The lacemaker from Calais

One of the ways in which I while away the hours and avoid human contact is to sit in my study and research my family history.

This is fairly easily done these days, thanks to the vast resources available on sites such as Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com. All the hard work of traipsing down to Births, Deaths and Marriages to find dusty documents has been done for you. You just have to follow the prompts, mostly.

So I’ve been off on my merry way following the Ancestry.com leaves and discovering all the usual suspects you find in the family tree of an Aussie. Farmers. Graziers. Blacksmiths. Butchers. Convicts. All from various parts of the UK. Lovely people, I’m sure, but…ho hum.

But then I came across my Great, Great, Great Grandfather Robert McMurray West junior.  The research showed that he migrated to Australia from France in 1848. “Ooh la la,” I thought. “Some sexy French ancestry!” Alas, no. He was born in Kent, England in 1814 and migrated to Calais with his family when he was about 31 – around 1845.

He was one of the renowned Nottingham lace makers. Due to the circumstances at the time in England (ummm….poverty, unemployment, disease) a large number of the lacemakers migrated to Calais where their artisanal skills at making lace by hand was revered. Employment and well being seemed assured!

But….bugger….the French Revolution of 1848 put paid to all that. France’s own economic crisis saw rising unemployment and, let’s just say the future of the English lace makers (indeed all English workers) seemed a bit uncertain. In fact, they became refugees. Rather than going back to the UK – to a life of almost certain poverty – they were provided assistance by the British government to come to Australia. Nearly 300 of them because, I guess, Australia was really short of lacemakers at the time!

So Robert and his lacemaker wife Ann ended out at Bathurst. Well, Rockley to be more precise. His parents stayed in France, so it was just him, his wife and his children. To Rockley. In the middle of nowhere. Can you imagine? In the space of three years migrating from Nottingham, England to Calais, France and then to Rockley, Australia? That’s what I call a culture shock.

I am still to learn whether Robert continued as a lacemaker here, or took on other work. But I do know that Robert committed suicide in 1876, at age 62. He took a draught of strychnine, a common pesticide in use at the time. According to his daughter (as noted at the inquest ), he said he was “tired of his life”.

I found a photo of him in the Ancestry.com archives. He is straight out of a Dickens novel. A dour, heavy-set man with mutton chop sideburns and a scowl. But I’d like to think that a man who made such delicate items with his hands would actually be a sensitive and gentle soul. An artist.

There is a story here that needs to be discovered and told, I think. A fictional story based on facts of the life of a lacemaker. I feel a novel forming in my head.  I am locating others who have lacemaker ancestors and have discovered (and joined) the Australian Society of the Lacemakers of Calais. Yes, such a thing exists. They even have a Facebook page!

So now I have a mammoth task ahead. So much research to be done – on lacemaking, the French Revolution, Rockley in the late 1800s! But more than anything, I am looking forward to finding where Robert is buried so I can visit him to say “your life mattered and is worth telling”.

Rowdy blessings.