Tag: inscription

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Indian Mutiny story in Who Do You Think You Are?

wdytya2014_connolly

If you caught the BBC TV programme Who Do You Think You Are? this week then you too were treated to a really interesting story.

It was that of Billy Connolly and in particular his ancestral links back to India.

His maternal great-great-grandfather was a soldier in British India who married the daughter of another British soldier. One who had seen the atrocities of the Indian Mutiny first hand and who himself was married to a young Indian girl at the time.

The Anglo-Indian aspect is another fascinating subject that could be examined in detail, but today I wanted to concentrate on the 1857 Indian Mutiny, as the British called it, or the First War of Indian Independence, as it is known to Indians.

What was good about this episode of the TV series was that it explained a bit about this historical time. There were brutal killings on both sides and it reminded me to go and look in my notes for an inscription that I had once seen on a headstone in one of the old cemeteries here on the other side of the world in Jersey, Channel Islands. There is no connection to Billy Connolly other than it is a person who also witnessed the brutality that his ancestor had in Northern India and the effect that it had on her.

 

Last year I was looking at some of the old Victorian monuments in Mont A L’Abbe Old Graveyard in Jersey when I came across this one:

Lavinia Fanny Kelly Hicks

Granddaughter of the above Mary Symons and the beloved wife of Captain W.J. Hicks H.M.E.I.S, who died at sea on her homeward voyage on the 28th of April 1858 in the 19th year of her age. Her constitution having been destroyed by the suffering she experienced during the mutiny at Allahabad.

So many other questions spring to mind from this.

 Lavinia Hicks headstone

This particular headstone can be viewed in its entirety as part of the Diamond subscription of TheGenealogist. This site has published photographs and transcriptions from several churchyards and cemeteries and I am told by my contacts at TheGenealogist that there are more to come in the future months.

Just search for Lavina Hicks and you can see the actual headstone that I was so moved by.

The Genealogist - UK census, BMDs and more online

Disclosure: Compensated affiliate links used above.

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Help preserve these crumbling records!

 

Thorne graves in Dartmouth, Devon Following on from last week’s post, about the Memorial Awareness Board’s photographic competition, comes this interesting project from S&N Genealogy and TheGenealogist.

As family historians we are all, no doubt, well aware of experiencing that thrill when finding the grave of an ancestor in some churchyard or cemetery. I also know the frustration of knowing that a forebear was buried in a particular burial ground but not being able to find them. Perhaps because their memorial stone had been taken down when it became dangerous, or simply that the inscription had decayed over the years from the onslaught of the British weather.

Headstones nationwide are suffering from erosion, and burial grounds from closures for new developments. We need to act now to preserve these crumbling records.

If you, like me, are interested in helping to achieve this then you may want to join this new project where you can earn credits towards a subscription with TheGenealogist or products from S&N Genealogy. All you need to do is photograph and transcribe headstones from local churchyards and cemeteries from your part of the country.

As S&N Genealogy writes, in their most recent newsletter, they are aiming at building the most comprehensive record of gravestones for family research and help preserve the memories these fragile stones provide.

I applaud them for doing this and make no mistake, I for one shall be contributing my part.

Join me by heading over to: http://www.ukindexer.co.uk/gravestone and signing up!

 

 

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WDYTYA? LIVE – Memorial Awareness Board Stand

Apart from all the obvious family history stands at the show I came across this one that gets my vote for the most animated. They had a real live stone carver creating a memorial!

Now we all know what it is like to find our ancestor’s grave and not be able to read the inscription but what will the generations to come find from our memorials?

Makes me want to insure that when my time comes I’d like my headstone to be carved in hard wearing stone!

The MAB campaigns for memorials in stone. For further information check out the website: www.RememberForever.org.uk

 

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