Discover Top Posts Tagged with #sam livesey

Sam Livesey-James Mason-Geraldine Fitzgerald "El gran vendaval" (The mill on the floss) 1936, de Tim Whelan.

#Geraldine Fitzgerald #James Mason #Sam Livesey #Tim Whelan

The intriguing Livesey family

I started watching The Private Life Of Henry VIII for Charles Laughton reasons, and there - as The English Executioner - was Sam Livesey. Now, look Sam up on imdb and it will tell you he's Roger's dad. I always wondered whether Roger got his nose from his mum or his dad. Sam's nose is not the Quentin Blake arrow that Roger's is, although he does have the same pleasing warmth to his voice (if not quite the huskiness). Look up Roger on imdb however, and it says his dad was called Joseph. Luckily, some kind anonymous soul has clarified the situation.

Sam was Roger's uncle, and he and his brother Joseph (who as far as I can ascertain hailed from somewhere in South Yorkshire - either Rotherham or Clay Cross, both excitingly near me) somehow met and married two Welsh sisters, Margaret and Mary Edwards. (This may seem unusual, but not to me - my great grandad Anthony and his brother Patrick married sisters too, in the 1880s/1890s. Though they were all Irish Catholic immigrants to England, and as such lived in quite a close-knit community.)

Roger's dad died when Roger was 5, and his aunt when he was 7, and Sam married Roger's mum. So his uncle was also his stepdad. They all lived together as one big family. Actually, it seems - looking at the 1911 Census - that they already all lived together, in Roger's gran's house in Barry, Wales (which is where Roger was born). Crikey, though, no wonder Roger has such a lovely voice, with a Welsh mum and a Yorkshire dad.

I could go on all day about how much I love the Census. (I have done a lot of family history research, and Census forms are one of my favourite things ever. I know.) In the 1911 Census each household had a separate entry page (before that it was done by street) and more detail than ever. Also, the head of the household filled in the form instead of the Census taker. The 1911 Census form fills me with happy detective glee, with its (new!) but often awfully sad column for children who have died, as well as the (often obscured) infirmity column. This one, because it's Welsh, has an extra column for languages spoken!

Even without knowing the people (though here we do know some of them!) there is so much you can read into a Census form from little bits of human error that make the people real to us. Look how, even after six years of marriage, Cassie's mum at first put her maiden name down. (Mary's middle name was Catherine, so I deduce that the family called her Cassie). Maggie, (Roger's sister) is 1 day old, obviously born at home, and presumably named after her aunt. And where was her aunt, overnight?

Census forms are full of misspellings and incorrect ages, and nicknames. It's fascinating. I have spent hours tracking a name from one decade to another, trying to decipher if that Silas Jackson is my Silas Jackson, and cursing all my ancestors for passing given names down from generation to generation, or for making someone almost untraceable because their name is spelt wrong. But oh! the moment when everything links up, and another piece fits! It's marvellous. Someone give me a job where I get to do it all day, please?

#roger livesey #sam livesey #census forms #1911 #wherein I geek out and want to be a researcher #family history rocks