expectations. The consequences of that effort, its successes and failures, still structure our ideas of civil society.

Jacksons of Grange, Kings County, Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 23:21:00 +0000

NOTE: In the old deeds, Offally was named King’s Co. I am using the old name in this piece because that is what is in the old records.

In like a lion, out like a lamb. Or vice-versa. My blog in the month of March felt as if it was more like in with the Broad-faced Potoroo and out with the Galapogus Mouse. Both animals are now extinct, which is what my blog felt like in the month of March. It was the first month since I started a year and a half ago that I didn’t manage a single post. If you deduced that my attention had been elsewhere, you would be right. It is also why this post will be indecently long. For those who are not interested in this topic, the Jacksons of Grange, Kings County, Ireland, it will also be infinitely boring. For the rest of you, parts of it may be more riveting than the tradesmen’s work done on the Titanic, which may not be saying much.

So why did I decide to interrupt this lengthy silence with a piece on the Jacksons of Grange, Kings Co., Ireland? Good Question. It was because I still can’t figure out if these Jacksons fit in with my Jacksons, or even whether that matters to the outcome of my particular quest.

It did help that two brothers, Robert and Henry, got into a legal slug fest over land, and left documentary traces of the whole kafuffle. After this, it seems that Henry retreated east and set up a life for himself in Co. Wicklow. This is not unusual. Jackson families did not stay within carefully delineated County bounds. They popcorned all over the place, including as far as America.

Birr Castle. SOURCE: Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons.

Now, when it comes to Kings Co. or anywhere else, just because a number of Jacksons lived cheek by jowl doesn’t mean that they are related. This caution, along with many others, is engraved on the inside of my forehead. It is equally true that if a family lives consistently over time in the same townland, this is nonetheless worthy of notice. The Jacksons of Kings County are the latter. There were clusters in a number of parishes, and I had already linked some of them in known trees. The links for these trees will be at the bottom of this post.

I have also posted references to all the deeds that I have found so far that mention Jacksons in Kings Co.. This adds up to about 8 pages worth of references. Again, the link will be at the bottom of this post.

In order to take this any further, it is definitely worth getting picky and naming the particular townland, parish and barony where various Jacksons lived and/or held leases. Deeds and wills and such often refer to a particular land designation one way, and then sometimes another. To make things worse, the boundaries of counties, parishes and townlands shifted over time. It is easy to make the mistake of looking in one county, when you should be looking in a neighbouring one. I know it gets boring when the string of place names gets too arcane, but it does help if you use the ordnance survey map site to get yourself oriented.

Let me give an example. Recently, I finally made sense of one of the Quaker Jacksons who emigrated to America. The Quaker records said that he was a Thomas Jackson born in 1710 at Drechet, Kings Co. So far, so good, but I could not find Drechet for love nor money. A chance encounter with a fellow researcher “Betty” pointed out that another record gave his birthplace as Dreighet, Co. Kildare. A quick dip into the IreAtlas Townland database made it clear that this townland was probably Drehid, Parish of Arkill, Barony of Carbury, Co. Kildare. It is in the north-easterly part of Co. Kildare. A quick peek at the ordinance survey maps, and Bobs your uncle. This barony is on the border of Kings Co., and Co. Kildare, and there are tons of Jacksons in the surrounding parishes on both sides of the border.

It turned out that this particular Thomas wasn’t included in the line of Quaker Jacksons that I had already assembled, because he was from another line of Quaker Jacksons, even though he was living in the same part of Ireland. Just to keep us on our toes, his line married with the ones I had already posted in my original Quaker Jackson tree.

This new lot of Quaker Jacksons, that this Thomas of Drehid belonged to, descended from Nicholas Jackson of Kilbank, Seawaite, Lancashire, England. His son, Thomas, was also born at Seawaite, and married an Ann Man of Mountmellick, Queens Co (aka Leix aka Laois). They had a son named, guess what – Thomas – who was born in 1710 at the aforementioned Drechet aka Dreighet aka Drehid. Pretty much every citing of his ancestry is based on the mention in the appendix on page 285 of Proceedings ofthe Sesqui-centennial Gathering of the Descendants of Isaac and Ann Jackson.

With respect to all sorts of Jackson families in Kings Co., we can see from the deeds that some of them farmed in the townland of Jonestown, in the parish of Ballymacwilliam, Barony of Warrenstown; others were in the townland of Ballychristal, Parish of Geashill, Barony of Upper Philipstown, Kings Co.; while still others clustered at Edenderry, in the parish of Monasteroris, Barony of Coolestown. In short, when it came to Kings Co., and nearby counties, there were Jackson families here, there, and everywhere.

So far, I have not been able to link this latest batch to any other group of Jacksons. They could be connected to the Quaker lot, or else they could be a branch of the Ballyboy lot, or the Ballybritt lot, they could be some other group all together. I would love it if someone out there actually knows.

One aspect of their tree that makes me curious is the marriage in 1785 between Robert Jackson and Mary Carroll. The Carroll name is a significant name in Birr. Perhaps she was related to the famed Charles CARROLL(1661-1720) a wealthy Catholic settler in Maryland who in later life became Attorney-General in Maryland. His family came from Aghagurty, Parish of Seirkieran, Barony of Ballybritt, Co. Offally. This is the same parish that Birr is in, so it is not unlikely that there is a connection here.

It is also worth noting that when you are looking for the townland of Birr, that it was also referred to as Parsonstown. This is not because a parson lived there, but because of the family of Sir William Parsons of Birr Castle (1731-1791). I have never been there, but from what I can see it looks like a lovely place to visit, at least these days. Aspects of it may be familiar to North American viewers of “Who Do You Think You Are?”. The workhouse, a relict of a harsher time, was toured by Rosie O’Donnell because the one from neighbouring Kildare which was connected to her family no longer existed.

One of the other things that I am curious about with respect to these Jacksons from Seirkieran, Kings Co. is why Arthur Tenison Groves spent so much time documenting them. Perhaps someone had hired him to piece this tree together. Maybe this post will find them. Groves was an antiquarian/genealogist working in PRONI (Public Records Office of Ireland), and did do work for hire. Thankfully, he had also a thing about making lists, and many of them were completed before much of the public records of Ireland went up in flames in 1922.

I don’t claim to have found all of his mentions of Jacksons noted under T808 in PRONI, but the ones that I transcribed after a recent trip to Belfast add up to 16 pages of single page typing. The deeds references have all been posted on my site. This gives some sense of the scope of this resource, but I should also note that is only a tiny taste of one part of the 9,000 documents that Groves left us. It was thanks to him that I discovered the details of the legal battle between the two brothers Robert and Henry.

Although Henry ended up in Co. Wicklow, some of this family seemed to have remained in Seirkieran parish and elsewhere in Kings Co. for some time. Decades later in Griffiths Valuation, there were still 207 mentions of Jacksons in Kings Co., and 11 Jacksons were mentioned in the 1870 Landlords lists. All told, they held leases to a few thousand acres. Not chump change when it comes to land values.

I can’t claim to have run them all to ground, but I have at least made a start. The deeds page that I assembled on Jacksons of Kings Co. will overlap with many of those mentioned in Griffiths and the landlord records. Although this quest is incomplete, I am hoping that it is helpful. Just let me know where it takes you, so we can all learn together. Otherwise, enjoy, and as a result of our sharing may fewer Jackson lines end up in the pile of endangered species. No more Broad-faced Potoroo and Galapogus Mouse.

Jacksons of Grange, Kings Co., Ireland.

Deeds relating to Jacksons in Kings County.

Deeds relating to Jacksons in neighbouring Co. Kildare.

A deed on my site whereby Robert JACKSON leases the lands of Tulla aka BallymacMurra

A deed of Marriage of Mathew Jackson of Edenderry, Kings Co.

The main Quaker Jackson tree of Jacksons in Kings County

A 2^nd tree of Quaker Jacksons of Kings Co.

Albert Cook Myers. Immigrationof the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750 : with their early history inIreland The Edmundsons of Ireland were originally from Westmoreland. Perhaps not coincidentally, a significant number of Jacksons also from Westmorland settled in Coleriane in the mid-1600s. Edmundsons emigrated to Pennsylvania soon after the first lot of Quaker Jacksons.

An excellent blog by Arlene H. Eakle about the records of Arthur Tenison Groves.

Ordnance Survey map site.

Birr aka Parsonstown

Inching Towards Kildare

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:29:00 +0000

Last fall, two retired military officers of the King’s Own Royal Regiment met at a regimental dinner somewhere in England. Weeks later my brain went into total overdrive. The connection was somewhat akin to how a butterfly can flap its wings and halfway around the world, a major shift in consciousness results.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite on that scale, but it did feel akin to that.

One of these men was retired Major Pat Roberts, a grandson of Amy Oliver Jackson, and hence a great-grandson of Sir Thomas Jackson. The other was retired Major John Jackson. One of his ancestors, a man who may have been related to Sir Thomas, was a Thomas Jackson of Co. Kildare, one of King Billy’s men, who supposedly met his end by falling off his horse in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne.

My link with these two retired army men is my obsession with Jackson research and more recently with Co. Kildare. Unfortunately, what I know about Co. Kildare could be poured into a thimble without any risk of its ever overflowing. This is too bad because Co. Kildare is also the epicentre of one of the remaining unanswered questions that I have concerning Sir Thomas: Did he have a farm in Co. Kildare, and if he did, where was it?

This is not just an idle question. We do know that Sir Thomas (1841-1915) hired Patrick Lynch (1832-1913) to be his farm manager at Cavananore in the early 1890s. We also know that this Patrick Lynch, who was born in Co. Kildare, was a widower, and arrived to work the Cavananore farm with his son, also named Patrick. The story goes one step further and that’s the part that I can’t yet prove: Patrick Lynch had been running a farm belonging to Sir Thomas which was down in Co. Kildare.

There are many lines of Jacksons in Ireland. Some of these Jacksons were Quaker farmers; some were members of the upper crust and were known to be landlords, legislators and such; while others were known to have been shipped out of the country as a consequence of their seditious acts in the late 1790s. Some individuals with the surname of Jackson were guilty of all three of the above. It seems pretty clear from the surviving family letters written to Sir Thomas that his mother knew a whole lot more about which line of Jacksons was theirs than I do.

Depending on how the family history shakes down, it is possible that Sir Thomas’s rise from being the son of a marginal, gentleman farmer to becoming a baronet was regarded as a redressing of past misfortunes. On the other hand, if his Jacksons had never been anything more than modestly successful farmers, his knighting may have been regarded as a stroke of either blind luck, or divine intervention.

A few days after the two retired majors had chewed over their family connections, I received an email with ten generations of the Kildare Jackson’s family tree included. It had been assembled by Archdeacon James Marcus Neville Jackson of Toronto, who was an uncle of Major John Jackson. This tree was a darned good start. It made me scrutinize all the locations where these Kildare Jacksons had either lived or held leases in the hope that one of them would lead to Sir Thomas’ farm.

I used our pool table to lay out all the maps I needed to make sense of this.

Since the mid 1600s, Jacksons have had roots in townlands such as Ballynagussane, in baronies with names such as Narragh and Reban East. These names do not trip lightly off the tongue of people like myself, a Canadian living on the west coast. Then again, we are quite at home with names such as Skookumchuck, so there you go. The Irish townland names have a rich complex history that goes back and forth between the two languages: Irish and English, much of which can be explored at the Placenames Database of Ireland .

The lands of Athgarvan and Kennagh are two of the townlands that these Kildare Jacksons were supposedly granted for services under William III. Sometime afterwards, they built the Stone House of Monistrevan aka Monastereven. Not that I know anything about The Stone House, but just because this is merely a story, doesn’t mean that it either is or isn’t true.

Here is a Stone House in Monastereven - maybe the Jackson's Stone House looked something like this

As you can see, this kind of research is not exactly straightforward. It was reasonably easy to track down the townland of Athgarvan, now known as Blackrath and Athgarvan. It is in the Parish of Greatconnell, Barony of Connell, Co. Kildare. When it came to tracking some of the other townlands, computer searches were not much help. The spelling of many names has shifted over time, and, for example, the townland of Kennagh morphed into Kineagh. It can now be found in the parish of Kilcullen, and the barony of Kilcullen, Co. Kildare.

It was only by tracking these townlands that I could learn that the barony of Kilcullen is in fact on the Northern border of Narragh & Reban East. This makes it more likely that the story of these two townlands being granted together to the late 1600s Jacksons will hold up. Form here, it is worth noting that some townlands that are now in Co. Kildare were once included in Co. Wicklow, and vice versa. This is only one of many reasons that a farmer could easily farm lands in several counties.

One other complication to bear in mind when trying to solve this kind of puzzle is that: Just because two Jacksons are living beside each other, and their families have done so for centuries, doesn’t mean that they are related. It is not impossible to find two entirely different Thomas Jacksons living side by each in the same townland, and to find that both of them have fathers called William, and then to find out that they are not even remotely related. It doesn’t even take a cuckold in the sack to make this happen.

So where am I now? I still haven’t found Sir Thomas’ farm, but perhaps other readers of this post might be able to lend a hand. As part of my research, I have produced a number of documents that are likely to be helpful to those pursuing quite different Jackson-related quests. It is also possible that in their hands, we may even stumble upon the truth. Blind luck is best assisted by continually keeping one’s eyes and mind open. Good luck to all.

NOTE: These links beneath to data on my website will contain updates as I learn more. I still have much more Jackson-related deeds research to transcribe.

This page on Wicklow & Wexford also includes some sightings in Kildare – particularly the mention of the townland of Bull Hill. It is on the southern border of the townland of Davidstown.

Jacksons of Co Kildare in Deeds

Jacksons in Co Kildare Griffiths Valuation 1852-1853

Family tree s of JACKSONs of Kildare – Outline version and Detailed version (with sources).

Jacksons of Ballygibbon, two pages including their Co. Kildare family trees as well as snippets that connect many of them to New Zealand.

Nepotism: Yea or Nay

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:05:00 +0000

Nepotism, particularly in business and government, is regarded as a dodgy practice. Fair enough, but in the days before the invention and installation of telegraph lines, it was one of the more reliable ways to stay connected. Without the feedback loop of today’s communication networks, businessmen needed the trust of both kith and kin to grease the wheels of commerce.The idea, let alone the reality, of a digital village wasn’t even a twinkle in the eyes of our great-great-grandparents.

Thomas Jackson, manager of HSBC in the mid to late 1800s, had nepotism down to a fine art. He brought in more than a dozen relations and neighbours from Southern Armagh to work in the bank in Hong Kong. Some stayed, while others moved on to other ventures in the region. Even after they had moved on, they still remained part of his information network, and contributed to the bank’s success.

Thomas’ most brilliant move, although it was clearly also done for love, was to marry the daughter of a Singaporean sea Captain, and to thereby marry into her brothers’ entrepreneurial activities. These were all useful men to have within the family tent in the nascent days of HSBC.

Last October, my seat mate on a flight from Dublin to Boston looked like an interesting guy to chat with. He had one of those classy leather satchels, ennobled by the patina of use, and even better, he reached into it and pulled out a history book. The title, I can’t remember. We introduced ourselves, and it turned out that Jim Livesey was the Head of History at the Universityof Sussex with a specialty in the 18^th Century. I wish now that I had peppered him with even more questions. In response to me asking about the early days of banking, he recommended - amongst other suggestions - that I read a book called Citizens of the World.

Citizens of The World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic community 1735-1785. David Hancock. Harvard University. Cambridge University Press. 1995.

This turned out to be a great suggestion. Unlike many academic books that tend to be dull - they teach us how to write like that, Jim said - this one turned out to be a riveting picture of a handful of men who had their fingers in just about every commercial enterprise that sustained the reach of the British Empire. It made me think about Thomas Jackson in a new light, and what he brought to the table when he set about making a success of HSBC.

Reading this book, I also gained a new appreciation of what the word merchant meant in the 1700s. The word didn’t refer to a mere seller of saddles, or feed, or pewter. It referred to someone “who trafficks to remote countries”. In short, the word merchant referred to what we would call an importer/exporter.

Not surprisingly, it took more money to enter the global game than it did to stay local. For example, if you were an apothecary, retail cheesemonger, or a upholsterer you only needed start-up cash of about £100. You could conceivably raise this from your extended family, including grandparents, granduncles and grandaunts, godparents, and cousins and so on. There were other occupations that had pricier start-up costs. If you were a retail linen-draper, pawnbroker, or pewterer, then you needed £1,000 or so to get started. Becoming a merchant required £3,000-£4,000. I am not sure how that amount stacks up against the cost of buying a military commission, but it was certainly much more than chump change.

Still, if you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but had the requisite social and commercial skills to succeed, it was well worth the candle. Compared to choosing one of the more usual options for men of this class: agriculture, it was a total no-brainer. As Hancock points out, historians have recently calculated the scanty returns that would be expected from land, no more than 3 1/4% per year. Far greater rewards, perhaps 20%, could be made in commerce.

Even though Thomas Jackson emigrated to Hong Kong in 1863, close to a century after the men profiled in Hancock’s book were commercially active on the international scene, he fits their profile of coming from the periphery, physically, commercially, and socially. In his case, he was a farmer’s son from South Armagh, and never had any formal university-level education. He learned the basics of banking as a clerk in Belfast, earning so little that he had to bunk in with relatives. Hancock describes the personality profile of such men as:

... “opportunistic”, restless men who actively adapted their decisions and actions to the commercial expediency of the moment. They were relentless, even experimental in seeking opportunities to invest; they maintained more than one product or activity at once; they entered new enterprises, often profitably; and in general they were flexible in their responses to change. Their opportunism stood in contrast to peers who thought and acted more traditionally. ... their fields of action were primarily neither local nor national. Their reach started early in life with their migrations, they drew on their far-flung experiences and contacts throughout their careers.

When Jackson was a lad in knee pants, his relations earned their living through inter-dependent enterprises which in their case included: farming, being a chandler (literally making candles from the fat of the land), working in the leather trades, or as a maltster, butcher, or grocer. The linen industry that his uncles were involved in relied on a mix of agricultural skills needed for growing the flax, mechanical skills needed to run the flax mills, and marketing skills to sell the finished product. Today, we would call this approach: vertical integration,. This is naturally a useful concept for a banker to have already internalized when it comes to being able to turn a minor local bank into an international success story.

As a child, Thomas had accompanied his father to the local markets where cows and horses were bought and sold, crops were exported, and where the trading was always direct and oral. The skills of the marketplace, frequently underrated, were as much social as anything. Learning how to size up prospective buyers, as well as when to step up to the plate, and when to step back. Taking the measure of a man., and knowing full well that loyalty was earned, not purchased.

Just as successful merchants had always done, Jackson nurtured commercial linkages to men with established skills. These men were culled and cultivated from a collection of blood, ethnic, and neighborhood connections. Like earlier men on the global scene, he also took care of his staff, and amongst other things, set up a lunch room for junior clerks – not a common practice in the days of Victorian banking. Aside from the obvious benefits, it also kept Jackson connected to cutting edge thoughts and approaches:

I have tried always, and I have succeeded, I think in making my principal friends among the junior members of the staff. Rubbing the old file against the young flint brings out the best qualities of both and produces a fire of intellect which has been grateful to us all.

Some of this was a no-brainer to Jackson. Like most of the global merchants who preceded him, he had grown up with no dramatic separation between public and private zones, no significant division of working spaces. As a child, he ate, played with and grew up alongside the children of the families who worked in his family’s fields, and in his parent’s home.He was at ease with a range of social classes.

Once married and living in Hong Kong, he had such an open door to his home, that his mother back in Armagh was a bit ticked off with him (on behalf of his over-worked wife): In my simplicity, she said, I thought that Tom was a Bank Manager, but it seems he is also a hotel keeper. Fortunately, Thomas' wife Amelia knew how to swing with this. After all, her family had not only run shipping interests, but also hotels. In fact, the present day Raffles Hotel is built on the same plot of land where they once lived, and as a sideline, once ran a rooming house.

I could go on, but I’ll stop for now, content with returning to my opening thought on nepotism. Yea or Nay? It does seem that it had its place.

NOTE: My next book to enjoy – which is on order: Civil Society and Empire: Ireland andScotland in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World, James Livesey. Yale University Press. 2009.

2nd NOTE: I have italicized quotes from Citizens of the World, as well as quotes from my Jackson letters.

Irregular Marriages

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:55:00 +0000

In 1842, if the Primate of Armagh had succeeded in outlawing certain kinds of Presbyterian marriages in Ireland, then the future Sir Thomas Jackson would have been legally declared a bastard. After all, his father was an Episcopalian, aka an Anglican, or a member of the Church of Ireland , while his mother was a fervent Presbyterian. They had been married at 1^st Ballybay Presbyterian church by a Presbyterian minister. Unfortunately for them, High Church Episcopalians, such as the Primate of Armagh, a hereditary landlord named Lord George John de Poer Beresford, definitely did not approve. Along with many of the members of the so-called Ascendancy, he regarded these liaisons as: irregular marriages.

It is often strange how changes in law regularly get triggered by something that seems on the face of it to be so utterly tangential. This legal shift started in the 1840s when Dr. Miller, the surrogate of the Primate of Armagh, as part of a ruling on a bigamy case was able to declare irregular marriages to be null and void when they were performed by a Presbyterian Minister. His ruling rested on the precedence of a Saxon law passed in the Tenth Century that required that a priest be present to solemnize a marriage. Of course, a priest back in the Tenth Century could not have been Anglican, since Henry VIII had yet to be born. Details, details. That kind of irrelevancy didn’t daunt the Primate. He used his own money to help to fund this case, and he also used his not inconsequential influence to tilt the laws against the needs of Presbyterian families.

Not unsurprisingly, this ruling opened a whole new can of worms. There was now uncertainty over existing marital property agreements as well as inheritances linked to marriage portions. It meant that dead-beat dads could and did legally cut loose from financial responsibilities to their wives and children. It also would result in a whole new cohort of children who were now legally termed: bastard. Had the ruling gone unchallenged, the future Sir Thomas would have been one of them.

It took a second legal case to totally put the cat amongst the pigeons. Fast on the heels of this first judgement, a similar case in Antrim was referred to the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland for decision. Since the judges in this case were divided, the issue got punted on to the House of Lords for a ruling. After much debate, the Lords were split when it came to a vote, so the custom of presumitur pro negate prevailed . This meant that the ruling tilted in favour of the one who denied – aka the defendant. The result was that the bigamous defendant wiggled out of his sticky wicket, but it was now the entire Presbyterian community that was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It is hard to believe that the Primate’s itch to make these irregular marriages declared illegal wasn’t provoked by other issues, including the usual provocation: money. After all, Presbyterian activism in the Tenant Rights movements felt threatening to those holding the reins of Anglican landlord power. Just a few years earlier, in 1850, Rev. David Bell of Derryvalley, Co. Monaghan had ended a speech at the Belfast Music Hall with the rousing In the name of Justice, in the name of humanity, in the name of mercy, in the awful name of God, I call upon Lord John Russell.... to render the poor man’s property as sacred as that of the rich.

It is therefore no surprise that Thomas Jackson’s uncle and future mentor, Rev. Daniel Gunn Brown, was a key mover of one of the resolutions to be forwarded to Parliament.

MOVED by the REV DANIEL GUNN BROWN: That by this unexpected decision, not only are the feelings deeply wounded of more than one half of the Protestants of Ireland, but the rights of property, in innumerable cases, may be unsettled and overthrown: a consequence hurtful to the best interests of society, and affording many opportunities for base and heartless miscreants to violate, with impunity, solemn vows, and desert those whom, by the laws of God and man, they are bound to protect and cherish.

Now this is the kind of story that I could never have found all by myself. Luckily for me, the news clipping was included in a scrapbook assembled by Kieran McConville. On my most recent trip to Armagh, we were unable to meet, but he kindly drove up to Armagh to leave it for me at TheIrish & Local Studies Library so I could photograph the parts I had missed when I first saw the collection at the Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich Memorial Librarya few years earlier.

I didn’t measure it, I am guessing that it is a good eight inches thick,, eighteen inches wide, and two feet tall.

That day in Armagh, I took 322 photos of the pages of this book, and each page includes anywhere up to six news clippings. I have already entered the ones that describe births, death or marriages of people pertinent to the story of Thomas Jackson in my website or in my family tree. News items that connect to the experiences of the families that I am following will also be transcribed, and annotated, in much the same way as the article that I posted relating to this issue of Presbyterian Marriages.

It is through the actions of transcribing these articles, then checking out the back story, and then annotating the news clippings accordingly accordingly that I am able to get a much more complete picture of many of the events in Creggan Parish from 1748 to the early 1900s. By sharing it, we all learn – and I am happy to be corrected if I have misunderstood anything in this tale.

As the narrator in an early 60s TV show, used to say: There are eight million stories in The Naked City. This has been one of them.

Background to the court cases: The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. XVI. London 1867. p. 437.

See also: History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland Vol III. James Seaton Reid. Belfast. 1867.

News clippings for members of the extended Jackson family (exceedingly extended - given that there are more than 10,00 names so far) are entered into: Family Tree at Rootsweb

News article: 1842 February 3 Newtownhamilton.

A couple of “Unchurched” OLIVERs.

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:04:00 +0000

Curious pictures begin to take shape when you stare at birth records, deeds and other such mind-numbing documents for long enough. It reminds me of when my husband and I used to develop black and white negatives in our darkroom in the basement. It was like watching a time release film of a bud opening into a flower. Slowly, the image on the paper would sharpen in the watery bath of chemicals under the glow of the soft red light. Not that anyone does this much anymore, but I remember well the feeling of watching the picture emerge.

I’ll get to the unchurched bit that I referred to in the title of this piece – just give me a moment. This is after all, merely a blog, not The News of The World – although look where their playing up the muck got them.

For a decade now, I have been mucking about in hundreds of documents trying to make sense of a great swat of Olivers who peopled rural Armagh from the late 1600s onwards. A few of them also lived and/or conducted business in the city of Armagh, often referred to as the City of Saints and Scholars. You can blame Eliza Oliver, the mother of Sir Thomas Jackson, and my great-great-grandmother for this obsession of mine. After all, it was her legacy of letters which started me on all this.

The story is that her Olivers had initially immigrated to Ireland as Huguenots after the revocation of the Treaty of Nantes in October 1685. It appears that her family, like many, had secured an early foothold in the burgeoning linen industry in Northern Ireland. Missing records make some of this story tricky to authenticate, but the story has seemed to be a good fit as far as it is currently possible to prove.

Recently, an unknown fact about one of her cousins, a William Oliver, turned up in a most unexpected place: the church records of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The reason that this was unexpected was that this was not the Protestant St. Patrick’s, but rather it was the Catholic one.

It turned out that this William had fathered not only one, but two children, unchurched, as my great-aunt Blin would have put it, and both of them with the same woman - a Mary Anne Mallon aka Mullan. Their son Benjamin was baptised on August 21, 1841, likely on the day of his birth. Their daughter Sarah was both born and baptised 31 Aug 1844.

The story gets curiouser, as Alice in Wonderland would say. In PRONI – aka The Public Records Office of Ireland – I found a will abstract that makes this relationship between Willaim and Mary Anne, well, as I said: curiouser:

Mary OLIVER, deceased January 24, 1892, wife of William OLIVER; granted 23/02/1892 to Mary Anne MULLEN of Killynure, spinster. Effects ₤54

So, who was this Mary, wife of William Oliver, and what was her relationship to Mary Anne Mullen? This is where I hoping that kind readers can help me.

Clearly, a next step is to get this Mary Oliver’s death certificate. Since she was described as a wife, not as a widow, perhaps her husband William Oliver may be further identified in that document.
A second step would be to find a death certificate for Mary Anne Mullen, which would be some time after 1892. This should give us an idea of her approximate birth date. It turns out that there were 64 Mary Mallons recorded in the 1901 Census, but all the likely ones are described as widow, which may or may not be true. My guess is that Mary Anne Mullan died before 1901.
A few further questions to pursue are: Did this William Oliver marry a Mary after he conceived children with Mary Anne Mullen aka Mallon, or are they two different William Olivers? Did William Oliver’s wife Mary raise the children of her husband’s unmarried partner? Is there any record of these children, other than their birth? None of the Sarah Olivers in Irish census records look to be a fit, and there is not a single Benjamin Oliver in either the 1901 or the 1911 census. I suspect that this is a result of emigration, rather than premature death.

For now, I have placed this William Oliver as a son of William OLIVER of Ennislare and Brootally, Co. Armagh and Elizabeth BALLANTYNE. The links to this information are beneath. Another William Oliver, who I have yet to place and whose photo is beneath, would have only been thirteen years old at the time of the birth of first child with Mary Anne Mallon, so I doubt that it was him.

On the front of the photo: Yours truly, William [Oliver]
On the back of this photo is written (in different handwriting than on the front of the photo):
Height: 5 feet 5 inches
Weight - 8 stone 13 lbs
Dark complexion
Age 18 years and 3 months
Left his country for his
country's good
A.C. NICHOLS
Photographist
62 Deleware St.,
Leavenworth, Kansas

Regardless of what we have yet to learn, this was an interfaith relationship that was carried out over some time, and it may turn out that it is one of many in this particular Oliver line. It is likely not a fluke that while there were initially dozens of Protestant Olivers in Armagh up until the mid-1800s, the preponderance of those who show up later in the records are mostly all Catholic.

It is also intriguing, given the interfaith aspect here, that the William Oliver who fathered children with May Anne Mallon had a cousin, also named William Oliver (abt 1810-1873), who was described as dying unchurched and who left £50 to his housekeeper, Sarah Rock. I suspect that this Sarah was related in some way to the Margaret Rock (born abt 1839) who married John Oliver (1841-1909) of Ballycrummy and Tullymore. Their descendants still live and farm at Ballycrummy. It may be that the story of the ROCK family in the region may become the clue to unearthing more of this particular puzzle.

To help anyone who may be curious, I have recently uploaded a few new compilations of data. There are close to a hundred pages of new material here. SEE:

Memorials of Deeds relating to Olivers in Armagh

A Descendant chart for William Oliver

My updated Family tree at Rootsweb

Records of OLIVER BMDs at the Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich Memorial Library

Willof William Oliver (abt 1810-1873).

My email contact info is on my web site.

Blame Housekeeping

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:03:00 +0000

I realize that this may sound dangerously like something Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in New York last year, but I as for The Moi, I have the more conventional kind of housekeeping in mind when I say: blame housekeeping. It was the main reason that my blog enjoyed a month-long hiatus. Recent challenges included not only the usual dishabille of hearth and home, but also my digital backlog. The dust bunnies behind my sofa, aka the herd of dust buffalo – given their size and numbers, were absolutely nothing compared to the digital backlog that urgently needed attention.

I don’t mean to insinuate that my computer caught a virus or anything like that. Pas de fear. It is just that my digital life was totally snowed in under an avalanche, and the only tool that I had to dig myself out of it was a teaspoon.

The worst of started when I came home from Ireland late October last year. I had piled dozens of new books, and hundreds of pages of new documents onto the pool table in my study, but that was not the biggest challenge that faced me. It was all the new digital material on my computer. Even I was aghast at the scope of it.

The most daunting part was the more than 1,000 emails that I had not yet read, let alone dealt with. Since 50-100 new emails were being added daily – many of them either interesting or helpful or both - I feared that I would never catch up. Ever. To make things worse, I then got flattened by a month-long flu. Think avalanche. Think teaspoon. If I were writing this in the form of doggerel, then I might have to say that I went from bad to verse. Ooh – that was awful.

So, I quit blogging for a bit and amongst other things, I attacked the pool table, and with good reason. The Christmas season is when actually playing pool is a significant part of the family scene. I could have thrown all my piles of papers into boxes, and hid them under my desk, but instead I filed and processed each and every bit of paper. Well, most of them. There is still one more half-sorted box to go. Still, I do plan to award myself a medal for this accomplishment.

The really good part of my blogging hiatus is that my email backlog is down to 145, from a high of 1,237. Just as importantly, the piles on my side table are organized in terms of urgency. Hopefully, the wooden surface beneath them will once again see the light of day.

I don’t mean to infer that I spent the entire past month doing nothing but all of the above. There was also a wonderful amount of time spent eating, drinking, conversing and cavorting as one does at this time of year. Amongst other things, I reckon that I baked close to 50 loaves of bread that all were consumed at the various family and community events:

My cup - aka my Bosch machine - overfloweth

One of our family pleasures included the stunning meals prepared by my eldest daughter and her husband:

The seasonings in the eggplant and basil haunt me still - in a good way.

Another pleasure was joining dozens of others in a Roberts Creek tradition as boats were set forth on January 1^st:

Andreas' boat is one of these. Photo Credit: Micah Silver

Thankfully, our beach was readied for our 12^th Night party by Andreas and Micah. Now – that’s taking housekeeping to an extreme point, but the log that they were wrestling with was totally blocking our path to the beach.

Andreas in his Mennonite Mafia hat. The log is bigger than it looks in the picture.

With that and many more such tasks accomplished, not only was Twelfth Night celebrated in fine form, our tradition was recorded in the Globe and Mail, and a heart-felt piece of writing was shared for the first time with all and sundry:

Vanessa read a heartfelt piece. The Moi on the right. Photo Credit: Russ Tkachuck

Now that the aftermath has all been attended to, I am finally back in the saddle, even if it is some forty-one days later. One of my plans for the rest of 2012 is to post six pieces to my blog every month. Just as last year, they will focus on my research and whatever else catches my eye. Books. Food. You name it.

Onward. 2012.

Goldsmiths, Jacksons, London, Ireland & some ongoing mysteries

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:10:00 +0000

I wasn’t going to write about Alexander Jackson, at least not for a while - mostly because I don’t really know enough about him – but he got under my skin. He was a goldsmith based in London who invested money in Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland and was rewarded when Cromwell won. This means that there are records of him as one of the Irish Adventurers. I kept wondering if he might be connected to the long line of Jacksons who were living in Co. Meath by the early-1700s, moved to Monaghan in the mid 1700s and lived in Ballybay. Many of them were prominent actors in the United Irishmen.

This particular Alexander Jackson had advanced money to finance Cromwell’s war, and was allocated property in the South-East corner of the Barony of Navan, Co. Meath. He was also granted land in the Barony of Morgallion. The townland of Lisnaboe – where the Jacksons of Monaghan and United Irishmen fame came from - is in the Barony of Kells, County Meath. These three baronies adjoin each other.

On April 4^th, 1670 a letter from the King to the Chief Governor of Ireland mentioned that a Mr. Palmer had purchased the land allotments of various Adventurers situated in the Baronies of Navan and Maghergallen (Morgallion), County Meath. It was a lot of land – 1,800 acres, Plantation Measure. The acreage was subsequently reduced to 1,004 acres because some of the lands were restored to innocents, papists and others. The names of the Adventurers recorded in this letter include the name of Alexander Jackson. This makes it unlikely that his descendants settled on this land immediately. It is probably significant that this letter was dated the same year that Alexander died.

What else do we know about him? The entry in The Rulers of London 1660-1689 contains the following:

Co Co Aldersgate Within, 1652, 1660 St John Zachary, 1624-64, ChW, 1637, St Andrew Holborn, 1667 (1) GOLD, appr, 1605, to John West, fr, 1615 (2) d 1670, bur ? St John Zachary (3) Will PCC 177 Penn, 19 Dec 1670 f Robert Jackson of Stone, Staff (4) Goldsmith, 1643, Assay Master of the Mint, 1624, Deputy Assayer of GOLD, 1626 (5) City property (£100 p a) (3) Presbyterian Elder of 5th Classis* of London Province (6) Da Sarah mar Lawrence DYER (7)

(1) McMurray, pp 422a, 438b, will (2) Will, GOLD, Appr Reg, I, f 165, Index of Appr (3) Will (4) GOLD, Appr Reg, I, f 165 (5) Heal, London Goldsmiths, p 181, McMurray, p 456, GOLD, Index of Appr (6) Sion College, MS Acc L40 2/E17 (7) Will, Boyd 25284

NOTE: Classis was the name for the organization of pastors and elders that governed a group of Presbyterian churches.

His will was proved 15 December 1670, and in it we learn that his daughter Sarah married a Lawrence Dakins Dyer, a pewterer of St. Lawrence, Jewry, London. This connection between pewtering and goldsmithing may provide other leads. After all, there was a Thomas Jackson,pewterer of London, who was granted land in the same baronies of Co. Meath.

Alexander Jackson was supposedly buried at St. John Zachary and his will was probated December 19, 1670. There was an Alexander Jackson who was sworn Assay-Master at Goldsmith’s Hall in 1667 which may have been him, but if so, it would have been at a time when he already felt himself to be weak and infirm in body but of perfect mind and memory praise the Almighty God.

As a result of a court case, we also know that this Alexander Jackson was a brother-in-law of the London merchant, William Drax. The Drax conection is intriguing because the name Drax is sometimes rendered as Drakes, and there is such a family with pre-Cromwellian roots in Co. Meath. This may be simply a coincidence and nothing more.

In 1663 there was a claim that two of Alexander’s servants, who by then had been an assayer for 34 years, had committed a fraud. They had illegally taken the official date letter and lion passant punches and then marked items belonging to friends, including Joseph Fabian. Their purpose was to make substandard plate pass as certified gold - 22 carat, I believe. Poor old Alexander may have traded in gold, but as a result of this, his reputation was as tarnished as silver.

He was ordered to dismiss his servants who were involved in the fraud, but he only dismissed one of them. Eight months after the first offence, there was a repeat of it. This resulted in the immediate dismissal of Alexander and his sons as assay masters. One of these sons, Abraham, was probably in cahoots with the servants and Joseph Fabian. Abraham had worked for his father in the Assay Office since 1645, and had, due to his father’s advancing years, been assuming on a major part of the duties. One of the servants involved in the fraud, Daniel Joslin, was still Alexander’s servant when Alexander’s will was witnessed in 1667.

Alexander was not the first Jackson to practice as a goldsmith in London. On October 31^st, 1574 a Francis Jackson, known as Citizen and goldsmith of London wrote a will that was probated a couple of months later on December 7, 1574. From this will, it is clear that his wife, Anne, was still alive, as were two of his brothers – Richard and John – as well as his sister Elizabeth who had married someone with the last name of LEEKE. There are no slam dunks here, but it’s a place to start when trying to determine whether these various goldsmiths might be related.

There was also a goldsmith named Christopher Jackson (1668-1730), of the Duddington,Northamptonshire line of Jacksons whose brother Francis Jackson (1670-abt 1740) settled at Fanningstown, Co. Limerick. It is curious that there are so many convergences of names and profession happening here. It is hard to believe that it is nothing more than coincidence.

There is something like a thirty year gap between the death of Alexander Jackson and the first sightings of Jacksons at Lisnaboe, and as they say in the London Underground – mind the gap. There is however one little bit that has hooked my curiosity as a possible lead.

In St. Mary’s Church, Crumlin, in Dublin there is a gravestone inscription referring to a goldsmithing family who were in Dublin a generation after Alexander’s goldsmithing son, Abraham, had died in London. Abraham had no surviving children, but his brother Isaac Jackson did.

JACKSON: This stone belongs to | Joseph Jackson of the City of Dublin | Gold Smith | Here lieth the body of his father Henry Jackson who departed this life April ye 11th| 1782 aged 64 years also the body of Ann Jackson wife of said Joseph Jackson who departed this | life April y 25th 1782 aged 28 years | [245] Vol V Memorials of the Dead p.360

It is intriguing that the Henry Jackson mentioned in the inscription above died in 1782 while the Henry Jackson of Lisbanoe supposedly died sometime 1778-1796. The text can be a little confusing, but Henry JACKSON (1718-1782) was the father of Joseph Jackson who was the husband of Anne JACKSON (1754-1782).

In 1761, Joseph was serving his apprenticeship in goldsmithing in Dublin. By 1780, he employed several goldsmith apprentices in Dublin, presumably having inherited the business from his father. He worked at Hoey’s Court in Dublin, and was recorded as a freeman from 1775-1807. He also served as a warden of the Company of Goldsmiths of Dublin from 1791-1793.

His work in silver was of the highest quality. It is collectable today. SEE: Weldons.

One generation before Henry JACKSON in Dublin, there was also a Christopher JACKSON who was practicing as a goldsmith in 1718 in Dublin. The questions that all this raises fro me are:

Was the Christopher JACKSON who was a goldsmith in Dublin in 1718 related to Henry Jackson (1718-1782)?
Was this Christopher Jackson the same person as the Christopher Jackson (1668-1730), goldsmith of the Duddington, Northamptonshire line of Jacksons whose brother Francis Jackson (1670-abt 1740)settled at Fanningstown, Co. Limerick
Did Alexander Jackson goldsmith who invested and received land in Co. Meath have descendants who settled in Ireland? His son Abraham had no children who survived him, but his brother Isaac Jackson had a son named Abraham. This younger Abraham may have lived to adulthood, inherited the goldsmithing trade and also may have descendant..
Since the names Alexander, Joseph, Thomas and Henry are first names that are frequently used in naming sons of the Jacksons of Lisnaboe Co. Meath and Ballybay, Co. Monaghan were they related to any of the goldsmithing Jacksons?

I have much more to learn, and will post more information and supporting documentation as I learn more.

Will of Francis Jackson, goldsmith of London, proved 1574.

Will of Alexander Jackson,proved December 19, 1670.

Will of Alexander Jackson’s son, Abraham Jackson proved September 3, 1700

A family tree including both Alexander and Abraham JACKSON

Jacksons from the region associated with Francis Jackson

Henry Jackson of Dublin - a 1690 will

noreply@blogger.com (SharonOddieBrown) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:27:00 +0000

Occasionally, I order a will with the highest of hopes, and then when it arrives, I start thinking of the childhood ditty:

Here I sit broken hearted

Paid my dime and only farted.

I recently ordered a will transcript for a Henry Jackson of St. Peters Parish Dublin. It wasn't my most thrilling find since it turned out to be only one paragraph long, and didn’t even name a single relation. After I declaimed the aforementioned ditty, I did however realize that it wasn’t entirely useless.In fact, it may be that someone else will find it quite useful.

It would seem that poor Henry had to make his will quite quickly, as he was preparing to go to war in the service of King William to fight in the upcoming battles. He bequeathed everything to a friend, whose name I can’t quite decipher but which may be John Horst of Kinsale, Co. Cork. Sometime in the next seven months, knowing the frailty of all mankind and being shortly by God’s grace to enter into a battle in the service of their Majesties of Great Britain against our ffrench Enemies, he died. So, I guess I forgive him for not taking the time to name his mother and father, and any siblings, nephews and cousins and such.

The rest of the digging is now up to us. There are a number of Jacksons in Co. Cork in the 1600s which will be worth tracking in relation to him. One of them is a Lodowicke Jackson, a grandson of the Rev. Thomas Jackson who was the prebendary of Canterbury. I will do a post on him and his family in the next few weeks after I do more digging.

In the meantime, some of the Jacksons of interest are mentioned in passing in the footnotes that I have appended to the will. Over and above that, there are a number of Henry Jacksons in other counties in Ireland in this time frame. Given that families used first names as frequently as birds are usually recycled in heraldic arms, it makes sense to give these other Henry Jacksons a good solid sideways glance.

SEE: 1690 June 26 Will of Henry Jackson