I met Keith Gregson quite by chance one night last year while exploring my ancestral stomping grounds. My wife Ruth and I were grabbing a hot meal in the dining room of the South Causey Inn after having spent a rainy but satisfying day at Beamish Open Air Museum, near Stanley in the north of England.
Suddenly, without warning or provocation, the room was filled with men dressed in strange costumes who began to dance around the room bashing each other with sticks and waving white hankies in the air in some sort of choreographed madness. At first we thought it must be an attack of sugar plum fairies as each of the men was attired in short pants with white leggings, pumpkin coloured vests, hats with ribbons, and footwear adorned in jingly bells that rang out with every step they took. Doubling the occupancy of the room in seconds, they began and were quite literally dancing between the tables. Here is one of several videos I shot from our table. (Note: The first ten seconds of the video are black as I struggled to get my camera out of its bag and onto the unfolding scene.)
The group provided their own musical accompaniment and it was clear above the turmoil of the presentation, that this strange act was based on some sort of long established tradition. Turns out we had stumbled upon the Benfieldside Morris and Sword Dancers (perhaps it is more accurate to say that they stumbled upon us) and were about to meet Keith Gregson, one of the members of the group.
After the men had finished their first set and had sat down to enjoy some of the fantastic fare on offer, Keith told us that in addition to being a Morris dancer, he was an educator, historian and author and was in the process of preparing a book of “Interesting Ancestors”.
I told him about a couple of mine and was later contacted by him to give him details of my relationship with Mary Dyer, “The Quaker Martyr”. This appears in Chapter 35 entitled, “Hanged For Being A Quaker”.
This entry is just one of 47 tales which make up this compendium of off beat and colourful characters found by family researchers upon the branches of their own family trees. Each story in the book is followed by Gregson’s comments about what the story has to teach us as family historians about the records, the methodologies used, and the pitfalls of family research. I quite enjoyed the book and would recommend it for anyone who has an interest in family research.
The book provides encouragement to the family historian by illustrating stories of research that worked and the various paths people took to discover their interesting family roots.
The book is available from Amazon.ca and Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Search for Keith Gregson as the title alternates between Interesting Ancestors and A Viking in the Family depending on the website location.
