family stories

Dartmoor

I've been reading lately.  Finally come back to my most enjoyable pastime of childhood.  

I've been making up for lost time.  

I think I've read eight books in the space of about 6 weeks. 

With all of this reading, I've been feeling the itch to write again.  

But writing takes time and space and solitude for me and I don't feel I have an adequate amount of any of those right now.  But I have been thinking on the importance of writing.  Writing down our stories, for one.

I've inherited a good number of things from my wonderful parents - love of books and education, weak eyes, perfectionism, to name a few...and a great interest in family history.  
Ever since I was little I remember the old photographs my Mom used to love to look through, of her parents as children, and any older photos she could get her hands on.  
And my Dad's interest in looking up our surname and finding out facts and family trees and occupations and births and obituaries.  
I remember being intrigued (and possibly using it as my claim to fame for a time) to find out that we could trace my paternal grandfather's family back to the royal Stuarts and Bloody Mary in particular.  How morbidly fascinating!

I've always been something of a reluctant Canadian.  I do love Canada, but I've always felt that it's too new, it doesn't tell the story of our family origins well.  I've felt the ties to the countries of origin still strong.  
Lately I've been reading Kate Morton (The Forgotten Garden, and now The Distant Hours).  These are, in essence, family stories.  Mysteries, and appropriately suspenseful and tragic for a novel - but they are family stories, traced down through generations.  
As I read, I remembered that we, too, have a family story... 

One day, a tiny baby boy was found abandoned on the bleak Staldon Barrow. Time has erased the name of the person who found him but he was taken back to safety and frantic efforts were made to find his parents. Sadly, nobody was forthcoming to claim the boy and the moorfolk became concerned that he would be taken into care. Luckily there was an old childless couple who took pity on the child and adopted him as there own. They gave him the name of 'Hillson', presumably from 'son of the hill', eluding to where he was found.

Time flew by and soon Hillson was a grown man, throughout his life he was a shy, solitary boy who preferred his own company. So it was no surprise that one day he took himself off the the hill where he was found and built himself a small house on its summit. The stone he used to build his abode was taken from the old ancient cairn which stood on the hill, the house of the dead became the house of the living.

Hillson had taught himself the intricacies of clock making and it was from this that he made his living by building eight-day clocks. Rumour has it that he was the first clock maker to introduce that type of clock into the Dartmoor area (possibly in the late 1600s).

The passages of time have abandoned Hillson for nobody can remember how he finished his years, he was left in legend to build his clock on that ancient and remote hilltop.

(taken from legendarydartmoor.co.uk)

Ruins of Hillson House on the moors, just outside Cornwood, England, from http://www.richkni.co.uk/dartmoor/hillsons.htm

   
I feel glad to know this small piece of my history - even if it is so far past that it is legendary.  The thought of all of our lives being made possible by the merciful strangers who rescued that little boy, then raised him and possibly taught him his craft, is quite remarkable to me.  
I would love to know more - and I think there would be much to learn if we had some recorded stories of what life was really like for these people.  More than just the births, marriages, children and obits.  What if we had their actual thoughts and experiences recorded?  I hope that one day my children, and maybe even further generations will be able to read some of the stories of our family - not just the highlights, but the troubles and trials too, and see testimony of God's faithfulness, and roots which they can plant themselves down into.