Family

After so many years of only really having extended family on my mum's side, its nice to finally have found some on my dad's, all thanks to my research, and trying to find out the family history.

John Vincent had a total of 10 children and step-children. Amazing! 5 children with his first wife, (one of whom sadly died as a newborn) and 5 with his second wife, and of course, his children in turn grew up and had their own children (and grand-children, and Great-grandchildren!), and so I have an army of cousins who I'd not known before!

So here are some of our family...



  First picture is Me, my dad and my great aunt, who is the youngest and only child of John Vincent still living. We are by the James Caird boat- the actual boat that sailed that 800 miles from Elephant Isle to South Georgia (currently in Dulwich College!)Aunt Dawn was in England for a holiday from her home in the US.

Next picture is me and my cousin Helen. we met purely by chance at Westminster Abbey, for the 100th anniversary service of the landing on South Georgia. We ended up sitting right next to each other and got talking, discovered we were related to the same crew member! Amazing co-incidence, I think someone was watching over us that day!





Finally, myself and my cousin Tracy, who I chat to a lot (and I bet she's reading this because she's the only person who knows about this blog!) We got in touch via our great Aunt and have a fair bit in common, mainly that we are both researching John Vincent. Here we are with John Vincent's cup and boots from the Endurance expedition. They are currently in the archives of Hull Maritime museum, and not normally on display but they were kind enough to bring them out for us to view.


How lucky I am to have such wonderful people around me, and that we've met in such symbolic places. Hopefully I will be able to discover more of us Vincent clan, as time goes on!

A Grave problem.

John William Vincent died in 1941.

He was 57 when he died, just a week before his 58th Birthday.

His grave in Grimsby and his death certificate both say that he was 61.


As a result, every biography written about him states he was born in 1879. 

He was born in 1884.

This is where my problems began.

Why did I start this?!

Well. It was my daughter's fault really,
Or rather the fault of the UK curriculum.

In 2015 my daughter was going into year 4 at school. On the first day she bought home a piece of paper outlining what they would be learning about for the year, and one of the first topics- Shackleton and Polar exploration.

Brilliant!

It has always been well known in the family of our connection to John Vincent, and his role in the Endurance Expedition, but I didn't really know much about him.

At that time, the extent of my knowledge was from the books that said he was a bully, that he had been demoted twice as bos'un, and that he had been denied the polar medal by Shackleton, a blow which still causes arguments today.

A Controversial figure indeed!

I wanted my girl to go into school, and be able to tell everyone all about her great-great-grandfather.

And so, I started researching him more, and realized how misleading some of the comments are.

This blog has become a kind of diary to track my research into him.