Family Tree

When I was cleaning up my apartment at New year, I found a five-thousand yen book token my students had given me when I left my last job. I took it down to Kinokunia bookshop yesterday, and they told me that even after four years, it was still valid. I was aiming at get something which I would never buy for myself, and looking around the shelves, it didn't take me long to decide what I wanted: The Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers. Thanks to that, I can tell you that the pretty flower above is a "Blue Beauty" water lily. I photographed it at Shinjuku Gyoen a few years ago, one hot summer afternoon after coming back from the dentist. I staggered around the park almost passing out from sunstroke and the effects of the dental anesthetic.

Yesterday was also the day when I finally started researching my family tree, or to be more accurate, I started researching how to research my family tree. There is a bewildering collection of online sites, some free and some not-so-free. I don't want to pay through the nose for something only to find that it is online elsewhere for no charge, so I have started trawling through the genealogy listings. The best thing I have found so far was the 1881 UK census, which is free to view. Through that I found my mother's father's father and grandfather and their household. I discovered their names: great-great-grandfather William and great-great-grandmother Emma, both born in Derby in 1848. By this time they were living in Sheffield with their four kids, William Henry (my great-grandfather) 7, Lillie 6, Betsy 2 and Eliza 3m. William is described as an "Iron Puddler", and Wiki tells me that this was a highly-skilled, but also extremely dangerous job - one of the most dangerous in a foundry. I am guessing that they moved from Derby to Sheffield so he could get a job in the steel industry. It seems from the records that William died aged only 38, so that is the first mystery I would like to solve - what happened to him? Was there an accident at the foundry, or did he die of other causes? Another mystery concerns their lodger, Fredrick, who seems to have been William's older brother. He is listed as an engine driver and on the 1871 census, he was recorded as living in Derby with his wife, Fanny. Ten years later he is in Sheffield lodging with his brother and there is no sign of his wife, so what happened there?