Family History

Our friend Joe H accused me the other day of having too much time on my hands and he’s right. The kids have moved out, the cats don’t care, the house is clean, the wash is done and the husband is away! What to do with myself now that I am not really drinking anymore? Well, I have been watching documentaries. This week I was obsessed with the program Who Do You Think Are? Celebrities trace family roots with the help of some knowledgeable experts. It takes about an hour and there are always tears in the end and some profound words of wisdom about remembering the past. It has motivated me to pick up my own family history again. I became interested in genealogy after my mother’s funeral when my Aunt Rose said that since I was living in London, there were all these English relatives that I should find. So I started looking. I bought books and magazines and scoured the Internet. Through some dumb luck I found them!

There is a contest currently going on Ancestry.com that involves three questions. Where do your ancestors come from? How many generations you’ve so far traced? And what makes your family story exciting? Well, OK, I can work on answering these questions because I have so much time on my hands!

Where do my ancestors come from? Simply put they come from England and Italy. Since I am currently living in England and my dad has done a fantastic job of taking care of the Italians, I restrict myself to the English side. My story really begins in my hometown of NYC with my grandfather Thomas William King Bantin. Great name huh? The Bantins lived right here in London and one of the things that makes this story so interesting is that family members are all buried in the Willesden Cemetery less than 2 miles away from where I live. My grandfather “Bill” couldn’t wait to get out of London. He ran away from home (so I am told!) to the sea (the family ran a stationary store and bookshop near Marble Arch!) and here I am living in the very place he couldn’t wait to get out of!

So how many generations have you’ve traced so far? Not many, my wonderful cousins Carol & Eric (our grandfathers were brothers!) had already done much of the work by the time I got interested. How I met them here in London is also another fabulous story. There is still work to be done on the family tree, so I am off to the Records Office on Monday to look for Lavinia Moon Bantin, my great great grandmother. She has been eluding me for too long now and I am going to find her! I am intrigued by her because she has the same name as my mother and she was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. How did she wind up in London married to a coachman? I have convinced my daughter Beth to take a road trip to Leeds to check her out in May. Beth nods at me, looks sceptical and says OK, mom a lot!

I have never met my grandfather Thomas William King Bantin (TWK as he appears in so much documentation). He died in 1935 of stomach cancer. My Aunt Rose still has the telegram from the hospital telling my grandmother Belle that he died during the night. I will save the story of my grandfather’s grave near LaGuardia airport in NYC for another day – it is a good one! I have already bored some of my friends’ silly with the “family secret”!