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Take me up the Tyne in a Little Boat
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 1, First Published: February 2004Take me up the Tyne in a Little Boat (and don't forget your atlas!) I want ancestors who stay put, and sometimes I get them!
It’s a great pleasure and satisfaction to find them obligingly living in the same street for census after census. They have the same occupation, the same wife, and the requisite five children every ten years who are christened in the same church two months after their births, and married there after a reasonable, sensible and easily discoverable time. This is perpetuated through the generations in a very satisfactory manner.
I’ve had more than one ‘stay put’ family and I think of them often and fondly. They are the blueprint and symbol of my ideal genealogy, and anyone who has such a family is entitled to gloat over them.
However, genealogy though addictive and ‘more-ish’ is rarely ideal, and I’ve been taken out of my comfort zone more times than I’ve stayed in it.
I once found a ‘stay put’ family in four censuses, but after exhaustive searching couldn’t locate them in any parish records, and had to buy (a lot of!) birth certificates.
Years later, quite by chance, I discovered them in the totally wrong parish, in the wrong town and county, but giving their own well known ‘stay put’ address.
Change of parish I could handle, but a total change of town and county was something that hadn’t entered my mind at all!
When I got out atlas and street map, I saw that the family lived right by the North Shields ferry landing. For them it was much easier to ferry across the River Tyne to St. Hilda’s church in South Shields than walk all the way up the Borough Bank to one of the North Shields parishes.
I hate to admit it, but I could see their point. The Borough Bank is still there, and it’s very steep.
That experience taught me a lot, and I began to keep my eye ‘on the water’ when doing research because little boats and ferries continually crossed the River Tyne in bygone years, and my ancestors used them. I also became aware of the possibility of long gone bridges making a difference to the place of baptism, and I was more careful before giving up. This resulted in a bonanza of finds, and I felt as though ancestors were coming out of the woodwork.
Children born in Medomsley Durham but baptised in Whittonstall Northumberland or born in Gateshead Durham but baptised in All Saints Newcastle, were just the start.
When we’re ‘genealogying’ we should be very aware of rivers that also form county boundaries such as the River Tyne between Durham and Northumberland.
What have I learned from all this?
Well, I’m not so affectionately attached to my counties any more, and my geography has improved dramatically. My map goes everywhere with me and places or parishes don’t just exist in the vacuum of the archive leaflet. I’m more open minded when faced with a ‘disappearing ancestor’ and I turn over a few more stones. I’m willing to think laterally and deviously when I’m researching, and I’m no longer dogmatic about ‘knowing’ where my ancestors are.
Also, I’m a bit impatient with people who are like I used to be!
Now the question isn’t only ‘Which parish church serves the area I’m researching’? but:
"Where is the boatman I’ll give any money,
And you for your trouble rewarded shall be,
To ferry me over the Tyne to me hinny,
And I will remember the boatman and thee"
