Olney, Buckinghamshire, England - 2011

Recently my sister was visiting in England and had the opportunity to visit some of sites from our family history. These are some of her comments. The highlighted names of Henry Carter and his daughter, Euphemia Jane Carter Freeman, will link you to more information about them.

June 11, 2011

This morning we took the time to go and see a Canal Museum. My great-great grandfather – Henry Carter - worked building a canal tunnel near Blisworth and then worked for many years as a “legger”. Boats traveled on the canals by way of a horse pulling the boat along as the horse walked along side the canal on the “tow path”. When there was a tunnel, the horse couldn’t pull the boat, so each boat would have 12 men lay on planks attached to the boat – 6 on each side – and use their legs against the side of the walls of the canal to push the boat through. The Blisworth Canal is over 3,000 yards long. The lady at the museum told me she tried to see what it was like to be a legger a few years ago at a re-enactment and she was exhausted in less than 5 minutes. Anyway, at the canal museum I found a map of the canal – it shows the Blisworth tunnel! I actually found a book that looks quite interesting and has pictures of what the leggers looked like.

The lady at the museum told us she came from a long family of canal people. She told us that there were two tunnels that she did not like. One of them was the Blisworth tunnel. She said her family told her it was haunted and difficult to get through.

After we got back to our flat about 10:45 am we headed out on the tube for Heathrow where we had made arrangements to rent a car for the next few days. It’s very expensive to rent a car here – It cost about 460 GBP – and since we’re getting an exchange rate of about $1.65 to 1 GBP, it works out to be over $100 per day to rent a car – and that doesn’t include the gas. Still, I was very happy we could rent a car because it meant we could take a little side trip to Olney – where my Grandpa, Ernest Freeman was born.

After some great adventures with round-abouts we made it to Olney around 2:30 PM. We found a place to park and then set out to see some of the city. The first thing we did was to find 20 Market Street – where Grandpa Freeman was born. It looks like it is now a clothing store. I walked all through it – it has a very low ceiling on the bottom level. I couldn’t go upstairs but we went in the side yard and took pictures. There are several shops in the various buildings around.

The town square was really a town triangle. I asked at a store if there might be anyone that did bobbin lace. I was directed across the corner to a small museum that has been built to preserve the lace history as well as for William Cowper – author of God Works in Mysterious Ways and John Newton – author of Amazing Grace. In fact there is a small building there in the back that is maybe 8 ft. by 6 ft. where Newton is said to have written Amazing Grace.

Anyway, since it was a Saturday they had some things going on there – an afternoon tea and - most exciting for me – a couple of ladies that were making lace with bobbins! They were interested in knowing that I had an ancester, Euphemia Jane Carter Freeman, who was involved in making lace. They said there had been several Freemans in the town over the years. One tried to help me find a pattern for making “Running River” – a pattern mentioned in family history – but we weren’t successful. She went through a box of patterns on the floor and then said she would keep looking for me. On the 3^rd floor up – they call it the 2^nd floor because there is the ground floor and the 1^st floor – was a display of a lot of different lace patterns. As we were looking at them, Jason found a small piece of the Running River pattern that I was able to take a picture of.

On the wall was a picture of 4 women making lace – one was even labeled Mrs. Freeman – wondered if she’s related?? As we looked around downstairs, we found that they had a few used bobbins that they were selling – so I bought what I could.

They were closing up at 4:30 so we had to leave. From there we went and found the old Church of England building. We could see the steeple from far out of town and figured it must be the one that our ancestors went to. When we got there, there was a very old, old cemetery. Some names you could read, some (many) you couldn’t. We didn’t have a lot of time and so weren’t able to find any headstones of family members. We did go in the church. It had a beautiful stained glass window at the end. It was a lot like a smaller version of a Cathedral – very high ceiling, a beautiful quire (choir) where at least one of our ancestors sung as a boy, and very ornate woodwork. The sign in the foyer says it was built in 1325. To think that would be about 500 years before George Richard Freeman was born in Olney! And life was hard here in the 1800’s – what was it like in the 1300’s? How could they build a church that massive out here in the countryside? I bet the inside went up around 40 ft! (the belfry was enormous. It was over 150’ and massive. When we went in the church you could feel that this was an important place. It was beautiful inside, but there was more to it than that. Built during that period (1325) it would have been Catholic, taken over by the Church of England. When we left they started playing the bells. It was a humbling experience.)

It’s the middle of June – it’s light out tonight at 10:30 PM and will probably be light at 3:00 AM – and yet it is very chilly out – too cold to be out without a jacket. I could see my breath! What was winter like in this part of England with the damp air and maybe only being light from 10:30 AM to 3:00 PM? What would it be like to be working on (hopefully not in) a canal in that type of weather? Or trying to climb up a tower to be a signalman with a peg leg?? It rains often here – wood things are very slippery when wet.