Family Gathering

In recent years tracing one's ancestors has become a popular activity. I became interested in recording the past when my daughter asked me to write my memories of childhood for her. I suddenly found myself wanting to delve more deeply into my family's history.

My sister and I knew that our father, William Hartford, and two of his brothers, Charlie and Eddy, had served in the First World War, so we made that our starting-point. After months of inquiries we discovered that a grand-nephew had our father's dog disk. Armed with the information on this, we visited the Public Records Office in Kew and we located his and our Uncle Eddy's papers. This was a sacred moment, as we read the hand-written entries on the crumbling parchment.

Then a nephew and a cousin contacted us to say they had come across a query online from a Trevor Jackson, asking if anyone knew of the Hartfords from Abbeyleix, as his mother was a Hartford. We all replied but we heard no more till one evening my sister in Tonbridge answered the door to a gentleman who wanted to chat. It was Trevor and he said that he lived just a few streets from her and he had found her address from his sister, Valerie, who had been given it by the Rector of Abbeyleix, when she went there to look up the parish records. Apparently, our grandfathers were first cousins. There was much sharing of information once the surprise of living so close together passed. Valerie now lives in Ireland but she had lived in Luton before moving to Ireland. I used to live in Welwyn Garden City, not far from Luton, unaware that a relative was so close.

Trevor and Muriel had the brilliant idea of organising a family get-together and they took four months to plan it. Twenty-seven of us met in September 2005 in the Comfort Hotel in Finchley and those of us who lived outside the London area booked in for the weekend. It was an exciting occasion, although many of our side of the family were unable to attend. I realised for the first time that I am the oldest member surviving. It was quite a shock. The youngest was 14 and it happened to be her sister's 16th birthday so we had a good age spread.

We seemed to split into two distinct groups but the more outgoing of us moved around and got to know everyone. It was such a change getting together for an occasion other than a funeral. We had all taken care choosing what to wear and we treated it as a festive occasion.

Since then our research has unearthed three more hitherto unknown relatives. My phone rang one evening and a retired doctor from Bath introduced herself as Betty, a cousin of mine. She is trying to trace a Muriel Hartford from Canada with whom her mother used to correspond. Betty’'s mother was a Perry and my grandfather's brother, Thomas, was married to an Ellen Perry who is buried in Abbeyleix churchyard. Betty has invited me to visit her in Bath. Her late husband was a clergyman and she had seen the review in the Church of Ireland Gazette of a book written by my sister, Muriel, and she mentioned this to a friend who also happened to be a friend of mine and this is how she came to contact me.

Then my nephew, Michael, and his wife visited Abbeyleix Heritage Centre where they read a letter, written from Cape Town in 1905 by a Joseph Hartford to his mother back home in Abbeyleix, saying he had arrived safely. Joseph's grandson, Miles, had been to the birthplace of his grandfather searching for family members. Michael has since been in touch with Miles and we have a photograph of him on the internet and it is just like Michael staring at you from the screen!

In my last university newsletter there is an article about a graduate, Harry Hartford, who runs a financial business in LA but he comes from Skerries in Dublin. I sent a copy to Valerie and she has been chatting on the phone to Harry's mother. We know they are related, too. A second son is also a graduate of Dublin University and he lives in Dublin.

Now we feel it is time to arrange another get-together, and we are planning to have it in June. Our first task is for four of us to discuss what we need to do and where the meeting will take place. We need to find out who will be able to attend before we decide on the venue. London is probably still the most central meeting-point and the two families who will have to travel from Ireland will, I guess, be happy to have an excuse to visit Britain. The manager of the Comfort Hotel made every effort to accommodate us last time. He provided a comfortable room with a bar, and he gave us a choice of menus for the buffet and we asked those who said they would be able to attend to indicate their preference. We possibly could do no better than choose the same hotel.

Hopefully, next time, my daughter and more of her generation will be able to attend. She is so interested in learning about the past, yet there are many of my family she has never met and as she travels around the world she would always welcome having some member of the family to look up. Until my father died in 1966 he was in touch with relatives in Natal and he often spoke of the cousin who qualified as a doctor, married the local school-teacher and emigrated to South Africa, never to return to Abbeyleix. He also told us that their daughter played tennis for South Africa in the 1930s. This is a different branch of the family from Joseph's, who, I believe, was a grocer.

It is not surprising that we are discovering relatives around the world. Our family are Norman in origin and they arrived in Ireland with aristocratic families who were given land there and who brought their own workers with them. As families were large, many of the children would emigrate to Britain and to the Commonwealth countries and to America. Some, we find, joined the British army and fought in wars such as the Boer War and Afghanistan. Together we are working on the family tree and discovering interesting connections all the time. What encourages me is the interest shown by my two grand-nephews, sons of my brother's two sons. One of them came to the last reunion so hopefully both will appear at the next.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to visiting Abbeyleix and checking up on some details and also to meeting Betty, the cousin I didn'’t know about till recently. I intend writing to the two Hartfords from Skerries and greeting them as fellow-graduates.

Since the last get-together there has been one death in the family. It makes us realise that time is running out, and it is up to us to leave behind a record of our family history.

The photo below is from a return visit to Abbeyleix in 2007 with Muriel, taken from the Cashins' living room. The lady sitting down is Dolly Phelan née Cashin. Her husband died at age of 29 from a heart attack when riding his bike to work. That left her with two girls to bring up. Dolly's daughter Mairead drove us around a lot in 2012 when we went back again.

When she was younger, Dolly had decided to be a nun and I remember her mother and mine hugging one another as they wept but in the end she left the convent so her mother was relieved. She was one of four siblings. The others were called Bridie, Johnnie and Maureen. The latter two stayed in the bar all their lives but Bridie went to Manchester and married and she and her girls were there on holiday the day when we visited Dolly.

The Casserleys of Abbeyleix are shown in the image below. He was a vet in Abbeyleix whose brother was a farmer in Whakatane. Obviously, that was of interest to Helen, living so close to Whakatane, on the other side of the world: she had met the brother when she was attending a course on Farm Management, and he had told her about his brother, the vet in Abbeyleix. They lived in Dr Maher's old house. His son is a vet in Abbeyleix now but he lives in the town where his wife has the pharmacy.