It is a year since I created this blog and I thought I would share some thoughts about its progress.
Instant Cousins started as a result of my frustrations about how I could write about by research and how to publish it. A couple of years before the Covid lockdown I had attended a brilliant eight week course on how to write up my family history research. It was led by Dr.Ronnie Scott, probably the best known social history researcher in Glasgow. I picked up many ideas and practised a number of ideas before realising that the best way of self-publishing was by starting an online blog.
I had collated a lot of material, mostly online, but also paper and files. Storage was untidy and once the material was gathered, used and then the content posted via the blog, it could be put away into the recycle bin. My faithful, old school PC has enough memory to publish the OED in full, I think. The popular research programmes such as Ancestry offer a lot of different ways to store findings. The annoying event of 2022 was that the National Archives awarded the contract for the 1921 Census Returns to Find My Past. This means that I have to subscribe to two search sites at an annual cost of about £300. Then there is the occasional costs accrued through using Scotland’s People, the official site for searching registration documents from the National Records of Scotland. That last one is not a subscription service but you have to purchase credits and pay so much for each document that you wish to download. It is an essential site for Scottish ancestry. All in all, it is not really expensive to research and operate this site compared to other hobby and activity subscriptions.
It also gave me the answer to how to offer my family history stories to those who would wish to read them. In the past I have sent out printed copies of my individual research to my family and cousins, which were always a bit dry and factual. Posting the stories in small bites gives an opportunity to explore other things around the lives of the ancestors.
The title of the blog, Instant Cousins, was created four years ago when my wife and I were driving across Glasgow for the first proper visit to see our new Grandson after he had returned home from maternity hospital. He had been born just a few months after our first Grandson was born in Edinburgh. I turned to my wife and said that after 35 years of marriage our children had produced instant cousins.
It would only be a short time later that I would discover all sorts of interesting new information that would lead me to other instant cousins of my own and soon, future cousins of my wife.
The first rule of blog writing is posting regularly. I have tried to impose the discipline of writing each week. Wednesday is my day of choice. It enables me to produce something that gets published every Friday morning. It is a combination of research and writing on a Wednesday. It is not difficult to learn how to research and today’s online search sites are powerful and helpful once you get the hang of them. They can also be frustrating because of the constant barrage of hints that are either repetitive with the same information or which lead to nothing – or both. Using them is a must. Long gone are the days when folk would go to Somerset House in London with a few bob in their pockets to pay for simple searches of the National Registry Office. It is just as exciting finding amazing new things in the warmth and safety of your own home.
One of the regular problems that I experience is distraction. I may be searching information about a Great Uncle and then discover an obscure avenue that leads me in a direction that is exciting – but has no connection to my family, and it delays the production of my post.
It happened this morning when I was revisiting the 1921 Census return of my maternal Great Grandfather – a man of Independent Means – living in Offord Darcy, a village in Cambridgeshire. That year, Cornelius and Susan Walker had three other young people staying or visiting their household on the day of the count. One was my Aunt Rene, aged two years. Another was a young man aged 18 who was described as a Clerk with a firm of Meat Purveyors. The third person was of more interest to me – Henry Leonard Bennister was aged 7 and described as a Boarder. This was one of the legendary Bennister family whose name I had grown up with, but whose members I had never met. My Grandmother, Grace Wilcox, the Walkers eldest daughter, Rene’s mother, often spoke about them and referenced them with regards all things Jewish. The question I immediately wanted to ask was what was Henry, always referred to as Len, doing as a Boarder in the Walker household? There must have been a connection between the Walker and Bennister families. Len was not visiting, he was a boarder. If this had been during the First World War then I might have understood that Len had been evacuated. This was 1921, two years after the Great War.
This is where the power of a search site can throw up other people’s research in an instant. I discovered that Len was the son of Russian émigré’s who had been fleeing anti-Semitic persecution during the early pogroms in Russia, from the Ukraine area, at the beginning of 1890’s. A pogrom was the act of persecution by destruction and other violence while those in power or control turned a blind eye.
The Bennister family were originally called Bernstein. They might have been fleeing persecution but they also had to protect themselves from anti-Semitic alienation when they came to Britain, a place they thought would be a safe haven. Many Jews fled Russia to Britain and also to the United States at this time. Those fleeing to America would arrive in Hull and travel by direct train to Liverpool to catch a ship for the Atlantic crossing.
The Bennisters settled in an area close to Brick Lane in Whitechapel, London. From their they established themselves and eventually found home in Wandsworth. Len had a brother, Frank and two sisters. They all became professionals in different professions and became the source of the legendary stories that I grew up with.
One Census return can offer a small amount of information that generates an enormous but no less important, distraction. This is one strand of storytelling that will expand during the coming year. Although the Bennisters were not my family, they were part of my Grandmothers story.
Here is to the next 50 stories.