When I was but a wee babe, clasped in my mothers arms, she would lull me to sleep with stories of olden times when our family fought side by side with "Lord Johnnie" in his quest to free the peoples of Wales from their oppressors. And as reward for our outstanding bravery, loyalty and dedication our patriarch, Robert "the Brave" Huish, was knighted and cities were named after our clan!! (How do you like my story so far?? Catchy isn't it)
Actually, when I was about 5, I asked my Grandmother what nationality we were, to which she replied "Heinz 57". Then explaining the mixture was "Probably" Scotch, Irish, English, Welsh and German(?) but that the family name was of Welsh origin. And so for five decades I believed this to be true. Until "IT" happened!
IT all started when I discovered the Internet, HTML and built my very own Home Page. I, like so many others, titled my page with the family name, thanked visitors for logging on, created some links to other pages...all the common stuff. Just for kicks and because so many people asked "how do you pronounce IT?" (Huish that is), the line, "rhymes with Jewish, it's Welsh with lots of letters left out" was added. A cute touch we, (LOML* & I) thought.
One day (Feb 3, 1996 actually), I received a message saying "My name's Bob Huish too", and he has a son named Bob and was originally from Ohio, and other general personal data. That's nice I thought and replied that "I too have a son named Bob", and added my parents were born in Utah, and I knew of some other Huishes in Arizona. The message came back as undeliverable and although I tried many different ways to resend the message it always came back. So my first email contact with another Huish was a flop. But the die was cast, there must be other Huishes on the Web, so my search began.
My next attempt to contact other Huishes was more fruitful, I found a directory that listed 15 or so Huishes and I sent a message to most of them, it included a short bio and hoped that they would reply. Nestled among the batch of "undeliverable" messages I receive back were a couple of real replies, success at last! real contact with another of my kind.
About this time fate took a hand. I had just returned from Texas where I was having problems using my remote mailer and so decided to resend my original (Texas) posts. Imagine my surprise when I received an answer back from Australia to a message I thought I sent to Purdue University. This turned out to be a wonderful mistake, Jennifer (in Australia), had been researching for some time and had accumulated a large amount of very useful data about the Huish origins. This correspondence was instrumental in my current quest to discover my "Roots", my newly found obsession with genealogy.
My obsession knew no bounds, e-mail fairly flew from my keyboard, streams of questions flowed through the telephone modem, flooding the Internet with requests for data. Each morning I feverishly searched my electronic in-basket for replies. Each name, date and location was added to my database.
My family sought refuge from incessent questions and demands for more data, stories, letters, pictures, dates, anything, everything...I was out of control.
So all these many months later I finally have a "Family Tree" or at least a start.(Bob Huishes Family Tree)
Paul - UK
Kathy - Purdue Univ, USA
Deanne - Utah, USA
timl@staffp.richuish,ac.uk - Kathys contact at Richard Huish College