Page 16 - Just another English family (Sep 2019)

Part One
Chapter One
1861 AND ALL THAT (1861-1910)
It needs to be recognised from the outset that family histories are difficult to write. They are often, perhaps usually, boring. While members of a family reading about their own history are more likely to overcome the boredom of a recital of facts, few outside the relevant family are likely to be riveted by such an account. Sadly, this narrative about Soothills is likely to suffer from a similar fate. In short, there will be few, if any, readers outside the family network who will be interested. The main task is to excite – and maintain – the interest of readers of what can be loosely described as part of the Soothill ‘tribe’.1 The cement that binds this so-called tribe together is in the use of the name Soothill. The name ‘Soothill’ can either be ascribed at birth or be achieved by marriage. There will be a few others who come to the name of Soothill by a slightly different route, such as adoption, but the main bulk of Soothills come by the simple route of either birth or marriage.
While, as we shall see, there are comparatively few Soothills living at any one time, there are still too many to give the same weight to their lives in this account. Partly this is because of a lack of information about most of the Soothills who have lived in the past two centuries and even less is known about Soothills living earlier. In other words, some will be given more prominence than others. This is largely because some have become more famous in their various fields. However, there has also been an attempt to make some mention of all those who have used the name of Soothill in the past two centuries. This is a daunting task and also may
1. The term, ‘tribe’, is normally considered to be TO ADD . Here it is used loosely to denote TO ADD . Another term, ‘clan’ which is normally used to TO ADD could perhaps be used in the non-technical sense of the present context.
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