It's a roller coaster of discoveries and dead ends. For me, wanting more than just names and dates, but also insights into who they were and how they lived, social aspects of their lives in the eras that they lived.
I have documents, documents and more documents, notes upon notes, and it seems that sometimes I miss information on them, that suddenly pops out at me again, at a later date.
Recently, I have made connections between information that I have had for years. Different marriage certificates, that together with census info and Kelly's Directory, gave me a more complete picture of part of my family residing at one address for over 2 decades.
Another was a clearing up of confusions arising from family memories and a sudden realization.
It had been something of pride for my nan, and I had just grown up assuming that Gypsy Lee was a great-great-grandmother or something like that, but my delving didn't confirm that at all. We were related but it is by marriage. Her granddaughter married my nan's uncle, her mother's brother Daniel, known as Danny, Hunt.
This, in itself, was a major event, as normally gypsies marry within their communities, and everyday English people were outsiders, known as "gorjas". For Danny Hunt to have been accepted as a husband for the granddaughter of the queen of the gypsies is an important fact, in itself. In tracing some of his descendants, who were raised as Romany, I have been told that he would have had to accept their way of life and "become" one of them, in order to have been accepted.
That my nan held Gypsy Lee in such high esteem, I feel she must have had contact, at some point, with that veritable lady. From my childhood, I remember certain habits she had, which I have since found out are "gypsy customs" to do with cleanliness, and she knew so much about nature, the types of birds, animals, plants and herbs. To me, this points to her being more than an outsider to their ways.
I had also been told that my nan's father,my great-grandfather Samuel Poyser
"maintained" his "connection" to the tribe by making the wheel for the "old gypsy caravans" (vardoes) as he was a wheelright. Well, since he was NOT gypsy, and his connection being that only of brother-in-law to Danny, it would seem not a "maintaining" but an acceptance of him as extended family (and hence my nan, as his daughter and Danny's niece).
However, trying to understand how Danny and Louisa Lee might have met (since customarily they should not have been moving in the same circles, one would expect), I realised that census information of the area kind of gave an idea of that.
In Canning Town, back then, at the end of the Forty Acre Lane was an area of land that was known as Cherry Island, and it was there that the gypsy encampment was, for decades. In the 1881 census, my great-great-great-grandfather, Matthew Poyser, and his family lived at Blenhaim Cottages on Forty Acre Lane. Despite his son Samuel not being born for another 5 years, he already had 4 children at that time, and possibly the children may have played with children from Cherry Island, and some early friendships created that way.
My great-grandfather's wife was Mary Ann (known as Polly), the sister of Danny.
Their father was a "bird shop" owner, at first at 12 Sabberton Street (showing in the 1902 Kelly's Directory), off Hallsville Rd, and later at 1 Rathbone Street. My nan's sister said his shop was kind of a pet shop but also sold rabbits for meat. When Louisa Lee got married,in 1921, her address was 10 Sabberton Street, so it is likely that Louisa and Danny grew up as young children, with each other as neighbours. I'm still pursuing that. They may not be my direct line, but I am fascinated with their story. I know so much yet so little.
Have an awesome day!
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