Stace and Hall family histories

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: History; Category: Recollections; Published: 04 April 2014; Hits: 222118

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The following family history relates to my daughter Emily and her mother Brenda. It was compiled by my niece Sara Stace, Emily’s first cousin, from family records that were principally collected by Corinne Stace, their Grandmother, but with many contributions from family members. I have posted it here to ensure that all this work is not lost in some bottom draw. This has been vindicated by a large number of interested readers worldwide.

The copyright for this article, including images, resides with Sara Stace.

Thus in respect of this article only, the copyright statement on this website should be read substituting the words 'Sarah Stace' for the words 'website owner'.

Sara made the original document as a PDF and due to the conversion process some formatting differs from the original. Further, some of the originally posted content has been withdrawn, modified or corrected following requests and comments by family members.

Richard

Stace and Hall family histories

a summary

Stace Lucas Bannister Fawkner Peed Hall Venables Mears Cutbush Nairn Pontifex

Compiled by Sara Stace, 2013

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Travel

Peru

In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Peru. We flew into Lima from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. After a night in Lima we flew to Iquitos.

Fiction, Recollections & News

The McKie Family

Introduction

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing. Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred. Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow.

The setting is Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and my path winds through a time when the gardens there flowered with exotic blooms and their seeds and nectar changed the entire world. This was the blossoming of the late industrial and early scientific revolution and it flowered most brilliantly in Newcastle.

I've been to trace a couple of lines of ancestry back six generations to around the turn of the 19th century. Six generations ago, around the turn of the century, lived sixty-four individuals who each contributed a little less 1.6% of their genome to me, half of them on my mother's side and half on my father's. Yet I can't name half a dozen of them. But I do know one was called McKie. So, this is about his descendants; and the path they took; and some things a few of them contributed to Newcastle's fortunes; and who they met on the way.

In six generations, unless there is duplication due to copulating cousins, we all have 126 ancestors. Over half of mine remain obscure to me but I know the majority had one thing in common, they lived in or around Newcastle upon Tyne. Thus, they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund. So, it's also a tale of one city.

My mother's family is the subject of a separate article on this website.

Opinions and Philosophy

The Prospect of Eternal Life

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

[1]

When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west. And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death. This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.

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