To the best of my recollection this journey begins sometime in the early 1970s when Dad, James Baden Thorp (Jim), decides its time to start the Thorp family history, aided and abetted by June. Car ownership now made it possible to travel to view Parish records in far off and exotic places such as Holmfirth and Hull. With a name like Thorp and living in Yorkshire as far back as anyone could remember we were almost certainly the descendants of Vikings. It was only a short step from Sheffield, his parents’ home to bearded beserkers charging up the beach at Scarborough or possibly Bridlington.
Grans and index cards
Back in the 70s genealogy seemed to involve grans, lined A4 pads, pencils, index cards and pouring over dusty volumes of tight and intricate copperplate. The Gran – in this case was the formidable Alice Brownhill Thorp (nee Paul). Turns out women in most families have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of who begat who, when and where – if its fit to publish. Theories abound about why this should be so but it boils down to roughly blokes go off hunting so map the land and women create the tribe and map the people (I made this up – and why not, this is the internet).
Yorkshire Pudding
Grans usually need little prompting to delve in to family history but a Sunday family dinner of Yorkshire Pudding (served first with gravy), followed by copious amounts of roast beef, mash, carrots and cabbage was an open invitation to recount numerous episodes in the family saga. All that was needed then was the wherewithal to write it down, particularly dates and places and book an appointment to view records. We were off.
Genealogical Jigsaw
To cut a long story short our Dad got as far back as we ever would (to date!) about 6 months in to the research. Our family history turned out to be less of a golden thread leading to Eric The Bloodaxe and more a very big jigsaw puzzle with lots of pieces missing. But filling in the pieces – discovering the detail of everyday lives began to populate this thing called history with real people, times and places. I suspect now that the real purpose of Dad’s genealogical quest had more to do with developing in his sons some critical faculties: what is a fact, what is its context how do we interpret artefacts and what do they reveal about our ancestors and their lives.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Genealogical Jigsaw 