Recently I was attending a Family History Conference when the institution of marriage was brought up for discussion. The point was made that not all marriages were formalized or legal. In some areas of northern Europe, common law marriage was referred to as a partnership. And dissolution of the partnership could be attained simply by walking away from the relationship.
In the United States, the legal formalities of marriage were not always followed. In the Midwest, often times, ministers or judges were distant. A marriage ceremony could be as simple as a couple announcing to their family and friends, and the immediate community, that they were married. At some later date, when the minister was traveling through, the ceremony would be legalized. Children born between these dates were not considered illegitimate. It simply showed that the legal system was slow to catch up with the community.
The institution of marriage can be further complicated by the motives for marriage. Everyone likes to believe their ancestors married for love. Prince Charming came into town and swept Grandma off her feet. And, some marriages may have been the result of love. But, before the 1880s, marriage was often regarded as a contract or a business agreement. Marriages often were negotiated to advance political power, or business influence, or more money. Rarely did love come into consideration.
Known as “companionate marriage,” the institution of marriage, before the dawning 20th century, was a negotiated agreement. Dowries and legal agreements came into consideration. Love had very little to do with marriage until the late 1800s
Marriage as an institution and the relationships coming out of matrimony are important considerations for Family History. Yet, understanding the motives behind it all is equally important.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Boston Athenaeum Flooded
The damage was significant but not catastrophic, the Boston Athenaeum suffered water damage this past weekend. Thankfully none of the historic books were severely damaged. Here is the story published on www.boston.com
The Boston Athenaeum, the landmark membership library on Beacon Hill that is more than 200 years old, has sent thousands of books to a specialist for freeze-drying after a water leak flooded the building on Monday.
Library officials said today that the leak caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. While stunned by the incident, they were also relieved because no truly historic items had been destroyed.
"It could have been a spectacular disaster," said James Reid-Cunningham, the Athenaeum's chief conservator.
The cause of the leak still hasn't been determined, but it did happen on one of the coldest days in years so frozen pipes are a suspect.
The flooding started on the first floor of the building on Beacon Street. "It was like Niagara Falls," said librarian Paula D. Matthews.
The flooding spread from the elegant Long Room, which overlooks the Old Granary Burying Ground, and to the Newspaper Reading Room, the Bow Room, and the Children’s Library. The water was ankle-deep and seeped into stacks of books on lower floors, officials said.
The Athenaeum was founded in 1807 and is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. It will be closed for the next few days, officials said.
The Boston Athenaeum, the landmark membership library on Beacon Hill that is more than 200 years old, has sent thousands of books to a specialist for freeze-drying after a water leak flooded the building on Monday.
Library officials said today that the leak caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. While stunned by the incident, they were also relieved because no truly historic items had been destroyed.
"It could have been a spectacular disaster," said James Reid-Cunningham, the Athenaeum's chief conservator.
The cause of the leak still hasn't been determined, but it did happen on one of the coldest days in years so frozen pipes are a suspect.
The flooding started on the first floor of the building on Beacon Street. "It was like Niagara Falls," said librarian Paula D. Matthews.
The flooding spread from the elegant Long Room, which overlooks the Old Granary Burying Ground, and to the Newspaper Reading Room, the Bow Room, and the Children’s Library. The water was ankle-deep and seeped into stacks of books on lower floors, officials said.
The Athenaeum was founded in 1807 and is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. It will be closed for the next few days, officials said.
Friday, January 21, 2011
This Microfilm Will Self Destruct in 30 Seconds
Although the headline is a bit dramatic, I couldn't help myself.
A report today in Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter stated that the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City was evacuated yesterday when flammable microfilm was discovered by an archivist. (Dick made a reference to the old television series and I decided to carry it a bit further)).
A 72 mm roll of film, inside a canister, was found to be deteriorating. It is easy to identify this stuff, because the film, as it breaks down, gives off a very distinctive ammonia type odor. The nitrate film is very combustible and capable of bursting into flames, or actually exploding.
In the case in Salt Lake, the library was evacuated. The film was removed and taken to a local landfill where it was detonated!
I think, beyond the safety concerns, what is important is the fact that film doesn't last forever. Although we, as researchers, are moving away from paper maybe we should rethink our actions. We can't count on film to keep our documents. Nor, can we count on digital records for any type of permanence. Here is another example proving that paper is the most stable and durable of products to save records.
Printing our important records and saving them in a box may still be the best action for researching and recording our family history.
A report today in Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter stated that the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City was evacuated yesterday when flammable microfilm was discovered by an archivist. (Dick made a reference to the old television series and I decided to carry it a bit further)).
A 72 mm roll of film, inside a canister, was found to be deteriorating. It is easy to identify this stuff, because the film, as it breaks down, gives off a very distinctive ammonia type odor. The nitrate film is very combustible and capable of bursting into flames, or actually exploding.
In the case in Salt Lake, the library was evacuated. The film was removed and taken to a local landfill where it was detonated!
I think, beyond the safety concerns, what is important is the fact that film doesn't last forever. Although we, as researchers, are moving away from paper maybe we should rethink our actions. We can't count on film to keep our documents. Nor, can we count on digital records for any type of permanence. Here is another example proving that paper is the most stable and durable of products to save records.
Printing our important records and saving them in a box may still be the best action for researching and recording our family history.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Technology Advances Slave Trade Research
Here is a long, but interesting article published in CNN.com that may be of interest to everyone having family history or local history ties. I printed it in full to provide easy access. The webpage can be found at: http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/05/eltis.richardson.slave.trade/index.html?hpt=C1
New revelations about slaves and slave tradeBy David Eltis and David Richardson, Special to CNNJanuary 5, 2011 9:01 a.m. EST
Editor's note: David Eltis and David Richardson are co-authors of the "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade." Eltis is Robert W. Woodruff professor of history at Emory University and co-editor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade database. Richardson is the director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, England.
(CNN) -- Most students of American history understand that a dramatic re-peopling of North and South America began in the years after Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World. But they may not realize that it was Africa, not Europe, that formed the wellspring of this repopulation process.
In the 3¼ centuries between 1492 and about 1820, four enslaved Africans left the Old World for every European. During those years, Africans comprised the largest forced oceanic migration in the history of the world. Who were they? Who organized the slaving voyages? Which parts of Africa did they come from? How did they reach the Americas? And where exactly did they go?
Strikingly, we can now provide better answers to such questions for Africans than we can for European migrants. The African slave trade reduced people to commodities, but commodities generated profits, and where there were profits there was generally good record-keeping.
Since the onset of the computer revolution in the early 1960s, early modern business and government records have allowed historians to retrieve information on 35,000 slave voyages from Africa to the Americas and make the information available on the internet. For many of these voyages, we have rich detail on the slave ship itineraries, as well as who was put on board, who survived and how they traveled.
A new "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade" draws on five decades of research in archives around the north and south Atlantic to provide 189 detailed and sumptuously drawn maps that answer many questions.
These maps show that almost every port in the early modern Atlantic world organized and sent out a slave voyage, and that the bigger the port, the greater the number it sent out.
Such ubiquity suggests that before the abolitionist era, there was no moral outrage or public disgrace associated with trading in African slaves. The maps also show that almost half of all voyages were organized and set out from the Americas, not Europe. As a result, bilateral (that is out and return) itineraries were almost as common as the famous "triangular voyage" pattern based on voyages dispatched from Europe.
The new "Atlas" of the slave trade provides 189 maps tracing the voyages.Within the United States, we now know that slave voyages left from almost every port and that although Rhode Island might be well-known as a slave trading region, it was far from synonymous with the U.S. slave trade. New York and Charleston, South Carolina, were also major centers.
A profile of those on board ship as well as the conditions to which they were subjected also emerges from the pages of the Atlas. Thus, Samuel Adjai Crowther, liberated from a slave ship as a child in 1821, became the first Anglican African bishop and was largely responsible for creating the first written version of the Yoruba language. Remarkably, he married Asano, whom he had first met as a girl on the slave ship from which they were both rescued.
The Atlas also contains the story of Mahommah G. Baquaqua, who was enslaved probably in what is now western Nigeria in 1845 as a 20-year old. He was first taken to Recife in Brazil, and after a ship's captain purchased him in Rio de Janeiro, he was taken to New York where he escaped, fled to Haiti, and after returning to New York to study and then moving to Canada, he wrote his autobiography.
For most there was no escape. As another captive, Ottobah Cuguano, wrote in 1787 in his own narrative, "the misery of that of any of the inhabitants of Africa meet with among themselves is far inferior to those of the inhospitable regions of misery which they meet with in the West Indies, where their hard-hearted overseers have neither regard to the laws of God, nor the life of their fellow men."
Some of the survivors lived on into the age of photography. Photographs of Crowther as well Cudjoe and Abache Lewis, who arrived on the last slave vessel to come into the US (the Clotilde in 1860) are displayed among the maps along with stories and paintings of some of their 18th century predecessors, such as Venture Smith and Phillis Wheatley.
The Atlas also charts more general patterns among captives such as their age and sex and, for two regions, evidence of ethno linguistic origins. The maps show that both mortality and voyage length in days declined over the slave trade era, but, as with ports in Europe from which free migrants left, risk of death was persistently greater from some regions of departure than from others. Captives leaving from what is now eastern Nigeria were particularly at risk with, on average, almost one fifth of those embarked dying on the Middle Passage.
Almost half of all voyages were organized and set out from the Americas, not Europe.
But the major contribution of the Atlas is to make it clear that the slave trade was not a random process. Systematic connections between Africa and the Americas can be tracked in the same way that people have been doing for years between Europe and the Americas.
Particular ports and regions in Africa were linked via winds, currents and political circumstances with particular islands, regions and ports in the Americas. For example, Angola supplied four out of every five captives in the very large branch of the trade that went to the southern cone region of South America (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay). The United States drew a larger proportion of its slaves from Senegambia south to Liberia than any other region in the Americas. And Amazonia drew almost all of its captives from what is now Guinea-Conakry.
Where a given part of the Americas drew on a number of African regions, it tended to do so in sequence. Thus Jamaica drew heavily on what is now Ghana and Benin in the 17th century before switching to first eastern Nigeria and then northern Angola and the Congo region. Such transatlantic links bear an uncanny resemblance to the patterns established by free migrants leaving Europe for the Americas.
Finally, the Atlas shows that the Atlantic slave trade remained strong until it was suppressed. Like the institution of slavery, the traffic that supplied captives did not die a natural economic death. The maps establish that in all the major importing areas of the Americas, the volume of the traffic peaked in the years just before its suppression. This pattern held for Brazil, the United States, and the British Americas as a whole.
It is becoming commonplace to claim that there are more slaves in the world today than ever and that large-scale trafficking in people continues. The "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade" suggests that such claims tend to obscure the horrors -- unique in human history -- of the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. It is indeed hard to imagine circumstances in which any parallel to the transatlantic slave trade could ever happen again.
The opinions in this commentary are solely those of the authors.
New revelations about slaves and slave tradeBy David Eltis and David Richardson, Special to CNNJanuary 5, 2011 9:01 a.m. EST
Editor's note: David Eltis and David Richardson are co-authors of the "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade." Eltis is Robert W. Woodruff professor of history at Emory University and co-editor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade database. Richardson is the director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, England.
(CNN) -- Most students of American history understand that a dramatic re-peopling of North and South America began in the years after Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World. But they may not realize that it was Africa, not Europe, that formed the wellspring of this repopulation process.
In the 3¼ centuries between 1492 and about 1820, four enslaved Africans left the Old World for every European. During those years, Africans comprised the largest forced oceanic migration in the history of the world. Who were they? Who organized the slaving voyages? Which parts of Africa did they come from? How did they reach the Americas? And where exactly did they go?
Strikingly, we can now provide better answers to such questions for Africans than we can for European migrants. The African slave trade reduced people to commodities, but commodities generated profits, and where there were profits there was generally good record-keeping.
Since the onset of the computer revolution in the early 1960s, early modern business and government records have allowed historians to retrieve information on 35,000 slave voyages from Africa to the Americas and make the information available on the internet. For many of these voyages, we have rich detail on the slave ship itineraries, as well as who was put on board, who survived and how they traveled.
A new "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade" draws on five decades of research in archives around the north and south Atlantic to provide 189 detailed and sumptuously drawn maps that answer many questions.
These maps show that almost every port in the early modern Atlantic world organized and sent out a slave voyage, and that the bigger the port, the greater the number it sent out.
Such ubiquity suggests that before the abolitionist era, there was no moral outrage or public disgrace associated with trading in African slaves. The maps also show that almost half of all voyages were organized and set out from the Americas, not Europe. As a result, bilateral (that is out and return) itineraries were almost as common as the famous "triangular voyage" pattern based on voyages dispatched from Europe.
The new "Atlas" of the slave trade provides 189 maps tracing the voyages.Within the United States, we now know that slave voyages left from almost every port and that although Rhode Island might be well-known as a slave trading region, it was far from synonymous with the U.S. slave trade. New York and Charleston, South Carolina, were also major centers.
A profile of those on board ship as well as the conditions to which they were subjected also emerges from the pages of the Atlas. Thus, Samuel Adjai Crowther, liberated from a slave ship as a child in 1821, became the first Anglican African bishop and was largely responsible for creating the first written version of the Yoruba language. Remarkably, he married Asano, whom he had first met as a girl on the slave ship from which they were both rescued.
The Atlas also contains the story of Mahommah G. Baquaqua, who was enslaved probably in what is now western Nigeria in 1845 as a 20-year old. He was first taken to Recife in Brazil, and after a ship's captain purchased him in Rio de Janeiro, he was taken to New York where he escaped, fled to Haiti, and after returning to New York to study and then moving to Canada, he wrote his autobiography.
For most there was no escape. As another captive, Ottobah Cuguano, wrote in 1787 in his own narrative, "the misery of that of any of the inhabitants of Africa meet with among themselves is far inferior to those of the inhospitable regions of misery which they meet with in the West Indies, where their hard-hearted overseers have neither regard to the laws of God, nor the life of their fellow men."
Some of the survivors lived on into the age of photography. Photographs of Crowther as well Cudjoe and Abache Lewis, who arrived on the last slave vessel to come into the US (the Clotilde in 1860) are displayed among the maps along with stories and paintings of some of their 18th century predecessors, such as Venture Smith and Phillis Wheatley.
The Atlas also charts more general patterns among captives such as their age and sex and, for two regions, evidence of ethno linguistic origins. The maps show that both mortality and voyage length in days declined over the slave trade era, but, as with ports in Europe from which free migrants left, risk of death was persistently greater from some regions of departure than from others. Captives leaving from what is now eastern Nigeria were particularly at risk with, on average, almost one fifth of those embarked dying on the Middle Passage.
Almost half of all voyages were organized and set out from the Americas, not Europe.
But the major contribution of the Atlas is to make it clear that the slave trade was not a random process. Systematic connections between Africa and the Americas can be tracked in the same way that people have been doing for years between Europe and the Americas.
Particular ports and regions in Africa were linked via winds, currents and political circumstances with particular islands, regions and ports in the Americas. For example, Angola supplied four out of every five captives in the very large branch of the trade that went to the southern cone region of South America (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay). The United States drew a larger proportion of its slaves from Senegambia south to Liberia than any other region in the Americas. And Amazonia drew almost all of its captives from what is now Guinea-Conakry.
Where a given part of the Americas drew on a number of African regions, it tended to do so in sequence. Thus Jamaica drew heavily on what is now Ghana and Benin in the 17th century before switching to first eastern Nigeria and then northern Angola and the Congo region. Such transatlantic links bear an uncanny resemblance to the patterns established by free migrants leaving Europe for the Americas.
Finally, the Atlas shows that the Atlantic slave trade remained strong until it was suppressed. Like the institution of slavery, the traffic that supplied captives did not die a natural economic death. The maps establish that in all the major importing areas of the Americas, the volume of the traffic peaked in the years just before its suppression. This pattern held for Brazil, the United States, and the British Americas as a whole.
It is becoming commonplace to claim that there are more slaves in the world today than ever and that large-scale trafficking in people continues. The "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade" suggests that such claims tend to obscure the horrors -- unique in human history -- of the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas. It is indeed hard to imagine circumstances in which any parallel to the transatlantic slave trade could ever happen again.
The opinions in this commentary are solely those of the authors.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Archive Job From Hell
I am reading the wikipedia biographical entry for Marie Curie. Why I am reading that is a completely different story. But, I found a brief sentence that truly puts any archivist job into perspective:
"Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle. Even her cookbook is highly radioactive. They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing."
This seems to me to be truly the most difficult, emotionally challenging archival job in the world! I admire the dedication and adventurousness of the archivists that handle these papers.
"Because of their levels of radioactivity, her papers from the 1890s are considered too dangerous to handle. Even her cookbook is highly radioactive. They are kept in lead-lined boxes, and those who wish to consult them must wear protective clothing."
This seems to me to be truly the most difficult, emotionally challenging archival job in the world! I admire the dedication and adventurousness of the archivists that handle these papers.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Minnesota Grows Everything!
When I first moved to Minnesota, on this latest sojourn, I discovered how very little I know about agriculture. My wife and I arrived in town thinking that corn and soybeans, the staple crops of Midwest, were obviously the main crops of Sherburne County, Minnesota.
Boy, were we mistaken.
Since arriving in Sherburne County, I have learned that potatoes are the current main crop for farmers. Corn and Soybeans are also grown. In the past a myriad of crops have been grown in the fields of Sherburne farms.
For a very long time, strawberries were a significant crop. In the 1870s and again in the 1960s, the county held annual Strawberry Festivals. In the 1870s, the festival mainly consisted of coming out to the farms and picking your own berries. Enjoy the day in the strawberry fields. In the 1960s and true fair atmosphere developed around the Strawberry Festival. These events culminated with a beauty pageant and the crowning Miss Luscious Red, a specific strawberry variety developed in Sherburne County.
Just as interesting, and possibly startling, in the early part of the 1900s tobacco was raised in Sherburne County. One resident, in the 1920s remembers farms throughout the county having at least one curing shed for tobacco. Another person remembers their grandmother raising tobacco as a primary cash crop in the early 1900s. I find this remarkable. Tobacco is a Southern crop!
In terms of overall numbers tobacco farming in Minnesota was small. At its highpoint in 1930 farmers in the state raised about 2.9 million pounds of leaf tobacco. By 1937 tobacco was no longer grown in Minnesota.
The point of all of this is that the assumptions we make are often terribly wrong. Jumping to conclusions about the communities around us can lead to some very confusing interpretations. As family and local historians we have to be prepared to open ourselves to new, and often startling, facts and details about our communities. When we are open to new discoveries the practice of local history truly becomes exciting.
Boy, were we mistaken.
Since arriving in Sherburne County, I have learned that potatoes are the current main crop for farmers. Corn and Soybeans are also grown. In the past a myriad of crops have been grown in the fields of Sherburne farms.
For a very long time, strawberries were a significant crop. In the 1870s and again in the 1960s, the county held annual Strawberry Festivals. In the 1870s, the festival mainly consisted of coming out to the farms and picking your own berries. Enjoy the day in the strawberry fields. In the 1960s and true fair atmosphere developed around the Strawberry Festival. These events culminated with a beauty pageant and the crowning Miss Luscious Red, a specific strawberry variety developed in Sherburne County.
Just as interesting, and possibly startling, in the early part of the 1900s tobacco was raised in Sherburne County. One resident, in the 1920s remembers farms throughout the county having at least one curing shed for tobacco. Another person remembers their grandmother raising tobacco as a primary cash crop in the early 1900s. I find this remarkable. Tobacco is a Southern crop!
In terms of overall numbers tobacco farming in Minnesota was small. At its highpoint in 1930 farmers in the state raised about 2.9 million pounds of leaf tobacco. By 1937 tobacco was no longer grown in Minnesota.
The point of all of this is that the assumptions we make are often terribly wrong. Jumping to conclusions about the communities around us can lead to some very confusing interpretations. As family and local historians we have to be prepared to open ourselves to new, and often startling, facts and details about our communities. When we are open to new discoveries the practice of local history truly becomes exciting.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Fiction and Fantasy Sometime Mix
Here is a really unusual story combining history and fiction. For Family Historians and Harry Potter fans, this story has everything!
----
The family of a real life Harry Potter who was killed in the army
claim that his grave has been turned into a tourist attraction by fans
of the hit book and movie series seeking their fictional hero. Private
Harry Potter was serving overseas when he died in Israel in 1939
during an uprising. His grave had gone unnoticed in the British
Military Cemetery in the town of Ramla for more than half a century.
But now the headstone has become an unlikely tourist attraction
because of J K Rowling's much-loved books and movies. Sightseers have
had their photos taken next to the grave, while the local tourist
board has listed it as an official attraction. And even though Mr
Potter, from Kidderminster, Worcs., would have led an active life in
the army, it is far removed from the magic and spells of the fictional
Harry Potter. Pvt Potter's surviving family members have come forward
to reveal the years of heartache they suffered after his untimely
death.
Ken Potter, 77, was just six years old when his elder brother was
ambushed and killed while driving back to a base near Hebron in
Israel. 'Harry has never left our thoughts,' said the former
greengrocer, from Kidderminster. 'He is with us all the time, even
though he died such a very long time ago. 'We were just young kids
when it happened, all I was bothered about at that time was going and
playing. 'But I remember a policeman came to our door to give mum and
dad the news. They were very upset but we didn't really know what was
happening. 'All I can really remember about Harry is one time him
carrying me about by the fireplace. 'It was so long ago and I was so
young, but I never forget his face." Fellow brother Derek, 82, also
recalled their parents Edith and David, who had eight children,
finding out about their son's tragic end. 'I can remember our parents
being very upset but they kept it to themselves," said the retired
carpet maker, also from Kidderminster.
'They kept the war from us because we were just kids, but you could
tell something was very wrong. 'It was hard because a letter from
Harry arrived the day after the policeman came to tell us.' The
poignant personal note read: 'Dear Mother, I am getting on alright. I
expect to be home for Christmas. If I am not, it is a bit of bad luck.
'I hope dad is still in work. Tell Ken I am not forgetting his bike. I
hope Alice (his older sister) is alright. 'You perhaps have been
reading the papers. 'I am not boasting but listen to the news on the
wireless and listen to what work we in the Worcester shires have been
doing. 'Well, I think that is all for now. 'Cheerio, Crash Harry.'
The latest film in the blockbuster movie series Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows was released two weeks ago. The film is based on the
book which was released in 2007 as the last in the series of novel
about the fictional wizard at Hogwarts school. A staggering 44 million
copies of the book were sold around the world just eight months after
it was published.
But despite his late brother and the boy wizard sharing the same name,
Ken admits he has never watched the films. 'I've seen bits of them
fleetingly on the TV but I have never properly watched them," added
the dad-of-two. 'Actually, I never really twigged that Harry shared
the name with the film character. 'It was my sister's son who first
found out about the interest in his grave about three years ago while
on the internet. 'We couldn't believe people visit his grave, but
apparently they come from miles around to have their photo taken next
to it.' The real Harry Potter left his family's home in Kidderminster
to join the army in Birmingham in 1938. The 17 year-old lad was
desperate to serve his country, so lied about his age, telling the
recruiting sergeant he was a year older. He spent eight months
training with the 1st Battalion Worcestersire Regiment in Aldershot,
Hampshire, before being ordered to Palestine in September 1938.
His unit was garrisoned in the area to battle an Arab uprising, and
Pvt Potter was a driver in the Motor Transport section, where he
gained the 'Crash Harry' nickname. During spring 1939, he was based at
Deir Sha'ar, near Hebron. On July 22 of that year he was driving back
to the camp in convoy when they were ambushed by armed bandits. Pvt
Potter and fellow soldier Pvt Joseph Darby were killed in the attack.
But despite being given the tragic news soon after his death, it would
be 50 years before the family found out the exact circumstances.
Ken, married to wife Shirley for 56 years, said: "About 15 years ago a
fella came into the shop and said he was with Harry when he died.
'That was how we finally found out what had happened. 'He said Harry
had been shot by a Shot sniper during the attack while they were
driving back to the base. 'We had not known exactly what had happened
to Harry until that day. The chap was old when he came to see me and
has probably died now, but it was only through him we knew how Harry
died.'
Brother Derek is still the proud owner of Harry's campaign medal from
the Palestine conflict. Two more of Harry Potter's siblings are also
still alive and well in Kidderminster. His sister Joyce is 88 years
old, while youngest brother Ray, 75, has named his pet dog Harry after
his long lost brother. And there is one other spooky link to the boy
wizard. Harry's father David acquired a scar on his forehead, just
like the fictional character, while in the trenches during the Great
War. Ken added: 'Dad had a scar on his forehead from the First World
War. 'He was shot across the forehead when he was in the trenches.
They operated on him and put a metal plate in his head. 'He was never
the same after he came back from the war." As for visiting Harry's
grave, none of the family has been able to make the journey, despite
an invitation from the town's mayor. Ken, who served in the Korean War
with the Enniskillen Dragoon Guards while doing National Service,
added: 'The mayor of Ramla did once invite us to visit.
'We would love to go, but things just kind of trailed off and we
didn't hear any more. 'I know Ramla can be a bit of a dangerous place,
so I'm not sure if we will ever be able to see it.'
--
And thanks to the History Net listserv for bringing this story to light. It was originally published on the DailyMailonline.
----
The family of a real life Harry Potter who was killed in the army
claim that his grave has been turned into a tourist attraction by fans
of the hit book and movie series seeking their fictional hero. Private
Harry Potter was serving overseas when he died in Israel in 1939
during an uprising. His grave had gone unnoticed in the British
Military Cemetery in the town of Ramla for more than half a century.
But now the headstone has become an unlikely tourist attraction
because of J K Rowling's much-loved books and movies. Sightseers have
had their photos taken next to the grave, while the local tourist
board has listed it as an official attraction. And even though Mr
Potter, from Kidderminster, Worcs., would have led an active life in
the army, it is far removed from the magic and spells of the fictional
Harry Potter. Pvt Potter's surviving family members have come forward
to reveal the years of heartache they suffered after his untimely
death.
Ken Potter, 77, was just six years old when his elder brother was
ambushed and killed while driving back to a base near Hebron in
Israel. 'Harry has never left our thoughts,' said the former
greengrocer, from Kidderminster. 'He is with us all the time, even
though he died such a very long time ago. 'We were just young kids
when it happened, all I was bothered about at that time was going and
playing. 'But I remember a policeman came to our door to give mum and
dad the news. They were very upset but we didn't really know what was
happening. 'All I can really remember about Harry is one time him
carrying me about by the fireplace. 'It was so long ago and I was so
young, but I never forget his face." Fellow brother Derek, 82, also
recalled their parents Edith and David, who had eight children,
finding out about their son's tragic end. 'I can remember our parents
being very upset but they kept it to themselves," said the retired
carpet maker, also from Kidderminster.
'They kept the war from us because we were just kids, but you could
tell something was very wrong. 'It was hard because a letter from
Harry arrived the day after the policeman came to tell us.' The
poignant personal note read: 'Dear Mother, I am getting on alright. I
expect to be home for Christmas. If I am not, it is a bit of bad luck.
'I hope dad is still in work. Tell Ken I am not forgetting his bike. I
hope Alice (his older sister) is alright. 'You perhaps have been
reading the papers. 'I am not boasting but listen to the news on the
wireless and listen to what work we in the Worcester shires have been
doing. 'Well, I think that is all for now. 'Cheerio, Crash Harry.'
The latest film in the blockbuster movie series Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows was released two weeks ago. The film is based on the
book which was released in 2007 as the last in the series of novel
about the fictional wizard at Hogwarts school. A staggering 44 million
copies of the book were sold around the world just eight months after
it was published.
But despite his late brother and the boy wizard sharing the same name,
Ken admits he has never watched the films. 'I've seen bits of them
fleetingly on the TV but I have never properly watched them," added
the dad-of-two. 'Actually, I never really twigged that Harry shared
the name with the film character. 'It was my sister's son who first
found out about the interest in his grave about three years ago while
on the internet. 'We couldn't believe people visit his grave, but
apparently they come from miles around to have their photo taken next
to it.' The real Harry Potter left his family's home in Kidderminster
to join the army in Birmingham in 1938. The 17 year-old lad was
desperate to serve his country, so lied about his age, telling the
recruiting sergeant he was a year older. He spent eight months
training with the 1st Battalion Worcestersire Regiment in Aldershot,
Hampshire, before being ordered to Palestine in September 1938.
His unit was garrisoned in the area to battle an Arab uprising, and
Pvt Potter was a driver in the Motor Transport section, where he
gained the 'Crash Harry' nickname. During spring 1939, he was based at
Deir Sha'ar, near Hebron. On July 22 of that year he was driving back
to the camp in convoy when they were ambushed by armed bandits. Pvt
Potter and fellow soldier Pvt Joseph Darby were killed in the attack.
But despite being given the tragic news soon after his death, it would
be 50 years before the family found out the exact circumstances.
Ken, married to wife Shirley for 56 years, said: "About 15 years ago a
fella came into the shop and said he was with Harry when he died.
'That was how we finally found out what had happened. 'He said Harry
had been shot by a Shot sniper during the attack while they were
driving back to the base. 'We had not known exactly what had happened
to Harry until that day. The chap was old when he came to see me and
has probably died now, but it was only through him we knew how Harry
died.'
Brother Derek is still the proud owner of Harry's campaign medal from
the Palestine conflict. Two more of Harry Potter's siblings are also
still alive and well in Kidderminster. His sister Joyce is 88 years
old, while youngest brother Ray, 75, has named his pet dog Harry after
his long lost brother. And there is one other spooky link to the boy
wizard. Harry's father David acquired a scar on his forehead, just
like the fictional character, while in the trenches during the Great
War. Ken added: 'Dad had a scar on his forehead from the First World
War. 'He was shot across the forehead when he was in the trenches.
They operated on him and put a metal plate in his head. 'He was never
the same after he came back from the war." As for visiting Harry's
grave, none of the family has been able to make the journey, despite
an invitation from the town's mayor. Ken, who served in the Korean War
with the Enniskillen Dragoon Guards while doing National Service,
added: 'The mayor of Ramla did once invite us to visit.
'We would love to go, but things just kind of trailed off and we
didn't hear any more. 'I know Ramla can be a bit of a dangerous place,
so I'm not sure if we will ever be able to see it.'
--
And thanks to the History Net listserv for bringing this story to light. It was originally published on the DailyMailonline.
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