The Fishing Fleet – Anne de Courcy

A year ago today I wrote a review of this book and you can read it here. Then last week, I was sent the link to an interview that the author did in Australia, for Adelaide Week in March 2013.

I have to say I was very surprised and enjoyed hearing the author talk of her findings and how she wove the details together into the book.

The subject is fascinating and my own interest, because I have family who left rural Surrey in the 1760's to head to India, has been reawakened and I am therefore inspired to re-read the book.

White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India by William Dalrymple

The June choice for our reading group was The White Mughals by William Dalrymple. The comments from the group were split into essentially three camps, those that loved it, those who read it and persevered and those who hated it.

I fell into the loved it camp and I did love it. The book took the author 5 years to write. It is thoroughly researched and painstakingly written, threading the storyline together with the use of historical documents and probable hypothesis when the documentation can not support the theory.

The book is based upon the surviving papers and diaries from 18th Century British aristocrats who spent many years in India. What is shown is India in context with history; the defeat of Napoleon in Egypt for example. The book explores the culture exchange, where many of the men in the region "go native" with local women and then send the children back to England to be educated. The book explores the Christian/Muslim/Hindu exchange which was perfectly acceptable in the 18th Century, alas when the 19th Century appears that exchange and the "go native" approach is scorned and unaccepted.

The book does cover the romance of James Achilles Kirkpatrick who was a promising British resident in Hyderabad, and a young noblewoman and descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, called Khair-un-Nissa and whilst this romance is essentially the backbone of the book, it in some ways fades into the background amongst the historical aspects of India and the region at this time.

Even so, I loved the book, I loved the provision of sources and notes and the depth of research and for me this has to be the read of the year.

The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour

Recently, I have been focusing my genealogical time on India as I work on a book about part of my family who spent time in India. Nothing special, except the research has unravelled some real surprises and I felt the stories were worthy of being shared through a wider audience.

As part of that research I wanted to fully understand India during the Victorian period and I came across The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour.

As always I turned to the index and was delighted to see a reference to another family connection.

It is those references I thought I would share here -

"Lewin Bowring felt that the great void in his life was travel. In 1854 he therefore set off on a long journeys through Rajputana, China (where his father, whom he had not seen for 10 years, was Governor of Hong Kong), France, Italy and Central Europe (which he toured three times), and the British Isles, where he inspected seventeen cathedrals" (page 276 Source Unpublished Memoirs).

"Lewin Bowring, who joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1843, won several prizes at Haileybury for Persian, Sanskrit and Hindustani. Yet on arrival in India he found his proficiency in these languages was "nearly useless" "(Page 40 Source Unpublished Memoirs)

I think we always assume that those who travelled to overseas destinations did so with little chance of returning home. That is a inaccurate. The amount of travel depended on your means in terms of financial and your status. The family whom I have been researching made several journeys, yet the time it took to travel and the conditions must have been very trying.

The Fishing Fleet – Anne de Courcy

When the author was undertaking her research we did correspond rather briefly, but my interest regarding my ancestral links to India was out of the time frame for Anne's book.

I waited rather eagerly for the book to be published. Once it hit the shelves of my local library I managed to grab the book and then quietly enjoy it.

The book looks at women who migrated to India looking for a husband during the period of the mid 19th Century until 1947, when India gained it's Independence.

I loved the colour of the cover which for me set the tone of the book. I enjoyed the depth of the research, which was gathered from letters and memoirs of the time and the focus of the book.

There is a suitable explanation of why the women were there, and why they risked travelling the globe to find a husband, but there was little detail on how the women adapted to the change in culture and their experiences. The author further explores the processes in India at this time, the bureaucracy of India and mixed raced children and how they were viewed.

Despite all that, I was a little disappointed. There is little scope given to how these women coped, not only with the country and culture, but also how they experienced married life with the men they met in India. I felt as though the author ran out of steam with the subject matter before the end of the book.

I enjoyed it, but it could have been better.

Sepia Saturday 110 - In the Movies.....

This story and the photograph have a tentative connection to the theatre.

Second lady from the left is Lesley Ramage with her father John.
Lady on the far right is Nehru's sister.
Taken Bombay 1957. Lady on the far left is called Jane.

The original of the photograph is with my mother in law. Almost 20 years ago my father in law showed us a huge set of photographs. At the time we videoed them. Then in the Autumn of 2010 I transferred the video to DVD. The transfer appeared to have been successful and in further experimentation mode I played the DVD on my laptop and took a photo from the screen. This is one of those photographs.

Lesley Ramage is the first cousin of my late father in law. She had a career as an actress. I have no further details on her career or her stage name. 

Taking part in Sepia Saturday

Postcard Friendship Friday - Bowring Institute Bangalore India

Submitted as part of Postcard Friendship Friday hosted by The Best Hearts are Crunchy

Carnival Of Genealogy 110 - What Tree Are You?.....

'What tree best represents your family's history? Is your family most like a towering redwood, weeping willow, or a stately oak?  Maybe you think of your family more like a brightly lit Christmas tree or a tropical palm'

What a fascinating pondering, this months Carnival of Genealogy is. 

My ancestry is diverse, spanning across continents, from my marriage in Kenya in 1994 to my several times Great Uncle, John Hunt Butcher's migration to Tasmania Australia in the early 1800s. To a cousin, Louisa Butcher migrating to Canada In 1903. To my Ellis ancestors migrating to Geelong Victoria Australia on board the James Baines in 1854. To my Elstone ancestors who established their papermaking business in Ontario, having migrated from Hampshire & Sussex borders in 1854.

To my King ancestors making the journey  to India in search of future husbands in the Honourable East India Company during  the 18th Century.

Three of the King sisters 

To the Bellasis & Bowring families, who both spent time in  India; and John Bowring who spent time in Hong Kong. To my Cousin who embarked upon a new life in Australia in 1946 and never made the journey home to see his parents.

William James West 1898 - 1918

To my relatives who served in various areas of the military. William West who served during the Zulu Wars and whom lost his first wife in Africa in 1896. To William James West who died in the battlefields of France during the Great War, and my several times Great Grandfather, George Ellis who served for 20 years in the Army & who following receiving wounds was discharged and survived until he was in his 80s.

To my Grandfather who was stationed in Sierra Leone  during the Second World War. 

George Butcher during World War II

There are many other ancestors & relatives whose time, both in & outside of the UK is still being researched. The adventures, some of which were quite a surprise when they were discovered, and those that are still to be discovered & researched. Some were simply visits & adventures, such as Alfred Elstone to New York in the early 1920s, to my own year long adventures to Australia in the early 1990s. It is those visits, I am sure, that made those who travelled the people they & I became.

Furthermore, my Sicilian ancestry is a huge unknown chapter, which needs & deserves much more research and understanding.

So which tree reflects my ancestry? I don't think a sole tree can reflect it. My ancestry, which I am immensely proud of is reflected in a fictional plantation of trees.

The Butcher family who were wealthy can be described as a solid oak tree whose roots were firmly established in Surrey initially for 300 years. My links to Africa, through my beloved grandfather & our wedding is reflected in the Baobab tree. My Australian lines, are reflected by the Eucalyptus tree, situated in a bed of wattle. My Sicilian heritage reflected in a gathering of olive trees.

The reality is, that these trees, because of the variations in climate would never grow side by side. Yet, I find that this is further reflective of the different lines of my ancestry, across the Centuries & Continents, as these ancestors would never have physically met & walked side by side.

Many of the surnames in my ancestry appear more than once, many lines intermarry & intermingle and this can be perfectly reflected by a weeping willow.

A Christmas tree with sparkling twinkle lights reflects each one of my ancestors, their lives reflected in a beautiful iridescent light, twinkling reminding me of the contribution they each made to my ancestry.

I thank every one  of them.

Carnival of Genealogy is hosted at Creativegene

Tea Cup Tuesday - A different sort of post

Welcome to the latest Tea Cup Tuesday post.

This week I have submitted a different, shorter post, but still tea related. The catalyst for this was being made aware of a website called Koi-Hai which focuses on the historical information of those who spent a lifetime working within the tea growing industry and community.

The site is very interesting, with details of web links to be explored, books to read and directories and photographs.

Submitted as part of Tea Cups Tuesday hosted by Artful Affirmations & Martha's Favourites

Ancestor of the week - George Bridges Bellasis & Ester King

Inspired by the post on Twigs of Yore in commemoration of Australia Day - 26 January, and doubling up as my Ancestor of the Week post.

Find the earliest piece of documentation you have about an ancestor in Australia. If you don't have an Australian ancestor, then choose the earliest piece of documentation you have for a relative in Australia.

1. What is the document?
2. Do you remember the research process that lead you to it? How and where did you find it?
3. Tell us the story(ies) of the document. You may like to consider the nature of the document, the people mentioned, the place and the time. Be as long or short, broad or narrow in your story telling as you like!"

The document I am going to use for this is the picture on the left of a pink Hibiscus and is titled "The Carrajan by Mrs Bellasis, Sydney and was painted circa 1803.

I first became aware of the Bellasis connection to my ancestry back in the late 1980s. I then did little research into that line beyond the records that existed in the rural Surrey parish of Puttenham and created what is online as the Puttenham One Place Study

Esther was born Ester King in 1770, the daughter of John King and Mary nee Budd. The whole story resembles that of Pride and Prejudice as John and Mary had a family of 10 children, 9 of whom were girls. I can almost here the cries of Mary King as she worries about her daughters finding good husbands. Just how the King daughters became connected to the Bellasis family is intriguing, but all but two of the girls (one married in England and the other died in 1795 aged 17 years) married men connected to the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) and their son also spent time in India before dying in the Gulf of Persia in 1812. The link to how I established this is rather wonderful. The Curate of the parish of Puttenham was a man called Charles Kerry. During his time in the village he kept a series of manuscripts and as part of those there is a reference or two to the Bellasis connection. It was this fact that acted as my springboard.

Ester married George Bridges Bellasis in 1796 in Calcutta India. George was known as the most "Handsome man in India" a fact gleaned from the book written about the Bellasis family called "An Honourable Company" by Margaret Bellasis published in 1952. What has been established is that the girls went out to India in installments, as they became of age and they were dispatched to parts of the "Empire" in the care of the elder sisters. The story is that one of Esther's sisters was proposed to. The proposal was later retracted and a dual between the proposer and George Bridges Bellasis ensued. As a result George Bridges Bellasis was sent to Botany Bay for life for killing the proposer, having been transported on board the ship called "The Fly" in 1802. When he arrived in Sydney, George was immediately given a conditional pardon by Governor King and on 24 June 1803 received a Royal pardon as an "act of commiseration towards a gallant, but unfortunate officer and an afflicted dying wife".

I wondered about Ester. Just what had her life been like? Married to a well to do member of the HEIC, was she shamed because of the dual and subsequent outcome of that?, then transported like a common criminal? I wish I knew just what she thought and felt. I wondered just what research material had been left behind of the Bellasis time in Australia. George it is well documented as a military man in Australia and India, there is evidence that he was involved in the Freemason movement in the early days of the colony.

I did a search online for "Mrs Bellasis"+Australia and for variations of - Botany Bay, Ester Bellasis and was very surprised to find the painting above online. I sent off to the archive, The Mitchell Library, State Library for NSW, for a electronic copy and it is one of my genealogical treasures. What is especially wonderful is that the painting by Ester Bellasis is the earliest known piece of artwork by a woman in Australia, so it looks like Ester made her mark afterall.

George and Ester returned to England in the early 1800s and Ester is commemorated at Puttenham Church having died in 1805 in Berkshire, at the Bellasis home. George returned to India and later remarried, to his deceased wife's sister, Elizabeth Kent nee King, herself a widow. George died in India in 1825 and the sister Elizabeth in Kent in 1837.

Associated posts - Genealogical Wonder published November 2010 has more details on one of the King daughters.

All the posts submitted for this challenge are here

Bowring Family at Torquay

Through various bits of research I established the Bellasis family connected to a fairly well know Devonian family called Bowring. As I live in the County it was relatively easy to access the archives and cemeteries. I don't want to write more of the Bellasis & Bowring families at the moment as they are going to be the subject of a couple of "Ancestor of the week" posts over the next few months, but I wanted to load the photos up the Grave Encounters site and I couldn't do that without a small write up.

Having established that Lewin Bentham Bowring was buried in Torquay I telephoned to see if I could arrange for the grave to be marked so that I could find it it easier. When I met up with the groundsman he said that there were two graves and asked if I had known that. I said no. He then arranged for me to see the burial books, which indicated that in addition to the grave of Lewin Bentham Bowring and his wife Katherine there was also the grave of Lewin's son Captain Vincent Bowring, but the plot also contained the son Edward Lewis who had died in 1885 aged 15 years.

It is a purely a guess that the grave had been initially been marked with a headstone for Edward by his father, but by the time Captain Vincent Bowring had passed away in 1951 both Lewin and Katherine themselves were deceased and as the family already owned the plot someone made the decision that Captain Vincent could be interned there and placed the headstone accordingly, which means that the burial of Edward is no longer recorded at the site, and only in the burial register.

Buried in section C, Un-consecrated ground

Pray for the souls of

LEWIN BENTHAM BOWRING CSI

Chief Commissioner of Mysore and Goore

J P for Devon

Who died Jan 14^th 1910 aged 85

And KATHERINE his wife

Née BELLASIS

Who died March 18^th 1915 aged 74

Requiescant in Page

Pray for the soul of

Captain VINCENT LEWIN BOWRING

Royal Navy

Died Feb 23^rd 1951

RIP

Section C line 18 Grave

From the Cemetery records we can establish that also buried in this grave is

EDWARD LEWIS LLANISLAS BOWRING

Who died 3^rd July 1885 aged 15.

The plot was purchased by Lewin B BOWRING.

Katherine purchased the grave of Lewin Bentham BOWRING at the time of his death. She purchased a double plot and they lay side by side.

At the time of her death Katherine was residing at 90 Hagley Road, Edgebaston Birmingham.

Graves Transcribed March 2000, Photographed June 2002

Who was Rani Maharaj Singh?

As I said in an earlier post I managed to photograph some images that were originally camcordered back in 1993. This is two of those images.

These photo shows my later Father in Law, Derek Goucher's first cousin Florence Ramage nee Worship along with someone called Rani Maharaj Singh. I had known from stories told to me that Florence and her husband John had spent some time in India, and there are photos to confirm that. They clearly moved in the Indian Society circles of the times - which would have been the early to mid 1950s, so just after Independence from the "British Empire"

So who was Rani Maharaj Singh? The photographs were taken to commemorate the YMCA Carnival in 1953





Rani Maharaj Singh was the wife of the first Indian Governor of Bombay (1948 - 1952), the Honorable Raja Maharaj Singh. In 1949 She led Bombay's City Council for child welfare with funds that had been pledged by UNESCO.

In 1952 Rani Maharaj Singh is mentioned in the Day books of Eleanor Roosevelt. With the entry for 11th March 1952 reading ".....We returned on time for a luncheon given by the Governor and Her Excellency, Rani Maharaj Singh. It has been a great joy to have Mrs. Pandit here, for she is the most thoughtful hostess imaginable........."

So it would appear that Rani Maharah Singh held quite a place in the history of India and it really is quite interesting how she came to meet Florence Ramage, perhaps at a fund raising event.

A Genealogical Wonder ......

Last week I heard once again from a contact in Canada with whom I share a distant connection, through the KING & EASTWICK lines of my family.

The KING daughters, there were seven of them are alike to the daughters of Mr & Mr Bennett in Jane Austin novel. All the daughters and their brother had a connection to India & the East India Company. More on that side of the family later.

The contact wrote that she had a picture of a painting that depicted three of the sisters. The painting was painted by the artist Thompson and was painted in 1795. The painting is mentioned in two books that connect to the family, An Honourable Company by Margaret Bellaisis and A Master Mariner by Captain R. W. Eastwick and has a lovely romantic story attached to it.

Thompson took a fancy to the younger of the sisters in the painting - Lucy King and proposed marriage. When Lucy declined he refused the finish the painting and retained it. Twenty five years later Lucy who by then was known as Mrs Eastwick was walking through London and noticed Thompson, she asked her son to go after him and when he saw who it was asked Lucy and her son to accompany him back to his home where he revealed the painting which had he said been completed from memory. Thompson then gave the painting to Lucy. The painting is in the hands of the family, sadly not this part of the family!

But isn't the painting a beauty?

Lucy Eastwick nee King is the lady on the far right of the painting. As I said the painting was done in 1795, and for me to now see a copy of it is simply wonderful. Thanks to my contact PP for sharing this with me.