Carbrooke Heritage Group News February 2014

 

The Wayland Heritage Group are applying to the Heritage Lottery Fund, for help with commemorating WW1, it is hoped a book and DVD can be produced to cover the whole Wayland area, reflecting the effect the war had on, and left on our rural community. How were the farms affected by many of the young men leaving for war, did crops have to change, were horses requisitioned from local farms, how did the women left behind cope and adapt, did war technology have any effect on the area, and what were the legacies of the conflict.

If anyone is keen to get involved, please contact us, this is more a project recording local effects, rather than just studying the death of a particular soldier, but we would like to hear from anyone with any interest. It is hoped to launch, with an open day in Watton, when people can come along and share stories, papers or items of interest.

At the end of March we celebrate ‘Mothering Sunday’, which although in recent years it has become rather commercialised,  is an ancient celebration, originally when people returned to their ‘Mother Church’, and also in celebration of Mary, Mother of Jesus, and to appreciate our mothers, as today, by giving posies of spring flowers.

Anybody researching family history prior to 1837, will realise how difficult it becomes to actually discover who the women in our families were. Church and secular records did not always recognise women in their own right, and they were often known as ‘wife of’ or ‘widow of’. Mothers were often not even named at children’s Baptisms. In spite of the fact that it cannot be disputed that a mother having given birth, was a mother, the same cannot be said of who an actual father might be!

The study of DNA, which puts a scientific slant onto family history, can identify our hereditary. And anybody who thinks that family history is boring or irrelevant, may like to consider genetics, and how we become who we are, all related to history really! It has been discovered, maternal DNA, unlike paternal DNA, can take us back to one of seven female individuals, who we are all descended from. All females, carry their mothers DNA, back to one of these 7 individuals, and pass it on to the next generation, males carry their mothers DNA, but do not pass it on to the next generation. This is a very simplistic version, of a complicated concept. Although the paper trail and historical records to our maternal ancestry may not be very good, nature remembers who our mothers were, in our DNA, and give us clues to our maternal ancestry.

The next Carbrooke Heritage meeting in Carbrooke Village Hall on 19^th March at 7pm (if you plan on attending, please contact us beforehand as the date is unconfirmed). All welcome to our informal meetings.