Not just another name

[softly softly]

I over the new year period decided to reminisce and watched "Zulu". Out of 139 men who fought in this battle 11 were awarded the Victoria cross. I decided to look at one individual who was "just a private" Arthur Henry (Harry) Hook-(6 August 1850 – 12 March 1905)

There are several trees on Anc* with & about him as well as info on the web.

I bet when he was a boy he never thought he would be in a film  , never alone a hero in later life.


It made me afresh realise/ recognise when helping to research for other's that these are real people, with real lives and stories to tell. We perhaps never know apart from dates the lives that these people led but all are important to their families.

John

[nanny jan]

I think it was the Victoria Cross at Rorke's Drift. 

[softly softly]

I think it was the Victoria Cross at Rorke's Drift. 

Quite right nanny jan, have amended my origina post.

John

[BumbleB]

I visited the area of Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana when I was in South Africa in 2010  I have to say that it was so evocative - beautiful green countryside BUT dotted with piles of white stones (the markings of graves).  Something I will never forget.

A family member died at Isandlwana - John Philip Archbell (d: 22 January 1879), son of James William Archbell, who was a son of James Archbell who left England in 1823 to become a Wesleyan Missionary (and later Mayor of Pietermaritsburg).

[jbml]

It made me afresh realise/ recognise when helping to research for other's that these are real people, with real lives and stories to tell. We perhaps never know apart from dates the lives that these people led but all are important to their families.

John

I think this is so important, John, and you have done well to remind us all.

It has, I think, certain corollaries ... the most important of which is that inaccuracies in online trees published to the world can cause a lot of hurt. So those of us who maintain online trees (I don't) should ALWAYS respond to people who contact us to point out errors (whether real or fanciful) and take account of any additional evidence supplied. I am sure that everyone reading this probably does this anyway ... but there are many who don't.

There are many trees out there which have completely fanciful accounts of some of my ancestors, linking them to completely unconnected persons. For the most part I can take this with equanimity. But in the case of my great uncle, I cannot.

My great uncle was born soon after the first world war, and he was gay. Growing up gay in the 20s and 30s was not easy, and after the second world war he moved to the west coast of America where social attitudes to homosexuality were more accepting than they were in 1950s Britain. He lived the rest of his life in America, and died in America. He never married, never fathered and children, and my great aunt (who is still living) scattered his ashes in the Potomac river in about 2001.

So when I see his name in online family trees (with all the correct previous generations for my family) but with a marriage and children sprouting from him, I KNOW they are wrong. They have made a mistake. They have confused him with someone else.

Well ... anyone can make a mistake. That's fair enough. But whenever I have contacted the author of one of these trees to lay the relevant facts before them, not one of them has ever corrected their tree, and not one of them has even acknowledged my message.

Do I care? You bet I care! It took a brave man to be openly gay in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. In a difficult situation he was not afraid to stand up and be seen for who and what he was. And these trees which show him marrying and having children somehow take away from that. The fact that people are prepared to continue telling these lies about him, publishing them to the world, even after they have been told the truth of the matter, cuts me to the quick. He is MY close blood relative, and they are diminishing him in the eyes of the world even though he is NO relative of THEIRS.