Judith Birch Memo
This correspondence was initially received on 24/10/10,
prompted because of the appearance of Keith Hatfield on the
scene.
She kindly gave me permission to reproduce the information,
which may help other browsing family members and researchers.
Dear Chris,
The recent email from Elizabeth Knowlton on
Keith Hatfield, the newest re-discovered member of this family
tree, has prompted me to send you an email, something I've been
meaning to do for ages, but never got round to.
You may have heard about me from Elizabeth
Knowlton - I am the step-daughter of Kathleen Winspeare McCarty
(she married my father after my own mother lost her life in a
really awful train accident). The reason I've always wanted to
send you an email was simply to thank you for putting that memo
on the Internet, which was the first thing I ever found, and
which led me to everything else. In the meantime, it seems
that all the others researching the WMs stumbled on your memo
too when they first started looking!
In my own case, I wasn't even intending to
research the family tree. It was just that my mother (I
called her that, although she was my step-mother) had some story
that one of her ancestors was the organist in Cork Cathedral.
When the Internet came into being, she said the one reason she
regretted not being able to use it was that she might have been
able to find out something more about the organist - and also
where her unusual middle name came from, because although all
members of her family had it, nobody knew why.
Anyway, one day I typed in the words "Winspeare
McCarty" "Cork" and "organist" into Google just for fun, and up
came your memo. I think you're the only person who had
also combined the word "organist" with the other words - I
suppose "professor" took precedence in all other information
about that first Winspeare McCarty! Reading your memo, I began
to wonder if "Eileen McCarty" was the person I had known as
"Aunty Eily", and then jotting down a rudimentary family tree,
if "Wm McCarty" was actually "Joe" ... and if so, then the other
people mentioned in the memo would also be my mother's
ancestors. Going on from that, it wasn't long before I got
on to Elizabeth Knowlton - and all soon became very clear!
(Yes, it was Aunty Eily, and yes, it was "Joe"i.e. Joseph, my
mother's brother.) When I passed all this on to
Kathleen, she said she had a very vague idea that she once
visited a family called Jenkins when she was a child!
You don't need to reply to this email, but I
just thought you'd like to know that yet another person was
extremely grateful to find that memo - and what a major service
you've provided for all the Winspeare McCarty researchers. It's
nice that your memo also has a little extra information too -
what the people were like, what they did, and so on. That,
unfortunately, is really difficult to find out for all the
others. I'm sure the Winspeare McCartys must have been a
very prominent family in Cork in their time, but as Elizabeth
told me, it takes hours to go through old newspapers etc., and
also a lot of records were destroyed in a fire, which is a real
shame.
We still don't know where the name "Winspeare"
came from, but perhaps we'll even find that out one day.
With very best wishes,
Judith Birch
Hello Judith
How very nice of you to make contact. It’s obviously pleasant to hear that something I did mainly as a technical exercise as part of making the structure of a project for a family web site of some interest to visitors, has given some pleasure or use to others. I must say that I am pretty hopeless at being able to map out in my mind the structure of my family, although it seems that because my late uncle responded to questions about our ancestors, and which eventually made an appearance on the World Wide Web, has attracted some of the offspring of a Winspeare McCarty to appear out of the woodwork. I’ve never had any ‘Jenkins’ members ever call me up though!
Anyway, I wonder whether you would mind if I made the contents of your generous email the subject of another ‘memo’, which future family researchers may find useful?
Thank you again for your kind words dear step cousin, and I do hope your family researches continue to be successful.
Best Wishes
Chris
Judith responded:
Dear Chris,
Thank you very much for your very friendly
email, and how nice to acknowledge me as your step-cousin, an
honorary member of this very interesting family. As I said
to Elizabeth, although I'm not actually a Winspeare McCarty
myself, these are the people I grew up with from a very early
age, and I always considered them to be my own relations too.
You are welcome to use my information on your
website, although perhaps not with things like email addresses
(but I don't think you would do that anyway). One interesting
bit of information about Eileen McCarty that you might like to
have is that she most definitely inherited the Winspeare McCarty
musical genes, as I can well remember going to hear her sing in
a choir at the Royal Albert Hall every Christmas.
I was looking at your website this evening,
which has certainly grown since the first time I landed there!
As you say some of the links don't work at the moment, but I
shall come and visit you again some time when I expect the
restructuring has been completed. In the meantime, I do
hope some of those missing Jenkins members of your family tree
turn up eventually. You never know - after all, family
tree research seems to be getting more and more popular in the
UK.
I. too, find it difficult to keep track of all
the far-flung family members in my head, and am so grateful for
Elizabeth Knowlton, who can do that - and who did all the work
in the first place. We are so lucky to have a real
genealogist researching our family tree, and also lucky having
the unusual "Winspeare McCarty" name. Just imagine trying
to research the name McCarty on its own!
Anyway, thank you again for opening the door
into this fascinating world for me - and it certainly made my
day to hear from my distant "step cousin".
Best wishes,
Judith