How time flies

I hadn't realised how long it is since I last made an entry in my blog. I've been prompted to update for two reasons. Firstly, a great friend of mine has finally entered the world of blogging and I've added a new section of my Favourite Blogs with Jen's as my first entry. You really should check her stuff out.

The other reason is that we recently took a holiday to Darlington in County Durham which is where my Great Grandfather was born and my Grandfather spent his first four years after the family returned from Madagascar. All of the family has now either passed away or moved away from the area so finding references to Hodgkin was quite difficult. However, my Great Grandfather's wife was from the Pease family and his Grandfather on his mother's side was a Backhouse and that made things a lot easier. Pease and Backhouse were sponsors of Stevenson and his passenger railway and were the financiers behind the Stockton to Darlington Railway. As we wandered around Darlington we found lots of references to these two gentlemen and their predecessors. Backhouse was the co-owner of the bank that is now known as Barclays and Pease was in partnership with three others in a bank which sold out eventually to what is now Lloyds TSB.

The old family home is so big that not long after my Great Great Grandfather (Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin) died, it was sold to a Methodist couple who donated it to the Methodist church and it is now Elm Ridge Church. There has been some modification to accommoate a large expanse for a church, but one of the rooms has a picture of Jonathan B's wife Mary, two of his watercolours on the wall and a photo of Jonathan B and Mary sitting on the back steps of the house. Ironically, the room is called the Hodgkin Quiet Room - you don't normally see Hodgkin and Quiet in the same location!

We also spent some time in the Quaker Burial Ground behind Darlington Meeting House. There, all the relatives are lined up in a row. Unfortunately, some of the older headstones have been laid against a wall which is now being intruded upon by the roots of the trees, but on the whole I got lots of photographs, including a photo of my Great Grandmother's grave. The members of the meeting didn't understand why Lydia was buried in Darlington when she'd originally come from down South. I tried to get them to understand that she had probably held with the view that when you marry, you take on your husband's family. When she died, she died a Hodgkin, so it was only fitting that she be buried with the rest of the Hodgkins.

I'd like to go back and spend some more time in the library at Darlington Meeting House. There is a whole wall of bookcases full of books by family members that I'd like to sit and look through. I mentioned that there is a Hodgkin Pedigree Book (which I thought was unusual) that has the entire family listing in it, and was told that there was also a Backhouse and a Pease Pedigree Book. Finally, I can learn how the families meet up. Until three generations ago, Quakers didn't marry non-Quakers so the same names creep up a lot in a Quaker family tree.