General Chat

Well I know one of my maternal great grandfather liked a drink lol. He lived in a small village outside Norwich and in his old age worked as the village postman. Obviously deliveries were widespread to farms etc so on cold days, and maybe hot, was given appropriate drinks which were usually alcoholic!

Luckily his donkey, called Obadiah, which pulled the cart, knew its way home so GGrandfather was ok if he drank too much and fell asleep!

Apparently one day Gg. dozed off and some lads unhooked the donkey and pushed the cart into a field, closed the gare and reattached the cart to the donkey through the bars of the gate! No matter how much Obadiah pulled he couldn't budge the cart and eventually Gg woke up. I bet the air was blue and those lads got a clip round the ear lol

Lizx

What a shame nobody thought to find out what those tricks were!

According to my granny one of her grandfathers walked out of a pub drunk. There was a horse lying in the road refusing to get up yet despite being stoating drunk he managed to get the horse up. When we looked up what he did for a living it said currier meaning he brushed horses for a living. I wonder if there might be some truth to legend beyond the part where he came out the pub drunk. Maybe he had a few tricks as he worked with horses every day.

My Hampshire Gran said my grandad must be Scottish - as he loved singing 'I Belong to Glasgow'. My sister believed this for years. :-D

My Dad said that my grandmother, my Mums Mum married a Mr Fremantle in Australia but no she emigrated to Fremantle in Australia, I’ve untangled a lot of misinformation over the years.

Mr Owls great grandfather was in the home guard in Barton in WW2. They were not provided with weapons and had to bring their own. Several of the men had guns as they would sometimes shoot a rabbit or duck. One man however showed up with a bow and arrow. In all fairness nobody would have heard it coming.

The family were also signatories of the temperance movement however great grandfather kept whiskey in the house to offer to guests. Mr Owl’s grandfather was offered a quadruple measure as great grandfather had no idea what a standard measure was.

We were lucky that we got all this information from granny before she died in April

I was always a nosy kid. It's how I found out when I was a child that we were not going by our real surname, among other little snippets and gossip.



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My dad asked his mum who his father was. Her reply was - 'Look for Juarez' :-S
Nor sure whether she meant a person or a place.

Gran wanted the best education for her son, so sent him to private schools.
Unfortunately, as a single mum of two in the 1930's Gran didn't have much money.
Dad told me, in the 1980's, that he went to quite a few private schools.
Gran would send him on the condition fees would be paid later.
When she got the final demand, she would get dad from school, change his name and send him to another school!
I did ask him to write down the schools and the names he went under, but, unfortunately, he became ill.
He had written everything down, but it was at home, and his wife didn't know what I was talking about - she refused to believe anything like that had happened, wouldn't look for it, and threw everything of his out, when he died.
(never liked the woman, anyway)

If I'd known what names he used, I could have, at least, found out , later on, where he was in 1939 - when his mum was in prison (I didn't know about her prison sentence until the 1939 register was released)

Shirley :-D

Thanks joy

Yes know that now thanks, but I was searching back in 2002 when the mmn was still only on the records after 1911 births and the gro hadn’t started the pilot scheme that is now a permanent fixture

Shirley, just spotted your post.

Are you aware that if you go onto the GRO site, the mother's maiden name is listed unless the child was illegitimate in which case the child's surname is the same as the mother's?

Oh Shirley, how sad that those children were separated and one sent abroad. Such a shame no one kept a note of the details

Sharron, women were made of stern stuff in those days.

My great grandfather worked as a stonemason and it's obvious that he travelled for work from their small village near Buckinghamshire and sometimes the family joined him. Several were born in different places to their home village, including one in Pimlico .

If only I could hear his story

Lizx

My mum told the story of her parents marrying in 1909 and both widowed

He had children from his first marriage who went into the workhouse and then the workhouse run children’s home in 1905 when his first wife died

Mums story was soon after grandparents married they got a contact from the children’s home saying we understand you have married .plesase make arrangements to collect your six children


Soo with that info I looked for six kids , we knew the eldest one was shipped out to Canada as a BHC late July 1909 and they missed her by weeks

Knew too mums 3 half brothers by name as they were always family but who were the other two

Now this was when the 1901 census has just been released so only two kiddies with them then

Spent yonks on freebmd looking for the other kids bought wrong certs too as mmn wasn’t available then other than on the certs


Sooo there was never six children it was four ,one daughter three sons

And the boys weren’t released til 1910 to stepmum ,our gran Jessie

Apparently the home wanted reimbursement for their care and aunts passage paid to Canada .but don’t know if that was true either

Never did find out if money was ever paid as gran had passed in 1958 and mum in1980 so couldn’t ask :-(

Also make sure you write them down :-). I have a book with loads of snippets of past events written in to pass on

Get down to the nitty-gritty, listen to the yarns. That is what life is about. Otherwise your research is just a chart with names on.

I totally agree but I think we all follow the same pattern, by the time we start genealogy some of our relies have already passed.

Was talking on the phone to one of our old biddies and she was telling me how her dad had walked from Barnsley with the Jarrow marchers.He found work here and sent for her mother and his four children, she was the youngest and just a baby.

This was interesting to me and I asked if her dad had come back to get them but she said her mum had had to bring them down alone.She didn't know because she was a baby and had never been told.

Luckily her brother is still alive and, in his nineties, still has all his marbles, so she is going to ask him. This tiny piece of information is, I think, a very important detail that could so easily have been lost forever.

That was quite a journey for a lone woman to take with four children and she may well have had to arrange transportation of the content of their home as well. So big but so easily overlooked and lost to history.