May 7th, 2009

Smile for the camera

Through a Twitter contact, I saw this and immediately thought of an old photo I have of my great-great grandfather which I’m going to submit.

It’s a studio portrait from the 1930s and he’s wearing his best tweed bunnet and watch chain.  With him is his dog, whose name was Rover. I see that Rover is wearing not only a collar but what looks like an identity disc. I don’t know what occasioned the visit to the photographer in Hamilton and why he took the dog with him (more…)

Apr 13th, 2009

I was here

After a few years of neglect, I’ve gone back to doing my family history research.  It costs a fortune (few data resources are free these days, sigh) and takes up inordinate amounts of time. Now I’ve got a gedcom file (afficiandos will understand) that comprises 1242 individuals, all related to me in some way.  My direct ancestors (all those Great Grandparents to the power of n) amount to 104 people, stretching back into the 1600s.  Their blood (and genes) runs in my veins.  Almost without exception, they were dirt poor and undistinguished.  Their lives must have been harder than I can even imagine.  They’d be disdainful of the soft life I lead.  Some of the women are especially interesting – brave, tough women who brought up housefuls of children without a man, or bore a child while rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

In the midst of all this data-gathering and detective work (that’s why it’s fascinating, of course, it’s your very own detective story and you have to pick up clues where you are and piece them together if you can) I sometimes stop to think why I’m doing it.  I know that it’s important enough to me that I’m thinking of putting it (more…)

Oct 5th, 2008

The Indian connection

I’ve done a lot of work through the years on my family’s history.  Unable to contain myself, I’ve gone spinning off into distant cousins of great-great-grandfathers and the like, fascinated by the spreading web of family. Recently, I’ve begun to look at it again, and to focus on the couple who were my paternal great-grandparents.

He was a coalminer turned soldier, she the daughter of a soldier. The twist is that he served in the British Army in India, where he married her when she was aged only fourteen. And I think that her ancestry wasn’t totally British. Curiously, there appear to be no children from this marriage until five years later.  That was very unusual in those days. I wonder if he was posted away from home immediately after the marriage, or there were children, but these died from some tropical disease (cholera was very much a fact of life then).

He was posted back to England and their first child was born on the way in Cape Town. There were to be at least twelve (more…)