Every generation hands down its genetic imprint, memories and artefacts to the next. For a family unusually rich in recorded history, we have not always been as careful or as lucky as we might wish. Much of that heritage is already missing or lost, seemingly evaporating as the decades and centuries roll by.

Of course, our early ancestors had few worldly goods, their Wills frequently bequeathing little more than their interest in a property, the crops and cattle standing in their fields, farm and household utensils, their best clothes, the contents of their store cupboards and whatever furniture they possessed. Thus Thomas Sturge of Winterbourne left to his daughter Mary “my red rug two sheets and a coople of pillows all belonging to the bed I now lye on” in 1712.

As the various branches of the family prospered, their houses grew larger, more was owned and more bequeathed. With houses passing through generations and ample storage space available, accumulations of heirlooms posed no problem. In more recent times, the changes in the way we live have seen this process reversed; smaller homes, less storage and the demand to rationalise what can be kept to remind us of the past. At times, furniture may simply become the victim of changing fashions or documents may be recklessly loaned to a supposedly responsible relative or friend.

Many events place our heirlooms at risk. The most frequent is the clearing of papers after the death of a relative; when, with many pressures to cope with, the value of the item is not immediately apparent. This becomes a greater risk the more distant the inheritance of the heirloom, especially when it passes into another, more distantly related family. This is particularly true in the case of unlabelled family photographs. On other occasions an old family picture may be cut from its frame to meet the current needs of an aspiring amateur artist. More dramatic has been the loss through flood, fire and enemy action, family homes being bombed or cleared to house evacuees in the Second World War. One set of school records I sought were found to have been burned by Allied troops, attempting to keep warm when billeted in a Herefordshire schoolhouse.

Various ancestors have made attempts to collate and preserve our family history. In 1803, John Player, who died in 1808 at the age of 83, wrote a long account of the Sturge family for his kinsman Thomas, who lived in London. Born in 1725, John’s life had spanned a period when some of our earliest recorded ancestors could have been within the living memory of family members.

The “John Player Annals” were contained in his journal, which passed into the possession of his great-grandson Walter Sturge, who used them in 1851 to compile a circular family tree. Later, in 1902, Walter wrote “About fifty years ago I prepared a genealogical chart of the Sturge family which shows that the earliest recorded ancestor of the family was a Thomas Sturge.” Sadly, those “Annals” are now lost and it seems impossible to prove the existence of Thomas, our best records only commencing with the beginning of our membership of the Society of Friends.

Towards the close of the 19th Century a member of the Birmingham Branch, Charles Dickinson Sturge (1833 - 1915,) carefully preserved many family papers and wrote a manuscript family history. He noted that he had used for reference “A letter from John Player to his nephew Thomas Sturge dated 1803,” “A memorandum received from Dr Richard (after he had written Joseph Sturges life [1864])” and material from Edmund Sturge.

Charles Dickenson Sturge carefully bound a collection of old family letters into four volumes. Many years later, in 1958, a relative gave the first and possibly most interesting of these, covering the earliest period, from 1786 to 1819, to a very distant kinsman. That volume is now in the Oxford County Record Office (reference Marshall XVII/I/I,) with an injunction that it may never be separated from the Marshall papers, whereas the Sturge family has deposited the remaining three volumes, along with Charles Dickinson Sturge’s manuscript family history, to the safekeeping of the Library at Friends’ House.

Similar donations by the family have led to heirlooms being donated to a number of provincial museums. The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have a number of items, including the overshoes worn by Joseph Sturge when he went to meet the Czar of Russia in 1854! The British Library has a small collection of his correspondence. As branches of the family moved to different areas of the country, so these relics of our history have become scattered, although safely preserved in the hands of professional archivists.

In 1891 our kinsman Joseph Francis Cotterell drew up a family tree to attempt to show the descent of the “Musical Branch.” He also cites his using the John Player information and Walter Sturge’s circular chart, coupled with the notes of John Luton Sturge. The tree has serious flaws and, today, appears to leave that question unanswered. We first heard of a full copy in 2003, in the care of John Sturge in New Zealand. This proved that the smaller chart found by Joyce Cook in her attic in the 1970s, was actually an extract of the larger document. But what has become of the original?

Some losses of heirlooms break a link that had been preserved through many generations. After Joseph Sturge V married Mary Marshall at Evesham on 2nd May 1787, she preserved her wedding dress and mementos of that day for the remainder of her life and thence they were passed down. The wedding dress was known to be in a trunk with other ancient costumes and regularly used for “dressing up” by younger members of the Sturge and Cadbury families in the early years of the 20th century.

Sylvia Lewin recalled the dress as “An exquisite white or pearly white satin dress” that “has since disappeared but was worn at some Friends’ theatricals in the 1930s.” [The illustrations show Monica Sturge wearing the dress.] The trunk is said to have disappeared during the Second World War. Others thought the dress had been given to the Birmingham Art Gallery, but the Costumes curator said not. Mary Marshall’s shoes were at one stage in the possession of Charles Dickinson Sturge and later, with Mary’s ostrich feather fan, passed to Maude Sturge in Moseley, Birmingham, until stolen by a burglar in the 1960s.

The sole remaining souvenir of that happy occasion, from which so many family members descend, is the Quaker wedding certificate that I now treasure and, hopefully, preserve to pass to future generations.