654 and all that

We've travelled over a thousand miles in the last week. Monday though Wednesday, Mum, Lucy, Jonathan and I drove up north to Northumbria and Yorkshire. These are the borderlands where the English, Scottish and Northumbrian kingdoms battled for centuries. The landscape is dotted with castles, some ruined and some comfortably inhabited. It was also a cultural and religious frontier, where early Christian monks established missionary posts and, eventually, some of the great abbeys of Britain. There are places up there I've dreamed of going to for years.

On Monday I drove all the way to Northumbria, on the English-Scottish frontier. On the way, we stopped at Newstead Abbey in Notthinghamshire which was the home of Lord Byron's family for three centuries. His ancestors bought an old abbey church in the 16th century and canabalised much of the stone to build the manor house, incorporating some of the abbey walls into the house. We also stopped in the Yorkshire city of Ripon to see their cathedral. From there we continued north by way of the Newcastle, where I wanted to see the landmark sculpture The Angel of the North. It's a hugely controversial work, but I like it and was excited to see it up close. We finally got to our hotel in Seahouses on the Northumbria coast at 10. Jonathan had been asking all day "What time are we getting to the hotel?", but it was so sweet we never tired of it. He was excited about sleeping on the top of a bunk bed for the first time.

Tuesday morning, we went to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne to visit the lonely and windswept ruined priory and former monastic community. Founded in the mid-seventh century, it was the bolt hold of Christianity in the north of England for centuries. It's not so lonely these days, with loads of cars lining up to cross the tidal causeway. I shall have to return one year in the winter to really get a feeling of what it was like. From there we drove 10 miles south along the coast to Bamburgh Castle, the stronghold of the kings of Northumbria. We had a look around the historic village of Alnwick, but unfortunately we didn't have time to visit Alnwick Castle (a filming location for Harry Potter!). So we returned to the coast road and stopped at Warkworth Castle, a ruined castle that belonged to the family of Henry "Hotspur" Percy of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I.

After spending the night in Newcastle city centre, we drove around the historic section of the city. Newcastle gets a bad wrap - it was hard hit following the collapse of heavy industry in the northeast- but it was actually quite an attractive place and I'm really glad we had time to explore a little. This being our last day, we headed south - via the Tyne Tunnel much to Jonathan's delight - into the North Riding of Yorkshire. Our first stop was Rievaulx Abbey. It is now a glorious ruin, but in its heyday was one of the great monastic communites in Europe. We drove through misty hills to reach it and arrived as the rain was just clearing. It was wonderfully atmospheric, all gloomy and austere, and then as we were finishing our visit, the sun came out and bathed it in light. From there we drove to Castle Howard, surely the most beautiful building in Britain, where we toured the house and grounds. Mum wanted to drive along the Yorkshire coast so we headed east to Scarborough and Filey, then along to Bridlington and finally home. We drove across the Humber Bridge, sadly at night so all we saw of it were little red lights outlining the spans in the darkness. It was a long drive home; surely I have never been so glad to see Luton!

Thursday we went to the London Temple to visit the grounds and the LDS bookshop in the nearby village. In the afternoon, we took Jonathan on the Bluebell Steam Railway. We bought First Class tickets and had a compartment to ourselves for the 1-hour round trip. Jonathan loves trains - "What do you want to be when you grow up, Jonathan? Train driver!"- and he was so excited to see real steam engines like Thomas and Henry and Percy. After the railway, we returned to the temple to have dinner with Gwen, who is serving temple mission there this year.

I've taken lots of pictures and posted them to my new flickr account. Some of the pictures are a little wonkey, owing to an extraordinary excess of wind in the region. Follow this link.
As you may be able to tell, I like archways, windows and doorways. And flowers. And old buildings! And my family.

My little boy

Ducies identified

Got a big package from the Wayne Country Microfilm Department on Saturday: a photocopy of Patrick Ducie's probate packet. He left a chunk of land with two houses on it. Not so bad for a bloke who was mining coal until he emigrated just fifteen years earlier!

The probate papers give the exact location of his land, names his dower as Mary Ducy, and, most importantly, gives the names of all his children. They are all listed by their married names in Mary's obituary, but here they are listed by their own names.

Mary Schonberger is named as some sort of direct participant (perhaps her and her husband John lived in the other house). Then there is a copy of a newspaper clipping in which the estate administrators advertise for the other three children whose location is unknown: John Ducy, Margaret Cummock (see post from 6 Aug) and Lizzie Shadwick.

I had found a John and Mary Schonburger in Montana in the 1900 census, where the obituary placed her. The census says her children were born in Ohio, so I'm almost positive this is John's sister. She is older than John, born in 1842. She isn't listed on the England 1861 census with the rest of the family, presumably because she was married to her German-born husband in about 1858. Did she marry him in England and they emigrated with the rest of the family, or did she go to America first and the rest of the family followed her? This I will have to figure out.

I'm still looking for Lizzie Shadwick. The obituary for Mary Ducy said she was Mrs Charles Chadwick of San Fransisco. There is a Charles and Elizabeth Chadwick in San Fransisco on the 1880 census. This Elizabeth was born in Ireland and her husband in England. So nothing conclusive yet.

I have a really good feeling about their sister Margaret, so I am determined to have the work done for this entire family!

The world's knowledge

I've been playing on the British Library's website. It's a treasure trove of manscripts, images and sound files. You could easily spend hours browsing through everything they offer online, but highlights have got to be the 13 great books and The Way We Speak. You can literally turn the pages of books like the Lindisfarne Gospels and there's an audio commentary for each page so you know what you're looking at. My favourite book is the Mercator atlas of Europe and the script in Baybar's Qu'ran is particularly beautiful. The Way We Speak is a collection of audio files of English accents and dialects. I liked the retired bus conductress from Tyneside.

Jonathan earns his first cap for england

As they're coming home from town, Jonathan says to his Mum in an excited voice:

I just had a dream as I was walking down the street. I was playing for England. And we won!!!

Me and the girls went to the temple

On Friday, I did the baptism work for four ladies in our family:

Samantha Luellen Patterson;
Eliza Roche;








Margaret Mary Ducie;













and, Lena Rosenblad, who is great-uncle Elmer Pehrson's mother. She was born in Finland in Feb 1867.

It was terribly exciting. They printed the little pink name cards for me and I got to hold them in my hot little hand until I went to get in the water. My friend and home teacher Jeff Butler baptised me, which was really nice, and he asked me to tell him how to pronounce their names properly. I liked that. It drives me a little nuts listening to name after name being butchered. They returned the name cards to me afterwards and we'll be back there sometime soon to carry on with their work!

Cezanne & Pisarro

The Museum of Modern Art is currently exhibiting two of my favourite artists, Mssrs. Cezanne and Pisarro. Pisarro has always been a particular favourite of mine ever, since I first discovered art other than my own. Which isn't to say that I didn't create some outstanding splodgy paintings as a six-year-old, but I have to give it up to these chaps, they are a bit better than me. So I trotted over to MoMA on West 53rd after work yesterday to do a tour around the exhibition.

I think what I like most about these paintings is the presence of so much light. Now don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of mediaeval (I like to spell this with as many vowels as possible) painting with its dark backgrounds and richly coloured subjects, but I was quite taken yesterday with the daylight and natural colours of these Impressionist works. These chaps refused to do preliminary drawings, and painted their pictures looking at the scene they were creating on the canvas. You feel as if you are standing on a French hillside, surveying the villages these two loved to paint and watching the comings and goings of the villagers.

This was my favourite picture: Small Bridge, Pointoise by Camille Pisarro

These exhibitions often appear at both the MoMA and the Tate Modern in London, so keep your eye out for a switch to London sometime after it finishes here on September 12. In the meantime, you can enjoy all the paintings at the exhibition website.

The happy couple

Our Cliff is getting married in December. Naomi is his lovely wife-to-be. I thought you would all like to see a picture.

I am one thirty-second Portuguese

I have some genealogy findings to post about the Paul family, parents and grandparents of Alfred O'Brien, Dad's maternal grandfather. These relationships all have to be explained in words for now, but I have big, big plans to launch my own website in the future with our genealogy and then you'll be able just to follow a link!

Here's what we knew already:
- Francis "Frank" Paul (born in Azores Islands) married Margaret Kelley (born in Ireland) 25 April 1858
- their daughter Mary Ann Paul was born 29 Jan 1858 in New Bedford, MA
- on the 1870 census Frank Paul is living in New Bedford with his wife Lucy, 11 year-old daughter Mary Ann and three younger children, the eldest born in 1863.

So what happened to Margaret? I thought perhaps she had died in childbirth, and having a young baby that needed to be cared for, he quickly found himself a new wife. So I ordered birth, marriage and death records for New Bedford on microfilm from SLC and here's what I found.

Not one, but two daughters were born to Frank and Margaret:
- Mary A. Paul - 29 Jan 1859
- Margaret Theresa - 11 Dec 1860
Little Margaret doesn't appear on the census along with Mary Ann later on so I fear she didn't live long, but we know what that means, so it's not so sad after all. And if you're not sure what that means... read D & C 137:10 Margaret Kelley Paul died in 1861. The index only gives the name and year, so I have requested the death certificate from the archives in Boston.

Frank Paul married Lucy Ann Joseph on 28 Dec 1862. According to the 1900 census, Lucy was the mother of 12 children, 6 of whom were still living at that time. I've been able to find 9 so far.

I think I also found the death of Frank's mother Theresa and Margaret's parents Patrick and Margaret Kelley. I've requested those certificates as well. They're only $3!!