May 27th 2014

 

I love history and would give anything to be a time-traveller. At school I got into deep trouble for shouting at my year head for his inability to see why my sitting Biology, Geography and History at O level was a good thing. In my mind the three go together, in his mind History and languages worked, or Geography and History, but History and Biology (which I was top in class at) never worked, and certainly not that trio of subjects, it just wasn't allowed and I so after my row and punishment I had to drop History. It still annoys me today that that blinkered buffoon prevented me learning about history and at the age of 14 it was probably the first time I came across stereotyping of an individual by another blinkered view. I railed against it then and I still rail against our lack of understanding of the individual now. 

 

But that aside, the images here are of the first record of my parents house from the 14th March 1831. My father requested the bank send him the property deeds for the house they have lived in since 1987. It is absorbing reading back through time, who owned the house and when. Most of it we knew but for me handling this vellum document, hand written in beautiful copper plate writing gave me such a thrill. Who sat down with a solicitor in the Reign of William 4th to write this? I know who sold the land, a Farmer Cummings, I know who bought the land, a Mr Browell Esq but I don't know who wrote this document. And that's why I love history, a man (I'm assuming a man as few women were copywriters then) born lets say in 1800 wrote these legal document words by hand, words which I now read in 2014, 214 years later. A direct connection. What did he think while walking to work that March morning? Was he a family man? did he live well? 

 

We talked about something similar over the weekend as my mother's grandmother Eulalia Andersen was Norwegian and born around 1850. My mother can just remember her as she died when my mother was still a child, but she can vividly remember this lady who spoke little English sitting quietly in the house. However Eulalia's mother was born at the same time and lived in the same village, Skien in Norway, as the writer Henrik Ibsen. Did they go to school together I wonder? But what fascinates me more is that we were talking back through time, on a May day in 2014, my mother connects me with Eulalia's mother as they /we have all spoken to someone across history, my mother and I, my mother and Eulalia, and Eulalia to her mother, therefore in an indirect way I have spoken to someone who has spoken to someone who has spoken to someone in 1850 or earlier. 200 years seems a very long time but when it's thought of like this it is a very short span of time. Gives me goosebumps of excitement thinking about it and the man who wrote my parents first property deeds. I wonder if I can ever find out who he was.