In the mid sixties I got involved in Tanner Family research. I don’t remember the occasion that began this search; a church project or a family discussion or something else. What I do recall is wondering who George Tanner was. I knew he was my Great Grandfather, he came from London, he was married to Ann Julia Lewis, and they had children, but I knew nothing else.
When I pressed my father for answers he told me they never talked about the Tanners much, and as they had all passed on, we should let them rest in peace.
He told me George Tanner had three sons; George William, Jack, and Charles Edwin. George also had four daughters, but Dad was only sure of the names of two. He thought the oldest was Peggy and the youngest was Rose. He knew the names of Ann Julia and Alice Maud. The order of the children was Peggy, Ann, George, Jack, Alice, Charles, and Rose.
Dad talked about his cousins and brothers and about the things they did as youngsters in the Waldo and Baynes Lake region; some good, a lot not so good, but all of it adventuresome.
All in all, I thought Dad knew quite a bit about his family, but I learned that he was right, he knew little.
He knew a lot about Grandma’s side of the family because Grandma, through the mail, had constant communication with her family in England.
Grandpa communicated with no one from home.
So…I wondered; “Who was George Tanner?” My problem? How to find out? Dad knew very little of the family back in England despite having been stationed in England for part of WW II and having met some Tanner relatives there. When my Mother took up the questioning he suggested she talk with my Aunt Edna, his oldest sister, as she may have some useful information.
At this point my Mother got involved in this family search for the Tanners. She asked Edna for any information she had and Edna provided Mom with what she knew - - about the same as what Dad knew. She suggested that Mom contact her cousin George Tanner, the oldest son of her Uncle George. He had served in England during the war and had met some of the Tanner family. He possibly still had contacts with them.
Mom wrote to George and in reply George said he remembered little about the family in England. He said he only met one or two people, but his brother Jim, also in the military, had traveled extensively in England and met many family members there. George also thought Jim was still in contact with some of them.
Contact with Jim provided an address in England for a cousin Maud Davis. Mom wrote to Maud and received some family information from her, and Maud also sent an address for Maud Suddon one of May Thompson’s sisters living in Canada. Winnie Smith and Maud Suddon were both in Saskatoon Saskatchewan.
May, Winnie, and Maud were the daughters of Ann Julia Tanner and cousins of Dad. Who knew we had other relatives in Canada???
Mom contacted them, and suddenly we had a wealth of material on the Tanner family. Winnie had the most contact with England and the family, as she traveled there constantly.
We learned that George Tanner was the Captain of a ship and his Father in Law, George William Fenn Lewis was the owner of the ship George sailed. We also learned that George fell overboard and was lost at sea just as he was turning 40 years old. He left his wife and children to cope as best they could.
Winnie also told us that when George and Ann were married, her father disowned them and refused to attend the wedding. Yet he still allowed George to captain one of his ships.
A teenage mind is a fertile place and I was soon conjuring up visions of high seas adventures. Either battling pirates or maybe being the pirates. A great grandfather as the Captain of a sailing ship opened up several possibilities for adventuresome tales of the high seas.
We found out Winnie knew a little more about the family than we did, but a lot of what she knew or thought she knew wasn’t entirely correct.
So, on to the research. Historical documents such as birth and death certificates, apprentice licenses, etc. provide a wealth of information that can be assumed to be more or less correct. It was from these types of documents and family information that much of the truth of George Tanner and his family was put together.
There will always be unanswered questions because the people that had direct contact with this period of time are no longer here. We know from our own history that each member of a family can witness the same event from almost the same vantage point, yet come away with such a great difference in opinion as to what actually occurred that an interested third party, upon hearing the different recollections would believe that entirely separate incidents were being related by each family member.
But, back to George. Through a lot of research and letter writing, Mom found out much about the life and times of George Tanner. He was a waterman and lighterman on the River Thames in London, not a ship’s captain.
He did work with his father-in-law, but George William Fenn Lewis could not have disowned his daughter for marrying George as he was dead at the time of the marriage of George and Ann Julia.
George did fall overboard, not from a ship but from the barge he was working on in the river. He stayed on the job after the fall, went home after work, contacted pneumonia and died just before his fortieth birthday.
We heard stories from my Grandfather and some of his nieces, that George was a heavy drinker, and that this contributed to his fall into the river. All in all, George lived a life that was fairly short and filled with poverty and probably much hardship.
I still at times wonder who George Tanner really was, and as I get older and think more and more about death and what comes after, I plan on sitting down with the guy and getting the stories firsthand.
Hey! I’m not ready to go just yet. I have a lot of years left so just lay off the hollering about my morbid attitude.
But you have to admit—it will be pretty interesting when I get there, to trade lies with George.