52 Ancestors, 52 Weeks: Wk 2: Family Legend

 FAMILY LEGEND: Help or Hindrance?

This blog post could be considered a prequel to the blog post I published in Week 1 of 52 ancestors in 52 weeks.

For week 2 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. I thought I would write about the Family Story passed down to me by my father from his father and what a merry dance this and further family folklore led me. However when everything came together there was a lot of truth within the stories, just that they had been embellished with the telling.

My Grandfather told my father that we descended from Spanish Royalty, a Spanish Princess marrying a Ship's Surgeon. Later discussing this with various cousins the 'ship's surgeon' was a common claim, but no-one had heard the story re Spanish blood:- 'but come to think of it, when you looked at photo's of the brother's they were all dark haired'.

Now my Grandfather was a gregarious gentleman with a sense of fun but also some grandiose ideas. So discounting a link to the House of Bourbon,  I did check out medical and naval links. There was one, George Perry in the Scots Fusiliers but he was born too late to be George Arthur’s father and I followed the families of two doctors, one in Hampshire, the other in Norfolk but no matter how often I double or triple checked and tried to match them, they were not correct.

By this time I had found Arthur with his 2^nd wife, actually his 4^th, in the 1901 census, this asserted that he was a British National born in Chile! So why would a doctor be in Chile. Requests for help on foreign forums and trawling through available lists that may have some tenuous link continued to come up blank.

Then I noted that in the 1850’s there was a trip by a John George Perry, a surgeon and member of the Royal Astronomical Society, to Chile, preparing for an astronomical event. Could this be a clue or was I clutching at straws? Was John George like George Arthur, a man who liked to use his middle name in preference? Well, despite becoming well acquainted with Charles Darwin and voyages on the Beagle, I still could not find a link.

By now, I had received a copy of a journal written by John Arthur Perry, the son of George Arthur and Jessie. Within this and separate documents there were a few more clues, despite John’s observation that both of his parents were reticent about their wider family. He had concluded, with further information from his father-in-law, that there were family objections to the marriage.

 ‘My father informed me that my paternal grandfather, who was a doctor of medicine, was also a great traveller, visiting India, Australia and South America. My father was in Melbourne when he was 12years of age (1869). He also went to the diggings at Ballarat.’

Now there was a whole new avenue to explore. Internet searches of passenger lists and Australian immigration records showed two George Perry’s, father and son, travelling on the SS. Great Britain. A cousin kindly sent me a book related to the SS Great Britain, but still we could tie in the information to what we had documentary proof.

We had a new birth date, 1857, whereas census returns (1891 and 1901) indicate 1852 and 1855. Still we drew a blank. The marriage between George Arthur and Jessie indicated that they had married in Newcastle, contact with the archive there regarding addresses given on this record also came to nought.

Another review of John Arthur’s journal spoke of an Aunt Rose and Uncle Tom, many further hours were spent looking for suitable candidates, nothing and then the mention of an unnamed uncle, the Mayor of Derby presiding over a dinner attended by royalty – but poring over lists of the mayors and newspaper reports continued to draw a blank.

Now, if you have taken the time to read my blog post related to George Arthur Perry, you will know the outcome of who he was and his ancestry. When all became clear so did many of these ‘Legends’.

Yes, his father, George Pye was a doctor of medicine (a surgeon). Yes he had travelled to South America, where his children had been born, at present there is no evidence of any further voyages and as he had died in 1855, it is unlikely that he did in fact travel further and certainly would not have been in Australia at the time of the ‘Goldrush.’ Would an older, teenage, George Arthur Pye, attend the 'diggings' in 1869? It is possible but perhaps unlikely.

However, research indicates that Jessie’s father had been an early settler in Australia and her brother had been a seaman, so their stories may have become entwined within the telling attaching themselves to George Arthur. G.A. was very young when he left Chile, but he may have had memories of the silver mines in the Atacama region.

Yes, he had a Sister, Rosa del Prado Pye, who married Thomas Harland. No he did not have an uncle who became the Mayor of Derby but, a cousin Randolph Thomas Hammond Rust, himself a businessman and ‘oil pioneer’ in Trinidad, did attend an Empire Dinner attended by Royalty.

And finally, the Spanish royal blood, well I think that may have been a figment of my Grandfathers imagination, taking his Great Aunts name (Rosa del Prado, Rose of the meadow) and fabricating a history.

Is there a moral to this story? Well I would say listen to those family stories but be willing to accept that they may be untrue or an embellishment of a hint of truth.