Brian Pears - Gateshead, U.K.
Most of my online activity now revolves around my Facebook page and my Blog, but I still maintain and develop many other pages.
My pages include the Northumberland section of GENUKI, the United Kingdom and Ireland Genealogical Information Service.
Genealogical information about my own family and relations is online as are a number of my efforts relating to World War Two in the area:- Index to the Civilian War Dead Roll of Honour (which covers Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire); North East Diary 1939-1945 (which I co-authored with the late Roy Ripley of Cramlington); When Bombs Fell on Rowlands Gill (which looks at the air raid of May 1st 1942); Rowlands Gill and the North-East 1939-1945 (which covers many aspects of life on the home front) and Wartime Incidents in Allenheads and Allendale.
My essay Blaydon Council’s Water Supply to the Rowlands Gill Area is already online, as is Eighty Years, the story of Rowlands Gill’s electricity supply; and in the near future I hope to add From Roller Skates to Bingo, the story of Rowlands Gill’s two cinemas; and Telephone Rowlands Gill One, the story of Rowlands Gill’s postal and telephone service. I’ve also edited and published my late father’s history of High Spen entitled High Spen and District; this is available as an e-book.
A series of articles - Our Ancestors, Conceptions, Misconceptions and a Paradox, The Ancestor Paradox Revisited and The Ancestor Paradox Yet Again - is also now available, as is Where There’s A Will… an article about the trouble that wills have caused in my family. This topic is also addressed in great detail in my paper, Greendikes - A tale of forgery and greed, which is available in PDF format (921 Kb).
Fans of murder and mystery may be interested in three articles describing murders in and around Rowland Gill. The Mystery of Doctor Robert Stirling and The High Spen Murderer were written by my late father, Thomas William Pears, and The Lintz Green Murder is by a friend, Terry Middleton, a very able local historian.
I’ve recently a added a survey of Plaques and Memorials in Gateshead Borough and my selection of Photographs taken at the North of England Open Air Museum at Beamish, Co Durham is still available.
Also online is an article I wrote back in 1996 entitled Police on Medium Wave which looks at very early police communications in England and Wales.
I’ve placed numerous small collections of photographs online, mostly for the benefit of ex-pats I keep in touch with through mailing lists. These include:
Trinity Square Open Day 10th November 2012 – Outing to Warden and Vindolanda 28th May 2012 – Fenwick’s Xmas Window Display 2011 – Family Reunion – 23rd October 2011 – Smith Family Memorabilia – Hookergate School Open Day – 21st July 2011 – Andrew & Lauren’s Wedding Reception – 15th July 2011 – A tribute to Christopher George Wheeler “Kit” Highton 1915-1944 – Mountsett Crematorium 22nd October 2010 – Demolition of the “Get Carter” Car Park at Gateshead – Fenwick’s Xmas Window Display 2009 – Geordie Afternoon at Rowlands Gill 1st October 2009 – Family History Outing 22nd September 2009 – Valerie and Ali’s Wedding 19th September 2009 – Recitals and Christmas Talk at the Shipley Art Gallery 2007 – Photographs taken at Ravensworth – Strathmore Road Road Methodist Youth Club and Church Photographs 1959-2007 – Tyneside Cinema & Restaurant at Gateshead – Red Kite over Hookergate Cemetery – Local Scenes by Tom Waters (1907-1990) – A Nostalgic Visit to Highfield School – Tall Ships’ Races on the Tyne 2005 – Newcastle Quayside 2 July 2005 – Town Moor Hoppings 2005 – Vindolanda Roman Camp 2004 – Fenwick’s Christmas Window Displays 2003 – Fenwick’s Christmas Window Displays 2004 – Some Remnants of Victorian Gateshead – Brandling Coal Drops – Launch of Local History Month 2003 – Demolition of the Union Debating Chamber at Newcastle University in 2003 – High Spen in 1977 with some old maps – Marlborough Crescent Bus Station in December 1976 – Exploration of the Victoria Tunnel, Newcastle. There is also a full index of albums and other collections.
I have been fascinated by your comments for the last few years now and have discussed them with various people who simply don’t believe that we are very likely descended from the whole population of the British Isles around 900 to 1,000 years ago (at least those who have descendants alive today). ‘It’s a mathematical impossibility for this not to be the case’ I tell them. But they still don’t accept it.
To take a single example, does this mean we are all descended from William the Conqueror? If any of our country’s history is correct he most certainly has descendants alive today. He is something like 28 generations back from when I was born (assuming about 30 years per generation) so should certainly be far back enough to be included by your theory. He had something like 10 children so should have plenty of descendants alive today.
Following your theory to it’s logical conclusion, it’s virtually impossible that we are not descended from him but I still find this fact astonishing. Have you written to the papers about this?I would be really interested to hear your comments, Thanks, Anna.
Hi Anna Yes, you and I and most of the rest of of the population are almost certainly descended from William the Conqueror. You say “Your theory”, but I must point out that it’s not mine. I just gave a simplified description of what many demographers and statisticians have known for years. You can find lots of academic papers on the subject, but the maths in them is invariably somewhat tricky so I thought a greatly simplified account would be helpful. Incidentally, we are probably all descended from every monarch up to and including the last Plantagenet at least. Here’s a piece from Andrew Millard, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Durham, about our descent from Edward III – http://www.dur.ac.uk/a.r.millard/genealogy/EdwardIIIDescent.php
Hmm . . . there are differences between mathematical probability and reality, particularly when we deal with human beings, aren´t there? Though the mathematics do point to a strong likelihood that all of us of English descent are fairly closely related (well, thirtieth cousin or so, I suppose), that we all descend from all early Englishmen and -women with living descendants certainly doesn´t seem plausible when one considers such factors as geographic propinquity, social prejudices, and simple physical attraction and repulsion.
This appears an instance of statistical rigidity outweighing common experience.
As any scientist or mathematician soon discovers, “common experience” is a very poor guide to reality. Indeed one doesn’t have to progress very far in either discipline to realize that the human brain is far from the ideal tool to deal with the realities of the very small or the very large, and that includes very small and very large numbers as well as physical entities.
As to the specific objections you mention, the first, geography, is dealt with explicitly and at length in the second of my three articles on this subject. The second objection, social prejudices, is referred to in the third article, and is probably of little significance given that we are talking about breeding, not necessarily marriage. How many illegitimate births of servants were down to their socially “superior” masters or their sons, and how many aristocratic sons and heirs were in reality the offspring of Mellors, the gardener, or Jeeves, the butler? The third objection, the vagaries of physical attraction, is, again, probably of far less significance than might appear at first sight, given that marriage, even as recently as the 19th century, was usually a matter of necessity or social convenience rather than romance. Arranged marriages were the norm on all social levels, and a teenage, unmarried mother, who was disowned by her parents in the days before the welfare state, would be likely to accept an offer of marriage from any suitor, however physically repulsive – as indeed would a young widow with a family in tow.
All in all, objections such as yours, even if meaningful, could not materially alter the conclusions that I and several other have reached, because the main conclusion is mathematically inevitable however one tweaks the variables. The timing might vary a little, but the conclusion remains inescapable – we all descend from around 85% of the population around 30 generations ago and in all previous generations.