View Full Version : Interesting Family History!
Piggymon
28-10-2007, 23:23
This weekend I spent a long time with my Gran and Auntie looking through old ( and I mean OLD ! ) pictures and learning some family history .. I found it really interesting.
My Great Grandad was a spiritualist and held seances for many people including Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle and the Cadbury's family ( my Gran used to get mahooosve chocolate castles ! )
My Gran showed me pics of my family that were over a hundred years old.
I then visited my Auntie and asked her about things and she brought out some pictures from the seances that were held ! :shocked:
I'm going to see if I can borrow them when I visit next and scan them in but they were very much like this one :
http://www.equinoxe.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/revtwees.jpg
There were about 20/30 of them and they were bloody amazing ! There was a picture of my Great Grandad with what appeared to be an American Indian coming out of him - My Auntie said this was his spirit guide.
Bloody fascinating :cool:
Anyone else have interesting family history ?
Kell_ee001
29-10-2007, 01:34
Anyone else have interesting family history ?
eerr... not that I know of! :o
Chuckles
29-10-2007, 01:40
My Dad's father worked down t'pit. His father worked down t'pit. His fathers father worked down t'pit. Reapeat Ad Nauseam.
My stepdad's a genealogy nut. He has a few big folders full of stuff he's researched since I got him on the internet a few years ago.
My Mum's side of the family has people in Yorkshire, somewhere in Scotland (who had lost contact with the rest of the family over 50 years ago but we found them) and probably a few other places. My Stepdad's side of the family has connections back to the Irish potato famine (well it would do with a surname like Menah a generation or two ago).
Unfortunately I can't find out much about my Dad's side as it seems my Dad doesn't have interest in such things (no surprise there), and the best source of information would be my Nan who seems to have decided it's too upsetting for her to recount and there's no way I was going to even think about pushing that.
I've even seen my Mum's diary from the year I was born - complete with my birth weight. :)
A distan relative grounded the SS Great Britain :o
I've managed to trace part of my family and our family name appears in the Doomsday book. However I haven't really focused much between that time and the relatively immediate past. Our surname is quite prevalent in the USA so we must have emigrated there at some point, or at least part of our family went to Ireland and moved on from there to the States.
That's fascinating Piggy. Would be really interested to see those pics when you get them :)
My Mum's absolutely obsessed with tracing our family tree and she has loads of folders full of info as well as a database on her computer. She tries to get as much info as possible on everyone to get an insight into their life, because she's really interested in the social history aspect. She's always off to various records officies to get marriage/birth/death certificates for some distant family member or other. She's not interested in the family name as such, more the link of people who got together to form our family and the people in it... if that makes sense? She's even been to churches to see where our relatives are buried and visited the villages they used to live in.
So far, she's found that we come from all over the UK. We've been in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and some of the family moved over to the USA too. I think the funniest story she's found out so far was that my Nana's great great great etc. Grandfather died in the asylum. My Nana was mortified because my Grandad kept taking the mick out of her for it, lol.
Some interesting family stuff, little major stuff from a historical background. My Mum and Dad have been researching their respective trees. My Dad has kinda hit a dead end at the moment and needs to travel to Ireland a few more times before he'll be able to trace back his side any further. For one reason or another the british army bombed the central records office in Ireland to stop terrorists *shrug* I'm sure it made sense at the time; but unfortunately it took out the main centralised records of Births, Deaths and Marriages, so my Dad is stuck having to pin point exactly which parish in a county my relative would have moved to England from, so he can go look at the parish records :)
I do know one of my relatives on that side of the family was a slave ship captain, family lore has it that a victorian relative first started investigating our history, got back a couple of generations, realised what her relative had done and then stopped, destroyed all her work and tried to forget the past :D
The only major interesting thing I can think of was my Father's involvement with two German POW Officers who were disguised as british pilots, and how he let them take off in a trainer plane from a Carlisle airforce base, despite having sussed out they were Germans. Its been a while since I read the book, and my Grandfather never spoke about it to me whilst he was alive; even my Dad had forgotten about it. I only found out by chance because I happened to pick up James Follett's book "A Cage of Eagles", in which as part of the fiction he recounts the real life story. I thought it was a very strange co-incidence. Same name, in an area I knew he was serving in, until I got to the end and read the authors comments..
http://www.dswilliams.co.uk/follett/A%20cage%20of%20eagles%20novel.html
There was something about the German Officer's buttons on their uniform that twigged my Grandfather to them not being proper british officers. Remembering there was a POW camp near by, and also realising that he was on his own on the airstrip with two large men and a plane, he let them take off in the training plane, rushed to the Command Officer and told them exactly what he'd done. The coup de grâce was that he knew that the plane only had less than half a tank of fuel in it, and would have to land at an airstrip within a certain radius of the air base to refuel. All relevant air strips were informed, and then when an hour or so later the plane lands at a strip, the maintenance crew invited the officers to go to the officers mess whilst they refueled and gave the plane an obligatory once over. The officers sit down with food in the mess hall, at which point the MPs turned up :)
Stan_Lite
29-10-2007, 08:48
One of my uncles on my Father's side of the family traced ours back to the middle of the 17th century, apparently our ancestors were the lairds of one of the small islands in the North of Shetland.
He went to the island and took pictures of the ancestral home - a small mansion by Shetland standards. Although there have been various bits tacked on throughout the years, it's still an impressive house and is still used - the present owner is a Lady something or other (no relation).
He couldn't get any further back than that because the parish records before that were in a poor state of repair and mostly illegible, which is a shame.
One thing that was quite interesting is that, up until the middle of the 18th century, they still using the Fathers first name with son or daughter tacked on to make the surname of the offspring (i.e. the surname of the son of Peter Robertson would be Peterson and the daughter would be Petersdaughter). This practice died out in most of the rest of the UK in the middle ages.
This format is still in use in places like Iceland and would account for why Shetland stopped using it so late on, since much of the culture in Shetland until recently was based on old Norse culture.
I remember saying that the first time I saw your surname. I knew there was something great about you! :D
Admiral Huddy
29-10-2007, 10:26
My Mum's absolutely obsessed with tracing our family tree and she has loads of folders full of info as well as a database on her computer. ..snip..
Same here. My mum has got back to the beginning of the 18th century but records start becoming fairly local then so she has to travel around for records. It does her good really, she gets around and travels. I’ll have to ask her. I don’t think she’s keen on sharing because of the work she’s put in.
One of my clients does genealogy for a living. She’s like a private investigator. One of her clients was trying to look for some twins that were killed in action during WW1 in 1917. However, one witness reported that he saw the boys being carried on a medical cart and were never seen since. Assumed dead, they had unmarked graves. It turns out that the boys were taken back to a London hospital and both died from their wounds in 1918. It also turns out that one tried to save the other whilst they were bombed and dies together 6 months later. Their real "unmarked" graves in south London could then be named and a proper service was performed in their honour. Nice story I thought :)
My Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great (I think that's the lot) Grandfather used to race longboats across the Tyne and all over the country. He was quite well known when he lived and was given a pub in his local village as a mark of respect, the pub still stands today. I remember visiting his gravesite for a project I was doing at school and instead of a normal headstone, he had a giant bronze statue of him there :D - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Clasper
His funeral procession was watched by an estimated 130,000 people.
Blackstar
29-10-2007, 14:35
We're French
My dad's mum is part English,
\\o/
I bet you can't actually do that. Don't make out like you can ;D
I bet you can't actually do that. Don't make out like you can ;D
Can so.
Stan_Lite
29-10-2007, 15:54
My dad's mum is part English,
My Mam's Grandad was Welsh - I shudder to think what nationality her Father was (war baby).
Blackstar
29-10-2007, 15:57
My Mam's Grandad was Welsh - I shudder to think what nationality her Father was (war baby).
My granny's family have Welsh roots as well.
My dad's mum is part English,
Poor darling.. that must be horrible for you :(
Blackstar
29-10-2007, 16:31
Poor darling.. that must be horrible for you :(
I just pretend not to know. She is as mad as a box of frogs anyway.
Pumpkinstew
30-10-2007, 00:14
It's fairly recent history but my Grandfather was an electrician in the RAF and was scheduled to fly on this aircraft:
http://www.1st-take.com/product.asp?P_ID=122
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downend_air_crash
Fortunately for him his apprentice mentioned that he had never flown before (ground crew rarely did) and he gave up his seat to him. His generosity saved his life.
Can't.
Can.
And I believe there's some Belgian in our family.
Piggymon
30-10-2007, 08:29
It's fairly recent history but my Grandfather was an electrician in the RAF and was scheduled to fly on this aircraft:
http://www.1st-take.com/product.asp?P_ID=122
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downend_air_crash
Fortunately for him his apprentice mentioned that he had never flown before (ground crew rarely did) and he gave up his seat to him. His generosity saved his life.
Christ ! :shocked:
In WWII by Grandad's house was bombed (fairly sure they weren't aiming for that particular house). My Grandad was in the house with two of his sisters. They both were killed, and my Grandad was very seriously injured. I *think* it was two that were killed, my Grandad was one of 7, but most of them were away at the time.
I've seen the photos of the house, how anyone could have survived, I don't know.
Can't.
Immanuel?
He was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
I'm too much of a mix to chase down most of my family history.
My mum's side isn't too bad. My mum's mum was from Sheffield and all her side are english. My mum's dad was from Scotland up in Fraserburgh and can be traced back to a lady who came over with the name Dotter added to her dad's name so we know she was from a Scandinavian/Viking background.
My dad's mum was Welsh but one of her parents was Scottish and my dad's dad had one Welsh parent and one from the West Indies (no idea where). There are differing stories about how he came to be over here but we know he was one of the first black people in the Rhondda. We know this because on looking into our family tree a family member still in the Rhondda asked around if anyone remembered Thomas Williams. No one did - until one woman said 'Oh! You mean Tom The Black! Why didn't you just say that?' That was how everyone knew and remembered him.
MarcLister
30-10-2007, 15:24
I really should do some research into my family tree. My uncle who lives in Canada is interested in this as well so I could probably get him to help me and to do the research for my Canadian aunt's history.
I did once do a family tree for school when I was in year 5 or 6. I only got one credit for it and my Mum was mad at that. We spent ages on it.
There is that family name research site that the BBC News did an article on. Basically you enter your family name into the site and it shows a map of the UK and colours the parts of the country where the name comes from historically. Running both Lister (my new name after parents divorced, Mum's maiden name btw) and Caldwell (my father's name/my maiden name) I get a very heavy occurence in Greater Manchester and to a lesser extent Lancashire. Caldwell seems to get a little more than comfortable hit in Scotland in the Dumfries/Glasgow corner. :o
Von Smallhausen
30-10-2007, 19:24
I'm a Pankhurst :D
A suffering get ?
A suffering get ?
Not for a while now :evil::p
Pumpkinstew
30-10-2007, 19:32
Christ ! :shocked:
Well, I haven't traced my family back that far......but you never know ;)
Pumpkinstew
30-10-2007, 19:38
There is that family name research site that the BBC News did an article on. Basically you enter your family name into the site and it shows a map of the UK and colours the parts of the country where the name comes from historically.
http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/
that link doesn't work for me :(
Yup, someone has borked the code :)
MarcLister
30-10-2007, 20:08
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5047982.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4620786.stm
Pumpkinstew
30-10-2007, 20:10
Try it now.
:p
Stan_Lite
30-10-2007, 21:45
Fascinating.
The top area in the UK for my surname in both 1881 and 1998 (and presumably in between) was the town in which I was born and brought up (Lerwick) - common as muck, me :D
common as muck, me :D
Its lonely down here :(
Told me what I already new.. Graydon family is a predominantly north of England based group. The only thing since 1881 is that we've spread East generally, with some vagrants like my family, heading south.
Davey_Pitch
31-10-2007, 11:24
I know that a fair way back in the family history, one of my great etc grandfathers was a sailor. The ship went to Portugal for a while, where he met and fell in love with a Portuguese Princess. She left Portugal to be with him and they returned to the UK together.
That probably makes me about 1 millionth in line to the Portuguese throne. Wonder if I start bumping people off I can eventually make it to be King? :D
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