The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

Wendy was a surname in the 16th century. One of Henry VIII's doctors was First Name Wendy.

cozie - they were their nicknames, lol, wee Neil for instance was neither the youngest or shortest, he'd just been the youngest at some point and so was forever wee Neil, wee Neily pet was wee Neil's middle aged son, who had his own children...

You'd think they'd come up with a better system TBH because there are as far as I know still about 8 of them all with the same blooming name because it's not just direct descendants that have done it, all the oldest cousins have it too.

So yes, I think more sensible families use proper nicknames, but clearly they don't all.

I suppose there's a degree of inevitability about it, though, in what is really a massive - but close - family. For example, if you have a brother who is good at cars and your car goes skew whiff then everyone will know who you mean if you just say 'I'll ask Neil to have a look at it'. Because the context will define properly the person, there being no doubt in anyone's mind who that particular Neil ought to be. In the same way, if you had something more ........bureaucratic to deal with, you might say 'I'll ask Seoras Post Office what he thinks...' and, again, everyone will know.

The devil for genealogists though. (And electoral registration officers! )

We have a Thurmuther and an Epsibeth in out family tree, both supposed to be a Biblical. Thurmuther is spelled differently on every census and certificate I've seen so far.

Epsibeth sounds biblical but, to my ear, Thurmuther has more of a Norse or Saxon sound to it. Might the family have had any 'connections'?

Thurmuther sounds as if it might be one of those mother's surname as first name ones.

Maiden name I mean.

True.

I have discovered a need to find my old 'Tales of the Unexplained' or whatever the book was called. (And if you saw the number of books in this house, you would realise what a massive task in prospect that is. )

It has most of the facts (i.e. what is really known) about The Mary Celeste.

I may be some time!

Epsibeth is a corruption of the Biblical name Hephzibah (I guess influenced by Elizabeth?)

I've found a reference to a Thurmuther in a census from 1871. I was going to say it sounded like "Thor's Mother", but the family in the census is Irish English, so perhaps someone more familiar with old Irish names will have some thoughts?

I found my book, after narrowing it down to the likelihood of one particular stack. (And, luckily, it had a distinctive dust jacket which I recalled.) I'm now re-reading the quoted evidence given before the Vice Admiralty Court of Gibraltar and my brain is starting to hurt.

There's an interesting general point though. Why are some tales handed down as (almost) gospel and form the generality of knowledge about a topic without reference to any known facts?

(I'll confess here to reading The Daughter of Time at an impressionable age. )

That's interesting Olennas, it's not the same Thurmuther so there was more than one! So it may not be a made up name. Not an Irish family nor Norse as far as I know but very rural England.

I've also seen it spelled Thurmuthen and Thurmurther on various documents.

You just can't tell when it's backaways. Maybe, for example, there was an itinerant trader called Thurmuther at some point who 'liked the ladies' ? Who can say?

The truth of many of these things goes when the last person who had knowledge of them dies. (Without writing it down for the future.) That's the way of life.

A festive question for you. My Grandmother used to have a little Christmas tree made from feathers dyed dark green. Not fluffy feathers, stiff ones like chicken feathers so they looked like pine needles. It was about 2.5 - 3.0 feet high and had a wooden base with a built in music box. She would be about 120 now if still alive, but the tee looked absolutely ancient! Any idea what it was and when it dated from? I can't remember what music it played, carols of some sort I suppose.

After visiting the v and a today I would like to know if ladies feet 200 years ago were genuinely as tiny as the shoes they have in the costume gallery

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather_Christmas_tree

Thank you dizzying. I googled it and got a load of eBay modern ones with fluffy feathers! No American links in the family that I know if so it was maybe passed down to her from a Victorian relative. No idea where it is now, I assume it got thrown out when the house was cleared.

Dizzy, re. the feet - yes, some of them probably were tiny. But I guess the shoes most likely to be preserved are the ones belonging to the dainty society ladies, rather than the working women with normal clodhopping feet

I remember seeing Charlotte Bronte's shoes in the Bronte Parsonage Museum. They're almost unbelievably narrow and tiny. But then she was very small indeed, wasn't she? Certainly under 5 feet?

Might the family have German links, though, Weeds?

Possibly, but I'm only aware of Irish, Scottish and Portuguese. Although, come to think of it, that's distaffside. Always assumed Dad's side were English through and through but not sure. Great Grandfather on that side was a clock maker, which sounds exotic to me for some reason, but obviously they must have existed in the UK! Maiden name of Grab was Pierce - Irish?

Gran. Maiden name of gran on Mother's side was Teed - Scottish?

Enoch, that's fascinating. I wonder if they were speaking Irish gaelic perhaps? A good friend of mine is something of an expert on Newfie military. I'll ask him. He wrote a factual book about the Newfie regiment called Into the Blizzard. You might be interested although it's more about WWI . His name is Michael Winter if you want to look the book up. I'd link it but not sure how to on my phone!

Good question about feet - I've only seen teeny tiny shoes in museums and galleries too. I know that all my elderly relations have / had small feet (size 3 or 4), so perhaps for some reason our feet have got bigger in a relatively short period of time?

Another feet one: has anyone else heard the theory that square feet (toes nearly the same length) are Anglo-Saxon feet, pointy feet (first two toes significantly longer than the others) are Norman feet?