Edward James Rapson (1861-1937)

E.J. Rapson was my great-grandfather's (Flora's husband, Herbert Benjamin's) brother. Their father was Edward Rapson, the Vicar of West Bradley. He was a Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge for thirty-three years, and wrote various articles in different journals, mainly in the Numismatic Chronicle and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He also wrote a series of six papers on Indian Coins and Seals, followed by a work on the British Museum's coin-collections, the Catalogue of the Coins of the Andhra Dynasty, the Western Ksatrapas, the Traikutaka Dynasty and the 'Bodhi' Dynasty (1908). His other main work was Ancient India: From the Earliest Times to the First Century A.D. (1897). I have managed to acquire both of these books - the former I was able to purchase, and the latter was my great-grandfather's, which my grandmother passed on to me:

I was also able to buy his obituary, which shed a lot of light on his life and interests. He was apparently an accomplished musician, with a tenor voice which was often heard in amateur choirs. He was a skillful organist and pianist, and resented the "blatant ugliness" and "perverted ingenuity" which was common in "modern music" (I wonder how he would have reacted if he had heard the music my generation listens to today...!). His favourite artist was Handel, followed by Bach and Beethoven.

In 1902, he married Ellen Daisy Allen, daughter of William Allen, of 'The House' in West Bradley. She was very supportive of his work, but passed much of her married life in infirmity, and died on the 26th March 1921.

When the First World War began, Rapson was resolved to participate in the national defence. He had previously served in the Officers' Training Corps (O.T.C.), and now he joined the platoon of O.T.C. veterans formed in Cambridge and became a drill-sergeant. In 1915 he took a commission in Falmouth, where he instructed a company before returning to Cambridge and serving as Assistant Adjutant at the Headquarters of the 2nd Cambridgeshire Regiment.

During the evening of Sunday 3rd October 1937, while dining at the high table in his college, he swooned, and after about an hour died without recovering consciousness. The medical verdict ascribed his death to a cerebral haemorrhage.

Source: L.D. Barnett (1937). Edward James Rapson (1861-1937). Oxford: University Press. p1-p14.

Captian John Mitchell - An Obituary

John Mitchell was my great uncle. He married my grandfather's sister, Christine Rapson and had three children, who now all have families of their own in Canada. 

"CAPTAIN JOHN MITCHELL, who has died aged 79, won the Military Cross when commanding a squadron of the 13th Duke of Connaught's Own Lancers in Java in 1946.

Shortly after the surrender of the Japanese in August 1945, a group of Indonesian nationalists proclaimed their independence from Dutch rule. The declaration was not recognised by the Netherlands, which attempted to restore its pre-war control of the islands.

The withdrawal of the Japanese troops to their barracks had created a power vacuum which soon resulted in a widespread breakdown of law and order. Of particular concern to the Allies were the thousands of prisoners of war and civilian internees who were at risk from the increasing violence.

The first British troops were parachuted into Kemayoran airport early in September 1945. Armoured support for the military intervention was provided by two Indian Army tank regiments, one of them the 13th DCO Lancers, which arrived in Java in November to face a rapidly deteriorating situation.

One squadron was sent to Surabaya to support 25th Indian Division, the other two squadrons to Batavia (now Jakarta) and Semarang to support 23rd Indian Division.

The regiment's Stuart medium tanks proved invaluable in supporting convoy movements and in keeping open lines of communication; and they were frequently in action against Indonesian forces which were equipped with Japanese weapons.

On March 10 1946 a supply convoy from Buitenzorg (now Bogor) to Bandung had been ambushed by the Indonesians as it entered Sukabumi. The following morning "A" squadron, commanded by Mitchell, was ordered to come to its support with all possible speed.

The road from Buitenzorg to Sukabumi, a distance of about 50 miles, proved to be mined and obstructed by a series of road blocks, made from huge trees or deep ditches. Progress was slow and hazardous.

Fifteen miles west of Sukabumi the squadron and its escorting infantry were caught in a defile in the dark and ambushed by Indonesian forces. The squadron fought its way through but a large number of casualties was sustained and most of the tanks were damaged.

Even during the ambush, there were lighter moments. A cook, tied up in the back of a lorry because he had made continual threats to desert, managed to hobble across the road before tumbling into the comparative safety of a drainage ditch. He was discovered in this refuge by one of his comrades, and his bonds were quickly removed.

"You always wanted to run away, you miserable so-and-so!" the soldier bellowed in the cook's ear as bullets kicked up the dust around them. "Now is your chance!"

The next day repairs to the tanks were held up by the constant threat from the Indonesians, who had surrounded the tank harbour; but by 9.30 am the squadron successfully joined the supply convoy and the column was back on the road to Bandung by noon.

They met with sporadic sniping from the kampongs along the way but were able to reach the convoy's dispersal point by the evening of March 14. Mitchell later paid tribute to the courage of the infantry and the fighting qualities of his Pathans. He was awarded the MC for his gallantry and leadership during the operation.

William George John Mitchell was born at New Malden, Surrey, on January 27 1922 and educated at King's College, Wimbledon, where he played rugby for the first XV.

He enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment in 1941 but transferred to the 13th Duke of Connaught's Own Lancers the following year and was posted to Bisitun, near Kermanshah in Persia.

In November 1942 the regiment joined the 31st Indian Armoured Division in Shuaiba and then Quaiyra, Iraq.

In Baghdad the Humbers were replaced with Staghound armoured cars before the regiment's move to Burg-el-Arab in Egypt in 1943. At Damascus, in 1944, the regiment was converted into an armoured reconnaissance unit equipped with Shermans and turretless Stuart tanks.

One morning, on first parade, Mitchell was disconcerted to find a scorpion in his shorts. Even the most tentative of military movements seemed likely to try the creature's patience; and the command "Stand Easy!" appeared to take little account of his circumstances. Mitchell was compelled to make a rapid tactical withdrawal.

After a further six months in Aleppo and Innsariya in Syria, the regiment moved with the division to Tripoli before joining the 50th Indian Tank Brigade at Ahmednagar.

In India it became involved in drawing up plans for Operation Zipper, the invasion of Malaya, but these preparations were rendered redundant when VJ day was declared on August 16.

The regiment was involved in the fighting in Java until August 1946 when they returned to India to join the 31st Indian Armoured Division at Secunderabad.

Mitchell left the Army later that year and went back to England to take up a position with the British Motor Corporation at Longbridge. In 1953 he emigrated to Canada, although he continued to work with BMC at Hamilton in Ontario.

In 1963, Mitchell went to George Brown College in Toronto as campus manager. He would remain there until 1985, playing a key role in managing the building projects and day-to-day operations of a busy community college.

An enthusiastic supporter of the college Scouts, he enjoyed leading canoeing and winter camping expeditions. In retirement, in North York, Toronto, he and his wife travelled widely.

John Mitchell married, in 1945, Christine Rapson, who survives him, together with one son and two daughters."

Source: Unknown. (2001). Captain John Mitchell. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1358372/Captain-John-Mitchell.html. Last accessed 25th April 2012.

The Wargent Family

My great grandmother's name was Flora Elizabeth Wargent (1884-4th September 1969). She was the daughter of a teacher named George Wargent (1853-?) and Sarah Elizabeth Longton (1858-?). They married in 1878 and had many children:

Left to right: Trix, Helen Kathleen (1882-21 August 1979), Flora Elizabeth, Donald (1886-?), Madge, Dora Violet (1890-?), Karl Wilfred (1892-approx 1916), Dulcie Isabel (1895-?), Aileen Decima (1898-?), Patricia Mildred (1900-?).

There was also a son, George Longton (1879-1893), between Trix and Kath, who drowned at age 14 in the River Wye, the fifth-longest river in the UK, forming part of the border between England and Wales.

Karl was killed during WWI. Vi and Pat died in middle age, and all the rest lived to be very old. Pat, Aileen, Kath and Madge's boyfriends were all killed in the War, and so they never married, instead living together in a house called Grey Gables in Kingswood, Kington, Herefordshire:

Above: Grey Gables

Donald married a Welsh lady and had two daughters - Ibby, whose son Toby is a chef in Cardiff and has a family of his own; and Mary, who lived in London and had many children. Mary married famous plant breeder Richard Cawthorne (he died in early November 2002), who held for ten years the National Collection of Violas. Some of his sons continued to work for him despite their parents' acrimonious divorce which was apparently in all the papers at the time (although I haven't been able to find any articles yet). Trix also got married.

The Wargents were all buried in Kington cemetery, Herefordshire: 

http://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/community_and_living/life_events/1420.asp

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose; by any other name would smell so sweet." - William Shakespeare

Onomatology (Onomastics) is the study of how and where surnames began, what they originally meant, and their various spellings.

As far as we know, the first people to have surnames were the Chinese. According to legend, Emperor Fushi decreed the use of surnames in about 2852 B.C. The Chinese generally have three names: the surname, generation name, and given name. The surname is placed first, and comes from one of the 438 words in Po-Chia-Hsing, a sacred Chinese poem. It is followed by the generation name, which is taken from a poem of 30 characters adopted by each family. The given name is then placed last.

To begin with, the Romans only had one name. Before long, however, this had evolved into three: the given name, called the praenomen (notice how similar this is to the French word prénom) came first, followed by the nomen, designating the clan, and then the cognomen, or last name. Some Romans even added a fourth name, the agnomen, to commemorate a remarkable event or action. With the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire, single names once again became customary.

At the start of the Middle Ages, people were referred to by a single given name, however gradually the idea of adding another name to distinguish between individuals became popular, and certain patterns begin to emerge in names; for example, the place of birth, descriptive characteristics, the occupation, or the father's name. By the 12th century, second names were used so frequently that it was considered in some places vulgar to not have one. It is worth noting, however, that these second names did not apply to families and were not hereditary.

The contemporary use of hereditary surnames originated in the Venetian aristocracy in the 10th or 11th century. Crusaders returning home took note of this custom, and before long it had spread throughout France, the UK, Germany and Spain. Certainly by the 1370s, the word "surname" was being used in documents and had acquired some dynastic significance, with men sometimes seeking to keep their surnames alive by encouraging friends to adopt them when they had no direct male descendants of their own. As the Government's activities became more wide-reaching, it became necessary to identify individuals accurately. By 1450 at the latest, most people in these countries had a fixed, hereditary surname.

Family names also began to gain popularity in Russia and Poland by the 15th and 16th centuries. The Scandinavian countries, on the other hand, continued to follow their custom of using the father's name as a second name, and didn't begin using family surnames until the 19th century. Shockingly, Turkey waited until 1933 to start using surnames, when the government forced them on its people.

In most cases, surnames were first used by the nobility and wealthy landowners, and the practice then trickled down to the merchants and commoners. Spelling and pronunciation have changed over the years as many family names were dependent on the competency and discretion of the writer. This explains why the same name can sometimes be spelled in different ways, even in the same document.

Most surnames today evolved from:
> Occupation: Every village had its share of Smiths, Carpenters and Millers, and the Smiths in one town were not necessarily related to the Smiths in the next.
> Location: Surnames ending in -hill, -ford, -wood, -brook, -well, etc are fairly self-explanatory. Less recognised locational surnames include those ending in -ton, -ham, -wick, or -stead, meaning a farm or small settlement. There are also locational surnames derived from words which are no longer in use today, for example -don (a hill), -bury (a fortification), or -leigh/-ley (a clearing).
> Patronymic (Father's Name): Can be recognised by the termination -son, such as Rapson. Some endings used by other countries include the Norman -Fitz and Irish -Mac. John Fitzgerald would therefore have been  John, the son of Gerald, etc.
> Characteristic: For example, Short, Little, Long

Many historians believe that locational and characteristic surnames were the first to become hereditary. Surnames from occupations came later, and patronymic surnames were the last to become hereditary, as although they had been used for a long time, they would change with every generation.

The Rapson surname, as mentioned above, is thought to be of English and Welsh patronymic origin, meaning "son of Ralph."

Source: MCMXCV (1995). The Burke's Peerage World Book of Rapsons. USA: Halbert's Family Heritage. p21-24.