It is a storyteller's tale told by Harry Hinchcliffe, my great grandfather, on a stormy October afternoon in 1913. Harry joins his friend George, the barkeeper of the Tudor Bar, in the George Hotel, Huddersfield, England, to while away several hours while waiting for his son to arrive on a train from Liverpool. A weather bound salesman joins the two men and in the course of conversation asks Harry where his ancestors were from and where his surname originated. The ensuing saga spans 2800 years from the steppes of Southern Russia to the valleys of Yorkshire and ultimately into Harry's own era. The symbolism of the names origin is illustrated in Harry's arrival in the Tudor Bar, and his final disappearance into the Huddersfield train station.

HEYNECHECLYFF

The Lame Man Who Lived Beneath The CliffBy Robert R. Hinchcliffe

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Robert R. Hinchcliffe
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-5150-1

Chapter One

How all this got started.

I am the only son, of an only son, of an only son, and I have no son, and with me the male line of my particular branch of the Hinchscliff, Hinchliff, Hinchcliff, Hinchliffe or Hinchcliffe family tree ends. I do have a daughter who I hope will have children of her own at some future time. At least in this manner the family genes will continue, albeit defused, as a graft from the tree's trunk.

I'm sure that if I had stopped and really considered the implications ten years ago, when I decided to have a vasectomy, instead of reacting from an emotional instinct, I would have chosen a different course, and for a more compelling reason; the continuation of my family tree. At the time the vasectomy seemed like the right thing to do; the only thing to do. We, my wife and I , didn't want any more children as we were raising three teenagers; our daughter, and twins, a boy and a girl she'd conceived as a result of an affair while I was in the Army in the early 1950's. I liked sex, as did she, but she had reservations, and to be put off by: "I don't want to become pregnant again," and her intransigence against the pill, drove me in utter frustration to take the extreme course that I did. For a brief while the improvements, not only in our sex life, but also in our total relationship, were worth the twenty minutes under the knife and a week's discomfort. As it ultimately turned out my decision, made for the wrong reason, put a possible and premature end to my male branch of the family tree. Now I will never know if I could have produced a son to continue the extension of the tree branch.

Anyway, a marriage that had been rocky at best for years, which in hind sight should have been terminated in the 50's, and only continued for the children's sake, ended three years after I had the vasectomy. Oh yes, I considered vasectomy reversal, which at the time had only a 15 to 25 percent success rate. However, as I am in my early 50's I've had to question whether I really wanted to conceive a child even if I could be assure a son. Certain other factors entered my deliberations, such as having a wife and being in love. Yes, I know these ingredients aren't necessary these days, but to me they are. And, since I don't have a wife and obviously am not in love with any one, the question is academic. Anyway, the possibility of whether I could father a child, a son in particular, is at this point water over the proverbial dam, is neither here or there to my story. If my ancestors hadn't been a prolific and resourceful people down through the ages I wouldn't be here today, and there wouldn't be a story to tell.

To begin with who am I? I'm Robert R. Hinchcliffe, better known as Bob or Hinch. The R. stands for Roy, contraction of my father's given name, Leroy, which I've never liked nor used other than as an initial. I was born 53 years ago in Plattsburg, a small upstate New York city; on the shore of Lake Champlain, close to the Canadian border. My mother, Nellie Josephine Winch, a Vermonter of English yeomanry stock, was a schoolteacher two years older than my father, Leroy C., Charles. She was according to my father, who had met and courted Nellie while he was still in college, very pretty, robust and full of life. The two pictures that I have of her appear to bear him out. My mother and father's courtship, and all to brief marriage, only three years, was, I understand a true love match. Unfortunately, complications at the time of my birth resulted in the untimely death of my mother ten days after my appearance into the world. My father subsequently remarried and has a daughter by the union. At this point I have been married and divorced twice, have a daughter I mentioned earlier, and the twins I helped rear from their birth. During my life to date, I have been a soldier, student, university administrator, house painter, salesman and civil servant.

When did I first become interested in my family tree? I really don't recall for sure, but it certainly goes back to when I was a youngster. I think I first began to wonder: "where I came from", when I was about eleven, it might have been earlier. The, "where I come from," wasn't the birds and bees thing; I had learned that several years before. Most children growing up on a farm or in a farming community, as I did, tend to have an early understand of sex and the reproductive process, at least as it related to animals, and it wasn't that much of an stretch to human beings. And, of course I had a sister, so I was aware from an early age that there were differences between she and me, important differences. The, "where I came from," was at that stage in my life an incomplete and badly framed question in a still developing intellect. The question was more a question within a question. It was actually where did we as a family, a people originate? How did we get here? When? In my very early years I can recall being taken once to visit an elderly, tall, raw-boned, dour couple who I assumed were my grandparents, my mother's parents. They probably weren't that tall, elderly, raw-boned or dour for that matter, they just appeared that way to a young child. During that same period a tall woman was pointed out to me, on several occasions, in our small town, as an aunt. These, my mother's relatives, were like shooting stars, a brief view and then they passed from my life to never be seen again.

A few years later an elderly gentleman, my father's father, appeared on the scene. He would arrive, spend a few hours and then leave not to reappeared for a year or two. It wasn't until I was ten that he became a meaningful person to me. That year my family went on vacation to Haverhill, Massachusetts, my father and stepmother's hometown, and there in Groveland I saw my grandfather in his own environment; his house, gardens, greenhouse and even chickens, all the things that leave an impression on a youngster. More important, he took an interest in me.

Later, as a teenager growing up in Cambridge, New York, I would often spend an afternoon stretched out on a moss covered ledge, beneath the drooping boughs of a large pine tree, day dreaming. The tree sat on a hillside east of, Cambridge, a small farm community, where I spent the war years. The drooping boughs afforded me with a view of the town, while at the same time providing me with teenage privacy, and sanctuary from the cares of encroaching adult world. There my thoughts would frequently traverse from the present to the distant past and the question of what had my ancestors been like. What had they done? Had they been horse traders, pirates, generals, kings, highwaymen, churchmen, good, bad? And, of course where had they come from? I knew by then of my birthmother's supposed English ancestry, but only they had settled in Vermont, but not where they had come from, when, or under what circumstances. I also knew of my supposed English ancestry on my father's side, but little more. There also had been a mention of a grandmother, my father's mother, but only to the extent that grandfather and grandmother had been divorced while my father was still in high school. During this same period in my life I would often stretch out on the tin roof of the back shed, which I could reach by climbing out my bedroom window, on warm summer nights, to start gaze and wonder if we had come from up there, somewhere, sometime in the past. No much for an active and enquiring...