(no subject)

[graculus]

The impression I always got when I talked to my mother about my extended family was that there was more discord involved between our relatives than you could shake a stick at. My maternal grandmother died in 1993, but I know that my mother hadn't seen her since the mid-1970's and I have no memories of her at all though I've seen photos of me with her when I was barely walking. In fact, until I started digging around in the family tree, my mother didn't know when and where her mother had died, though I know she'd tried to trace her via the Salvation Army without any success. As for my maternal grandfather, the man my mother always speaks so fondly of, I've yet to track down exactly what happened to him.

In general, though, I've been blessing the organisational skills of the Victorian era that have allowed me to track my mother's side of the family (through a combination of census records and births, marriages and deaths) back to the turn of the 18th century with some confidence. Though how anyone had the patience to do this before computers, I have no idea! There's no such chance of success on my father's side, even if I knew where to start - the Irish records are too messed up because of the civil war and so on, not to mention I have a surname that populates a significant portion of Munster all on its own, without taking the variants into account. Family mythology says we dropped the O' back before WWI but I have no way of knowing if that's true.

The other side is populated, unexpectedly, by agricultural labourers from Lincolnshire and, further back, Ely in Cambridgeshire. Meanwhile, the London side of things (which I expected to be more prominent than it's turned out to be, since my grandfather's folks are the unexpected rural types) is full of bookbinders, all living in the lovely borough of Clerkenwell. No sign so far of the rumoured Huguenot connection, though, so perhaps that's just wishful thinking...

Comments

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

My mother's father and his ancestors came from Holbeach and the fens. Perhaps in the distant path we share a swamp dweller ancestor. *g*

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Well, my fenland types at least saw the error of their ways and fled to London about 1860, but who knows... since I discovered a while back that I went to the same high school as sg1scribe, I'm ruling nothing out! ;)

[musigneus.livejournal.com]

Off topic from your family research (which sounds very cool, by the way) - hermitsoul mentioned a new Magnificent Seven noticeboard, clarion_news. Wasn't sure if you'd be interested, but thought I'd point since you're one of the only three people I've seen mention that fandom.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for thinking of me, though I've never really been all that much in that fandom, mostly because on a bad day the crazies (mainly the cult of St Vinny Sue and associated loons) make HP fandom look sane. ;)

[musigneus.livejournal.com]

What, HP fandom isn't sane? ;)

[epistrophia.livejournal.com]

You have my sympathies re the Irish ancestry. My mother's family are called Walsh. Which is like Smith in England. (Though obviously as far as she's concerned, we're the branch of the Walshes who have towns named after them and are related to (one of the many many branches of) Irish royalty and had castles and lackeys...)

Finding any information worth anything is well nigh impossible. Shame, really, because part of me would love to prove that we are in fact descendeded from peat-cutters, just to see her face...!