An All-Hallows Frost
Oct. 31st, 2019 04:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootGrass glittering, sky full of stars, Sirius really bright. There's light pollution here but nothing like to the extent of London. And it's so quiet.
I love starlight. If I can make it to the Dark Skies event in the Hebrides next year I'll go, but that will be super big jumper weather.
Tonight is Halloween, so time to honour ancestors. This is a joyful thing for me; I have learned what I always suspected to be true, that I am a thorough mongrel, and all of Europe and much beyond has contributed to the blood and bone of me. I am one of those citizens of the world Theresa May decried and it's a fine thing to be, though reviled in times when tribe is all that matters. Tribes are more interesting to study than to belong to. I don't quite like them in practice, despite finding out more about family history.
Since last Halloween some blanks have been filled in though some questionmarks are more distinctly outlined.
One thing I discovered is the thorough abundance of ancestry I have in Northern Ireland. I never knew about this, perhaps because my father was fiercely Catholic, and this he seemed to get from his mother who got it from her mother who got it from hers in the heart of what we would now call the Republic of Ireland. His mother was of Ireland on her mother's side, of Scotland on her fathers. It is this latter line I have been able to trace with some ease, back to the beginning of the 18th century, and this I'll pursue at some point when I am less lazy. But Dad's father was a mystery...
I never knew if Dad knew Grandad, only that Grandma seems to have felt keenly the pain of desertion and her boys can't have been untouched by that, indeed Dad often deserted us. As a growing teenager, my bitter half joke was that our bad luck lay, not so much in his leaving as in his repeated returns. What was it that made him the way he was? They say sociopaths are made, psychopaths are born, I don't know if he really fitted either bill, but I do know that his father or lack of father mattered to him. It must hurt very much to think that down through the decades, a parent can leave and never want to come back, never care enough to make themselves known, or be proud of their child. I am of the school of better-no-dad-than-a-bad-dad, but appreciate that not everyone is. These things scar.
I couldn't find much beyond the name regarding my father's father. Last Halloween I recall telling my phantom granddad in some frustration, 'fine, don't be part of our family if you don't want to be. No-one needs to know about you if that's your preference. If you want to be known, make yourself known.' I didn't quite call him a pain in the arse and tell him to f*** off, but wasn't that far from it.
A while later a stranger made contact. He was a family member living in Australia, a DNA match, and his family notes augmented my own. This was the story.
There was a family, name of Shaw, linen dyers and bleachers around Seapatrick in County Down. They were kindly enough people, they went to a cottage in the country for summers and seem to have included warm pleasant individuals. Another distant relative is said to have discovered some black sheep business way back, but I have no real evidence of that yet. Some dedicated Unionism at least existed in the family; two male family members signed the Covenant of Ulster, and I think one female member may have signed the Letter, though I am not certain of this last.
Anyhow... they had many children. One daughter, Annie, fell pregnant, and had a little girl, Maud. Annie married a man called Charles Gallagher (Charles was also the name of the Shaw family patriarch, there is no getting away from it or from the name William in that family's histories) and they made their way to Scotland. Maud stayed with the family near Belfast. It seems possible that Charles Gallagher was not Maud's father.
Maud lived with the family until she married a man called Thomas Harrison in 1916/1918 (my records are still all packed up) They married in Ireland but she at least moved to Scotland and there had a son, my grandfather, Charles. The genealogy specialist at the Mitchell Library pointed out that there was an anomaly in his birth certificate. The top line of the parentage form was left blank, and his mother named before his father, implying there might be some doubt as to the father's identity. In any case, Thomas faded out of family history, Maud died young of ovarian cancer, and Charles Harrison was unofficially adopted by his grandmother Annie and step(?)-grandfather Charles Gallagher. Thus as Charles Harrison Gallagher he married Grandmother, had at least one son and disappeared.
As disappearances go it was very thorough. The reason I hadn't been able to find him, was because, as the man at the Mitchell explained, later in Charles' life he changed his birth certificate details regarding his name: Suddenly he was Charles Shaw, harking back to his grandmother's family, those Shaws of Seapatrick. Not that it stuck. I found an obituary for a man who died in Nottingham 1983, Charles S Harrison Gallagher. I'd bet a pie and a pint that the S stands for Shaw, and that the man was my grandfather. Ah Poor Dad! I wish I could have found this for him when he was alive, when Grandad was alive. But there's a lot of pain in it. And what would Dad have done anyway? Confront his father, himself a child when he lost everything? The answers were only possible in this time of DNA validation, and perhaps another answer too; the real identity of grandfather's father. I have a lot of Harrison DNA matches, and while it is no dead cert, it's pretty likely that Thomas Harrison was indeed Charles' biological father. Now from what I can tell, Charles may not have done a massive amount to earn his Halloween toast, but OK after all that he gets included tonight.
A mystery that remains is to whom Annie fell pregnant. Of course she and Charles might have been living as Common Law spouses before they married, but why would they leave Maud behind? When they got to Scotland, they had another little girl, Martha. Why didn't Maud join them?
DNA shows currently unaccountable Germanic/Dutch/Polish relatives and they all seem to hit the right generational point. The Ukrainian/Russian connection didn't make any sense at all, until someone pointed me at the findings on Rathlin Island, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35179269 But this leads on to much older stuff, Celtic identity etc, and will have to wait, despite tonight's roots in Celtic celebration; for all there are ghosts, it's a fire festival and I will certainly be in front of my own, rewarding trick or treaters and saluting the Winter on my doorstep.
The stars are gone now, dawn on its way. But I feel more alive, more able to read and think, less stupefied by exhaustion.
This will be a time to remember. Happy Halloween!
I love starlight. If I can make it to the Dark Skies event in the Hebrides next year I'll go, but that will be super big jumper weather.
Tonight is Halloween, so time to honour ancestors. This is a joyful thing for me; I have learned what I always suspected to be true, that I am a thorough mongrel, and all of Europe and much beyond has contributed to the blood and bone of me. I am one of those citizens of the world Theresa May decried and it's a fine thing to be, though reviled in times when tribe is all that matters. Tribes are more interesting to study than to belong to. I don't quite like them in practice, despite finding out more about family history.
Since last Halloween some blanks have been filled in though some questionmarks are more distinctly outlined.
One thing I discovered is the thorough abundance of ancestry I have in Northern Ireland. I never knew about this, perhaps because my father was fiercely Catholic, and this he seemed to get from his mother who got it from her mother who got it from hers in the heart of what we would now call the Republic of Ireland. His mother was of Ireland on her mother's side, of Scotland on her fathers. It is this latter line I have been able to trace with some ease, back to the beginning of the 18th century, and this I'll pursue at some point when I am less lazy. But Dad's father was a mystery...
I never knew if Dad knew Grandad, only that Grandma seems to have felt keenly the pain of desertion and her boys can't have been untouched by that, indeed Dad often deserted us. As a growing teenager, my bitter half joke was that our bad luck lay, not so much in his leaving as in his repeated returns. What was it that made him the way he was? They say sociopaths are made, psychopaths are born, I don't know if he really fitted either bill, but I do know that his father or lack of father mattered to him. It must hurt very much to think that down through the decades, a parent can leave and never want to come back, never care enough to make themselves known, or be proud of their child. I am of the school of better-no-dad-than-a-bad-dad, but appreciate that not everyone is. These things scar.
I couldn't find much beyond the name regarding my father's father. Last Halloween I recall telling my phantom granddad in some frustration, 'fine, don't be part of our family if you don't want to be. No-one needs to know about you if that's your preference. If you want to be known, make yourself known.' I didn't quite call him a pain in the arse and tell him to f*** off, but wasn't that far from it.
A while later a stranger made contact. He was a family member living in Australia, a DNA match, and his family notes augmented my own. This was the story.
There was a family, name of Shaw, linen dyers and bleachers around Seapatrick in County Down. They were kindly enough people, they went to a cottage in the country for summers and seem to have included warm pleasant individuals. Another distant relative is said to have discovered some black sheep business way back, but I have no real evidence of that yet. Some dedicated Unionism at least existed in the family; two male family members signed the Covenant of Ulster, and I think one female member may have signed the Letter, though I am not certain of this last.
Anyhow... they had many children. One daughter, Annie, fell pregnant, and had a little girl, Maud. Annie married a man called Charles Gallagher (Charles was also the name of the Shaw family patriarch, there is no getting away from it or from the name William in that family's histories) and they made their way to Scotland. Maud stayed with the family near Belfast. It seems possible that Charles Gallagher was not Maud's father.
Maud lived with the family until she married a man called Thomas Harrison in 1916/1918 (my records are still all packed up) They married in Ireland but she at least moved to Scotland and there had a son, my grandfather, Charles. The genealogy specialist at the Mitchell Library pointed out that there was an anomaly in his birth certificate. The top line of the parentage form was left blank, and his mother named before his father, implying there might be some doubt as to the father's identity. In any case, Thomas faded out of family history, Maud died young of ovarian cancer, and Charles Harrison was unofficially adopted by his grandmother Annie and step(?)-grandfather Charles Gallagher. Thus as Charles Harrison Gallagher he married Grandmother, had at least one son and disappeared.
As disappearances go it was very thorough. The reason I hadn't been able to find him, was because, as the man at the Mitchell explained, later in Charles' life he changed his birth certificate details regarding his name: Suddenly he was Charles Shaw, harking back to his grandmother's family, those Shaws of Seapatrick. Not that it stuck. I found an obituary for a man who died in Nottingham 1983, Charles S Harrison Gallagher. I'd bet a pie and a pint that the S stands for Shaw, and that the man was my grandfather. Ah Poor Dad! I wish I could have found this for him when he was alive, when Grandad was alive. But there's a lot of pain in it. And what would Dad have done anyway? Confront his father, himself a child when he lost everything? The answers were only possible in this time of DNA validation, and perhaps another answer too; the real identity of grandfather's father. I have a lot of Harrison DNA matches, and while it is no dead cert, it's pretty likely that Thomas Harrison was indeed Charles' biological father. Now from what I can tell, Charles may not have done a massive amount to earn his Halloween toast, but OK after all that he gets included tonight.
A mystery that remains is to whom Annie fell pregnant. Of course she and Charles might have been living as Common Law spouses before they married, but why would they leave Maud behind? When they got to Scotland, they had another little girl, Martha. Why didn't Maud join them?
DNA shows currently unaccountable Germanic/Dutch/Polish relatives and they all seem to hit the right generational point. The Ukrainian/Russian connection didn't make any sense at all, until someone pointed me at the findings on Rathlin Island, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35179269 But this leads on to much older stuff, Celtic identity etc, and will have to wait, despite tonight's roots in Celtic celebration; for all there are ghosts, it's a fire festival and I will certainly be in front of my own, rewarding trick or treaters and saluting the Winter on my doorstep.
The stars are gone now, dawn on its way. But I feel more alive, more able to read and think, less stupefied by exhaustion.
This will be a time to remember. Happy Halloween!
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no subject
Date: 2019-10-31 02:02 pm (UTC)I've noted some similarities in our backgrounds before in regards to our mothers.
There are some similarities, too, in terms of our fathers. My father also left my family (such as it was—my mother and me) when I was quite young. Fortunately, he never came back because he was an evil and destructive man. But his father had also deserted his family when my father was very young. A few years back, I discovered my father's much, much younger half-brother from a subsequent marriage and traveled to Philadelphia to meet him. My half-uncle is incredibly pleasant and well-to-do, and when I shared what I knew of the family history, he looked panicked—almost as though I was threatening some life fundament. We did not stay in touch.
The stories we learn.
Date: 2019-11-01 08:33 am (UTC)Or at least, they become dangerous. Lost girls don't seem to last long enough to become destructive to much apart from themselves. And there always seems to be something tethering a woman to Earth, whether it's a period or a baby. There comes a point, a physical point, when we can't run away. It may be different for every woman but every woman has it.
But lost boys don't seem to have that. Only their own often undeveloped sense of obligation keeps them attached to anything. The whole Peter Pan on steroids thing can keep going and going, and Peter Pan is a deeply unpleasant child.
Why so many of these men follow patterns so very similar to their barely known fathers is a mystery to me. I don't know if girls do the same with their mothers. I have tried not to.
Strange but comforting to me, these similarities between us. It sounds harsh but I am glad distance kept you from an evil man. I also understand why your half-uncle looked panicked. He might not want to look at his father with too lucid an understanding.