(Sat 30.5.2014 at 10.40 hrs en-route by train P/boro to Newcastle):Musings on Ernest Albert Archer:If I could write to great uncle Ernest, or indeed speak to him now, what would I say? Well......a letter to Great Uncle Ernest:
Dear Uncle Ernest,
The things I think I know about you include your birth date being in 1874, four years before your brother William, your second name being Albert (perhaps after your mother, Olive's brother Albert Edwin Reed), your marriage in Holland to Marie, and other aspects of your life in Holland, including your home at 13 Jan Steenlan in Bilthoven.
Well, well. So much to ask. And where to begin? Firstly, that very fact of your 'disappearance' from Oxford to Keizersveer the 1880s/1890s, and William's too. You both went into Uncle Albert's paper business, but neither stayed in it. And of course I wonder why not? A whole host of possibilities of course, and I have speculated elsewhere about them. No doubt the balance of factors was influenced by those including Marie's views and her family and background in Holland. Your brother William's diary from 1898 includes several references to you two brothers meeting and/or working together in Holland. Did you leave behind any record of these things, I wonder? And your son Jan (?), must have been born before my Dad, Fred, who was William's second son, and so I need to find Jan's descendants, perhaps in Holland, if any answers are to be forthcoming. My first attempts to do so bore no fruit. More effort needed, no doubt.
But your flying record in 1912 is of such interest. How did you get started? Your photos show that your aircraft was a Bleriot-design monoplane, and this is confirmed by "Flight" (magazine). So did you find an opportunity to build or acquire such an aircraft? It has been stated that the engine was from (or anyway designed for) a motorcycle, which, if true (and I wonder whether that might be apocryphal stuff originating from an "Oxford Mail" journalist), suggests it might well be that you or perhaps someone from whom you bought the aircraft, were involved in the building process. And what about the use of bamboo as the aircraft-frame (and wings) structural material? Was that your choice? And how did aircraft seem to you in those very early days of aviation? A wonderful opportunity to be involved in an entirely new branch of human endeavour? Or merely a novelty? Something akin, I suspect, to the present situation on computer technology: that it can do things which will change (and have already changed) the world, and it offers opportunities to do things that previous generations couldn't conceive of. So it has to be done, if those opportunities, or some of them, seem very worthwhile. Well, well. And so you did. And so do I. And for that reason exactly I am here today in 2014 (140 years from your birth year), aged 72, and musing about my great uncle Ernest.
And what about your elder brother Edward? Who died in (about) 1888? Was his death 'just one of those things' which happen, and accepted as quite normal in1888, at a time when many a family would lose one or two children before adulthood? Edward was taken off by Consumption, or tuberculosis as we call it. He was your elder brother for 14 years - and then he was gone. Just like your younger brother John, killed in that tram accident in Leeds. That left, of the boys, just you, Ernest, and William, Herbert, and Charles. Well, four instead of six, and of whom only William remained in Oxford. And that meant that William inherited the 'Oxford' legacy, if we call it that, from your (Archer) uncle, James Archer, in about 1925, when you were 51. I wonder how that seemed to you? Probably perfectly normal and fair, and a natural consequence of William's decision to return to Oxford and marry a local girl? By which time, probably, Charlie and Bert had moved away from Oxford. Charlie to Devonshire (or that's where he ended-up), and Bert to Tilehurst. And that was that. Not many Archers left in Oxford. And indeed that's what I have done: Oxford schooldays, West Midlands in my 20s and 30s, East Anglia in my 40s to 70s.
But getting back to technology, here I am, 'writing to you' 140 years after your birth and able to make these musings available as part of the family history quite easily and quickly, quite literally 'all over the world', whereby the technology (computers and IT generally) available and of interest to me has more direct application to our mutual family connection than did the then-current technology innovation (powered flight) - though that seems much more exciting than IT! And I am so glad you did what you did. It adds so much colour to this story. The two action photos of your actual flying are so real when seen (as I intend to make them available) in 'full-screen mode', that one feels as if one were there with you at Twello in Holland in 1912. Just two years before that technology was used for the very first time as part of a war-machine in The Great War of 1914-1918. And how did that conflict affect your life Ernest? I have nothing whatever on that subject, as far as I know
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