A life in Bemmy
After my grandmother died in 1967 I was determined to write her life story” explained Sheila Hayward, who is retired and lives in Clevedon.
“She had an interesting, if rather turbulent, life - very different from my own.
“But family life kept me busy and, although I had started making some notes, I didn’t really get started until about eight years ago.
“As a family we lived together in Eastville for some twenty years and gran helped look after me.
“When I was young she would tell me stories about her difficult childhood.
“She had to defend her mother against an alcoholic father and, as an adult, lost two much loved husbands, one of them in a tragic mining accident.”
By the time Harriet Holt died at the age of 83 she had lived through two world wars, a deep recession which saw millions unemployed, and seen five monarchs ascended the throne.
Amidst her personal joys and tears - the ups and downs of family life - the social and economic changes had been unprecedented.
Women had been given the vote, radio and television had arrived and transport had evolved from the horse and cart to the car and the jet engine.
“Although I began writing Harriet’s story soon after she died,” explains Sheila.
“I soon realised how little I really knew about her early life.
“A real boost was discovering that my sister had an old photo of the Bolt family.”
Another great plus, she says, was having three elderly relatives with excellent memories and a cousin who never threw away a family photo (and knew the names of all the people).
A talk about researching family history also helped point Sheila in the right direction.
“My in depth research really began in the local history section of Bristol’s Central Library on College Green” she explained.
“But it was early days in the family history boom and the staff there couldn’t really help me very much.
“The facilities, by today’s standards anyway, were primitive.
“Everything was on microfilm or microfiche and there were no indexes.
“I knew that Harriet had been born in 1885 and that the family home was in Bedminster but spent a whole afternoon looking for her on microfilm.
“Nowadays you can look online - it’s much quicker and easier.”
If you don’t have access to the internet at home, says Sheila, your local library will let you use theirs - as will your local history society, who are full of enthusiasts and can be a great help.
“Having finally discovered where the family were in 1901 I looked in the old Bristol street directories for confirmation,” says Sheila.
“I now knew the names of my great grandparents and decided to buy copies of their birth certificates.
“But when I went to the Bristol Registry office to ask for them the clerk told me that there were two George Bolts, one registered four years before the other.
“It was likely, she said, that the first baby had died and the second had been given the same name - a typical Victorian practice.
“It was then that I realised there could be hidden names to research - those who had died at birth or in infancy.”
Booking a half day’s research at Bristol’s Registry Office gave Sheila access to both birth and death indexes.
“This was how I discovered that, as well as the five children pictured in a photo, my great grandmother had lost five others,” says Sheila.
“I returned to the office a number of times in order to investigate various other members of the family.
“The birth certificates gave me the names and occupations of the parents of my great grandparents and, armed with this information, I was able to look them up on previous censuses.”
It was then that Sheila encountered a family mystery that, she tells me, she still hasn’t re-solved to this day.
“On the 1881 census that I discovered that my great grandmother had, ostensibly, married again” she says.
“Checking a film copy of the earlier, 1871 census, I discovered that she was married, not widowed, and listed as the Head of Household.”
But her husband wasn’t listed on the census. So, where was he? Could it have been an enumerator’s mistake?
“Imagine my surprise” says Sheila, “ when, in the 1901 census, I found her living with her first husband again, this time in Gloucester.
So, where was he for some twenty years?
“I checked prison records, even the Australian deportation and emigration records, but there was no trace of him” says Sheila
“Perhaps we went abroad or simply lived here under an assumed name.
“But I did discover that the man she had been living with all those years had died BEFORE she returned to her first husband.”
As most of Sheila’s relatives had been born, lived and died in Bristol she was able to purchase certificates from the Registry Office in person.
This was both cheaper and quicker than ordering online (or by post) from the General Registry Office based in London.
“I also bought a copy of the 1851 Census on disk” she says, “ something which has proved invaluable in tracing many branches of the family.”
Bristol Records Office, next to the Cumberland Basin, is another invaluable place in which to check births, marriages and deaths - as well as indexed census copies from 1841 to 1901.
“I found them especially competent and helpful” says Sheila.
“And the Bristol and Avon Family History Society have a research room there, staffed by knowledgeable volunteers.”
But what about more personal information? Where did she find out that?
“Gran had told me that her first husband, Bill, had been killed in a mining accident at Hanham” she says.
“So I contacted the local history society who took my cousin and I on a tour of the remnants of the old mine.
“Later they put me in touch with a descendent of another man killed in the same accident.
“ I also managed to obtain a copy of a newspaper report about the accident and the inquest.
“It’s good to share these tragic stories with someone and I was very grateful for the help.
To research stories about the Bolt family during World War I Sheila travelled to London - to the National Archives at Kew in fact - where the staff, she says, were very knowledgeable and helpful.
“I was able to look at the medal rolls, campaign maps and - most enlightening of all - actual accounts of the war by company commanders” she says.
“These gave me an insight into the day to day lives of the ordinary soldiers.”
A lot of individual records, however, were lost in a wartime Blitz.
An avid reader, Sheila perused every book she could find on old Bristol.
“Some of the World War II books provided me with facts that I would not otherwise have known,” she says.
“When I had finally completed my research it was time to interweave the stories I already knew with others told me by family members.”
The result was “Harriet’s Family” of which Sheila had an initial 150 copies published.
It’s sold well in the States, she tells me, as well as in Bristol, and another 100 copies have now been ordered from the printers.
Bringing a closely researched, ordinary family history to life is no easy task but Sheila has managed to pull it off admirably.
The result is a well crafted, lively tale which will keep you reading from cover to cover.
Harriet’s Family by Sheila Hayward is published by Trafford and costs £7.99.
Copies are available from Borders, Blackwell’s and Waterstones bookshops as well as from Bedminster’s Grant Bradley Gallery
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