Surprises, Secrets and Skeletons

Do you ever wonder where you come from or rather who you come from?

I’ve always been interested in my ancestors ever since childhood when my Nana would tell me about her Dad and their lives up in Rothbury. I remember when she stayed she used to sleep in my sister’s bed and many Saturday mornings she’d tell me how she used to knit socks for the soldiers in the First World War and how she carried a milk yoke across the moors. Of course to a child, these images were very romantic whereas in reality it must have been a hard life, especially in the winter.

So with these memories in my head and the ever increasing information on the internet I began researching my family history. And found quite a few surprises.

I think the main one was I thought my Mum and Nana came from good old Geordie stock, I’d been brought with the words ‘hinny’ ‘netty’ and the broad vowel sounds of the Geordie accent. But no, wrong.

I discovered that both my Grandad and my Nana’s dad were born in Norfolk so that knocked the Geordie blood on the head. So leaving Newcastle and Gateshead behind I headed south and east (on the computer of course) to Norfolk. There I discovered a murmuration of Starlings and an illumination of Turners. I also was fortunate enough to meet some distant cousins who were able to give me some more information about my great, great, great, great granddad.

The story goes he was supposed to have at the Battle of Trafalgar and they had a sword which allegedly belonged to him. Immediately the romance that I’d imagined when Nana told me her stories went into overdrive. Swashbuckling hero on the high seas, perhaps looking over Hardy’s shoulder and Nelson succumbed to his injuries.

But sadly this was all in my imagination, the sword was of the wrong date and despite intensive research there was no record of an Edmund Starling at the Battle of Trafalgar but maybe he’d been press ganged and didn’t give his right name – I wish.

John Starling
1806-1891

His son John was a right character. He was a painter and decorator, church warden for over forty years and collected the census information for Worstead  in the mid nineteenth century. He was also a writer and some of his work remains today in the Norfolk Archives in Norwich.

He appears to have been a virtuous and quite a pompous man. In 1876 he went on holiday to Great Yarmouth with his wife Hannah. He wrote in a small notebook about his holiday and what he saw but he also gave a brief insight into the person he was. I love this.

‘I am now standing looking at some men lying down gas pipes to lighten the street to the pier. I pray that more may be employed to exibet the true light, hic enlighten every man that cometh into this world.

                A man on horseback very near rode one. I said friend there ought to be room enough in the world for you and me to pass through, He rode away angry.’ John Starling 1876.

I bet he did.

James Massingham Starling
1845-1887

I don’t much about his son, my great, great grandad, James Massingham Starling, other than he followed his Dad into the decorating trade, married Mary Ann Wenn and died at the age of 43.

However, the cousin I met could remember his wife. She told me that in her old age Mary Ann Wenn went blind and Margaret could remember meeting her and Mary running hands all over face so she could a picture of what she looked like.

Mary Ann Wenn
1846-1929

What amazed me about that story though was the fact I was talking to someone in 2003 who had spoken to someone who was born in 1846. To me that takes some getting your head round.

Now the secrets and skeletons.

James and Mary had a son in 1873, my great granddad who was also called James Massingham Starling (sounds posh doesn’t it?) This James was responsible for the move of this branch of the family up to the north east.

In 1895 he left Worstead, his sleepy little village in Norfolk because his elder sister Kate had an illegitimate child (Margaret’s mother) and his way of escaping the ‘humiliation’ was to leg it up north. Little did he know what was in store for him and that history would repeat itself through his eldest daughter, my lovely, brave Nana.

When I was growing up I always understood my Nana had four children. There  was Cyril, who I never met, my Aunty Elsie, my Mum and my Uncle Stan. But this little girl used to earwig in on grown up conversations and perhaps heard things that she shouldn’t have. I’m not sure how I knew but I did and once the internet started producing family history sites, I had a look.

I discovered that in 1919 my Nana had her first child, Ernest William Starling. I’ve no idea who his father was and I doubt there is anyone alive today who can answer that question for me because his name was never put on the birth certificate. I do know that he was initially brought up by Nana’s parents and he ended up in Coventry.

Then in 1926 she had a son James, who again I don’t who the father was but this time she had to have her baby in ‘a naughty girls’ house in Newcastle, described by some relative as a workhouse. I can’t imagine that would have been a pleasant experience by any means. James went to live in Rothbury with his grandad and eventually settled near Newcastle. I don’t remember ever meeting him but I do know that some of the family did have contact with him.

My lovely Nana
1900-1983

Then there was Cyril. He was born illegitimately in 1929. Nana married my Grandad Arthur Turner the following year and he adopted Cyril. However, when Cyril found out the circumstances of his birth he walked out and never saw my Nana again. When she died in 1983 he was invited to the funeral but replied by saying ‘as far as he was concerned his mother died years ago.’ Cruel to us, into today’s world but back then it was a very different world and perhaps circumstances of birth were more important than a mother’s love?

But there are a couple of twists to this story. My Grandad was born in Mundesley, Norfolk in 1880 but his family also came from Worstead and both the Turners and the Starlings had known each other for about 130 years before Nana and Grandad married.

Grandad Turner
1880-1946

The story goes though that Grandad was a widower up in Newcastle/Gateshead and Nana went to live there as a housekeeper (I think that was Great Grandad’s suggestion) and three years later they married.

But perhaps the biggest twist is that three times, before she married, my Nana found herself pregnant and had her children. However, Grandad’s first wife Elizabeth Goodwill was a back street abortionist.

Different times, a different world, a different society but Nana was spurned by many because of what happened and because of the attitude of many, she didn’t or couldn’t tell the truth to her younger children. My Mum grew up believing that Ernest and James were her uncles and not her brothers.

How much did she miss out on because of that belief but I like to think that before my Mum died, she did know the truth and I know it wouldn’t have made any difference to how she felt about her mother – they were two peas in a pod who loved each other dearly and me, well I miss them both terribly but I’m proud that I knew them, I was loved by them and yes, they helped make me the woman I am today.