Genealogy Chat

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I had a similar feeling of deja vue to Linda when I was on a school camping trip to the Forest of Dean thirty years ago. I had no idea why as to my knowledge none of my family had ever visited the area. When I started researching my family tree two years ago I ordered the birth cert of my grandad and found that his mother had a very unusual maiden name which of course made it easier to find her on the census etc., it turned out her family were from the Forest of Dean area and she herself was born there. How strange?

Caz

I don't think we often realise how difficult their lives were. I knew my grandmother, who died when I was 10, but it took 20 years to find her birth, and then only as a result of the 1901 census. She always said that she came from the Isle of Man, but was actually born in Liverpool and her father came from the IoM.

I thought she had been married twice, with a son from the first marriage and two girls from the second marriage, but in fact her son was born prior to her first marriage.

Research has shown that she had a son outside marriage in 1913 when she was in service and her parents had died. She first married in May 1915 to a soldier injured in WW1. (She took 5 years off her age!) After recovering from the injuries he went back into service and in Sept 1915 came home for a week prior to be being posted back to rejoin his unit.

One morning during his week's leave my grandmother woke to find he had died in bed beside her. She had become pregnant with my aunt that week and in May of the next year married for a second time at 8 months pregnant to my grandfather. My mother was born 4 years later and I certain that my mother and aunt never realised they were not full sisters.

I think I said earlier that my father's family had been traced back by a cousin (with some help from my brother) to 1720.

I thought it had all been done!


But on a whim, about 6 months after I started doing all this genealogy, I entered CADD in Google ...... and found 2 complete trees on rootsweb.com PLUS the fact that there was a One Name Study Group.

My cousin had found that some family members had gone to Australia from this small area in Buckinghamshire, one in the 1840s, and then 2 siblings (with spouses and children) in the 1850s ....... but hadn't taken it any further.


It turns out that the brother and sister who emigrated in the 1850s went to Adelaide, had more children and grandchildren, some were possibly involved in the Bendigo gold riots ............... but the parents and some children and their families then moved on to California.

It seems that they sailed on one of two Mormon ships to go and proselytize on the California goldfields. I do not know whether they actually did this ........ certainly by the time the patriarchs died in the 1920s and 30s they were being hailed in the local San Bernardino newspaper as important settlers in the valley. I've seen copies of the newspaper articles on the web.


There is now a network of Cadds all around the world! I get contacts through here about every couple of months from the UK or Australia, and the Australian ones are all connected up with this.


The Cadd One Name Study group did organise a meeting of the family in 1999 (which of course I knew nothing about as I didn't start tracing until 2003). Two years ago, I was given a cd of the family that had been produced for that meeting.

Imagine my surprise to find that they had me down as the daughter of my brother! They had my mother correct, but had lost my father. My brother was 10 years older than me, but still .....................!

It has taken me 18 months to get that mistake corrected in their files, although the cd still exists with the wrong information. In the process, I might have been responsible for the demise of the One Name Study Group as the owner of it refused to answer my questions or respond in any way, so I complained to ONS.

It turns out the ONSG owner was actually my second cousin, and it was his brother who had done the initial work back in the 1980s. He should have checked the information provided, and should have known that the information was wrong!



sylvia