Finding Great Places to Visit in England While Tracing My Family Roots

Family history, and genealogy - researching one's ancestors - has always held a fascination for me. Both my grandmothers came from England, so we were raised with stories of their life there before their families came to Canada. My mother's mother was born in England in the late 1890s, and we were fascinated by her stories of her life there as a child. She talked about the street vendors crying their wares, and something called "Hokey-Pokey" that was sold for "a penny a lump." It sounded like quite a treat. I have always wanted to trace our family's roots, and visit some of the places she talked about.

One of the nicest things about genealogical research, in addition to finding relatives you haven't met before, is in discovering great new places to add to your must-see list. Being blessed with ancestors from the British Isles, Ireland, and France, as well as some parts of the family who remained in the United States after immigrating to the New World, I have a wealth of places to explore on both sides of the Atlantic.

Born in Lancashire, England, in 1896, Granny came with her family to Canada, to settle in Saskatchewan. She was about eight years old at the time, and I can only imagine what a drastic change that must have been for her - from the cities of England to a farm on the prairies.

Granny shared one of her earliest memories of Canada with me. They were traveling by train to what would become their new home. It was in winter and she was wearing a bright red sweater - a parting gift from a family friend when they left England - something to keep "little Annie" warm in the cold Canadian winters.

Their train derailed and many passengers were injured and some thrown far from the train. Granny's family escaped unharmed but no-one could find the little girl.

It was growing bitterly cold when one of the men walking along the tracks noticed a patch of bright red almost buried by the snow. What had caught his eye was the sleeve of granny's sweater sticking out of the snow. Granny was immediately dug out, and returned to her family, cold but unharmed. She always swore it was that friend's farewell gift, the red sweater, that saved her life that day.

My granny's last name has been proving interesting to find. It is spelled "Ollerenshaw" on some papers that we have, and in a charming book of very old photographs presented to her by a family friend, as a memento of an outing to the sea-side.

Spurred by granny's statement that our family was descended from "good yeoman stock", I remember asking her where her maiden name came from. I had just read "Robin Hood" and was quite enchanted with "yeoman", so I asked her if we might somehow be related, as we were yeoman, too.

Though granny laughed about being related to Robin Hood, she did tell me that her name meant "all the birds (or trees, she wasn't sure which) in the forest", the word "shaw" being an old English word for "forest". She explained that often, English families were named for the work the father did, or the place where family originated.

I have been unable to find a place called Renshaw, though I did find an estate with that name. My search for "Renshaw", and "Ollerenshaw" has yielded the following information from the Internet Surname Database:

This is a locational name from a now "lost" medieval hamlet which at various times was recorded as Ravenshaw or even Rainshaw, the dialectal "link" with the modern surname spelling. This hamlet was a township within the parish of Prestbury in East Cheshire, although it seems to have disappeared before the 17th Century. The origination is from the Olde English pre 7th Century "Raven", a personal name of considerable popularity, plus the suffix "shaw", a wood. These habitational surnames were amongst the first developed surname forms, and equally they rapidly developed variant spellings as the name-holders moved away from their original villages. In the case of "Renshaw", the variants also developed because the "townships" had ceased to exist, so there were few definable spelling links. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

Recorded in various spellings including Oldershaw, Ollerenshaw, Olerenshaw, Olrenshaw, Ollarenshaw, and even Houldershaw, this is an English surname. It is can be either a locational or a topographical surname and if locational it derives from a small place in Derbyshire called Olerenshaw, in the parish of Taxal. The meaning and derivation of the placename is from the Olde English pre 7th Century "aelren", meaning alder trees from "alor", fused with "sceaga", the later shaw, and meaning a wood or copse. As a topographical surname, the meaning is "the dweller by the alder-wood". Locational surnames are usually "from" names. That is to say surnames given to "strangers" as easy identification, after they had left their original homesteads and moved somewhere else.

Some day I shall follow these intriguing threads and perhaps find where we came from.

© 2010, Text by Elle Fredine, All rights reserved