Back To My Roots (1 December 1978)

In the few weeks after my son was born he was the usual centre of attraction – among womenfolk at least.

They peeped at him in his pram, made clucking noises, and then began discussing who he was like, his mother or his father.  This was never suitably settled. Personally I didn’t think he looked much like either of us.

We then had a trip to Yorkshire to show him to our families and have him baptised.  At the “christening party” the same kind of discussion followed.  I became restive.  “Why can’t the poor little blighter just look like himself?” I thought.

Finally they asked my opinion (they always do ask fathers last)  Then I had a bright idea.  “Since you ask me,” I said, “he looks more like my Grandfather Sykes than anybody.”  Now this was very naughty of me.  I had only one clear recollection of Granddad Sykes and that was just before they screwed the lid down prior to his burial, but I knew that nobody present could contradict me as they had never known him at all.  At any rate, it ended the guessing game.

More than 20 years later I was re-visiting the village and I had my now-grown-up son with me.  We had just got out of the car and crossed to the other side of the street when I was greeted by an old woman whose face and name I fortunately remembered.

After a few words she turned to my son and her face lit up as she said, “No need to tell me who this young man is; he’s the spitting image of old Ben Sykes, your grandfather!”  Delighted, I said to him, “There now, haven’t I always said so?” On that occasion my son just smiled and shrugged his shoulders, but now that he is living overseas and may be staying there for the next ten years or so, he has taken a sudden interest in his roots.  He wants me to make out a family tree.  Moreover, he wants a photograph of each person on it, as far as possible.

Personally, I do not set much store by family trees, genealogies and all that.  I distrust them from personal experience.  One example:  Some time ago I wrote in this column about a Miss Waller, who lived at Newton Longville, and who genuinely believed she was the last descendant of a Waller who distinguished himself at Agincourt and of another Waller who was prominent in the Civil War.  But about two months later I read in a Yorkshire magazine of an old hall up there which had the Waller arms and a 17^th century date cut in stone over the door.  Some Wallers still lived there and the same claim was made for them as had been made by our Miss Waller.  Of course, there are branches  of families, but it seems to me there are also so many twigs as to make the whole exercise meaningless.

THE FIRST SON

Genealogies are not so much concerned with blood as with titles and properties.  They are concerned with the first son of the first son of the first son and so on.  What happens to younger sons after the first generation is rarely revealed.  What happens to the daughters and their families is anybody’s guess, unless one or two come to dangle from  some other notable family tree through marriage.  Eventually you could reach a situation where, through inter-marriage between second cousins and other accidents, Mary Bloggs, the scullery maid, had more of a the original blood in her veins than his lordship or her ladyship upstairs, did they but know it.

It used to be fine to be able to say that one of your ancestors came over with the Conqueror.  Hardly anybody can say so today with certainty.  Possessions of a name approximating to that of one of the Conqueror’s comrades – and there are some today scattered about the working classes – might be suggestive, but it is no real proof.  By the same token my own name, like the great majority of names in this country, is Anglo Saxon, but I cannot say for certain that I have no taint of that old blue blood.

In the late Saxon times the word “Worth” was given to a bit of land that had been ignored in the first flushes of invasion and settlement, but was later found to have some small value. In my case the value is supposed to have been in rose hips and so the place became known as Hipworth or Hepworth. If the place came to be settled – and there is at  least one place called Hepworth – everybody coming from there to another place was called by that name, although not necessarily related to each other.This applied to thousands of other places and people too.

Coming to later times, parish registers can be some help, but not much, owing to the movements of the great landless part of the population from generation to generation.

Sir Frank Markham once tried to make  a tree of his family, but failed to complete it and I know I shall fail to complete mine before I even start.  I know I am a first son of a first son, but beyond my great- grandfather I cannot go.  As for the family, I had five aunts, four uncles and at least 22 first cousins, all on my father’s side I can name. But my mother – a Sykes – died when I was two. My father re-married a couple of years later and after that the Sykes connection fell away and step-relations came in.  Occasionally people would tell me that they were first cousins to me on the Sykes side, but I don’t know how many, or their names, and it was another part of the country that I saw grandfather Sykes finally screwed down.

If you add similar complications on my wife’s side, including a grandfather who ran away with his housemaid, it will sure be a most peculiar family tree that shall eventually send my son!