A Wry Look at Family History

Malcolm Soane, 57 South Street, East Hoathly, Lewes, East Sussex BN8 6DS

Historian Vol 9 No 7 September 1991

It was just after auntie's funeral that it occurred to me that my father was now the last survivor of the twelve brothers and sisters, so, as I was the only son born to any of the brothers, I had the awesome sole responsibility for the continuation of the name. Fortunately, as I already had a son I felt I had reasonably discharged that obligation and could therefore better direct my energies to the task of researching the name itself.

After all, it was an honourable name of an eminently respectable family... wasn't it? Oral history had it that the family was Brighton and Shoreham based, that Great-grandfather had been a farmer on the South Downs, somewhere above Brighton on land that ultimately became one of the golf courses, and that Grandfather was one of the three men who had started the famous polish firm of Ronuk at Portslade. What's more, being a fairly uncommon name, the research itself would of course be an absolute doddle.

Oh dear! How little I knew! It all started easily and pleasantly enough with the reading of several of the excellent books on the subject, none of which did anything to dampen my enthusiasm. Later, on a visit to Lewes library, I was quite excited to come across a printed transcript of the Brighton parish registers. In it I found entries referring to baptisms of the children of an Edward Soane dated October 1592. Great! All I had to do was to link up back to him, after all, right name, right area, so naturally he had to be an ancestor hadn't he? Touching, isn't it? Such naiveté... such blissful ignorance. But the perverse gods of family historians were already planning to bring me back to earth.

I had been given one of those memorial cards of my grandfather's funeral which showed the date of his death and his age. Take one from the other and you should have a reasonably accurate date of birth. Armed with this information and having read all those books I made my first foray up to St Catherine's House.

Now... nothing that I had read prepared me for the actuality of St Catherine's on a busy day. I feel certain that at any other time in any other place all those people would be charming, courteous and friendly. What is it that compels so many of them to act as though they were researching their direct descent from the Mongol Hordes? Brandishing their registers as barbaric weapons of death and destruction, they are ready to defend the bench space they have conquered against anybody who so much as looks remotely interested in it. If one is stupid enough to let a hand stray onto their area it is at the risk of having it crushed by a ten pound volume slammed down from a great height, whilst the little grey-haired lady responsible smiles sweetly at you saying how sorry she was but she hadn't noticed your hand in the way. When eventually I found room on the extreme end of a bench, just enough to balance half a register on, I soon found grandfather's marriage but, despite widening the search period from the expected date, could find no trace of his birth and so I finally came home extremely disappointed, very puzzled... but only slightly bruised.

A few days later I was telling a cousin about it when he casually remarked that "perhaps Mum wasn't wrong after all then". When I asked him what he meant be said that just before she died his mother had told him that Grandfather had, at his fiancee's insistence, changed his name from Manser (back?) to Soane because she was afraid that the marriage might not otherwise be legal. Why, by whom or even if it was originally changed from Soane to Manser she had of course, failed to say. My cousin had apparently simply put it down to confusion due to her advanced age and thought no more about it. For me, it put the cat right back amongst the pigeons. Back up to St Catherine's and there it was, Joseph John Manser. Right date, right place... wrong name.

Scampering between East Sussex Record Office and Brighton Library, my frantic searches of various censuses eventually turned up an entry in the 1881 one for Patcham of a Joseph Kanser, farmer, his wife Martha and son Joseph John as living at Hollingbury Hill. What a relief! I was beginning to pick up the thread again.

Hollingbury Hill! That sounds quite a nice address doesn't it? Unfortunately no amount of digging among the old maps, Land Tax and estate records revealed where this farm actually was. So I went back and looked at the census once again and this time I noticed that there was a scratchy little entry below the address that, after considerable magnification, proved to be "Hut". Now, whether or not they were any better off than those in the next entry, the Grover family, who were living in a railway carriage I have no way of knowing. Ah well! So much for the fine yeoman stock.

Having got Joseph John's birth certificate this showed that his mother was formerly Martha Pratt. So, plucking up my courage, I made a further sortie up to St Catherine's to try to find the marriage. Starting at the 1868 period of J J's birth I worked my way back... and back... and back until finally in 1859 I found Joseph's marriage but I was unable to cross reference it with Martha. Never mind, I ordered the certificate but when it came I was somewhat surprised to see that he'd married a widow named Jane Paris nee Bignell at Preston, Brighton. Checking in the register of St Peter's Church showed that Jane Bignell was married to Richard Parris on the 18th June 1835, since Joseph was born circa 1836, meant that according to my calculations she was old enough to be his mother.

Co-incidentally Bignell happens to be the maiden name of my own mother. Fortunately Jane doesn't seem to have been a blood relation, otherwise she might have proved to be both my paternal and maternal great-something-or-other. I don't think I could have coped with that. I get confused enough as it is, what with cousins either being first, second, or are they all removed? Luckily I have this computer program which works out all those complicated relationships for me.

Well that's about as far as I've got so far. As you can see I'm still a little way short of proving my relationship to the 16th century Edward Soane but then perhaps I should be looking for a Manser anyway. It is beginning to look as though Great-grandfather Joseph was a bit of a rogue or maybe worse. Never mind! Be it ever so humble a history, and brief, t'is my own. If it gets too gruesome I can always start on my mother's family. They were descended from one of the Pendrell brothers. You know...! The men that hid Charles the first in the oak tree. I know that's true... my mother told me.