The spirit of my great-great-great-grandfather is elusive. He hovers on the edge of bureaucracy in a tangled mess that offers limited vivacity.
The family stories are measured by deeds of heroism on the war-torn landscape of Flanders in France, where he lost his life. The tales are romantic—fantastical, even.
Leonard Long was the grandson of Alfred Long, a descendant of Alfred De Lange Long Sr., who partnered with Dorman in Dorman-Long, the company that built all the bridges in London, England, and in most of the known world. He was the black sheep of the family and escaped his filial duties to dynamic effect when he boarded a ship bound for South Africa in the middle of the night.
He changed his name so that nobody would familiarize him with his famous father. Then he joined the army in South Africa and took up arms against the Boers (Africans).
On a fateful day during a grand raid, he came across Gertrude Kathleen Fisher, a Dutch Huguenot. She was, from what we are told, exceptionally beautiful, petite, and blushingly young. For Leonard, it was apparently love at first sight. He abandoned protocol and married a Dutch Huguenot, a person he was supposed to be at war with. WWI broke out at that very moment, and Leonard was carted off to fight overseas.
He did not tell his family about his new wife, and he married Gertrude Kathleen Fisher under an assumed name. Sadly, Gertrude only discovered his true identity after the War Office sent her a telegram with the ill news of his death. She applied for a war pension and discovered an entire British family she knew nothing about.
Tom and Agnes Long were in their sixties when they discovered that their only son had married a Boer and that the woman was pregnant with their grandchild. Of course, they sent for her immediately, and Gertie boarded a ship and traversed the ocean to visit her new family. We are led to believe that Tom and Agnes fell in love with the thought of their granddaughter long before she was born. Shockingly, after offering Gertie a pension for life from the steel-building company, they tried to bribe her to give over the care of her child to them and return to her uncultured ways in South Africa.
Unfortunately for the aging Longs, Gertie was extremely headstrong, innovative, and resilient. She gave birth to my great-grandmother Kathleen May Long on the 18th of December 1917, and four weeks later she escaped the confines of the Long mansion and joined a Gypsy community on the outskirts of Watford, England.
We are told that she took in soldiers’ laundry while living with the Gypsies until she saved enough for her passage back to South Africa. The Longs had given her a Dorman-Long pension, and they couldn’t revoke it.
That’s how my story in South Africa begins. Gertie returned to our shores, and here we are.
But... the story, as we know it, might not be true!
The online records don’t mesh with the documents and facts that we have.
A quick online search reveals that my great-grandmother was born in March of 1918, not December of 1917. Of course, this could be a transcription error, but... but ship passenger lists detail that Gertrude Kathleen Long boarded a ship in 1918 bound for England. However, Leonard Long died in September of 1917, so he could not possibly have fathered my great-grandmother if he were dead. Also in 1918, Gertrude Kathleen Long entered a hospital in Watford, England (ostensibly to give birth).
What does this mean? Oh, dear…dear!
My grandmother told us that her grandmother received a pension from Dorman-Long until her death. She received a war pension as well. Her grandmother’s married surname was altered to "Long." Kathleen May Long’s father and mother on both the online and physical records are: Mother, Fisher. Father, Long.
The thing is that the website that holds the records costs £49 per month to join.
So... to discover the truth, I’d need to spend that amount.
Conclusion:
I think that they’ve stolen my heritage and that they require a fee from me to access data that, clearly, belongs to me.
The only positive that has comes out of this foray into my heritage is that, according to the 1901 British Census, my great-great-great-grandmother, Agnes Long, was an accomplished tailor.
Is that my heritage?
All images are my own, including screenshots and scans
Feature image is of my great-great grandmother Gertie