My Family Tree ~ with its Deep Roots and Many Branches

Almost Half a Millennium of My Family History

Who am I? Where did my family come from? What am I searching for? Who am I looking for? What am I hoping to find? Why am I doing this? Well, I can't retrieve the full set of answers at this moment in time, but I can trace the clues and manoeuvre in the right direction ~ with an interweaving of family fact, historical accuracy and an optional measure of fiction.

I was never much interested in history when I was at school.  Apart from the Stone, Iron & Bronze Ages and the excitement of Viking raids, it was all Kings and Queens, Tudors and Stuarts ..... and a never-ending list of meaningless dates. Now, however, as I am building my family tree, researching my ancestors and trying to discover my roots - my family history - everything has changed. Dates are now of great importance. There is a real intimacy about all this. I am trying to piece together the life of my family through the history of 500 years.

In all of us there is an inquisitiveness, a curiosity, deep down, to know our heritage, our ancestral family background - to know who we are and where we came from. No matter what we achieve in life, there is still a sort of vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting questions about our own personal qualities and traits ~ our characters and personalities.

I'm trying to get a better understanding here of the situation in which my ancestors found themselves .....

Families of economic migrants are common in my family history:

1. The Cupits moved from agricultural Lincolnshire to Liverpool; Cupids then moved to Barrow-in-Furness
 2. The Bailey family moved from Lincolnshire to Liverpool. This was a staging point for many Baileys before embarking for North America
 3. The Gillians/Gillins family moved directly from Lincolnshire to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
 4. The Nichols family moved from Castlethorpe, Buckinghamshire to Crewe, thence to Barrow-in-Furness
 5. The Taylor family moved from Newton Stewart, Wigtown, Scotland to Barrow-in-Furness
 6. The Cooper family, small as it is, probably had the greatest motivation to geographical rearrangement from the North American Colonies through Nova Scotia to Liverpool
 7. The Adams/Crumpton family moved from the light industry of Halesowen, Worcestershire to the heavy industry of Barrow-in-Furness
 8. The Millward family moved from Stafford to Rhyl, North Wales, thence to Barrow-in-Furness

Our world today is small by comparison to theirs. We move around planet Earth in terms of hours rather than days, weeks or months, and can be in voice (and visual) contact in seconds no matter where we may be. In the early nineteenth century a trip of twenty miles, from the village to the nearest city was considered a long distance. When looking at my family history, I sometimes become puzzled at why my ancestors left their place of birth for the "new world", in days when there was little expectation of seeing that place ever again or even of corresponding with their relatives. Their motivation must have been very strong.

I knew very little about my family before I started my FH research. My mother's maiden name is Cupid; my paternal grandmother was Retsea Ann Millward. These somewhat unusual names are what got me started. It's very much like being Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot rolled into one (or Miss Marple in many cases) searching for clues and hints - to fit pieces into the interlocking jigsaw puzzle of life - ancestry and descendancy.

This mass of data refers to many lives ~ complete from birth to death by the individual but just data on these pages. Lives lived through time. Time changes. Family and social life continue through the ages. My humorous genes (and my funny bones) tell me that many areas of my ancestry are populated with good humour, riotous laughter and lots of fun. I will live with a family where and when I can - when the data is sufficient to develop a story, a fiction, of what might have happened in a particular family's daily lives - but there must be fun and humour.

All I seek during this meandering journey is data, information, food, warmth and shelter ..... a pleasant smile and a humorous nature are the greatest warmth.