Category: Family

The emigrants

Thomas Hardy’s 1886 novel The Mayor of Casterbridge begins with a notorious scene in which Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, when drunk and after an argument with his wife Susan, auctions her and his young daughter Elizabeth-Jane at a country fair. The pair are bought by a sailor for five guineas. The following day HenchardRead More

An unfortunate man

It was when I was undertaking some family history research, twenty-five or more years ago, when many genealogical resources first began to appear online, that I came across Thomas Pooley. There were rumours in the family of an ancestor who had been imprisoned for blasphemy, sometime in the nineteenth century, but it felt like aRead More