I’m guessing that in 1937, when your great great grandmother turned 100, the telegram came from the King, or Princess Elizabeth?
2 Likes
I have a copy somewhere. I think it was Elizabeth.
G
1 Like
My daughter works for Ancestry, with data analysis and programming, all related to the search engines used for the research.
We live in Ireland and one interesting point she made was that researching Irish heritage was more challenging as most of the historical records were destroyed during the Easter risings.
3 Likes
Another issue is that, if you live in England and have some Irish ancestry, on the English 19th century census returns it often states the place of birth as simply Ireland, which can make it tricky to pursue further if you don’t know where exactly in Ireland your Irish ancestor was born.
2 Likes
This is true my Brother and I had some real issues getting hold of our Grand Parents Birth certificates when we where wanting to apply for Irish Passports post Brexit. First you have to yourself be put on to the register of foreign births after which you can apply for a passport unfortunately we are still waiting as during a normal year 6,000 such applications are processed post Brexit 27,000 then Covid happened and so the Register of Foreign Births is now closed.
Now onto my parents they met at school and where married and had four children by the time they where 23 and 22. My father like his father was a Bricklayer both myself and my older brother both went into the building trade too.
My other half’s family are interesting on her maternal side she is of German decent her Great Grand Mother and Father took their young family to Brazil in the late 1920’s where they lost all their money in some dodgy farming ventures.
After returning to Germany in the late 1930’s her Grandfather went to work for the new car manufacturer VW in Wolfsburg at the begging of 1937 and was part of the Beetle design team. At the end of the war like many thousands of women my partners Grandmother became pregnant. In the years 1945-46 the abortion rate went up 1000 fold in Germany luckily for me Ilsa the very strong German Lady I would meet over 50 years later decided to keep her baby and came back to England with an English soldier she met (not the father) and settled in Ilford.
The baby my mother-in -law who sadly I never met stayed in Hamburg with her Aunt she was 6 when her mother sent for her in England. Ilsa later met Ernie who sold potatoes from a lorry in Hackney and in the mid 60’s they moved to La Manga in Spain and had a lovely and successful life together.
Sadly in the early 1980’s at just 38 my Mother-in-Law Margot died of lung cancer leaving my 13 year old partner and her older brother and sister without parents as unfortunately their father a merchant seaman was absent but the two girls 13 and 15 where taken in by family friends.
Before Ilsa died we managed to tape her speaking of her life both during the War in Germany and in Post War London an amazing tale I can tell you though the identity of my partners ‘blood’ Grandfather and the circumstances of her Grandmother’s pregnancy at the end of the War went with her to the grave.
5 Likes
My Mother and Uncle did a family tree a few years back and one of our ancestors a Scotsman took part of the Mutiny on the Bounty of course this was very exciting news and we all waited in anticipation as we waited to discover a new branch of the family in the South Pacific even perhaps on Pitcairn Island.
Unfortunately though our relative whose name escapes me as I’m writing this died without having children. Prior to leaving Scotland he had been brought up around the Whiskey distilleries and whilst in the South Pacific he put these skills to good use and produced a spirit of some kind and drank himself to death.
Paper family histories though not as exciting as the more embellished oral ones are so incredibly interesting especially when they are proved to be fact. Oral ones though can be much more fun like our Great Grandfather in Ireland who according to family history was a freedom fighter who died during the Easter Uprising and whose grief stricken young Bride committed suicide leaving two Orphans who then lived with a band of travelling Tinkers.
Unfortunately the truth is less glamorous my Great Grandfather was an apprentice boot maker and both he and my Great Grandmother died of TB but they did leave two Orphans and my Grandad did live with a family of Irish Travellers.
3 Likes
My mothers side had mostly successful creative folk. The men were painters or draftsman and the women veered away from playing skivvy.
Although my fathers side has more obscurity, resulting from a visiting American serviceman during the Second World War who fell for young grandma’s impeccable Jewish descending good looks.
2 Likes
Boom tsh! (If you’re not careful)
G
2 Likes
An interesting thread.
My mother’s side was upper-middle-class, with banking and law seemingly being preferred occupations, though my maternal grandfather always wanted to be an engineer and was into DIY before it was a thing and made model steam engines etc. My father’s side was Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, my grandfather being born there and arriving in the UK as a child, he married an English woman, who was the daughter of a Charity Commissioner but she died when my father was 2 and I have never met any of her family.
My parents were fairly young when they met and my imminent arrival prompted a hasty marriage, that ended in divorce 13 years later. As my mother was a single child and my dad had a younger half brother, we had a very small family but after the divorce and my parent’s remarriage, I gained a couple of step-siblings and shortly after half-siblings.
3 Likes
My maternal grandmother was one of those ladies, full of stories. One of thirteen, born to a minister, she became a “nurse” to a widowed man, married him. Never quite sure how she came to get a job in Bristol from Midsomer Norton.
Apparently related to Sarah ? who is commemorated with a stone bust in the town, had family die in mining disasters and somewhere related to the author of the nursery rhyme Jack And Jill.
As a child she always told us to seek out and marry into a family of butchers because they never wanted for anything. This may have been prompted by a neighbour who never left the house without pearls, diamonds and a fur of some sort. So when I was researching family history my grandfather’s family was something of a mystery and the outcome was a real surprise. Eventually we discovered that his father ran a pork butchers where Bristol bus station is now and lived for at least fifteen years in Frenchay Poor House!
3 Likes
For my dad’s story I suggest watching the 2010 movie The Long Walk which I think gives a good flavour of part of his wartime experience:: I found it very moving as so many things struck a chord with my dad’s descriptions when I was a kid, except he had inevitably refrained from giving the true detail.
He had been a painter and decorator before WW2. He evaded the Germans when they invaded Poland, but when the Russians then pushed the Germans west he was bundled off on a cattle train as a slave for the salt mines in Siberia. From there he escaped, made his way somehow to South Africa and joined the RAF, ending up meeting my mum after being demobbed in England, fortunately for him and me! If not for readers of this forum!) not one of the Poles repatriated against their will to Poland that by then was behind the Iron Curtain.
One of my father’s brothers died at Auschwitz (he was a lawyer, and wasn’t a Jew: it is less well known that the Nazis also persecuted the “intelligentsia”). I don’t know more about my dad’s ancestry, though I recall a photo of his parents taken some time before WW1 with them dressed very smartly.
My mum’s dad was from Ireland, and after moving to England I understand became a prominent member of one of the trade unions in the early part of the 20th century, possibly a founding member. My mum’s mum was born in England, her grandfather hailing from Orkney (where he had made a grandfather clock), and her grandmother’s family, or part of it, hailed from Cornwall.
So I’m a real mongrel!
5 Likes
Started to read that and thought, you could have had mine for free :-).
5 Likes
Take a trip to Dublin and visit the public Library (when you can), they have a huge record there. and its near the Guiness brewery if you fancy a little refreshment. This might be a useful article to read also . . . . good luck!
Me and my old mam’s trip to Dublin to find out about our family history in the Cork shipping industry . . . . well so, we went to the library so we did, but bad luck! it was too early and not opened yet. But the guiness bar across the road was open, so we popped in for a liquid breakfast. After a little while, we wandered out into the street and back across the road, but the library sign now says “closed for lunch”…
Aaaah Bigora! . . . bad luck again. An so, just one more little drink across the road while we waited, Guess what, when we staggered back across the road black tloo dur lubrary it wis shut at 5 O’clock. Well! . . . . . . . We had been in Dublin the whole week and the Public library always seemed to be closed, at least when we turned up. Later when we arrived home, we discovered that all the information we needed about the O’Donovan clan ( Ó Donnabháin ) was now posted on-line. What luck! We needn’t have gone all the way to Dublin after all, but the Guiness was Good.
5 Likes
I had the same problem with early thoughts of a Thai bride !!
1 Like
I’ve gone back to 1754 on the fathers side, at that point it gets a bit fragmented, but has links to Scotland & Ireland. But no question about the time after 1754, they lived what was then the open countryside of Hoxton, then the edge of London suburbs. The family were significant trade guild people & freemen of the City of London for three generations.
Mother’s side I’ve gone back to 1622 & with a yet to be verified line to early 1200’s (WIP) They were a long string of farmers & from 1622 onward, & still today, living around south Bucks.
My paternal & maternal grandfathers both fought in the same campaigns throughout WW-1
One was in the Royal Bucks Huzzars the other The London Regiment. Both fought in Gallipoli and then into Egypt, subsequently into the Palestine campaign and eventually both in the battle for Jerusalem.
Maternal G.Dad took part in the cavalry charge on the Turkish lines at El Mughar, the last horse charge with swords drawn recorded by the British army.
Paternal G.Pop’s only comment was it was a bloody long walk.
1 Like
I took a conscientious decision not to have any children, although I have an estranged sister with two young daughters who will no doubt see to a continuation.
I see that there’s too many of us in the world.
I do sometimes feel all the hardship, stress, pain and joy from all my ancestors behind me - but reconcile that with hope for others that’s not my others.
1 Like
Us too. I sometimes get tired though of the long pauses from some people after telling them I don’t have children but like you I believe there are enough of us on this planet.
3 Likes
What’s needed is for people generally worldwide to stop having more than two children, rather than some choosing to end their gene line. Last year nature introduced its own approach to humans being unable to control their own population and unable to control their destruction of the planet…
1 Like
I’m in no way ending my gene line my two sisters have 3 children and numerous cousins have children and the same on my partners side.
So in India and Africa people are going to persuaded to have only two children and what if they have two girls and no boys.
It’s so much more complexed than that and as for Covid 19 being natures way of keeping the population down whats the point in killing the over 80’s surely a disease that targeted babies or infants would be more effective?
1 Like