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My GGF the celebrity

Liberty

Liberty

LostCousins Megastar
I have just made a match and contact with a 6th cousin, via Lost Cousins. (No, that isn't the news.)

Regular readers of my posts will know that one of my ancestral lines bears the name Cubitt, it being my mother's maiden name. My new-found cousin had traced her family tree back to know that one of her direct ancestors was an Elizabeth Cubitt (who was the sister of my 5G GF). She told me that making contact with me had spurred her to look more at the Cubitts, and she asked 'if there was any connection to the architect or the designer of agricultural implements'.
Well, the architect is not of our line, but the designer was my GG grandfather, and I wouldn't have thought him notable outside the immediate family. Has anyone else had the experience of someone asking the equivalent of, "Any relation to THE George Cubitt?"
 
I really really just can't resist. Sorry! ... aren't Cubitts the sort of ancestors you keep at arms length?

My lot were all just ag labs & farmers so no one is likely to say any such thing to me. I envy those with interesting ancestors.
 
Liberty said:
I have just made a match and contact with a 6th cousin, via Lost Cousins. (No, that isn't the news.)
. . .
Has anyone else had the experience of someone asking the equivalent of, "Any relation to THE George Cubitt?"
Click to expand...

S-o-r-t o-f, although I hesitate to mention the surname concerned in case Alexander has another go. :)

Shortly after I started full-time work, my attention was drawn to an obituary in the Times newspaper for the founder of a medallist company who had the same surname as me. Although it is not a common surname, I have not managed to find any direct link to that branch of the family. A few years later, I did come across a photo in a book, taken of the medallist shortly before he died. I think there is quite a physical resemblance between him and my father although the artistic quality was not related.

Not really someone famous but probably more notable than the remaining labourers that make up most of my family and are so difficult to trace.
 
I wasn't having a go honest :( Your story is the sort of story Bryman that often leads to the starting of a one name study. In my case a work colleague and a friend both had Bisset's in their immediate family and so I got started on tracing them which lead to gathering any little snippets and adding them to my tree and from those small cuttings grow little twigs which often join together to form branches and occasionally merge into the main trunk of my tree.

Its one of those things that can be really fruitful to pursue and gives you a diversion when you are facing the same old brick walls in your main tree. I would encourage you to give it a try and start by tracing everything you know about the medalist. From what I can gather it seems to have been a family business founded in 1840s. So there should be plenty of census records etc to find, and since its such an unusual profession there should be plenty of documentation in more unusual sources. Is there a London Livery company for medallists for instance similar to the goldsmiths? Medallists seem to have been involved in creating coins too so perhaps royal connections and documentation. LOTS of potentially really interesting stuff to dig into.
 
Perhaps I should come clean about the medallist. The book which contained his photo was probably the result of a ONS showing dozens/scores of 'the family' who originated near the Welsh/English boarder. Unfortunately there does not appear to be a link to that part of the 'family' later than about 1700.

I once met a namesake helping to install a computer system for a major bank and he told me that his father had mentioned that there was a churchyard where most of the gravestones showed the family name. Then again, my father once examined telephone directories for the whole of UK and determined that there were less than 2,000 entries for our surname, mainly centred around the West Midlands. Do I have time for a ONS? I have just built a new house and my wife wants the landscaping completed yesterday.

Today I discovered that I have another, more famous (?) ancestor on my mother's side of the family. My 4G Grand Uncle was a self taught mathematician who was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in about 1820. How unexpected was that? I have so much to investigate that I don't even have time to update LC! :eek:
 
Alexander Bisset said:
I wasn't having a go honest :( .
Click to expand...


Years ago I read a bit of advice along the lines of : Don't make jokes about the other person's name - they will have heard them all before.

But as a free gift, Alexander, I will tell you I have direct ancestors with the surname Strangleman. I think definitely a family to be cautious of.
 
Well, I was going back on one particularly uninspiring line when a contact told me that one of my 3g-grandmothers was the grand-daughter of a baronet. After confirming that, a combination of Burke's Peerage and other aristocracy sources led me straight back to William the Conqueror. Assuming this is correct it is amazing how quickly a family line can sink down the social order. The lady in question married a tradesman (seems to have eloped) and was cut out of her father's will (although he left money to his son-in-law and grandson) and her son worked on the railways. From baronet to porter in 4 generations. The surname was Wiseman and I am happy to receive jokes as I have not heard any yet. Most of my other lines peter out in illiterate Ag Labs in the late 18th century or even later.
 
So far the only 'celebrity' I have turned up, in the sense that he got lots of media coverage, was the first husband of my 4-G-grandmother. He was hanged at Newgate for a large fraud committed in the City of London, and if that wasn't bad enough, the trial surfaced that he was also a bigamist. My poor 4-G-grandmother was pregnant at the time, and the other wife had a small baby, so as you can imagine there was some good tabloid journalism to be had.
 
Liberty said:
I have just made a match and contact with a 6th cousin, via Lost Cousins.
Click to expand...

I thought I would report (largely because the forum seems to have been rather quiet lately) is that my 'new' cousin and I are now doing exactly what LostCousins is all about - namely, sharing info and building up a bigger picture than either of us had before we made contact. Nothing exciting to report as a result, but it's satisfying to have a whole section of the jigsaw filled in.
 
My 'celebrity' was my great grandfather who neither I or my mother (due to divorce) knew nothing about. He was a Football Gold Medallist at the 1912 Olympics for GB. He is still one of the top scorers at the Olympics. After that career, he went on the stage and was very successful as a comedian, singer/songwriter. Luckily, I have been able to buy memorabilia as we had none. ;)
 
Anyone else feel that OnlyMe should be telling us a lot more about her "celebrity" - my appetite is whetted :) You might even find YTF would publish an account as a "case study".

One of my ggg'mothers was one of 20+ first cousins to Richard Pankhurst - that's the closest I get to infamy. Richard was husband of Emmeline and mother of Sylvia, Christabel, Adela and 2 short-lived sons. Wiki link
 
AndyMick said:
Anyone else feel that OnlyMe should be telling us a lot more about her "celebrity" - my appetite is whetted :) You might even find YTF would publish an account as a "case study".

One of my ggg'mothers was one of 20+ first cousins to Richard Pankhurst - that's the closest I get to infamy. Richard was husband of Emmeline and mother of Sylvia, Christabel, Adela and 2 short-lived sons. Wiki link
Click to expand...
Sometimes family history research does lead you to unexpected, and disturbing, discoveries. My husband never knew his maternal uncle, who died before he was born, and my mother-in-law was vague about the circumstances of his death, but we knew he had served in the army during WWI. During a visit to relatives in North America about 10 years ago I entered Uncle Ernest's name in the search box on the National Archives website and got this result. It was a profound shock to my husband and his cousin and raised almost as many questions as it answered. The full details are available, with photographs, on several websites now, and we have seen the National Archives file, which makes grim reading, but two things primarily of family history interest stand out. Firstly, there are no family photographs of Uncle Ernest, and we think his parents must have destroyed them after his death because they were simply too painful to keep. The first picture my husband ever saw of his uncle was the one in the National Archives file. Secondly, the information about Uncle Ernest's espionage was in the public domain before we knew of it - I found a book in our local public library with a whole section on Ernest. It's a sad, sordid, story, and the best one can try and do is try and understand Ernest's reasons for behaving as he did. (I hope the link works - I've not done this before:confused:)
 
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