My comment about COVID was half joking (but only half) - but in answer to your question, a disease killing babies just means people will have more.
Ok.
Stop it (still tempted after 21 years)
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Very interesting Adam and I especially like you’re Great Uncle’s way of dealing with his wife not something I can adopt myself but I can always imagine…
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I wonder what Adam’s great uncle had discovered her doing while wearing (only?) a nightshirt?
Oh probably just that she did not shut up when he tried to sleep. That drives me crazy every now and then.
It’s normally the other way round, the man snoring!
My favourite thing is when she stands over me whilst I’m doing some immensely infuriating bit of DIY and says,
‘is it always going to look like that’? Right pass me my duelling pistols!
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LOL, don’t get me started.
DIY and I have a number of holes to drill in a wall. One hole drilled and I go out to the barn to get another drill. Come back in and swmbo is there hoovering up the dust!
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Quote from @Roog “My old man was a dustman and yes he wore a stereotypical dustmans hat.”
When I was a kid, we had a 45 rpm record with the single song ‘Sink The Bismark’ on it, and the song on the flip side was ‘My Ol’ Man’s A Dustman’.
Played both of them lots, and I knew all the words to both songs, of course.
Dave
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I did a lot of family tree tracing a few years back using the family tree maker software and found it utterly compelling. I did find a couple of interesting things including the fact that my Father’s great Grandfather was a Mersey ferry Captain which I guess was a sort of airline pilot of his day - which has parallels with my own career choices. On my Mother’s side my great great Grandfather was a pretty famous conjuror called Professor Ware who regularly performed in front of royalty and at Royal Ascot etc.
I haven’t yet found the ‘Prussian Count’ who was reputedly some way back in my Father’s line but I live in hope of one day being informed I am the sole heir to a glorious Dracula style Prussian Castle somewhere out there!! I shall then live out my days wearing a cloak and blasting out music on my hi-fi in the castle’s enormous rooms!!
Jonathan
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I have traced my ancestors back a bit further, my great x9 grandfather (Killiaen Van Rensselaer) was a director on the Amsterdam board of the Dutch West Indies company. They were the ones who ran the trading centres in New Netherland (what Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Long Island, Manhattan and most of New York state were called until Governor Nichols arrived with three British Man-O’-War (or equivalents in 1664) and offered them the choice between accepting the sovereignty of the Prince of York (along with freedom of religion, trade, and ability to go home if wanting) or have their homes destroyed, their goods seized, their women raped, the usual routine at that time.
The Dutch, unlike the British, Spanish or Portuguese, never just planted their flag and therein claimed or seized land. They bought all the land they later occupied from the indigenous people and, as a result, were always supported and defended by the Mohawks and other tribes of the Iroquois Nation.
Although Killiaen never visited New Netherland personally, he purchased enough land from the Iroquois to build a colony of about one million acres. His son Jeremias ran the colony till his death. Jeremias had two sons who split the (now British manor) with Killiaen keeping title and the major share and gave the Claverack area to the control of his younger brother Hendrick. Hendricks two oldest daughters were married to two Ten Broecks brothers, two generations later the grandchildren of those two pairings (Maj. John C. Ten Broeck and Annetje Ten Broeck) married after the Revolutionary War finished. Their daughter, Anne Van Schaick Ten Broeck married gentleman breeder of rare cattle, Thomas Hillhouse. Their daughter Sarah married Amos Perry, comptroller city of Troy. They had many children, their son, James, after graduation from the Rensselaer polytechnic was commissioned in the US Navy were he started as an engineer doing blockade duty on the Rappahanock during the Civil War, which interestingly, was were his future wife Ella Brooke resided at Brooke’s Bank, a colonial ferry station on that river that had been twice hit by cannon ball during the war, the concussion of one loosened the cover of a secret compartment were the original velum deed signed by the King of England resided. James ended up as head of steam engineering and was buried at Arlington. His son, John Stone Perry, my mother’s father, also graduated from Rensselaer polytechnic but used his math skills learned there to work as an actuarial for an insurance company in San Francisco. He married the daughter of the attorney general of the Utah territories, Talma Breeden, whose brother Roscoe delivered J. C. Penny his first typewriter by stagecoach. John and Talma had two daughters, my mother Ann and her little sister Sarah.
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I could not understand my mothers mother she came to England in 1900 from Russia. Her english was not so good.
My fathers father came to England in 1870. Also a Russian immigrant.
That is hilarious HH and Adam. Nearly choked on my tea reading that.
Having Irish heritage there often appears to be a certain ‘freedom’ about informal renaming. Only when my mother died did we find out she had ‘informally’ swapped round her first and last names so the records in the UK and Ireland don’t always match. My father sometimes went by his original name (James) or the Irish version, Seamus. He also dropped the ‘O’ prefix to his surname when moving over to the UK in the 60s. All makes for a challenging search, as informal renaming appears to be pretty endemic in older Irish culture.
Oh yarbles, I don’t enjoy that ancestry option.
All I know is that Grandfather paternal side - was at the Somme in the South Wales Borderers and Grandfather maternal side was I believe in the Royal Artillery .
I found my parents marriage certificate during the dour days after WW2, both lived in fairly basic houses , one in South Wales (six children - two bedrooms ) . When the war came , most used it as an opportunity to get away.
I looked up my grandparent’s homes on Google Street View , suffice it to say the houses on the outside weren’t that different in 2019 to 1940 .
So there we are, a simple two up two down in the nineteen forties were homes for both my parents .
My grandmother’s proudest boast was that none of her sons went down the mines.
Cut it forward to 2019 and a family member received his commission at Dartmouth - and I can see all his forbears looking down with great pride .
My maternal grandfather did that as well. Since discovering that my mother’s brother reaaffixed the O - and of his children, my cousins, some did likewise, and others decided to remain o’less.
My Great Grandfather was from Castlerock in Co. Cork Ireland. He dropped the O’Sullivan, so I’m a Sullivan. My brother and I have visited the ruins of the family castle, but alas, we don’t seem to have any claim to it……
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Likewise Mike but we are all O’Sullivan (Ó Súilleabháin) again. Was it done to avoid the racism (No Blacks No Dogs No Irish) we’ve always wondered unfortunately Grandad died before we could ask but It’s always been a family joke how to fool people from believing he was Irish he dropped the O as Sullivan is less Irish.
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