dadams.co.uk

Those lovely tiles are gone, the skip is nearly full, we now have french doors (wonder why they’re called that) where a window used to be, there’s a fine layer of dust over everything, and the builders, electrician and plumber have put a big dent in the teabag / milk / sugar / biscuit supplies. But they have worked very hard.

With a couple of days off work I have been mainly responsible for getting ripped-out kitchen units and various other bits of crap in the skip. Not much of a job, eh? Actually yes, because Adams Towers is located at the top of a narrow lane which the skip lorry couldn’t reach, so the skip is down on the avenue several hundred yards away. And this being England, it’s been raining. A lot. In the picture here, Adams Towers is the house at the top-right. The skip is located where the word ‘Avenue’ is. No, that’s not our swimming pool.

My other job was sorting out the cable to feed the new television - from the splitter box in the loft, through the airing cupboard (following the route of the old analogue cable) and into the ceiling cavity. The electrician took over at this point.

Speaking of the electrician, he discovered some real horrors. He basically condemned some of the outside light fittings, and found an extension double-plug socket attached to the main electrics using lighting cable (which is apparently a no-no). Our fuse board is no longer within UK regulations and will have to be replaced. Up goes the budget again.

It’s now that I realise that the kitchen really is the hub of family life. Although we’re managing okay with cooking in the dining room we feel a bit like refugees in our own house. And I can only start to imagine what it’s like for people who were forced out of their homes by flooding last year. At least this temporary ordeal was our choice.

Having painted nearly every square inch of wall in this house, and having had to carry out some fairly serious remedial work to a number of rooms, all that’s left to do is the kitchen. It’s really rather grim (despite being re-fitted about six years ago) and needs ripping out and starting over entirely. If you are in any doubt about the grim-ness, check out the picture - these tiles adorn the wall behind the hob and pretty much sum up the tone of the kitchen (if anyone does have some tiles like this in their kitchen, I’m sorry, I’m not being rude, they’re just not to our taste).

So, starting tomorrow, we face a number of weeks of washing dishes in the bathroom and cooking with a camping stove in the dining room. The fridge-freezer, which didn’t look so big in the kitchen, looks huge in it’s temporary location (in the hallway). Why six weeks? Well, there’s a bit of a gap between the building work (including a new door to the garden) and the kitchen re-fit, basically because of the availability of the parties concerned. Then there’s a week in-between the kitchen fitters and the granite worktop fitters completing their work, and then finally the floor people finish once everything else is done.

But I look at it this way… six weeks of microwave meals and the wife fussing about the building dust will be worth it to get rid of the bloody grim kitchen.

One last thing - I’m removing those tiles carefully and they’ll be on eBay by the end of the week, and if anyone wants a bigger version of that picture to have as their Windows / Mac / Linux desktop wallpaper just let me know.

Roxy and Basil (as named by Lauren) put in another appearance this morning. They were last seen in our garden drinking from the bird-bath, but this time they were in the garden beyond. Basil washed Roxy’s ears for a while, and then Roxy relaxed for a few minutes while Basil kept watch. Then they disappeared into the undergrowth, presumably to get some rest before going through someone’s dustbin or stealing some shoes later tonight.

The family tree project is going well, but there are still a few gaps to be filled in for the mid and late-19th century. I received an incredible amount of detail from a distant cousin from my grandfather’s side of the family, including details of where my great-grandfather was born, where his father died just a year later, and where my great-great-grandfather was married. However, I decided that I didn’t just want too much information handed to me on a plate, so I will do my own research on that side of the family.

Over at my grandmother’s side of the family, the Clinch dynasty, there have been a few walls to knock down. Still the most pressing is the identity of my great-grandmother, Alice West. This was not an uncommon name in 19th century London, so some clues were required. I decided to cough up for my grandmother’s birth certificate, even though I supposed I had all the info that it would contain. However, it arrived yesterday and it revealed one crucial piece of information… a middle name, Maud. This meant that I could discount any candidate who wasn’t shown as Alice, Alice M or Alice Maud… and that narrows it down significantly.

There was one other interesting piece of info… my grandmother (also Alice) was born at the family’s home, 32 Wood Street. Yet in the 1901 census, ten years earlier, the family lived at 30 Wood Street, and my great-grandfather’s older brother lived at number 32. Stranger than truth, except it’s true (or it could have been an error on the part of the census taker).

The next obvious step in revealing more details of Alice Maud West would be to obtain her marriage certificate. This should be found by cross-referencing marriages of Henry Clinch to Alice West in a time period and in London. I’ve used this method successfully for other ancestors, but on this occasion it drew a blank. Despite an exhaustive search, one that I’ve repeated several times, with variations on names, I’ve failed to find any record of their marriage. Perhaps they didn’t get married. There’s a thought…

But then I hit on something. Normally if you search a marriage register and view an index number in a given district it will display an even number of men and women, signifying that these men married these women, although you won’t be sure who married who (in 1911 they changed the marriage register to show who married who without the need of the actual certificate). However for the 2nd quarter of 1898, in the London district of St Saviour (Southwark) there are five names… three women and two men. So, a fair guess that one of the men’s names is missing. The trouble is, the Alice West listed could have married one of the other two men, that I can’t tell from the marriage register.

I then looked at the birth register and discovered that in 1879 (the right year) an Alice Maud West was born in St Saviour. Okay, this could all be highly coincidental. There is only one way to find out, and that’s to obtain the 1898 marriage certificate for Alice West of St Saviour and see what it says. It could be £7 down the drain, but it could be one of the most important pieces of the jigsaw. If she does turn out to be my great-grandmother, I already know the names of her parents and her grandmother (courtesy of the 1881 census). Mind you, I’ve been sure of details before, only to have found they were wrong later. It’s worth a £7 gamble, so here goes…

I have been given permission by the incredibly handsome and well-educated owner of this blog to request the assistance of the numerous visitors who frequent this excellent site. [Darren's note - I didn't add that, honestly]

I am Steve, brother of the aforementioned handsome chap and I live in Florida with my family. We are here on an E2 Treaty Investor Visa, which means that we get to invest a large sum of money in a US business, employ US citizens, pay our fair share in taxes, but get not a lot in return in terms of being able to stay here indefinitely.

I would like to direct your attention to a web site that Darren has helped me set up to try and address some of the issues involved with being in the US on this type of visa.

The web site is www.E2Reform.org. Please take a look. It might appear somewhat familiar to you.

A bill was introduced into congress last year which would have gone some way into improving our situation, but as it is an election year, most politicians will not go anywhere near it as it deals with immigration. It might as well say “make 12 million Mexicans citizens” for all the support it has received.

On the site, you will also find an on-line petition, where you can add your support to help the thousands of other E2 Visa holders in the same predicament.

Or you could visit it directly from here… http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?E2Reform

I will close with a threat. When our children reach the age of 21, they are no longer covered by the parental visa and would be forced by the US Government to return back to England. That means that a number of their parents who may have spent many years in the Florida sunshine will be returning to the UK with them. The skin on some of us is so tanned and dried out that we look rather like alligator skin handbags… you wouldn’t want that would you?

Thanks in advance for any support you are prepared to give.

Steve

September 2006… I had a meeting in Aberdeen and then Matt, Kemal and I journeyed to Edinburgh in Matt’s car. When Matt dropped me off at my hotel, I picked my bag up out of the boot (trunk if you’re American) and immediately noticed it was warm. Closer inspection showed that the ThinkPad T40 hadn’t suspended and had been running for three hours inside the bag (ironically, having two batteries attached is normally a good thing). The hard disk had roasted so I had lost everything (including the presentation I was due to deliver the next day), and this proved to be a monumental pain in the arse for weeks and months to come. Just as annoying as losing work stuff, I also lost the last ever pictures I’d taken of my dad. I think I also came close to physically assaulting several people who said “oh, I hope you had backups”.

Shortly after this I acquired an external USB drive.

February 2008… I’d taken the ThinkPad (a newer one, a T60 which has an annoying aversion to external monitors and projectors which means I still have to cart the T40 around sometimes) to the in-laws to show them the family tree progress and to grab some info from their memories and some birth, marriage and death certificates (jolly way to spend a Sunday). After Sunday dinner we went for a walk, then Lauren spent a while surfing the interweb before we made our way home. I shut the T60’s lid and stuffed it into the Lotusphere 2007 rucksack.

Back at home I experienced a sense of impending doom… the whole bag felt really hot and there was a, well, not burning smell but the smell of electrical stuff that’s got really hot. The T60 was very warm, much warmer than I remembered the T40 being. The battery warning light was flashing and it was back at the boot-up password screen. My first thought was “oh no, not again” and my second was how much of a pain in the arse it was going to be for months, not to mention tomorrow, if everything was gone.

I took the battery off, left it open to cool, went for a bath, and then thirty minutes later with great trepidation attached the power and booted up. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see the Windows logon screen.

Two things I have been reminded of today. Always check your laptop has actually suspended before you put it in the bag, and back-up important stuff even more frequently than you do already. Phew…

I think I’ve used that rather poor-quality play on words before. Anyway, my older brother Florida Steve (who might have had a more prolific career as a guest blogger here) is now the proud owner of his own Wordpress blog. There were a few challenges in setting it up, most of which went away when his hosting company moved him from a Windows server onto a Linux server (say no more).

His debut posting features an account of a no-doubt deafening evening at a gig by a reformed Van Halen at the Amway Arena in Orlando. I know we’ll all be looking forward to a double helping of wisdom and balanced opinions from the Adams brothers in the future.

I was working at the Camberley office today when I heard an all-too-familiar noise. I looked out the window and saw our most frequent-visiting vixen calling her mate who trotted up to her a few seconds later. The female was last seen sun-bathing beyond the rhododendrons on Sunday, and then she ventured into our garden for a quick drink from the bird-bath. Today the ginger twosome (named Basil and Roxy by Lauren) both had a drink - and then while Roxy sat on the steps waiting patiently, Basil scampered off to annoy next door’s dog (Tommy). I bet the cunning devil knows that Tommy is restricted by an electrical circuit running round the garden. After a few minutes Basil returned, nuzzled his mate, and they disappeared into the bushes.

Lauren has mixed feelings about the foxes as they’re one of the reasons we’re not having a pet rabbit. Personally I love seeing them, but I just wish they’d stay away from the dustbin.

A few evenings spent digging through census records have revealed quite a lot. Getting hold of my grandparents’ birth certificates will make some of my findings certain, but I’m 99% sure that I’ve identified one branch of the clan going back to my great great great grandfather Henry Clinch (and we’ll call him Henry Clinch Senior as my great grandfather was also Henry Clinch).

Henry Clinch Senior was born in 1820 and his profession was listed as cheese monger and also ‘butter man’ (so clearly in the diary produce game), but then later (in the 1871 census) he was a poulterer. So far this is scuppering my hopes of turning up a long-lost wealthy relative from which I can inherit some unclaimed fortune. And funnily enough Florida Steve was hoping the same.

It’s possible I can go further back to my great great great great grandfather on the current evidence, but the past starts to get murky. Henry Clinch Senior has no wife listed on any census until 1871. Up until then it’s just him, the offspring and a servant. The offspring included my great great grandfather James Clinch. Then in 1871 Henry Senior’s wife is listed as Ellen (aged 38 to his 51). However, in the 1881 census, Ellen appears in James’ household, but has the surname Manning. So, the question is, was she James’ mother or did she meet and marry Henry Senior sometime between 1861 and 1871? To be sure I’d need James’ birth certificate.

I do hope Ellen was the mother of James, because she was fairly easy to trace on the 1841 census, and this reveals the possible identity of my great great great great (there has to be easier way of writing that) grandfather - David Manning, a labourer (sadly, not a duke) born in 1791. This is getting exciting, getting back to the 18th century, but unfortunately I will then exhaust the census information as a source as 1841 was the first (as far as I know).

This is just one branch of the family. At the moment I know little about my great grandmother Alice West (Henry Junior’s wife), or Mary Ann (James’ wife)… I don’t even know her surname.

More soon, I know you’re all riveted…

The night before Lotusphere Comes To You 2007 (Manchester edition) I sat next to Diane from our Marketing team at dinner, and was absolutely enthralled by her account of tracing her family tree. She’s gone back as far as the 17th century (that’s the 1600’s), and said that some of the ancestors were quite difficult to pin down.

My frolleague Cali Clarke has also done some detective work and has traced her ancestors back to the 18th century. Coincidentally, among the wonderful treasures that the previous owners of Adams Towers left for us before they hoofed it to Spain (that reminds me, I must hire a skip soon) was a CD of a genealogy program. It’s imaginatively named ‘Family Tree’. To give you an idea of how hi-tech it is, the system requirements demanded a 486 processor (hmmm, should be okay with this Pentium), Windows 95 or 98 (XP will have to suffice) and a whopping 8 mb of RAM (yep, I think I can spare that). It looks like it was designed in the Windows 95 era, but Cali confirmed the all-important feature - it supports the open standard for family tree files (GED).

Plotting my past could be a tad tricky on my dad’s side. One limiting factor is that he passed away (and is sorely missed) and is therefore not around to fill in any details. The other factor is that he was adopted, and all we really know is that he was born in Ardrossan (West Scotland) in November 1940. Therefore, it makes more sense to start on my mother’s side. I already knew the details of my maternal grandparents (they died well into my adulthood), and I also knew my grandmother’s maiden name. But that was all. My mum didn’t know much else apart from my great-grandfather’s Christian name.

Fortunately, there are some on-line resources that allow you to search birth, marriage and death records. Unfortunately they only give you so much information, and some sites demand payment for the info. However, there is one site that lets you view the registers for free. The registers only give so much info, but provide the base to then get the certificates which will uncover further details.

So, my next step is to ask my mum and uncle if they have my grandparents’ birth certificates… and if not I can get them from the General Register Office. Then I can get the details on my great-grandparents and start to dig further.