More revelations

Saturday evening 17th July, the day of the Tearle meet. I drove down fairly early this morning, leaving home around 8:40am. The trip was pretty uneventful, arriving in the village of Stanbridge at around 10.00am, I had a bit of a drive around first, just getting a feeling for the size of the place. One thing struck me straight away - the houses don't look at all old, all are of brick, I didn't see a stone building anywhere (except the church). On reflection this may be something to do with the area - not too far from some of the largest brickworks in the UK! 

After parking up at the local pub car park I made my way across the green to the church of St John the Baptist where the meet was taking place. 

Entering the church I was nowhere near the first to arrive, I was met at the door by Barbara Tearle who was the first of this line in my tree to contact me after reading this blog just after I came back from India. Barbara introduced me to Ewart, who is a New Zealander. We spoke for a while about my roots and I offered a few records so he could copy them for his files.

There were a number of 'trees' located around the place, the longest of which ran the length of the building, right from the altar down through the nave, it must have been over 60 feet long! However, this wasn't the one I was interested in, that was a shorter one, but to me, much more important. This was the line from William Tearle of Stanbridge (1749). This was where my James came from. Having a good look and checking against what I had been given before by Ewart, all seemed to tally quite well (there was a slight transposition of birthplaces, but apart from that it looked good), and my grandparents, Harry Edward Essex & Ida (Margaret Ida Bale) his wife were displayed. 

I spent some time just wandering around, going outside to take a few photos of the churchyard, and back in to look some more over the records. It was also interesting to listen to the different accents, Ewart and his wife with the New Zealand twang (sounded a sort of cross between Australian and South African to me!), various London strains wafting around the room, and others without a specific accent. 

Studying the faces, I really couldn't see any sort of family resemblance with anyone of my own line, which wasn't surprising really as most or all the attendees were of other Tearle lineage. 

As lunchtime approached we made our way to the pub for lunch, I chose to sit at a table set for two, not a lot of point in taking up a table with six or eight settings I thought. There was a woman just wandering around the dining room so I offered her a seat at my table. We got talking and it turns out she had only joined the Tearle online group a couple of days ago and had come up from Bristol at the last minute. All I really found out was that her name was Anne Tearle, that she had two children, one of each, and also had a brother who had children. She stated that she too was part of William Tearle's line.

Her mother had died last year (2009) and she had found some letters from her father's family when she had been clearing out after the funeral. It turned out that her father hadn't been the sort to keep in touch, and when he died some 40 years previous, someone in his family had written to her mother, but she hadn't responded either. Anne thought it was about time to make it up to her grandfather and find out a little about where her name (and she) came from. Dinner passed without much conversation, always a little awkward between two strangers, and there were a number of short speeches from various quarters within the gathered group.

Making our way back to the church after lunch, Anne was already pouring over the tree when I entered the church, I was surprised that she appeared to be centred on the area where my family were entered. She pointed out where her entry was, I found myself standing talking to the great granddaughter of James Tearle. My mother is also a great granddaughter of the same man! This was a direct descendant of Henry James, Frances' brother, albeit by different mothers, but the same blood-line all the same.
It seems that both brother and sister's families suffered much the same fate, Frances and husband George Essex died in India within a few months of each other in 1897, their three children being orphaned to two uncles back in England, Henry James and his wife Louisa also died within a short space of time, Henry in Lagos, Nigeria in 1914, and Louisa at sea on 28 March 1915, their six children becoming orphans. Annes' grandfather, Frank George Tearle spent some time in one of Dr Barnardos orphanages, coming out to be taken in by what she always thought was an uncle 'Arthur Tearle', it would appear this might have been an older brother instead.
Anne, please forgive me if I have any of these facts wrong, I made no notes at the time and all is from memory.

So, there we have it! A real live long-lost relative. Probably the closest I could ever have expected to meet today, there wasn't a lot of chance that any of Pop Harry's sibling lines were going to put in an appearance.

A red letter day, topped off by an email later on from Barbara with references to James Tearles' military record. He served for over 13 years, a private, corporal and finally six-odd years as a sergeant, discharged on 16 October 1866, in his posession three medals for the Crimea with the clasp for Sebastopol, and an examplary character!
The date of 17th July 2010 closed with an air of contentment.