Discovery is the theme for the Guild of One-Name Studies Blog Challenge 2021
It was a bit of a surprise to see something like this identified with someone with the Saggers surname. John Saggers’ puzzle and his instructions give us a hint of his personality, something we so rarely glimpse. Discoveries like this keep me researching on through the ‘dry days’.
From the Chelmsford Chronicle(Essex County Chronicle), 8 May 1903, page 4 – the “Today’s Questions” column.
– Mr. John Saggers writes from Stebbing: – “I have found this to puzzle many who have tried it: ‘Put the nine figures – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 – in any position so that, when added together, they amount to 100. Each of the figures must be used once, and only once.’ Will your readers try it?”
Located in FindMyPast’s newspaper search, British Newspaper Archive, May 2021.
I have yet to discover (confirm) which particular John Saggers this was – but I do see there is likely a family connection to British Columbia, Canada where I live. Perhaps another discovery for the future.
Stebbing War Memorial with the spire of TL6624 : St Mary the Virgin, Stebbing, Essex, England in the background. Courtesy Glyn Baker, the photographer: CC BY-SA 2.0 license, For more of these photographs, see Geograph.
Interested in joining the Guild of One-Name Studies? Or in learning more about the Guild? Whether you are ready to register a surname study or not, joining the Guild will be of great benefit to your research. The Guild offers research indexes, a wiki with worldwide genealogy information, webinars and seminars, publications, including the Guild’s quarterly journal, and a webforum, email list and Facebook and regional groups for all members, with additional specialized assistance for those who register their surname studies.
Best of all is the enthusiasm and assistance you’ll gain from contacting and perhaps working with other Guild members, near and far.
Guild members are at Virtual NERGC 2021 – the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium conference which features live and on-demand sessions. It’s not too late to register. The Guild of One-Name Studies has a virtual booth at the conference in the Virtual Exhibit Hall. Members will be on hand to acquaint you with the Guild’s activities and to answer your questions. See the Guild’s booth schedule on the conference website. The Virtual NERGC 2020 conference e-zine, available here, has updates.
The Hall is free for anyone interested, and will be open all day and all night for 61 days; exhibitors offer information and can schedule appointments and/or video chats. Follow this link to register for the conference; you can also select free registration for “Exhibit Hall Only.”
Local newspapers used to feature “Missing Friends” columns often. This one was from the Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 14 December 1930, on page 22 – The “Page of Old Country News”.
SAGGERS (Ada, Frances, Tom and Harry) believed to be living in Crisp Street, Limehouse, London. Inquirer niece Miss Ella Saggers, 30 Monkton Terrace, Jarmy [Jarrow?], Co, Durham.
Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 14 December 1930 – The “Page of Old Country News”, page 22.
Currently, June 2020, MyHeritage.com is opening up one of its genealogy collections free each day. There are two Canadian ones to come:
Canada Newspapers, 1752-2007, free on June 15, and
1921 Canada Census, free on June 16.
I couldn’t wait, so off to MyHeritage to see what I could find. With a free search, I found an interesting sounding Saggers result which told me the article was from the Vancouver Sun and gave the date. I did go to Newspapers.com which has the Vancouver Sun indexed and searchable, but no result came up.
However, I remembered that, years ago now, Google experimented with digitizing newspapers including some Vancouver Suns. It’s easy to find a newspaper by date if it was included. And there it was! No problem for me to go through the pages and find the article. (Of course, I like to read all or almost all the pages anyway. Great Christmas ads!)
I wonder if these are the newspapers included in MyHeritage’s collections? If so, bravo! as Google’s search for those papers is not that useful.
The 1921 Canadian census is available free too with page images at both Library and Archives Canada and Ancestry (register to search). But I have often said that if one search is good, two or three are better! Indexing is a difficult job; errors seem inevitable, so knowing there are other databases or indexes available can be very helpful.
Randy Seaver, at GeneaMusings, has a list of all the MyHeritage collections to be offered for free this month with the dates. It’s worth a close look.
The latest edition of the Guild’s Journal of One-Name Studies (April-June 2020) has an article “Taking Up the Challenge” by Melody McKay Burton about the 2020 Guild 10-Blog Challenge which the Saggers Study particlpated in. One of the first Saggers articles is mentioned – on Sarah Saggers’ Christmas Pudding. Goodness! Christmas seems almost another time and place now that many have been ‘staying home’ for so long.
In May, I added my own great uncle Bert Saggers to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s “Wall of Remembrance”.
The most recent challenge the Saggers Study has been involved in is the 21 Day Connections Experiment over at my personal genealogy blog, CanadaGenealogy, or, Jane’s Your Aunt. See more about this Experiment here. One of the Experiment blog articles (Day 12) was about Sarah Saggers’ photograph album. If you would like to see her photos, contact me via this website. I have scanned the album and would be happy for you to see them if you think there might be a connection. And quite a while ago, I transcribed her last address book and put the names online, so you might find a connected name or a familiar address there. (Rogers-Saggers, Vancouver, BC – 1940s-1950s address book.)
A half Irish grandma’s Irish Beleek pig – family collection.
I’ve been working on the few Irish connections I’ve seen for Saggers families and would be happy to hear from anyone with a Saggers individual or family who lived or worked in Ireland or had Irish parents or grandparents. Please contact me via this website or at: canadagenealogy @ shaw.ca
My own Saggers families have no Irish connections made (yet) but I do have lots in my Irwin families – mostly from County Cavan as far back as I can see at the moment.
There is one Irish Elin Saggers in Canada that I’d like to know more about. She’s listed in the 1861 census as a widow, 46 years old, so born about 1815, in Dublin, Ireland. She cannot read or write. She is living on a 1/4 acre with an Alfrid Clarke, age 12, born in London, Canada West. Both are Church of England.
Alfred may be the Alfred A Clarke, aged 1, born in Canada, listed in the 1851 census with John F. Clarke MD, 25 years old, born in England, and Susannah Clarke, 23 and Joseph W Clarke, 3, born in Canada, If so, I know more about this family, although not about Susannah’s parents. Dr. John F. Clarke was well known at the time.
Library and Archives Canada has Elin and Alfred indexed in the 1861 census as Elin Laggers and Sophia Clarke, as does Ancestry, but I believe that’s incorrect. Findmypast has them as Elin Saggers and Alfred Clarke. Library and Archives Canada 1851 census entry:
Census Year: 1861 Item Number: 1494954 Surname: Clarke Given Name(s): Sophia Age: 12 Province: Canada West (Ontario) District Name: London (City) Sub-District Name: Ward no 11 View digitized page of Census of 1861 (Canada East, Canada West, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) for Image No.: 4391537_00665 JPG (Image No.: 4391537_00665) PDF (Image No.: 4391537_00665)
I’m happy to see that Spring is coming soon – on Thursday, March 19, early this year. And springtime makes me think of – dandelions! Here is my Grandma Sarah Saggers recipe for Dandelion Wine.
Barn and Dandelions: Along Castlederg road, north of Bolton, Ontario, Canada. Photograph by Allen McGregor, Flickr, CC by 2.0.
Dandelion Wine
1 gallon dandelion
flowers
1 gallon boiling
water
pour water over
flowers and let stand 48 hours
then strain in stone jar add 4 lemons &
4 oranges cut into slices, 4 pounds sugar
& one yeast cake
(fleishmans) and a package
of raisins, stir well
& stand in a cool place.
Stir several times a
day until ferman-
tation ceases &
keep covered, in two weeks
strain & add 1
tea spoons bitter almond
then bottle &
keep in cool dark place.
if possible let stand
six weeks before
bottling.
Grandma Sarah Frances Saggers, handwritten recipe book, Dandelion Wine, personal collection.
Note: Grandma Sarah was from England, and likely never saw dandelions except there and in British Columbia. Here is a website with an amazing number of kinds of dandelions in the UK – Wild Flower Finders: https://wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/D/Dandelion/Dandelion.htm
MyHeritage last week announced a new service – colourizing of photographs. I tried it out with a few of mine.
I know there’s a bit of angst online about this. But truly the world was full of colour before the development of colour film.
And it is certainly a fun thing to do. And may provoke some interest in all those ‘non-gen’ relatives out there.
You will see one in the header above. And one below.
The photo above shows my own Saggers family about 1905 in England before their emigration to Canada.
The photo below shows some of the Saggers families in Vancouver, British Columbia in July of 1929. Mothers are in the back row; kids in the front. My dad, George William Rogers, is the boy on the very end. Although his pants look like jeans in this colourized version, I suspect they were really dark grey or possibly brown fabric. However, blue jeans would certainly have lasted longer – I think he was quite an active kid!
If you’d like to try this out, go to MyHeritage – Colorize Your Heritage. If you are not a subscriber, you can do 10 photos free; if you are a full subscriber, there’s no limit and it’s free. Non-subscribers will have a small MyHeritage logo on their photos as below. The little palette logo signifies that the photo was colourized.
Read more at My Heritage about the colourization process, licensed by MyHeritage from DeOldify, created by Jason Antic and Dana Kelley. And about how MyHeritage is handling these photos.
MyHeritage would like to know if you might be interested in colourizing old black and white films in your possession. Contact them if you are.
This article is my first following a new genealogy blogging prompt – “Through Her Eyes Thursday”, started by another Diane who blogs at This Hoosier’s Heritage. I intend to write about the women in the Saggers One-Name Study at least once a month.
From the Poverty Bay Herald newspaper, Volume LXII, Issue 18768, 26 July 1935, page 2.
An article including news about Alice Saggers.
PATUTAHI NEWS
BROWNIE’S
PARTY
____
(Herald Correspondent.)
The prosperity that has
attended the Girl Guide movement and its younger sister body, the Brownies,
since their inception at Patutahi some years ago was amply demonstrated yesterday
afternoon, when the latter organization celebrated its fifth birthday. The
function, which took the form of a social gathering, attracted a full
attendance of the local pack, there also being present representatives from the
Manutuke and the Te Hapara troops.
After
an hour’s recreation in the form of organized games, it was with healthy
appetites that the young people sat down to a sumptuous party tea provided by the
local committee. Amid innumerable dainties, pride of place was given to a beautiful
iced birthday cage [sic -cake] in the form of a log adorned with candles and
toadstools, symbolical of the movement, the whole being the work of Miss Yolande
Renner.
A pretty
ceremony was the lighting of the candles by Shirley Knight, the youngest Brownie
present, and the cutting of the cake by Alice Saggers, the eldest. After tea
Miss Meredith, district Tawny Owl, presented service badges to the
following:–Mary McDermott, Peggy Waddell, Alice Saggers, Patricia Atkins,
Betty Dickenson, and Dulcie Barber. The gathering concluded with the singing of
“Taps” and the National Anthem.
The
following were amongst those present:–Miss Meredith, divisional Brown Owl,
Mrs. A. J. Davis, captain, Patutahi Guides, Miss Price, captain, Manutuke
Guides, Misses Buscke and F. Beauchamp, acting Tawny Owls, Manutuke Pack, Miss
Ferguson, Te Hapara Brown Owl, Miss O’Halloran, acting Tawny Owl, 1st
Gisborne Pack, Elsie Bryson, leader; Mesdames E. R. Renner, president, W. J.
Atkins, J. Robb, F. Habgood, S. Wells, O. Williams, and A. Waddell. Apologies
were received from Mrs. L. Balfour, divisional comsioner (sic), and the First
Gisborne Brownie Pack. The girls included Alice Blakey, Rosalie Simpson,
Noeline Miller, Phyllis McIntosh, Fay McKinley, Grace Cooper, and Margaret
Hedron, Te Hapara; June Jones, Raina Waipara, Sophie Moeau, and Roa Beauchamp,
Manutuke; Patricia, Anne and Alma Atkins, Dulcie Barber, Alice Saggers, Betty
Dickenson, Peggy Waddell, and Shirley Knight.
My downloaded copy of this newspaper report from Papers Past, a project of The National Library of New Zealand / Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, is courtesy of the Gisborne Herald Company which allows non-commercial use of their images under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. The transcription is my own work.
Regions and Districts of New Zealand. Patutahi is on the north island, in the area of Gisborne.This map is by Korakys – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2019, Poverty Bay (so named by Captain James Cook in 1769) was officially gazetted as Tūranganui-a-Kiwa / Poverty Bay.
I could not resist this Saggers-Knapp wedding announcement. Sounds a lovely ceremony, despite the times in 1941. With connections to Buckingham Palace, no less. Just wondering what happened to these two. Long and happily married, I hope!
GUARDSMAN BRIDEGROOM
Guardsman P. Saggers—Miss D. F. Knapp
The wedding
took place on Saturday at Holy Trinity Church, Trowbridge, between Musician
Percy Saggers, of the Grenadier Guards, son of Mr. F.A. Saggers of Bexley
Heath, and Miss Dorothy Phyllis Knapp, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W.G. Knapp of
14. Studley Rise, Trowbridge, who was formerly on the domestic staff at
Buckingham Palace. The Rev. W. B. Church officiated.
Mr. J. Flay
was at the organ, and besides playing other appropriate music, accompanied the hymns,
“Lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us” and “The King of Love, my shepherd is.”
The bride,
given in marriage by her father, was dressed in white satin, with wreath and
veil and accessories to match. Her bouquet was of carnations. Her only bridesmaid,
Miss Ivy Hawkes, a friend, also from Buckingham Palace, was dressed in blue taffeta.
The best
man was Mr. Edward Saggers, and the groomsman, Mr. Arthur Saggers, both brothers
of the bridegroom.
After the wedding a reception was held at 14. Studley Rise. The newly-married couple’s future home will be at Clapham Common.
Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser, Saturday, July 5, 1941, page 3. Via findmypast.com
The challenge topic for this weekend came from Jen at Auntie Jen’s Family Trees. She had posted “Throwback Thursday Favorite Toys” on 23 January, and Linda Seaver thought it would make a good SNGF topic. And Randy agreed.
“What are some (one or more) of the toys you played with as a child? Share your favorite toy(s) with us….”
My favourite toys were books and dolls, to put them alphabetically. I don’t know which I’d have rated first when I was little. Before I left ‘home’ I ended up with a lot of dolls, and quite a lot of books. I still have a few of the dolls and a lot of the books – and more.
Not everything was brand new. In fact, since my Na enlisted me to help at the church sales she was involved in, I often got to pick out dolls and books second hand. And sometimes, if I was lucky, things were passed down to us.
Here is a now old book with thick board pages given to me by my great aunt and uncle, Uncle Bob and Aunt Elsie, my grandmother’s sister. It’s ‘well loved’, but still good enough that I read it to my little grandson.
It was published in England – the Saggers sisters were all from there; they’d emigrated to Canada in 1907. The book is from the 1940s so someone brought it back from a trip or perhaps a relative in England sent it here to Vancouver. As I child I didn’t care that a few scenes weren’t familiar ones but as it happens, many were. As you will see, the book was inscribed for me by Auntie Elsie and Uncle Bob. I’m sure I was excited about that. Not for my baby brother!
I was pretty careful with my books; my mother was always watchful, I thought. But this book does have initials pencilled in on almost every page. Whose, I wonder? And whose writing? I know it’s not mine. Maybe it’s one of those Saggers-Westwood cousins??
Happy Hours children’s book, 1940s. Published in Great Britain by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd. Home-Made Curls, For A Change. Happy Hours children’s book. Honor C Appleton was the artist. I am surprised I don’t remember trying to add some paper curls to my long and annoyingly straight hair. Perhaps Mum confiscated the scissors! Splendid Fun In the Snow – Happy Hours children’s book. I’m afraid I can’t make out the artist’s name. Perhaps someone knows? This scene in Vancouver, BC is one kids here all like to see. And at the top, very faint now, is the inscription to me.
