DEARMAN & MOLLETT

Although this is a man, known in life to my mother and some of her sisters, there are no photographs and virtually nothing is known of his early life.  He is our hardest and most frustrating brick wall.

I think that, as a child, I must have had no concept of generations further back than my grandmother - together with a few great aunts, the oldest relatives I had.  I therefore did not think to ask about her mother and father, or her husband’s mother and father, or indeed, her husband, who was long dead.  I do remember that there was an old photograph album though, which was brought out every now and then.  Alas I have no memory of who the photos were of, or what happened to it.

My uncle Leslie, James Henry’s grandson, was the one who started us all on this family history stuff.  He was too young to have known his grandfather who died the year he was born, but he did his best to find out about him.  According to him, family legend had it that ‘grandfather was a Londoner’, and this led him astray in his researches, it now appears.  Or did it, as I guess this has not been definitively disproved.  But even my uncle, who was very dedicated, was unable to find traces of his early life, or his first marriage.  And despite the persistent efforts of myself, my sister, my cousins and newly discovered cousins we have also been unable to find out much.  A breakthrough is well overdue.  Although it now seems very likely that he was born a gypsy, or spent a large chunk of his life as a gypsy or, probably more correctly, a traveller.  Which would account for not finding records.  

What we do know I recount (and re-imagine) on the following pages.