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Jigsaws
by Val Atkinson
Article ID: 20, First Published: February 2005I was taught jigsaw making by experts in the days when families sat together after tea and did things.
In case you don’t know, the method is:
• Find the four corner pieces and place them
• Collect all the straight edges and make the framework
• Sift through the rest looking for pieces that catch the eye: a splash of red maybe, a sudden yellow in the dimness of the forest, or a profusion of flowers on grass
• Make a collection of the rest and put them into large heaps: endless blue sky or sea, large expanses of greenery, or the monotonous brickwork on the sides of a town’s worth of houses
• Fit the eye catching groups together and position them according to the picture
• Tackle the heaps by spreading them out. Arrange according to shape and colour, then painstakingly one by one, test them in the vacant places until they fit
‘Working the Heaps’ is not a task for the faint hearted, because you need patience in buckets, a love of jigsaws, and the self control not to smash the whole thing apart when it takes its time coming together.
‘Working the Heaps’ can be a time of reflection and pondering while your hands do the job.
Recently I was talking about ‘Pathways from the Past’.
Jigsaws work on the same principle. We are working back to the original picture before it was cut up into bits. Because we know jigsaw pieces were once a complete picture we persevere through difficulties to restore them.
When we start research it’s a bit like the jigsaw and its rules. We make the framework and go for the bits that stand out, thoroughly enjoying ourselves as we fit them together. These include:
• The pleasure of unusual names that hit you in the eye: Anastasia Higginbotton, Sophronia Lackland, Robert Zanty Glover, to mention but a few. They jump out of censuses and indexes in a mass of colour, and they don’t have to be turned all ways before they fit. THEY ARE SO INTERESTING! You really want to find out everything about Robert Zanty Glover, and when you’ve found it all you still keep looking for more while you roll the name round your tongue. Every time you see a ‘Z’ you get excited.
• The knowledge of occupations related to an industry such as mining: pony putter hewer/ sinker/engine man/brakesman/horse keeper/stone man/water leader
• Awareness of terms connected with that industry such as: ‘Sand Feeder’ and ‘Inundation’. A ‘sand feeder’ is a huge amount of water and very wet sand. An ‘inundation’ is caused when the fast flow of this water and wet sand into the pit shaft overcomes the strength of the pumping engine.
• Finding out what unknown mining expressions mean, such as: canting out the timber/ kip/sets/dirt band/kirving/sprags/jud props/
NOW WE’RE LEFT WITH THE HEAPS : Not a task for the faint hearted!
In research terms it means dealing with problems like:
• Multiple use of a favourite family name through the generations: I once found cousins of the same name who had sons with the same name who had daughters of the same name. That was real ‘Endless blue sky jigsaw work’
• Common names that repeat themselves in records and can’t be readily identified as your people (monotonous brickwork on the sides of a town’s worth of houses)
• Inter marriage among families until you can’t tell who’s who, and they all look the same (large expanses of greenery)
• Conflicting memories of the same event (The pieces all look the same!)
There’s no easy way to deal with the ‘heaps’ but an expression of my father’s comes to mind: ‘I’LL FETTLE YOU!’
(Sometimes uttered in connection with naughty children!)
The process of ‘fettling’ involves finishing a job off no matter how tedious or repetitive, and tying up loose ends. Mill fettlers cleaned mill machinery, removing accumulations of fibres, grease, and generally made them workable again. Iron fettlers finished a process in the foundries
A jigsaw piece/solitary family member is like a piece of mill machinery or a lump of iron that needs a fettler.
NO PIECE IN THE HEAP IS UNIMPORTANT.
We don’t throw jigsaw pieces away, and families are a good deal more important!
If you need to employ a researcher, think of yourself as a partner in solving problems. Put in your ‘two pennyworth’ as they say in England, and it could yield riches beyond imagination.
THIS IS WHAT I MEAN:
Look at this ‘throwaway’ comment that seems to say nothing useful, apart from anecdotal memories of childhood.
“My mother would like to find her roots. She remembers going to see a grandfather Jerom who was a game keeper and he lived in a cottage in the woods”.
At first glance it’s ‘HEAP’ information: the same colour as millions of others.
Well, a researcher found that ‘Cottage in the Woods’ with the ancestor living in it, and there was a gamekeeper, and he was the grandfather.
1881 CENSUS: Cottage In The Wood Chelsham, Surrey England
Richard HUMPHREY Head M 69 Merstham Surrey England Ag Lab
Sarah HUMPHREY Wife M 68 Chelsham Surrey England
William KING Son U 40 Chelsham Surrey England Ag Lab
Elizabeth R. TR...M Gran Daur 4 Chelsham Surrey England
(This is Elizabeth Rose JERRUM the mother of the lady who ‘wanted to find her roots’. Her parents were three doors away)
Ten years later with her father George (Grandfather Jerom the Gamekeeper):
1891 CENSUS:
George Jerram 34 Sanderstead Surrey Head Gamekeeper
Sarah Jerram, 36 Chelsham Surrey Wife
Rose Jerram 14 Chelsham Surrey Daughter
Martha Jerram 12 Chelsham Surrey Daughter
There is something so satisfying about being part of a team, and then to stand back and view the whole picture/family the team has created.
You can’t understand what the problem was because it all looks so FETTLED AND FINISHED.
Say this to yourselves:
LET’S SET TO AND FETTLE THEM ALL!
