Using my iPad to post

So, when we're in England I'm going to post to this blog with my iPod. I wanted to see how easy it would be. I'm a two finger typist so typing on the screen is quite easy for me. I probably won't type as much, but that's probably a good thing. I just wish there was an easier way to do apostrophes. Here's my family thing for this post: we're staying in the Ring O Bells in Cheriton Fitzpaine, where some of my family originated. Now I'll post.

Mount Felix: The Walton Hospital

During the war, Violet Woods worked as a nurse at Mount Felix, a few  miles from her home in Shepperton. Here she met Claus Nissen, whom she married in 1917 in Staines. In 1919, with baby Brenda in arms, she boarded the Athenic, a sister ship to the Titanic, and sailed to New Zealand, never to see England again. Recently Walton celebrated ANZAC day (April 25) to commemorate the New Zealanders. Read the story. You can check out some photos here.

Harmless imbeciles

Only a couple more weeks, and we're off the England. Last month I sent away for the death certificate of Flora Grace Woods (Smith). Apparently she died of lobar pneumonia at Leavesden Asylum, Watford on October 24th 1916. She was 52 years old and still married. In 1911 she was still at Hanwell Asylum, so I don't know when or why she was moved to Leavesden. I did think, with some hope, that she was moved to an asylum that was not specified as being for the poor, but the only good news was that Leavesden was for "quiet and harmless imbeciles", albeit for poor imbeciles. In 1916 the Asylum was also home to soldiers about to head off to war. Funnily, those that had been to war and been injured were being taken care of by her daughter Violet at a hospital not far away in Staines.

My adventure began

I grew up in New Zealand and although I knew my mother's mother (she died when she was 63) I didn't know much about her. I was more interested in my father's family, holding the mistaken belief that I was directly descended from Scottish royalty of some kind. A couple of year's ago my sister emailed me and asked what our grandmother's last name was--Wood or Woods. She was looking for in the 1901 Census, which had just gone online. From my home in Canada, I went online to look for Violet Flora Rose Woods, and there she was. She was living with the Gray family in Walton-on-Thames, described as a niece. She was supposedly born in Marlesford, Suffolk. I knew it was her--the uncommon name, and besides she grew up in Shepperton, not far away. As well, I remembered that my brother had visited with some Grays when he went to England in the 1960s.

After dropping several pounds to actually look at the details of the 1901 census, I eventually subscribed to Find My Past and grew with them as they added more and more census years. When that wasn't enough I also subscribed to the English version of Ancestry.com. And when I was stuck for times before 1837, I checked Family Search, the Church of Latter Day Saints database. Although I found hundreds of ancestors, I gradually started to focus on the direct line of mothers--my mother's mother's mothers, as it were. What I found was two with more than ten children, two who died in childbirth, and one who was committed to an asylum with "puerperal psychosis." One survived a terrible cholera epidemic in London, the same one that saw Dr. John Snow develop his famous ghost map that followed the spread of cholera through the water pump in Broad Street.

Tracking mothers takes some skill. But finding them is that much more exciting. Now I am looking forward to going to England to see where they lived. The country homes where they worked as servants, the farms where they grew up, and the hospital where my grandmother met my grandfather, a rifleman in WW1 who took her back to New Zealand as a war bride. Stay tuned!