I'm welcoming back my friend, Paula Martin, who has a new novel to share with us which is 'right up my street'. Paula and I have quite a few things in common like our professional backgrounds, our love of history, and in particular for this current blog post - our love of ancestry. For her latest story, Irish Inheritance, she's had to create a family tree with all the interesting ramifications that can throw up. Readers of both my contemporary ancestral mysteries- Monogamy Twist and Topaz Eyes - will likely have read how much I enjoyed doing that for my own writing, and I know Paula's had great fun creating hers as well.I've not managed to read Irish Inheritance yet, but I've read other Paula Martin stories and thoroughly enjoyed them. I'm sure you will, too!
Over to Paula...
Inventing Family
History
For my latest release, ‘Irish Inheritance’, I needed to
invent some family history for my American hero and English heroine. They have
jointly inherited a house on the west coast of Ireland, but neither of them has
ever heard of the Irish woman who has bequeathed it to them. This leads them
into an intriguing, and sometimes puzzling, journey into their individual
family histories, until they eventually unravel the tale of a 19th century love
affair.
Sorting out this family history was fascinating for me too!
I’ve done quite a lot of research into my own family history, so at least I was
aware of the resources that are available online.
What I didn’t know before I started was that only the 1901
and 1911 Irish censuses are available. The census records for 1861-1891 were
pulped, by government order, during the 1st World War, and the earlier records
from 1821 to 1851 were destroyed by a fire at the Public Record Office in 1922.
This actually worked to my advantage, as it meant my characters couldn’t find
out where their ancestors were living before 1901. The census records did help
me, though, to see what names were popular in the early 20th century, and also
to find out what streets and houses existed at that time in the Irish town of Clifden in County
Galway.
Coincidentally, most of the USA
1890 census was destroyed by a fire at the Commerce
Building in Washington DC
in 1921. Again, this proved very convenient for me – although it must be so
frustrating for American researchers!
My own research came in useful, too, when my heroine asks
someone to look up information about her great-grandmother, because the 1911
census does not shown the maiden name of a wife. The heroine needs to know
this, and I could easily imagine her researcher trawling through the marriage records
to find one that seemed to be the right one. I say ‘seemed’ because in family
history research, we can’t always assume that something that looks right
actually is the correct record.
Another ‘headache’ in creating an imaginary family tree was
getting ages right. I couldn’t have someone getting married when they were 15,
or a woman having a child when she was in her 70s!
When I needed one couple to die relatively young, I had to
search for plausible reasons for this, which was where my knowledge of history
came in useful. The Spanish flu epidemic at the end of World War 1 fitted the
bill perfectly, and so did the evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940.
I really did enjoy inventing this family history, even
though I must have drawn and re-drawn the ‘family tree’ a dozen or more times
before I eventually decided it worked!
I know exactly how that felt because I had to re-draft my family trees many times, Paula, but if you're like I was it was so exhilarating when the final version was constructed and everything seemed to 'fit' perfectly! Thank you for such a great blog post, Paula.
Bio:
Paula Martin lives near Manchester in North West
England and has two daughters and two grandsons.
She had some early publishing
success with four romance novels and several short stories, but then had a
break from writing while she brought up a young family and also pursued her
career as a history teacher for twenty-five years. She has recently returned to
writing fiction, after retiring from teaching, and is thrilled to have found
publishing success again with her contemporary romances.
Apart from writing, she
enjoys visiting new places. She has travelled extensively in Britain and Ireland,
mainland Europe, the Middle East, America
and Canada.
Her other interests include musical theatre and tracing her family history.
Blurb for ‘Irish
Inheritance’
English actress Jenna Sutton and American artist Guy
Sinclair first meet when they jointly inherit a house on the west coast of Ireland.
Curious about their unknown benefactress and why they are considered 'family',
they discover surprising links to the original owners of the house.
They soon unravel an intriguing tale of a 19th century love
affair. At the same time, their mutual attraction grows, despite personal reasons
for not wanting romantic involvements at this point in their lives.
A local property agent appears to have her own agenda
concerning the house while other events pull Jenna and Guy back to separate
lives in London and America. Friction builds over their
decision about the house and its contents.
Will their Irish inheritance eventually drive them apart –
or bring them together?
Links:
Website: http://paulamartinromances.webs.com
Amazon author page: http://amzn.to/KtlU6Y
Thank you for popping in today, Paula, and best wishes with Irish Inheritance.
Slainthe!
My dad worked on our family tree for ten years: it literally looks like an inverted tree with micro branches. I could study it for hours, but I always come away with the feeling that the "tree" doesn't tell me anything about my ancestors' lives.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Ana. A tree with just names and dates is simply a 'list' - which is why I like the census information and obituaries (if you can find any), as they help to build up a picture of your ancestors. I also enjoy pondering the questions to which I will probably never know the answers - like 'Why did great-grandmother move from Liverpool (where she's always lived) to East Lancashire in the middle of the 1870s' - and what happened to her husband (as I can't find any record of his death). Researching family history (as distinct from compiling a family tree) is fascinating - and addictive!
ReplyDeleteI loved this story as I do any Paula Martin novel. Paula, while doing your research did you use any program such as Ancestry dot com?
ReplyDeleteHi, Toni, and thanks! I did use Ancestry for the English census records and the Birth, Marriage, and Death indexes, and I also used the Irish National Archives. Fortunately, there are so many useful genealogical records online these days (far more than when I started researching my own family history about 12 years ago)..
ReplyDeleteHi Paula and visitors. I agree that there are some really good sites out there for ancestry now. I use Ancestry for my own family history researching but came to some blind ends with my Irish records since a lot of Cavan records were burned in a fire at the Records Office around the 1920s.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your blog today, Paula. I know you worked diligently to get all the facts correct. Another great book to be sure.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Linda. It was fun inventing an imaginary family history!
ReplyDeleteNancy, I've not been able to trace a couple of what I think were my Irish ancestors -but they came over to England from Ireland in the late 18th/early 19th centuries.
ReplyDelete