Genealogy in England – A Hinde Family Adventure

"Dad was a bobby in London in about 1905 and he met a guy in a pub– a scoundrel really – named Arthur Mamby who was murdered in Taos a few years later. This Mamby character said that Taos was a wonderful place in New Mexico where everyone would be settling. I guess dad was ready for a change or something. He packed all their things and came directly to Taos along with mom and Doris. When they got here, it was nothing but the pueblo and just a handful of people living in town." This story from Thomas George Hinde about his parents’ trip from England was just the beginning of our search for our Hinde Family’s English roots.

The English have been migrating to the United States since 1607 when the first colony was established at Jamestown, Virginia. Additional colonies were established in the years following in Plymouth, Massachusetts; Salem, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Maryland; and Pennsylvania. This relative trickle of migration increased until the period between 1820 and 1920 when 2.5 million people moved from England to the United States – among them William Thomas Hinde, our "Grandpa Hinde." After generations in the US, these immigrants have turned into millions of people with roots extending back to England and other UK countries.

Our initial effort was to begin to understand the family tree in a factual way. So we completed interviews with relatives who knew Grandpa Hinde and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Steer – our "Grandma Hinde." We also made some trips to Taos during vacations to see grandpa’s blacksmith shop, the house he built, the old jail on the square, and numerous other examples of his ironworking talents around town. We suspect that he was commissioned to build the iron fence around Kit Carson’s grave – just across the street from the Hinde home. On our last trip there we discovered Hinde Street named in honor of this early day Taos pioneer family. This effort produced some colorful stories about the trip from England and their life in Taos along with some important documentation showing that the Grandpa Hinde was born Kempston, Bedfordshire and Grandma Hinde was born in Risely, Bedfordshire.

Months turned into years as we gathered additional information about the Hinde family that stretched back to 1824 Olney in Buckinghamshire where the family was a stable member of the community for several generations.

We found a distant relative through an Internet discussion group that tied directly to our oldest known relative in Olney – one of those happy occasions that we genealogists live for. We also spent $100 US to hire a professional genealogist in England to research William Thomas’ history as a bobby in London. As it turns out, he was not a bobby at all – but his brother, Ernest, was. This is a good example of how stories can get changed over time.

Both grandpa and grandma died before my wife and I were born. So, neither of us knew them except through family stories and the factual information that we have been able to find. At some time during our process we began to discuss a trip to England to see the places they had seen, to be in the places they had been, and to walk the places they had walked.

We decided on a combined tourist and genealogy trip that would include highlights of London along with a few days of tromping through old church cemeteries – my favorite part of any trip. We took the tube from the airport to a stop near our hotel - a real adventure in my mind. As we came up out of the station area into the bright light of London, a nice local man came up and said, "You look like you are lost. How can I help you?" He gave us precise directions to our stop and advice on a good local pub where we could lift a pint of bitter on the way. The British are friendly and fun with razer-sharp wits that will keep you on your toes.

After our time in London we took a train south to Maidstone where we picked up a car and toured Leeds Castle, a beautiful and relaxing spot not yet covered with tourists. Finally the genealogy portion of our trip was beginning! We continued to Dover where we took a wrong turn and very nearly entered the Chunnel under the strait to France. Thankfully, the tourist-friendly folks in England left a last-minute turn-around for us. We enjoyed a dock-side pub within walking distance from our hotel where I feasted on a fresh seafood platter in cream sauce. Margaret discovered her English roots with a plate of bangers and mash that was simply delicious. So much for the negative stories about English food; we found it different but quite nice everywhere we went. We slept with the window open to the channel where we peered through the fog watching the flickering lights in France – yet another world away from home.

Our schedule was much too tight as we could have stayed the week in Dover; it was just lovely with lots of interesting and historical things to see. We traveled along the south coast on our way to meet our distant cousin who had agreed to meet us for tea. We passed castles along the way that just begged us to pull off the road and linger for a few hours. Alas, we needed to move on and were content with seeing the beautiful beaches and countryside from the car. Somewhere along the way, our radio came on in the car with a warning about traffic conditions just ahead including detailed information about the motorway we were traveling and our direction – quite a fun surprise since we had never heard of anything like that before.

We reached cousin Rick and Linda’s house near Titchfield about mid afternoon as they were finishing up a yard sale event at their house. It was fun to meet them and hear about their lives over tea. Since tea is not really a special event where we grew up in the US, it was especially meaningful to share it with these new relatives and friends. As you might expect, the conversation turned to family and genealogy as they told stories about some of the places we were planning to see. It just notched up the excitement level as we heard about the charming small towns and churches where grandma and grandpa lived as children.

We spent the night in a hotel on the harbor in Southampton, the port where the Hinde family boarded the Teutonic for New York in 1906 to begin the adventure of their lives. The next day we took a slight detour to the little town of Risely and looked through the graveyard without finding any familiar names. We went to the vicar’s house and got permission to go into the church to look around. We learned so much about England from that stop. There was an elevated section just off the sanctuary that had been built for the lower classes; they were not allowed on the main floor along with land owners in the upper classes of the time. There was a rope hanging near the back for ringing the church bell and the vicar said that training sessions were underway for bell ringers in preparation for an important anniversary celebration. The church was decorated for a fall harvest celebration from the previous week.

We also learned about conkers. Two people in two days had cautioned us to "Mind the conkers." So we asked the vicar to explain. Conkers are chestnuts – horse chestnuts to be more precise. They look a lot like a buckeye – but larger. In the fall, they are on the ground and could cause quite a nasty fall if you step on them in a certain way. Children – historically little boys - in England search for the largest and strongest conkers to use in a game called . . . conkers. You tie the best conker you can find on a string by drilling a tiny hole in the conker and threading the string through the hole. Then you spin your conker on the string while your opponent spins his in the opposite direction until you conk them together. The objective is to break your opponent’s conker. I confirmed this story with British friends here in the states who just raved about the childhood memories that flooded back when thinking about playing conkers with their friends in England.

We wondered about how grandpa and grandma Hinde could have met since Risely was so far from Kempston and speculated as we made our way north to Buckinghamshire just an hour or so north of London. A few days later we discovered that there are two Risely’s in England – the one we visited and one within walking distance from the town where grandpa lived. Sigh . . . so much for planning. That’s why the original documents we had made such a big deal out of Riseley *Bedfordshire* England!

One of our first stops was the city grave yard in Kempston just to see if we could find any Hinde grave markers. The office to the cemetery was closed so that we could not ask about records or locations – so we carefully stepped through the conkers and covered the entire cemetery in about an hour. We made our way to Turvey where great grandfather Hinde was supposed to be buried and found one distant cousin buried there next to a beautiful church.

We finally got to the correct Riseley church where grandma and grandpa were married in 1898. A friendly local directed us to the vicar’s house and he was very friendly and helpful. The church is quite old and the vicar explained that the main section was built first and then a side portion build later. The "new" section was 250 years old as I recall. The iron door was built by a famous metal worker from London and is still working and being used every day. The vicar apologized that they only have records back to the 1600s in the church – a pretty foreign concept to us since churches in the US are generally only 100 or 200 years old. We were able to get some good information about some in-laws from the ledger kept there. I took a few pictures inside including one with my wife standing on the step where her grandparents stood a hundred years ago and pledged their love for each other. It was a poignant moment for both of us as we soaked in the feeling of that place and imagined the beginning of their lives as a married couple.

Doing some research in this area? Here are some resources that helped us.
Bedford Library
Harpur StreetBedfordMK40 1PGTel: 01234 350931Fax: 01234 342163A great set of microfiche with both church and public records from Bedfordshire – many not online yet.

Taos County Historical Society
http://www.taos-history.org/

Buckinghamshire Family History Society
http://www.bucksfhs.org.uk/

Bedfordshire Family History Socieety
http://www.bfhs.org.uk/

Other neat links:
http://www.allsaintsriseley.org.uk/
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Bedfordshire/RiseleyRollofHonour.html

Gene Hall is a genealogist with almost 30 years of experience and the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., a world-wide genealogy exchange dedicated to serving the needs of genealogists, genealogical societies, professional genealogists, and transcribers all over the world. FamilyTrackers is located at http://www.familytrackers.com/ .

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