How our Family History was Researched

A comment on my last post from my niece prompted me describe how our family history search was carried out, predominantly by our parents.

Firstly it was started in the days before internet searches.

Research on Alderney

Dad wrote down all he knew of his Grandmother Harriet Jane, alongside lots of questions and we headed on a family holiday to Alderney and then on to Guernsey. Here are a couple of key questions:

Who were Harriet’s parents? (my Great Grandmother)

Where did she live?

What happened to them? Dad knew that they had died but how?

There were three ways we could find out information:

• Visiting a dear lady on Alderney who was in her 80’s, but worked with families who were researching their family trees. All she asked was a donation for the museum and for us to send her any information we gleaned.
• Visiting the museum where the potter Peter Arnold (and curator I believe) allowed us to search all the old acetates of any records the island possessed on a machine where you carefully turned the handle and looked into a viewer.
• Looking around the graveyard for possible relatives.

As I have said in a previous post, records on Alderney are not complete due to the evacuation and occupation in WW2.

Most which are available, of course, can now be accessed on-line.

(Meanwhile I researched life on Alderney in the Victorian Age for my novel)

Research on Guernsey

Here there is a Records Office and the Priaulx Library, both mines of information, not to mention Trinity Church where my Great Grandmother Harriet was married. Our parents went back to work on their searches. Family History is absorbing but time consuming.

After our trip together

Subsequently …

A few days was not enough, although we had an enjoyable time together. After that Mum and Dad made another trip to both islands on their own and I too visited Guernsey on my own for my research, which was now diverging from the truth into fiction. I travelled to Guernsey, in the opposite of the journey made by Harriet and her young family, on the slow ferry from Portsmouth, when you are still passing The Isle of Wight after an hour at sea!

As Mum and Dad went on to do more detailed research, uncovering much of what I have described in the previous few posts, they also went on to access records on the internet too, as soon as it was available.

It was a wonderful topic of discussion when we met and they distributed much of it to all the family, although it was poignant but also a delight to find all the original documentation and notes in their things when they had passed away.

Next post …

The Family in Wooston

Elizabeth Renier ~ Born 1811 / Quesnel/ Taylor

Let’s start at Elizabeth, my Great Great Great Grandmother, the first relevant person in my family tree and a key character in RIDUNA.

Elizabeth Renier married Nicolas Quesnel on 15th May 1932 on the island of Alderney.

John Taylor became lodger in the household, which we are led to believe was called The Reading Rooms on Braye Road, a boarding house and public house. On the 1861 census on Alderney below this is clearly shown. We spent a lovely hour with Eileen Mignot, who used to be the keeper of all of Alderney’s paper records before everything went digital.

After Nicolas Quesnel passed away Elizabeth married John Taylor, who I imagine had been very supportive in running the public house and lodging house when Nicolas was ill. All of these characters feature in my novel.

On the next post I will bring Harriet, my protagonist, into the picture and it is there that truth begins to diverge from the fiction.

Islands of Inspiration (5) Alderney ~ for me the Ultimate Island

Looking out over Braye Beach

Alderney was the island which gave me the original inspiration to write my debut novel Riduna, first published by Pegasus in 2009, then Eventispress in 2012 when its sequel Ancasta was published. How time flies!

I have not been back for eight years due to moving to Fife and increased family commitments. It seemed an awful long way from here. How would we get there? How would a small island community have survived Covid? Would it be in decline or could it have ridden the storms?

What I did know was that I had a burning desire to return; a feeling you should never ignore.

Alderney is an island I have always held dear to my heart; the location of many happy memories of holidays as a teenager; the origins of the Jackson branch of my family and the place of my Great Grandmother Harriet’s birth.

How the island helped me in Mind, Body and Spirit

I am always excited to return. The two plane journeys, first from Edinburgh to Southampton and then on to Alderney seemed a bit daunting at first post Covid, but we took it in our stride and I was filled with an overwhelming joy; a sense of Deja vu of journeys gone by. I was smiling as we were called through at Southampton airport.

Each moment was precious; the first sight of Alderney from the plane; coming into land and into the little airport building, which hadn’t changed a bit, then the taxi drive to our hotel. Oh so very familiar and beautiful.

On our first day we ambled about, first visiting the town St Anne, which appeared to be thriving, relative to some English and Scottish small towns. Then it was down to the harbour and the breakwater and on to Braye Beach. The weather was warm and there was a tiny breeze, which was perfect. The following day we walked to the beautiful bays of Saye and Arch and then got a light lunch in The Old Barn at Longy.

Spiritually I felt so in tune with Alderney and know it is my spiritual home. I always feel a closeness with my Great grandmother there, but I was also aware this time of being extra-specially close to my Mum and Dad.

The sunshine, warmth, exercise and fresh air filled us with life, and my mind cleared of some of the fog of the past couple of years. I could feel a healing power and a setting free. Marvelous!

How I was inspired by the island of Alderney

Alderney, as I said at the beginning, was my initial inspiration to write, as was the story of my Great Grandmother. Walking where she walked and seeing houses and streets much as she would have seen them, with the cobbles and Georgian buildings as well as the tiny stone cottages down at Newtown, I became aware of her footsteps beside me and a whisper of encouragement in my ear.

Alderney Mid 19th Century

This was added to by a visit to Alderney Museum where Guilia, who is in charge of research, spent a couple of hours with me, talking through my projects. She was interested in what I knew of my family history and attempted to untangle fact from imagination, as my talk of my novels wove in and out of Harriet’s true story. (In a nutshell she lost here parents and was sent to Guernsey) Armed with several books to bring home I was tasked with sending her our family tree as we know it, with documental proof wherever possible.

I felt quite light headed as we headed back down to our hotel.

I was not so sad when we took off the next day because I knew I would return soon.

I’ve been inspired to delve into my parent’s family history files, untouched since they passed away.

I’m also inspired to work on Dad’s novella, a prequel to Riduna, in the knowledge that there are experts at hand who will take my work seriously and read the manuscript with a critical eye on its authenticity.

I had reached out and I feel that folks are reaching back over the sea to meet me half way.

It is a wonderful feeling!