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Footnotes to History - The Personal Realm of John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty (1809-1830), a "Group Family" (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,979
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Footnotes to History - The Personal Realm of John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty (1809-1830), a "Group Family" (Hardcover)
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This book brings a novel focus to social history. It is a study of
a "group family" -- an extended family closely structured though
marriages that were either internal or with trusted associates. Its
members strove cooperatively for their own mutual benefit. This
kind of social entity evolved down the centuries, reaching its
zenith in the early nineteenth century. The family portrayed, the
Pennells, provides a supreme example of such a united body. John
Wilson Croker, his two half-nieces and his best friend all married
into it. The size of this "group family" gave ample scope for
marriages between cousins. Most men in it gained prestigious
appointments through Croker's patronage, but at the price of giving
him their unswerving loyalty. From diaries, personal letters,
newspaper articles, Chancery papers and Government documents, the
book brings the character of family members to life and shows how
they interacted. Their personalities are portrayed through a wealth
of entertaining anecdotes recorded by their contemporaries.
Discussion focuses on the family in the nineteenth century, but how
it evolved is also described. With their varied occupations and
far-flung travel, the people whose stories are narrated give
insight into fascinating but little frequented byways of British
social and colonial history, such as intelligence gathering in the
seventeenth century and the Newfoundland cod trade in the
eighteenth. Their direct participation in events included riding
from Dorset to London to warn James II personally of the Duke of
Monmouth's landing and rescuing Marie Antoinette's daughter from
Napoleon. The book takes us on a meandering journey through British
history brought to life by the experiences of one family over more
than two centuries.
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