Final Resting Places: - Ronald Herbert English

Sitting high above the township on Crawford Road, just outside of the small Southland town of Mataura, sits the Mataura Cemetery. It is a very quiet place, with the only noise being the occasional passing of a car or farm tractor, or the bleating of a lamb from the surrounding paddocks.

Block 5, plot 185 in this quiet, peaceful cemetery is the final resting place for a person who long ago meant the absolute world to me. My eyes would light up when he walked into the room ….. I wanted to go everywhere with him ….. and I often waited along at the corner of our street for him to finish work so I could walk home with him. 

But all too soon this childhood love was over. I had only just turned seven when my dad, Ronald Herbert ENGLISH, died unexpectedly. My dad is now resting peacefully in block 5, plot 185 in the Mataura Cemetery, a place where I still frequently go to visit him, just to talk to him and feel close to him once again. 

My dad with his older brother Evan
(please click on image to enlarge)

Dad was born in Mataura in December 1941 and spent his whole life in the town. He was the second son of Bob and Lizzie (nee RENSHAW) ENGLISH and he had one older sibling, my uncle Evan. Dad was educated at the local primary school and then continued on to Gore High School, where upon leaving school he ventured to the local freezing works, one of the main employers in the town, to seek employment. The boss at the freezing works was a friend of my grandparents and he told my dad that he would not employ him in the freezing works as he had too good a brain for that, but instead offered him a job in the company office, which my dad accepted.

In March 1968 my dad married my mother, Maureen EGAN, the eldest daughter of Doris and Jack EGAN. My mother was a primary school teacher and her father Jack was the principal of the local primary school. In the years that followed my parents were blessed with three children; firstly Stephen, then myself, and later on Julie arrived on the scene too. And my parents were happy. 

As was the norm in the 1960’s and 70’s, Mum stayed home to look after the children while Dad continued to work at the freezing works. In his spare time Dad loved to go duck-shooting or fishing, he loved to play rugby, tennis or golf, he loved gardening and harness racing, and he particularly enjoyed spending time out on the farm of his good friend Barrie Cullen who lived just outside of Mataura on Terrace Road.

My dad with my older brother Stephen
(please click on image to enlarge)

After many years in the freezing works office Dad did finally venture into the actual processing part of the freezing works to work, and at the time of my birth his occupation is listed on my birth certificate as wool-pullers assistant. But he wasn’t content with just “working on the chain”, a term used locally to refer to those working along the production line at the freezing works. He had aspirations of going higher so went away to Lincoln College and re-trained, this time as a meat inspector. When he came back he was employed by M.A.F. (the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) to work at the Mataura freezing works as one of their meat inspectors.

Life was once again back to normal for our family and as much as I can remember from back then, we were a normal, very happy family. But all too soon life was to change and our quiet happy life would be shattered.

My dad, Ronald Herbert ENGLISH
(please click on image to enlarge)

Dad began to experience frequent severe headaches and upon seeking medical treatment was sent for a brain scan. And when the results of the scans and the tests came back our world was turned upside down. Dad had a brain tumour !!! 

But it was soon discovered that the brain tumour was a secondary cancer and the source of the cancer was actually his kidneys. A double blow !!!  Because I was so young at the time I am a bit unsure about the exact time-frame of what happened next. All I can really remember is that Dad immediately went into Wakari Hospital in Dunedin where treatment was to happen. However, within a very short time of him being in hospital he suffered a traumatic brain haemorrhage and passed away. 

My dad was only 36 years old and within the space of a few short weeks we had gone from a normal, happy and loving family to one that was completely devastated. My mother was only 31 years old and was left to raise three young children, aged 9, 7 and 3, all on her own. And that she did, and made a wonderful job of it. My brother, sister and myself are now all grown up and if our dad had still been alive today he would find himself the proud grandfather of five beautiful grandchildren.

I missed having my dad in my life when I was a child growing up. And I miss him still, and will until the day comes that I pass from this world and get to join him in Heaven. I am especially sad that he never got to live long enough to give me away at my wedding, that he never got the chance to meet my wonderful husband, that he never got to be a part of my children’s lives and that my children never got to know him and love him too.

Block 5, plot 185, Mataura Cemetery
Ronald Herbert ENGLISH  (26 Dec 1941  -  9 July 1978)

Thirty six was too young to die. And the seven years that I got to spend with him was not enough time for me. Sometimes life just doesn't seem fair. Dad has now been gone for more years than he actually lived, and his three children are now older than he ever got to be. 

My dad is never very far from my thoughts. I will continue to visit his grave in the Mataura Cemetery for the rest of my life. I will continue to remember him and miss him, and I will continue to love him .....…… forever.

A new year genealogy resolution

It’s been well over a month since I last posted on this blog, and despite the fact that I’ve been itching to get back to it, life in general just seems to keep getting in the way. But that’s quite okay, life’s for living and that’s what our time on this earth is all about. 

Summer on the farm: shifting sheep

Besides the very busy Christmas period that I’ve no doubt we all experience, life on the farm has also been so busy, busy, busy lately. Whenever I think that I’m about to get a free hour or two so I can head into the office to do a wee bit more research or scan a few more old photos, I get called upon to help shift cattle, or draft sheep, or weigh lambs, or something similar. In past years the kids have helped out on the farm and have done a lot of this work over the busy summer period. But as some of you reading this will already know, life for our family has changed recently with both of our kids finishing their high school careers and moving on to the next stage in their lives. They are both now working full time (one in a permanent job, and the other full-time at the moment raising funds to begin university next month), so that means they aren’t here to help out anymore, so more of it is falling back on me. And with that I find my time for my research, and my scrapbooking, and my writing, and all the other things that I love to do, have all taken a back seat. But that’s quite okay, I don’t mind helping my husband out with these jobs and I know that in a few months time when the busy summer period on the farm is over, and when my daughter is away at university, I will get some of my free time back.

Summer on the farm: making baleage

So with that in mind I thought that I would begin the new year by explaining how I am attempting to come at my research from a bit of a different direction this year and to hopefully do my bit to preserve my family history research for future generations. 

The number one thing on my genealogy “to do” list for this year is to continue with my project to get my family history research sorted and do something more meaningful with it. Creating this blog was the first big step in the process of making my research more accessible to other extended family members. I have been chasing ancestors and their descendants for almost thirty years now and all that I really have to show for it is boxes and boxes of old documents and photos (only partially sorted), and a huge, huge database of facts and figures in the family tree programme on my computer. Don’t get me wrong, there is an absolute wealth of information contained within these records, but unless you are someone who is very much “into” genealogy, browsing through someone else’s computer database just isn’t that interesting and it makes our family history very difficult to share with anyone. 

And if I were to drop dead tomorrow, I am sure there wouldn’t be anyone in my family that I can currently think of that would jump up and exclaim “she has all our family history on her computer; let me at it, I want it”. I would imagine one of my kids would probably claim my beloved computer, and it would then be used for gaming or ‘Facebook’ or such-like, and the family history contained on it would just sit there in the background until such time as they needed more room on the hard-drive, and then with the tap of just a few buttons it would be erased, just like that, and be gone forever.

My new shelves in my office. Still at least ten
more binders needed to complete my collection.

My aim for this year (and continuing right into the future) is to get more of the story of our family history actually written down to be shared. Last month I bought myself a new bookcase for my office and have started creating what I hope will become my family history legacy and my gift to future generations. I want to get back to basics and start recording more about the actual lives of those family members most closely related to me and my actual direct ancestors. My database currently contains thousands upon thousands upon thousands of names of those who can all be linked back to myself in one way or another throughout history. But many of these people are just so far removed from my main ancestral branches that I thought it was time to put a stop at present to just the collecting of more and more names and dates, and instead focus a bit closer to home on just the main ancestral branches and their families. (I will in time get back to these more removed branches as I do also like to follow branches right down to the present day if I can; but that’s another project for another year).

It took me many, many weeks of thinking about this before I decided exactly how I wanted to attack this project, but what I have come up with I am very happy about. It may not be the best system out there but it is one I feel very comfortable about and look forward immensely to getting on with it. I have begun to purchase 3-ring binders and hope to have one binder for each set of direct ancestral grandparents, right back as far as I can go. And within these binders I want to record everything I know or have found out about that particular couple’s life. The binders will also contain individual tabs for each of this main couple’s children, with another tab directly behind each child for that of the child’s descendants (their children and grandchildren). If the child is one of my direct ancestors that I descend from I will only have minimal data for them in their parents folder but will instead make a reference to them having their own folder.

I hope I aren’t confusing anyone and you are still following what I am attempting to do. To put it in slightly plainer terms, I want to only concentrate on those I directly descend from (and also include their children and grandchildren). And at this point in time I will go no further down any particular branch than that. There are many siblings of my direct ancestors that I have no knowledge of as yet, and it is the filling in of all these gaps that are “closer to home” that I want to concentrate on.

A work in progress; a close-up of some of my new binders

You might say I could have saved myself a lot of the money I have spent on binders etc and still do this using just my family tree programme on my computer. But as I explained above, that defeats the purpose of what I am attempting to do. I want to share what I have and what I find, and what better way is there to do it than to pull out a particular binder and let the person you are wanting to share it with actually see for themselves the photos, and read for themselves the stories that relate to their family too. There is nothing like holding a real actual book (or binder) and reading it for oneself to be able to better understand and feel more connected to those from whom we descend. And when the time comes that I breathe on this earth for the final time, I hope that these stories in these binders can then be more easily passed on and more easily shared with future generations. 

So many genealogists nowadays are trying to go all digital in the hope of simplifying their lives and their research. I myself will never do this as a physical book is so much more likely to be kept and cherished and passed on than a collection of digital files, that with the push of just one little button could all be gone FOREVER !!!

Happy Fathers Day !!!

I am unsure about the rest of the world, but today in New Zealand it is Father's Day, a day we celebrate and remember, and also thank our fathers for all they have done for us. My own father died when I was seven so I have no real recollection of spending a Father's Day with him, but I’m sure he has spent every Father's Day watching down on us from Heaven. Instead, my childhood memories of Father's Day lie solely around my paternal grandfather, Robert ENGLISH. He lived in the house right beside us and was probably the main father figure I had in my life. So my childhood Father's Days always meant a visit next door to see my grandad and my mother always baked him a sultana cake which was one of his absolute favourites.

Today I would like to celebrate and remember all the fathers on every branch of my family tree. Without them our tree would simply stop growing. An extra big thank you must go to all those fathers whose genes make me the person that I am today and whose blood still runs through my veins. These remarkable men; my own father, my two grandfathers and my many great grandfathers further back, have all helped me to become the person that I am and to them I owe a very big thank you. Each and every one of those whose photos appear below makes up a special part of me, and although there is only four of them that I actually ever met, the rest have all had an influence in some way or another in my genetic makeup.

So a very happy Father's Day to those below, and to all of my other great grandfathers further back on my tree. 

But today’s most special happy Father's Day wish must go to the most important father in my life today; - the fantastic father of my children, my husband Ross. For eighteen years now he has always been the kindest, most patient and loving father to our children. Thank you Ross for giving me two absolutely beautiful children and thank you for being the best husband and father that anyone could ever wish for. You are one in a million and Bridget, Mark and I love you so much   :-)

Reflections: ..... and a conversation with my Dad

Last week on the television I saw a list of 'new' words that have been officially recognised as being able to be used in the game of Scrabble. The words are all part of our modern language, many of them are used frequently by my teenage children, and they really got me thinking. The thing that struck me the most is just how much our language has changed in the last twenty years, or even in the last five years.

My own dad (Ron ENGLISH) died in 1978 when I was seven years old. He was only 36 and although it doesn't seem that long ago, the world we live in now is just so far removed from that in which he lived. I miss having my dad in my life, and I especially miss the fact that his beautiful grandchildren never had the chance to get to know him and love him.

My father Ron ENGLISH
(1941 - 1978)

But I often wonder; - if Dad was to walk through my door today, would he even have the slightest clue what my children were talking about? Or would the modern lingo be like a foreign language to him.

So just for a bit of fun I have decided to draw up my own small list of modern phrases and words that have slowly crept into our lives. We think nothing of them now, but what on earth would Dad have thought.

Where else could I start but with the latest trend, the 'selfie'. In 1978 there were no 'selfies'. Nor was there any 'texting', 'skyping' or 'tweeting'.  There was no 'going online', there were no 'downloads' or 'uploads', and 'the web', well that was where the spiders in the garden shed lived.

In 1978 you watched the tele, not 'podcasts', 'MySky', 'freeview', 'YouTube', 'dvds' or 'blu-ray'. There were no 'flatscreens' or 'HD', and if you were lucky you had not just one channel, but two. You listened to an LP, the wireless or the radio, as a 'cd', a 'playlist', an 'iPod' or 'iHeart radio' were not yet part of our world.

Dad played rugby, golf and tennis, whereas nowadays kids play 'X-box', 'Playstation' or 'Wii'. Back in Dad's day you swallowed your 'tablet', not played a game on it, and 'the cloud' was the fluffy thing that floated in the sky. Things weren't 'munted', they were broken, and if you wanted to know something you went to the library to look up the Encyclopaedia Britannica, not pull out your 'smartphone' to 'google' it.

In 1978 you couldn't be 'tagged', 'blocked', 'liked' or 'unfriended', and if you were 'followed' a call to the police may have been necessary. A 'Big Mac' was a large truck, an 'apple' was for eating,  and to be 'photo-bombed' sounds a very dangerous thing indeed. If someone said 'sweet' they were usually offering you a lollie and if the words 'sup', 'skuxx' or 'broski' came from your mouth it would have got you many odd looks indeed.

'Snail mail' existed but Dad wouldn't have known it as such, and an 'internet cafe', 'e-mail' and an 'attachment' were years away yet. 'Generation Y' was yet to be born and an 'anti-virus' was prescribed by your GP and picked up from your chemist. When you went to visit a friend the first thing you often asked was "do you want to go outside to play", certainly not "what's your Wi-Fi password".

In 1978 there was no 'speed-dating', 'rogernomics', 'glamping', 'me-time', 'hoodies', 'Angry Birds', 'Twitter' or 'zumba'. No 'cyber-space', 'couch-potatoes', 'fat-pants', 'puffa-jackets', 'Super 15' or 'flash-mobs'. No 'Big Wednesday', 'gigabytes', 'TradeMe', 'pixels', 'ringtones', 'widgets', 'hash-tags' or 'Facebook'.

The modern world is moving so fast that at times even I feel a bit left behind by it all. Technology is old and out-dated almost as soon as it is released, and it seems that only the young can keep up with it all. 2014 is indeed a very different world from that of 1978 when my father lasted breathed on this earth. I know Dad would have loved to have still been here with us but the modern world just wasn't where he was destined to be.

So back to my first question, ..... if Dad was to walk through my door today, would he even have the slightest clue what my children were talking about? Probably not, but I would sit him down for a nice long chat, fill him in with all that he's missed and help him to catch up.

Thank you Grandma

My late paternal grandmother Elizabeth Speirs ENGLISH (Lizzie, nee RENSHAW) is probably the main reason why I first became interested in my family history. 

As a child growing up in Southland, New Zealand I was very fortunate to live right next door to my grandparent’s house (they were Lizzie and Bob English but from here on I will refer to them as Grandma and Grandad). I was their oldest granddaughter, and one of only four grandchildren, so I guess you could say they probably spoilt me quite a bit. I didn’t mind though and their place was my second home. I spent many, many happy hours with them and I loved to listen to Grandma tell me stories about her childhood and her ‘old country’.

Grandma and Grandad both came out to New Zealand from Scotland as children, Grandad in 1914 as a one year old and Grandma in 1926 as a 13 year old. Grandma came from the small coal mining village of Bothwellhaugh in south east Lanarkshire, where her father and many other family members worked underground. Sadly for her she was unable to visit her old hometown when she went back to Scotland for a visit in 1974 as the entire village of Bothwellhaugh and the surrounding area had been flooded in the late 1960’s when the Strathclyde Loch was created.

Grandad’s family came out to New Zealand from Wigtownshire but unfortunately he never knew much about his family background. He couldn’t even tell me the names of his grandparents or any aunts and uncles that were left behind in Scotland. It seems that for some reason no contact was kept between his parents and any family that may have remained in Scotland. 

My very first memory of actually wanting to know more about my family history came when I was about 10 years old. Grandma and I had been discussing baby photos so I went home and collected my baby album to take over to their place to show them. As is usual in many baby albums or baby books, the first page had a graphic of a family tree that you filled in the names of the parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Mum had recorded my paternal great grandmother (Bob’s mother) as Helen McCarthy. Grandad took one look at it and said “Mum’s name wasn’t McCarthy, it was McCallie”.  And from that moment on I just wanted to find out as much as I could about my family history and those who came before me.

In the last ten years or so it has become so much easier to research overseas from the comfort of your own home. So many more records are being digitised and placed online for anyone with an internet connection to access from anywhere in the world. Scotland would have to be one of the easiest countries of all to obtain records from as many of the old birth, marriage and death records can be found online at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. 

Both Grandma’s and Grandad’s maternal sides have been relatively easy to piece together using these old records and I have managed to amass quite large families for them both. Their paternal sides however are proving to be brick walls at the moment. Grandad’s father (William ENGLISH, born in 1877) has remained very elusive with no trace of him or his family in any records so far. And Grandma’s father (Herbert RENSHAW, born in 1885) has a Scots-Irish background with little to no progress made on that branch either. But I will keep looking and searching for them and hopefully one day I will make the breakthrough that I have been seeking for so long.

Grandma and Grandad on their golden wedding anniversary, 26th February 1988

Grandad died in 1996 and Grandma in late 2000. Since then I have discovered so much more about their families, in fact Grandad’s maternal McCallie side is huge (thanks to his great grandfather who had 18 children, but that’s another story for another day). I only wish that they were both still alive today so I could share with them what I have found. Probably the thing I would most liked to have shared with Grandma was to show her a video that I located the year after she died. “Bothwellhaugh, the Drowned Village” was a 30 minute documentary made by the BBC that featured old home movies shot in the village in the early 1960's. I wish so much that she had been alive to have watched this movie and to have seen her old home one final time. Grandma loved her family and she loved Scotland so much and I know for certain that she would have been absolutely thrilled with my research and what I have found.

So thank you Grandma for giving me this love of family and of our history, for filling my heart with a passion for Scotland and all things Scottish, and especially for instilling in me the desire to want to know more and to pass the stories on.

___________________________

Footnote: Oct 2016 - I have just found that the link for the video of "Bothwellhaugh, the Drowned Village" no longer works and the video has been removed from YouTube. However, I have found another film that shows images of Bothwellhaugh (Lost Village of Bothwellhaugh), still quite good to watch but unfortunately not as good as the original film. 

From where it all began .........

My story begins in the small Southland town of Mataura. I grew up there, my parents and both sets of my grandparents lived there, and for the first 18 years of my life, this was my world.

The mighty Mataura River roared through the middle of town. Standing proudly on it's banks on either side were the large industrial factories of the paper mill and the freezing works, which in their day employed thousands of local workers. Mataura was often thought of as the poor-relation to the much-larger neighbouring town of Gore. Mataura was a relatively small town, it wasn't pretty and it wasn't wealthy, but to me it was home. It was the home of the working-class people; people who worked hard and often played hard, whether it be on the rugby field or the bowling green. Townsfolk of Mataura enjoyed living there. They took pride in their homes and tended their gardens with care.

Mataura viewed from the north (taken in the 1960's)

But time hasn't been kind to Mataura. Over two decades have passed since I moved away. I haven't gone far, and on most days of the week I still travel through the town, but other than to pop into the butcher or the petrol station, I rarely now stop. The paper mill closed down in the 90's and now sits as a sad, decaying reminder of what used to be. And the freezing works, whilst still operating, has downsized enormously and large parts of it are currently being demolished.  The large buildings that once welcomed travellers passing through town on SH 1 (and also dominated the view from the street where I lived), are now all but gone. Just another sad reminder of happier times now long ago.

And while some of the familiar faces that I grew up surrounded by are still there, the majority of the townsfolk are now strangers to me. Some houses still stand as proud and as beautiful as they ever where. But many others are now showing their age, and the families that once loved them and cared for them are gone. I doubt there would be many places in New Zealand where you could buy a cosy 3 bedroom home in good condition for under $80,000 or even under $65,000. You can in Mataura. Yet not ten minutes up the road in the township of Gore, the same house would sell for triple that price. I take my hat off to the Mataura Community Board who are always looking at ways of attracting people and businesses back to the town. At times it seems like they are fighting an up-hill battle and I don't envy the job they do. I do hope that some day in the not-too-distant future Mataura will once again be the bustling, happy town that it once was and that once again people will find it an attractive place to bring up their families. How this might come about in the immediate future I am not sure and I certainly don't know what the long-term answer is to bring Mataura back to life.

My dad and all four of my grandparents are buried in the cemetery on the hill over-looking Mataura. Someday I may join them there as although I no longer live in Mataura, it will always hold some of my fondest memories and to me it will always be home.

____________________

(Please note; these two photos aren't mine and were "borrowed" online from www.nzmuseums.co.nz)