I have been thinking for some time of writing about one of the shakier boughs in my Family Tree – the Kenyons.
'Shaky' - not that I have anything specific against them – more that I can’t quite place them in terms of achievements and attitudes.
I think we all have families in our backgrounds like that – we are not quite sure whether the oral history is simply putting a good face on things or possibly masking something.
And this set me thinking about the thoughts, thought processes and drives that cascade down from generation to generation - going ‘Into the Woods’ as it were.
Just as we are a mixture of the genes that we have inherited from our ancestors, our personal attitudes and the family cultures that we build for our children draw upon the ‘memes’ of those who have gone before.
Memes are chunks and strands of thought processes. A couple of definitions:
‘A meme (rhyming with "cream") is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another’ at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memes
‘meme: a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation)’ at:
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn.
I started thinking about this back in 1990 when I happened to be on a business trip in London, on behalf of my employer the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. I met up with my sister and brother in law and we went to see Stephen Sondheim’s Musical ‘Into the Woods’.
In the Sondheim Musical several parts are doubled. Cinderella's Prince and the Wolf, who share the characteristic of being unable to control their appetites, are played by the same actor.
Similarly, the Narrator and the Mysterious Man, who share the characteristic of commenting on the story while avoiding any personal involvement or responsibility, are played by the same actor.
Granny and Cinderella's Mother, whose characters are both matriarchal characters in the story, are also typically played by the same person, who also gives voice to the nurturing but later murderous Giant's Wife.
The show covers multiple themes: growing up, parents and children, accepting responsibility, morality, and finally, wish fulfillment and its consequences.
William A. Henry III wrote that the play's "basic insight... is at heart, most fairy tales are about the loving yet embattled relationship between parents and children. Almost everything that goes wrong — which is to say, almost everything that can — arises from a failure of parental or filial duty, despite the best intentions."
Stephen Holden writes that the themes of the show include parent-child relationships and the individual's responsibility to the community. The witch isn't just a scowling old hag but a key symbol of moral ambivalence.
James Lapine said that the most unpleasant person (the Witch) would have the truest things to say and the "nicer" people would be less honest. In the Witch's words: "I'm not good; I'm not nice; I'm just right'.
And as the stories meld together and cascade through time, characters go from hero to zero - and then on to legend if they are lucky. Just life real life and the subjects of real family histories then.
But Sondheim also made the point in one of his songs that we can actually inherit thought processes and patterns from our forebears. This of course is genetic rather than imitative but then Nature and Nurture are often Siamese Twins.
It is in some senses a comforting thought for posthumous or dislocated children like me who have never known one or both of their parents but in other ways perhaps a disquieting notion.
My sister and I recently had a related conversation when I was back in England on a trip late last year.
We tried to decide the genetic provenance of the abrupt and scathingly direct and often highly inappropriate interjections that sometimes exploded into family conversations. Generally, they were apparently ignored and life went on as before but pock-marked with shell holes.
My mother who suffered with this, referred to it as ‘nast’ using a Cheshire dialect term (i.e. a noun back-formed from nasty). And occasionally people would be admonished with ‘less of the nast’. She also used to talk about women who had ‘It’ – exhibiting a kind of histrionic and aggressive form of nagging.
Well, we couldn’t quite pin down the genetics but we did eliminate some of the possible candidate families.
But there were other subtler forces at work shaping our attitudes.
We definitely have an aristocratic streak. At the farmhouse where I grew up, there was a ceremonial front room that we called the ‘Green Room’ (even after it underwent an otherwise complete transformation into rusts and pinks).
As with many ‘front parlours’ in Northern English houses, it was almost entirely for show. And prominently displayed in a little antique magazine rack, for the occasional posh visitors, were relatively recent copies of upper crust magazines like ‘Cheshire Life’, ‘Vogue’, and ‘The Tatler’.
There is little doubt where the memes behind these aspirations come from. They stem from the Salters.
Asked whether she would like to be among a very select group who would be able to meet Prince Charles when he ‘saddled up’ for the Cheshire Hounds at my brother-in-law’s farm, my mother tutted and then declared that she would have attended for the Queen Mother but was not prepared to stir for the Prince.
And when John originally took the tenancy of the beautiful farm, nestled next to Cholmondely Castle, my grandmother commented, gazing at the elegant three-storey Georgian farmhouse ‘This is more what we are accustomed to!’
Well it was, in a manner of speaking.
But in 1881 the Salters, like 16 percent of the national workforce of England and Wales (including 1.3m women) were in domestic service. My great, great grandfather Joseph Salter was a Liveryman who helped run the Stables at Upham House, the ‘seat’ owned by the Hornsley Family in Hampshire.
[In 1881, according to Mrs Beeton's revised 'Book of Household Management', a man on £1,000 a year could afford five servants. Mind you, it was possible to hire a cook for as little as £15 and a maid for as little as £9 a year – and the 'General Report' of the 1881 Census commented on 'the increasing difficulty of finding suitable servants'].
So, given half a chance, the adopted, cross-spliced Hornsley memes kicked in downstream as the family prospered.
Well what about the Kenyons?
The legend there is that they were rich but that they were cruelly robbed by fate of their birthright.
The story goes something like this. My great grandmother Sarah Clarke (nee Kenyon) was the daughter of a wealthy businessman in Oldham. The family had built a street of tenanted houses there – Kenyon Street. However, there were problems with business partners and inheritances, and an unscrupulous intervention by a man with the name of Ormerod led to the loss of the family fortune.
And possible links were hinted to the family of Lord Lloyd Kenyon of Gredington, Flintshire and Kenyon Peel Hall, Lancashire. [During his long career at the Bar, Lord Chief Justice Kenyon was concerned with many interesting cases: as advocate he led the defence of lord George Gordon in 1780 ; as judge , he presided over the trial of Stockdale for libel, in 1789 , and, for a period, over the trial of Warren Hastings].
Trouble is I can find no inkling of this in the available data.
This is what I wrote in my Family History (blending census data and oral history):
‘My maternal grandfather David Clarke was born around 1888. David Clarke’s father (my great grandfather) was also called David and was born on 26th August 1842. Old David Clarke was a relatively wealthy accountant who made his money providing auditing services to the cotton milling industry.
He married a much younger woman, Sarah Kenyon on the 9th April 1882. Sarah was born in 1862. In the 1881 Census she was recorded as being 19 years old, and was then working as a dressmaker living with her married sister Elizabeth Nicholson at 119 West Street, Oldham).
The Marriage Certificate for great grandfather David Clarke and Sarah Kenyon records David as an Accountant. It confirms Sarah's address as 119 West Street, Oldham and her married sister Betty Nicholson was one of the witnesses. The other witness was George / Georgie Kenyon (presumably her brother).
Sarah's father Oliver Kenyon was already dead by the time she married (which may explain why she was living with her sister). We can't be at all sure of Oliver Kenyon's occupation. It clearly was not a common one that can be easily deciphered from Minister John Barry's quirky handwriting. [I am now pretty positive that it was ‘Provisioner’ (i.e. wholesale trader)].
There is a photograph in Roy Jenkins’ biography of Winston Churchill of Churchill speaking at the Shambles, Manchester before WW1 and the shop in the background has the inscription “Kenyon – Wines and Spirits” (the owners of this establishment may well have been relatives).
The data on my Clarke – Kenyon family that can be gleaned from the 1901 Census is as follows. They were then living at 20 Whitehouse Lane, Wistaston, Nantwich. By that time, my great grandfather David had already died and Sarah was the head of household, aged 39. She had been born in Oldham, Lancashire.
Her children are given as: Florence (Florrie) 17 dressmaker, born Oldham [never married]; Rossela A. (Rosie) 16, Teachers School Assistant, born Wermeth, Oldham; Lillian Annette (Nettie) 14, Teachers School, Assistant, born Wermeth, Oldham; David Kenyon 13, born Nantwich (my grandfather); Francies A. (Frankie) aged 5.
Apparently, the family was very well-respected and Sarah was offered the opportunity to become a Justice of the Peace - very rare for a woman at that time. There are also oral history memories of the family have a carriage / trap pulled by 2 white horses (today's equivalent of a Rolls or Jag).
However, inflation and children gradually ate into Sarah's resources and the family became quite impoverished.
My father ‘Jay’ was appalled in the late 1930s to find the family using old man Clarke's book collection for toilet paper’.
[I used to have a Box Brownie 'snap' of her at this time - sadly lost - that showed her as a rather stout Russian Doll with pinned back braids].
Census Records and BMD searches provide the following additional data:
In 1841, my great, great grandfather Oliver Kenyon was 23 years old and he was running a small farm with his elder brother Robert at New Springs in the Ashton & Oldham district.
Apparently, his father George (60) was still on the home farm at Higher Boarshaw in the Ashton & Oldham district, with his wife Esther (55) and their eldest son Major. There were also two daughters, Esther aged 14 and Mary aged 8.
Oliver Kenyon married Sarah Robishaw and in the records of the marriage (27th May 1844), Oliver is recorded as a Carter and his father George Kenyon as a farmer.
Sarah's father James Robishaw does not give his profession - in fact Robishaw is a very rare and specifically Oldham name and a subsequent Robishaw records himself as 'Squire Robishaw' in the 1881 Census (almost certainly though this is a rogue forename not a 'title').
The marriage of Oliver and Sarah took place at Oldham St Mary's, Oldham and my great grandmother’s sister Betty Kenyon married William H. Nicholson at the same church in 1876.
However, neither Oliver nor his bride Sarah Robishaw could write their names in 1844 - they signed with crosses.
It appears that Sarah senior had died before the 1871 census and as her youngest child in the 1871 census was Sarah junior, aged 9, she probably died in Oldham some-time between 1862 and 1871. A possible is a Sarah Kenyon who died in the June quarter of 1870 aged 42.
The basic family in 1871, as reflected in an earlier censuses comprised parents Oliver and Sarah plus Robert, Esther, Elizabeth, Major [again a repeat of the unusual forename] and Sarah Junior [the ancestor].
So there we have it - tales of fabulous carriages drawn by white horses, lost wealth and the buffets of fate. Or maybe, Sarah after her husband had died and being well distant from Oldham, decided to petit point a little embroidery on the family tapestry?
After all, she had a father who was illiterate and it is very unlikely it seems to me that a woman of her limited education would have been considered as a JP – particularly in an era when women could still not vote.
So what memes have come down to us from the Kenyons?
Maybe we get some story-telling capabilities from them; a preoccupation with inherited wealth; a certain chip on our shoulders; and even the risk of becoming ‘strangers to the truth’ if we don’t keep our feet on the ground.
I obviously get my respect for books and the written word from another source!
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NOTES ON THE NAME
Kenyon is one of those locally common South Lancashire locative surnames. Like as not, a well-populated male-line ydna surname study would show that many of the families are directly related.
My Kenyons come from Middleton in Lancashire near Oldham – not far in fact from the site of Kenyon Peel Hall in Little Hulton.
The small hamlet of Kenyon is south of Wigan in South Lancashire. It is a place-name that apparently was originally Cruc Einion in Welsh, meaning Einion’s Mound.
It is possible that it was the capital and subsequent burial place of Einion Yrth, a Celtic chieftain in post-Roman Britain who may have been the leader who combined his forces with those mobilised by St Germanus to defeat Irish intruders around 470.
Einion Yrth’s son Cadwallon Llawhir is credited with finally dislodging the Irish from North Wales and Anglesey around the year 500.
There have been suggestions that Einion Yrth was one of the Dark Ages heroes whose exploits contributed to the legends of King Arthur. And that the River Douglas near Kenyon is the River Dublas that, according to Nennius, was the site of one of Arthur’s twelve famous battles.
The stories place Kenyon clearly in the Welsh-speaking Old North (Yr hen Ogledd), whose inhabitants were also known as the Race of Cole (Old King Cole no less – who as we all know was ‘A Merry Old Soul’)
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