Broadland Tree

K Andrews Marcel

Description

Martin Allen is a thirty-five-year-old construction surveyor, an ordinary man who is pursuing a long-run ambition of tracing his family tree. His search has finally come to an end, stopping at a record of a baptism held in 1777 of a child called Jacob, to parents Edward and Elizabeth Allen. No more information can be found beyond that date, it is a mystery to him who his ancestors were. This story covers the lost story of his discovered ancestors and follows three generations from the Georgian period to the beginning of the Victorian age. The setting is the county of Norfolk, particularly around the city of Norwich, and covers the lives of simple working people living around both a rural and city setting who are enjoying love, suffering loss and tragedy, and living their lives according to the seasons.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 août 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528956567
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Broadland Tree
Marcel K Andrews
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-08-30
The Broadland Tree About the Author About the Book Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Introduction Chapter One Chapter Two The Story Begins Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Jacob’s Story Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven John and Amelia Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four
About the Author
The author, Marcel K Andrews, comes from Norwich and works in the construction industry as a bricklayer. He is married and has a teenage son. His first steps into writing began back in 2007 when he learned to use a computer by tracing his ancestry and turning his research into a book-type document, copied and shared among his family. After this, he was inspired to write The Broadland Tree by a feature on a breakfast television programme. Since then, he has written a sequel that is yet to be published.
About the Book
Martin Allen is a thirty-five-year-old construction surveyor, an ordinary man who is pursuing a long-run ambition of tracing his family tree. His search has finally come to an end, stopping at a record of a baptism held in 1777 of a child called Jacob, to parents Edward and Elizabeth Allen. No more information can be found beyond that date, it is a mystery to him who his ancestors were. This story covers the lost story of his discovered ancestors and follows three generations from the Georgian period to the beginning of the Victorian age. The setting is the county of Norfolk, particularly around the city of Norwich, and covers the lives of simple working people living around both a rural and city setting who are enjoying love, suffering loss and tragedy, and living their lives according to the seasons.
Dedication
To Catherine and Logan
Copyright Information ©
Marcel K Andrews (2019)
The right of Marcel K Andrews to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528956567 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Many thanks for the help and support of Cheryl Reynolds, Keith Watts, Anne Thompson and Catherine Andrews.
Introduction
In 2007, my wife, Catherine, convinced me, with very little effort, to buy a desktop personal computer for our new home, of which we had moved into just a year earlier. Now, being a manual worker, a bricklayer by trade, I had never found any real use for one in my past and had no knowledge of how to use one. However, I did think her idea was a good one, because at that time I was starting to feel that I was becoming one of the last of my generation to allow the computer age into my life. I had a feeling that if I didn’t succumb to the inevitable, I would be left behind and be perceived by future generations in much the same way I would see an illiterate adult today. So the day came when our new computer was installed, but there was a problem, only Catherine knew how to use it. I suggested to her that maybe I needed to go to an evening class at the city college and learn how to use it. I had heard they held courses on teaching computer illiterates such as myself how to get to grips with these new machines, but she didn’t agree. “Why waste your money going there when I could teach you?” she said. “Once you get started, you could play around with it and teach yourself.” She was half right, I did get to learn some of the basics but made loads of mistakes on the way (and am still making them).
Then one day, it came to me, the one thing that I had always wanted to know was my family history. I had never known my family’s past any further back than my grandparents and that was only a few tales my father had told me. My paternal grandfather had died fifteen years before I was born and my grandmother a week after my birth. This was the way to both learn the use of the computer and discover my family’s roots. Little was I to know, however, that the task to teach me computer skills was to become one of the most fascinating projects I had ever undertaken. I found that researching my family tree most rewarding, especially when presenting my finds to my father, who also knew nothing of our past. Over the course of time, I gathered more information and arranged my findings in a chronological order. I wrote a section on each ancestor of all the facts that I had learned of the lives they had lived and put it all together with copied church documents and any photographs relating to each subject. Put together in a file, the whole project formed what could be perceived by some almost as a book document.
My father was still in contact with many of the surrounding family, mostly cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. He told them of my project and soon I was printing copies for them too. To me, this almost felt like I had written a book. It gave me a great sense of pride, in having those people read my material and to be told that they enjoyed what I had written. This had never happened to me before. Then one day, there was nothing left to do. I had found as much family information as I was able to find and one by one, my searches came to an end and there was nothing left to print. This was about three years after I had begun the project in the first place, and it had indeed achieved its objective in teaching me how to use the computer. But what was I to do now that the project was over?
One morning, I was watching breakfast TV on the BBC before leaving for work. The girl announcer began a feature with the words, “They say that everyone has a book in them,” and preceded with an interview with a lady author whose name I didn’t catch. She asked her for tips on book writing for beginners and she replied, “To structure the book, write a little at a time and to keep a notebook with you at all times to write ideas that may come.” I wrote down all her tips and decided that my next project would be to try and make a story from the findings of my family tree, as the structure had already been made. Maybe it was time to see if I had a book in me. So, nearly three years after this book writing idea and six years after the computer was installed, this is that story that I have tried to form from the findings of my family tree. This story follows the line of where I inherited my surname. For reasons of not wanting to appear too self-centred, I have changed the surname of Andrews to Allen in this story, as Allen is another surname to appear in my family tree on my father’s maternal line. All of the characters did exist, the only name changes made, aside of the surname, were that of Jacob who was in reality called John after his father, John; this was obviously done to avoid confusion. The maternal characters did exist too, and with their factual maiden names included too. Sarah Fox, Anne Fox, Amelia, Beth Metcalf and their mother, Elizabeth, all existed in name. Their birth, marriage and death years were all accurate, only Edward and Elizabeth’s story was non-fact based, other than the birth of their son John, who I have called Jacob. Unfortunately, this was where my family search ended and I had no information on their lives before their son’s birth, so their story was made up and set in the close-by village of Crostwick. The genealogist Martin Allen was a fictional character too. I thought it better to invent that character to maybe develop another story from him in the future. Overall, this book is a fictional story loosely based on historical facts.
This story is set in the county and the city I am privileged to call my home, Norwich in Norfolk. On my search for my roots, I developed a fond interest of our local history and have added some tales and facts of the area into this story, of which I came to learn during my research. I have many local authors to thank, as their books on local history proved to be invaluable reference points for my research. Pamela Brooks, Frank Meeres, Neil Storey and Keith Skipper. If it hadn’t have been for these great local historians, I would never have known where to look in the records office in Norwich, and I thank them for that.
It cannot be said that this is a story full of unpredictable twists and turns and clever plots like a Tom Clancy novel. This is just a tale of the lives of ordinary people living within their time, who suffered hardships and pain, as well as enjoying the simple joys that life gives, falling in love, young passion and having children. As the seasons passed, they lived their lives in accordance with it and enjoyed the beauty of their surroundings while the years slowly passed.
I hope that someone out there enjoys this tale even if it was written by a bricklayer with basic computer skills, but don’t worry if not, I can always stick to the day job, becau