HelPeR - BYU Idaho Special Collections and Family History

Relative y Speaking
A Visit to England
By Ru t h Kn u d s o n
Stumbling up the depot steps of my first British town,
and bewildered at being hustled out of there because
the letter “r” pronounced me a foreigner (probably
Irish!), possibly concealing in all that untidy luggage a
hostile bomb, I first visited this land of my forefathers
in May of 1976. Sixty-one years old, five foot two, with
gray eyes and hair, I was ready to rent a small car,
then explore obscure spots from which ancestors had
sent Lesans, Thompsons, and Winslows—as well as
those named Allen, Andrews, Chilton, Dunlop, Grey,
Houghton, Mason, Morse, Packard, Potter, Taylor,
Van Swearingen, and Webster, to America.
Night was falling. Taxis waited. One young man
smiled a welcome at me and began carefully packing
the bags into his vehicle. His mother helped me register
at the hotel where she clerked. His father had written
a genealogical history of their town. Tomorrow
this young man would drive me up to Samlesbury,
home of the Southworths and a Houghton bride.
In 1623, Edward Southworth’s widow was about
to sail to Plymouth, Massachusetts, to wed her old
sweetheart, William Bradford. Fifteen years before,
her father, Alexander Carpenter of Wrington, Somerset,
had refused to let her marry the awkward young
Bradford; after all, Alice’s ancestors had been members
of Parliament for three centuries, back when
taxes were levied to hold off Robert Bruce! And there
was a great-uncle who was still called the most famous
town clerk of London…
Alice left her little boys with her spinster sister
in Somerset and met William,
now governor of Plymouth,
with delight.
I had flown from Chicago
over Ontario, enjoying follow
passengers whose speech had
the same Yorkshire ring as I hear
in the greetings of many Iowa
neighbors with British grandfathers.
We flew south. Someone
pointed out, beyond Lamish
Bay, the crumbling walls where
my Hamilton ancestors once
lived. Around here, my teenage
“pirate” ancestor, Allan
Dunlop, had gathered up the
wild pals that helped him kidnap
the crew of the Perundiall,
dump them along the coast, and
go skylarking around the Isle of Arran, gulping down
the contents of the ship’s wine bunkers. Then they
gave the ship back to its chilled crew. Allan married
a Montgomery and moved on to more excitement in
the furious Irish uprisings; his son died in Sligo and
now we are tracing our Irish ancestors.
From Banbury Cross, where all the Sunday bells
were pealing, which in my day had to suffer bombing
so that Winston Churchill’s breaking of the German
Codes could be kept secret, where in ancient times
some VIP’s wife rode naked through the streets as
told in nursery rhymes, I asked the way to Sulgrave
and went hunting Leeson land.
I found the parchment, a deed drawn up in 1610,
generations after the manor foundation had disappeared,
but before the landlords razed their English
village of 30 houses to enter the booming market
with a sheep pasture. There the Thames and Tims
families still mourned for old neighbors turned penniless
onto the road. They asked me back to tea and
listened to what happened to a few refugees who
made their way to America.
Elington Manor, long owned by the Stoteburys,
was by 1610 the home of the last Stotesbury and her
husband, Robert Leeson. The long-forgotten castle
of the Elingtons must have disintegrated in Norman
times. The parchment deed I found surrendered land
to Lawrence Makepeace. His grandmother was Mrs.
Lawrence Washington. Sulgrave Manor is now maintained
by the Colonial Dames of America.
Ja n ua ry/Fe b r u a r y 2009 Ev e r t o n’s Ge n e a l o g i c a l He l p e r © 51