My granddad, with two of his younger brothers, outside their house.

My granddad was the eldest of six children, which meant that my dad grew up in something of a clan – he had two siblings, and ten cousins on his dad’s side of the family, to say nothing of a stack of cousins and second cousins who were from his mum’s side. Families in those days had a lot of proximity about them. They all lived within a few miles of one another, in North Liverpool, and the ones who didn’t, didn’t go too far – Aunty Gwen lived in Parbold, Uncle Alf moved to Rainford, but mostly, they were less than ten minutes apart by car. Also, those of them that held on to the faith of their childhoods, tended to stay in the one church.

My dad’s generation, of course, were the baby-boomers (he only discovered this about himself recently, I can’t imagine where he’s been). They were the ones who did the 11+, and saw driving their own car as less of a privilege than a right, and would move towns for a job, and be the first in their family to own a house. My dad’s cousins were much more geographically disparate. We lived in various bits of East Lancashire when I was growing up, and Tim moved from Southport to Altrincham, and Phil spent about fifteen years in London, which was as close to the edge of the earth as made no practical difference to the rest of us.

Some of the cousins lost touch, at that point. There are at least four or five whom I know I would not recognise if I met them in the street – although one of that group is my “friend” on Facebook, and lives ten minutes walk from my house. I’ve not been round, though. A core, who stayed in Liverpool, also stayed in the church, and helped to create a kind of home base there, that the rest of us came back to, periodically. My grandparents and two of their children went for a communal living approach, pooling their resources to put three generations into a lovely big Victorian house in the suburbs. The house became another sort of base – there was always someone in, there, and when you arrived, you instantly felt part of the big family, probably just because a good proportion of the family were there already.

That house is where the Christmas parties were held (Boxing night, every year), with all the little traditions, including the one where Father Christmas arrived, and handed out presents to everyone (for hours…) in return for a rendition of Away in a Manger. One year, my granddad stood in for Santa by appearing in drag as a Christmas Fairy – drag isn’t something I would ever have associated with him, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, and as far as I know, it has never happened before or since. Increasingly, for me, part of generation number three of the ever more separated, and ever more numerous family group, the Christmas party was the only time I ever saw most of those people. We have less and less in common, and less and less to tie us together.

And yet, we are still tied together.

I heard a story, today, of one of my dad’s cousins, who’s immediate family had drifted away from the group, and who, now in her fifties, is missing her family, to the point of feeling quite resentful about it. It touched me. I don’t know this woman from Eve, but if she has discovered a need in herself to reconnect with the Family (that makes us sound like the Sopranos, and nothing could be further from the truth), then I’m pretty sure we have space for her. Why not? She belongs with us. She should have been here all along.

My great-grandma, with her grandchildren at Christmas - the generation before mine!

For various reasons, the Christmas party did not happen last year, and isn’t going to happen this year. It remains to be seen whether two years out will mean the end of it, forever. I’m really not sure how much effort is reasonable to expend, in an attempt to bring together a group of people who otherwise get along fine without each other. To bring any real substance to those relationships, I’m pretty sure we’d have to meet more frequently than that, and I’m equally sure that if someone were to do something off-the-wall, like host a family open house once a month, nobody would show up.

The fact is that our family is too big, now. Including spouses, there are knocking on for fifty living descendants of my great-grandma. So, it’s hardly surprising – the family is losing it’s structural integrity, because in modern life, when we live so far apart, and have such busyness to contend with, it takes all our energy to maintain our closest family links. The second cousins once removed are just once removed too far.

That kind of makes me sad. I’d like to find a way to fix it, to make it possible for the group identity to continue, because it’s a key part of my own sense of identity, and I suspect, I’m not the only one. I’m just not sure that it’s possible.

Me: “Who are they?”

Daisy: “exactly”

Ruth: “that’s very good Daisy,”

Me: “See, I told you mummy would either be very pleased or throw us out of the house”

Daisy: “You can’t throw us out of the house, all the windows are closed”

Well we haven’t had any major breakthroughs but we have put it all on-line. You can now look at the family tree on this very website! you have to be registered to see any recent parts of the tree (you can request to become registered over here).

We currently have 606 names in our tree spanning 228 years; there’s loads of information and we are currently in the process of uploading all the certificates and stuff we have. so if you’re in the slightest bit interested in our family tree then you should go look at the Jump Family Tree.

I took lots of photos of cottages and things – pretty much any building that looked like it might pre-date WWI, and discovered a row of cottages that were built in 1857, and the village school which was built in 1856 (someone throwing money about in the 1850s, apparently…). And I talked to a couple who live there, who said I should go when the post office is open, and talk to Sue who knows everything about everyone, and Dean, who’s writing a book. And they were terribly friendly and nice, and I came away feeling all warm and welcome and fluffy and nice.

That’s two villages that I’m from – Cockshutt, and Haskayne. I’ve been to both, and whilst both are in country that’s a little too flat to be beautiful, I think I could get used to village life. Plus, compared with Liverpool, houses seem to be very cheap there…

this entry was written in pencil

To celebrate this little milestone, we are going to print out new copies of the tree, the only question is how. Gene’s Reuniteds tree software is refusing to print a tree that big, and the software I’ve downloaded, while very good, can’t get the tree down to less than 8×9 pieces of A4; I think we need to clear some wall space.

The world is positively miniscule. Kevin has discovered that his great great great great grandmother was a Jump, which would be worrying if she was a Lancashire Jump, but the connection with the West Derby Jumps is so ancient as to scarcely be relevant (in case anyone thought that 200 years didn’t already put the relationship firmly in the irrelevant category). Still, it’s an unusual name, and a protestant name at that, so we were a little surprised.

The size of the world has also been brought into question by the fact that my aforementioned doorbell-accompanying friend today met my first cousin once removed on my father’s side, or, as we usually call him, Our Phil^*. Phil is an area something or other (they used to be called Superintendants, but some time after I drifted out of the denomination into the murky world of the housechurch movement, and churches that were all too often called “Something or Other Christian Fellowship”, they restructured, and I’ve no idea what he does. The evidence would suggest that he still uses Superintendent as a point of reference to counteract the blank looks.) in the Baptist Union, which means that he turns up at Baptist Churches as guest preacher, authority figure, shoulder to cry on, etc etc, and to celebrate high days and holidays. Our local Baptist church is celebrating such a high-day/holiday at the moment (a centenary), and so there was a comparing of notes between my astute friend, who guessed that there must be some relationship between us, and my distant cousin.

On one level, I’m quite gratified – much depends on tone of voice and levels of irony, but since I’m told he said, “Oh yes, Our Ruth^* – the clever one,” I’m taking it as a compliment. Two tiny degrees, that’s all, nothing to brag about, but thank you.

On another, these things always unnerve me a little. I don’t have huge secrets to protect, when my different worlds collide – plenty of people do, I’m sure – but it just seems very odd, that Tess spent some minutes, this morning, talking to a member of my family, who actually knows me hardly at all, and rarely sees me outside of Christmas. There’s always Christmas, and in a funny way, most of the family rather value the fact that we don’t lose touch all together, because we always go to my Grandma’s at Christmas. But in another, it’s a bit farcical, because we know so little about each other, the need to hold onto that connection is… odd.

An example: before he went to Bible college, Phil worked at Camel Lairds. I’ve always known this, but I only learned today that he did electrical type stuff there – for all I knew he could have been an accountant, or a spot welder. I think I had an idea he wore a suit, so maybe not a spot welder. Similarly, our Will does something in computers – I don’t know what, or for whom, or at what level. Our Tim works for BT, and always has, but I don’t know what he does. And all they know about me is that she’s the clever one – went to University, you know.

I value my family pretty highly. Maybe I ought to speak to some of them.

* I don’t have an Aunty Ermintrude, or an Uncle Joshua. They were merely examples.

Well firstly let me tell you what it is.

This is my great, great, great grandfather’s occupation, at the time of the marriage of his daughter (my great,great grandmother) to my great, great grandfather.

Know I have no idea what that says, all I know is that they lived in the vauxhall area of Liverpool in 1874, at the time almost everybody who worked, worked on the docks, so I am (maybe incorrectly) assuming it has something to do with that, but still, what is a Hordeshoeen ?

answers in the comments please.

Update:
The favorite theory so far, is that this says horseshoeer and that the Priest couldn’t spell so that’s why it’s got so many e’s in it.

• A great (*n) aunt who saw fit to name her children Oliver, Cromwell and Wellington.
• A branch of the family who hail from Dodge City, North Wales, which was apparently neither in England nor Wales, and therefore fell under nobody’s legal responsibility.

It rather makes my Orange Lodge connections in one direction, and illegitimacy in another, pale into insignificance…

The internet rocks for this, at first I can be hard to find the information but once you’ve got the right places you can (and do) spend all night looking through names, and working it all out. So much so, that when we’ve been looking for software to put the tree into (currently we’re using genesreunited) one feature a few of them have is an alarm to tell you to go to bed.

Today. I took the next step, and actually went to the library, and looked at parish records on microfilm, valuable lesson of the day? When you know you’ve written down the information you need to find, make sure you then take that piece of paper with you to the library.

All wasn’t lost, I at least have gotten over the first hurdle and spoken to people and used the machines, so the fear factor isn’t stopping me anymore. Next time I will take all the right information.