My family wheel begins in east Devon, in what I call the 'land of the Luggs'.
It was only a handful of years ago I found that the maternal branch of grandmother Jane (father's mother) side of the family, the Luggs, were rooted in and around the Budleigh Salterton district, at Colaton, Harpford, Otterford and other nearby parishes. Jane's immediate ancestral names will appear on the next blog post.The piece below is a layered superimpostion of pieces inspired by the area near the estuary of the river Otter, which weaves into and through the Lugg family's homelands. I wanted to try and capture the essence of the landscape.
There are also fragments from drafts of poems I've written about people on that tree, with the names of Jane's parents, Elizabeth (Lydia) Lugg and Richard Harris (who I think must have met in the area of East Budleigh, or perhaps Bicton, where Richard's father William was for some years Farm Bailiff) standing out (see a draft of another poem about William on this post).
Why can't you read all of the piece? Well, this representation is for me the best way of illustrating how I see genealogy. There are multiple complicated levels of a life-journey for each individual on a family tree and each of these is complexly interwoven with the equally intricate life-trails of the others on the tree. How ever much we find is only partial; much will remain lost or invisible and as a writer this kind of document reflects the frustration and intrigue of the process of research and documenting the family-tree.
Copyright Julie Sampson
No comments:
Post a Comment