GENEALOGY

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WHERE DID I COME FROM ?

An attempt by Kenneth Rawnsley, to answer this question for his children.

The question “where did I come from?” is the subject of many stories involving children and their parents. The answers are usually amusing. It is however, a question being considered in more serious fashion by a very large number of people, probably more than at any time since the writing of the genealogies in the bible. Proof of this time since be found in the number of full-time researchers to be found in London and other places where records are kept. All attempting to trace “family trees”.

In England, tracing one's ancestors back to the Doomsday book is a popular If scarcely attainable goal. In the USA on the other hand back to the Pilgrim Fathers

will do nicely and If the genealogists should discover the family entitlement to a Coat-of-arms or two, so much the better. This despite the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers were trying their best to get away from the sort of people who were granted Coats-of-arms, and indeed their descendants of a couple of centuries ago were very active in ridding their country of anything and every- thing associated with the damn British.

In Australia, some years ago, a national Daily sought to capitalise on the popular interest by publishing lists of those selected by the best Judges in England to be the early pioneers of this land.

The lists were read avidly, if a little fearfully, to see if great- great- Grandfather had been one of early settlers.

I used the term-‘scarcely attainable to describe the Doomsday goal and indeed unless your ancestors accompanied Prince William or Normandy on his 1066 Expedition it is extremely unlikely that you will succeed in that goal. Alas ‘worse to come. If your ancestors were not of the nobility it is unlikely that you will be able to go back earlier than the 17th. century. The reason’ in those earlier times the keeping of records depended on the whim of the lord of the Manor or on the diligence of the local vicar. Even after it was required by law to record births, marriages & deaths there would have been the occasional neglect and of course from time to time accidents happen and records become lost. All In all the fact that so Many records are available is a matter of some wonder.

Having gathered some information you will then be faced with the decision on how best to present the information. Perhaps the better starting point would be to first decide on Just what information you want to be able to present. If you say “I’m a Rawnsley and I only want to be able to present the Rawnsley line back from myself, then your task becomes very simple. If on the other hand, you aknowledge that your Mother did have something to do with your make-up, and you Fathers Mother and your mother's Father & Mother and so on, and so on, then your (the really starts to look like a tree with double the number on branches each generation you go back.

and you'll readily see that if you include brothers and sisters along the way, it will not be long before you have filled a normal house wall with names, this particularly as you do into the last century when families of ten or eleven children were not at all uncommon.

Notwithstanding the difficulties I have attempted to pursue each line back as far as has been practicable in the time we had available for research. The results of our research, which has entailed Many hours in the Bradford Public library, in the Wakefield Archives section, in churches and graveyards, and incidentally a lot of fun, I now pass on to you.

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