Unconfigured Ad Widget

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Musings - do you ever get a certain 'feeling' about an ancestor, or record?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Musings - do you ever get a certain 'feeling' about an ancestor, or record?

    I sometimes find that once I've followed someone through the written records I start to get a certain sense about the individual. Oh I know, there's no real way of knowing, but just sometimes I feel as if I know them a bit. And sometimes it's not a pleasant thing either :(

    I'm prompted to write this post from a recent discovery about a 2x great grandfather. He married three times, nothing major in that I suppose, but each time the bride was in her very early twenties, and the last time he married he was 65! And the second wife was the girl he'd got pregnant at 16, after having lived next door but one to her and her family from the age of six years old. Okay so he married her, but I can't help but feel extremely upset at the thought of a 38 year old man living next door to a six year old child and just ten years later fathering her own child :( It feels very very wrong and has actually upset me considerably.

    In contrast to many of the other wonderful stories in my tree, this is really the first one I've had a very bad feeling about and reaction to. Am I unusual in having such strong emotions - I suspect not, but I've surprised myself these past few days!

    So what happy or sad stories do you have that have prompted strong reactions?

    Kate x

  • #2
    Kate

    I have something broadly similar in my tree. The eldest child of my 2 x GGPs is seen on census as a servant in a pub, aged 13, where her uncle aged 42 is the Landlord. By the next census he has married her and they have a nine year old child. This made me feel quite sick.

    The one which really upsets me though (and everyone else will be yawning, they've heard this one so many times!) is my Jane Green,

    "singlewoman of Gawsworth, found dead in a field of childbed and her bastard stillborn infant. Unshriven". Jane was 19 and had called Banns to marry Jonathan Potts in June. The marriage did not take place and Jane died in September. Good ol' Jonathan married someone else in October. I wept buckets over Jane.

    OC

    Comment


    • #3
      My mum's great grandmother died when she was 8 years old, yet she didn't know of her existence. There appears to have been some falling out with my great grandmother because she thought that she married beneath herself, so it seems that they lost contact, therefore not keeping her informed of her growing family. My great great grandmother appears to have had a hard working class upbringing, losing her father at 13 and then something happened to her mother but I don't know what. Then she was widowed at 47 and lost her only son in WW1. I get the feeling that she was a hard, embittered woman with strict Victorian values, especially concerning class status. However as a parent myself I do find her hard to understand.

      Comment


      • #4
        I was a bit offended by a man of 50 marrying a woman of under 20. By itself, that's not too bad, but his age per that marriage cert was 34 - and the marriage took place just over a State boundary from where she was born.

        I've more or less got over it - these things happen - but I didn't think it seemed very nice.

        Christine
        Researching: BENNETT (Leics/Birmingham-ish) - incl. Leonard BENNETT in Detroit & Florida ; WARR/WOR, STRATFORD & GARDNER/GARNAR (Oxon); CHRISTMAS, RUSSELL, PAFOOT/PAFFORD (Hants); BIGWOOD, HAYLER/HAILOR (Sussex); LANCASTER (Beds, Berks, Wilts) - plus - COCKS (Spitalfields, Liverpool, Plymouth); RUSE/ROWSE, TREMEER, WADLIN(G)/WADLETON (Devonport, E Cornwall); GOULD (S Devon); CHAPMAN, HALL/HOLE, HORN (N Devon); BARRON, SCANTLEBURY (Mevagissey)...

        Comment


        • #5
          My great grandmother Key (Dad's Mum's Mum) is the ancestor that made me weep.

          She was a much loved only child of a reasonably well-off Master Mason living in a smallish town in Herefordshire. She met & married my great grandfather (son of an Ag Lab from a village in Worcestershire) and followed him to Wales, where they had a son, a daughter and a second son within 3 years. G grandfather worked for GWR, but was tempted by the promise of a better life in Canada. He sailed to Canada alone in May 1911, followed in July by his elder son, aged 15. G grandma and her 2 younger children followed in September. A year later her elder son died after an illness and the family were homesteading in the Prairies in Saskatchewan. Hard work for a genteel lady with no experience of farming. Her younger son volunteered for WW1 as soon as he was old enough, and was killed just after his 20th birthday. Her mother died the following year, pining for her daughter. G grandma and g grandpa worked hard to keep their farm going and in 1945 celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary. My Dad & Aunt said they remember their grandma as being always tired, and worn out and it was her that kept the farm going when g grandpa wanted to give up. She died in 1948 aged 75. I wish I could have met her.

          I wonder if she ever wondered what her life would have been like had she not met g grandpa and stayed in Herefordshire.
          My avatar is my Great Grandmother Emma Gumbert

          Sue at Langley Vale

          Comment


          • #6
            I have followed the life story of my Gtgrandmother,Jemima,with much interest. I know so much about her life, born in 1872, married in 1891, she lost a son in WW1 as well as 2 brothers. She had many children including my grandmother, Nellie. I then thought I would trace her death..I looked for it in the 1920's/30's/40's & finally found it in 1956...but I was 15 that year & I NEVER MET HER !!!She also lived just a short bus ride from us.. I will never know why I never got to meet her...did she even know of my existance I wonder? There is no-one left to answer my questions now, there must have been a massive break down within the family for this to happen, but it just makes me feel so sad...

            Margaret.
            Family Names : HALE, GREEN, BROUGH, HARRIS, FARMER, REEVES, MINCHIN, CORNISH, WARD.

            Comment


            • #7
              I am still investigating what happened to my father and his siblings, ten altogether, ages 2 to 13, who all ended up in an orphanage in Clonakilty in Ireland around 1912/1913, after the mother died of consumption in Cork City and the father (my grandfather) just walked away from the family, unable to cope. I never knew any of this whilst my father was alive, and unfortunately due to the Second World War, with my father in the navy and separation from family, my relationship with my father was rather strained, and I never knew my Irish roots until 1990, after meeting with Cork cousins. Now, as his story is unfolding before my eyes, bit by bit, I am really feelng for him and his family, as I realise just what he must have gone through. I have only been able to uncover the story as my father kept in touch with all his siblings, and the bonds were so strong that he even sent money back to one of his sisters in Ireland on a regular basis when she had lost her husband, so that she could keep her family together. The more I learn the more poignant the story becomes for me.

              Janet
              Last edited by Janet; 02-08-10, 10:12.

              Comment


              • #8
                OC - poor, poor Jane! It makes me weep that these people, so passed over in life, could simply pass through history unnoticed but for those of us researching like this. I think I've said before but I've always had a particular affinity for the women in my tree, and when I try and think of the losses they have all suffered over the years my heart sometimes breaks, and it's just too hard. Amongst some precious few family papers I have the receipt for a coffin and grave plot for my g-grandmother's first born child, dead at 7 months old in 1911, of enteritis - basically diarrhea and vomiting. Something we could so easily resolve today. And on all the documents it's my g-grandmother who makes all the arrangements - did her husband go to pieces, was it simply the mother's job, how did Minnie find the strength, the will to do all this for her tiny, precious daughter? I know death and infant mortality was high, especially in the industrial cities, and people became somewhat stoic in the face of loss, but your first born child, your daughter, at that tender age? It's terrifying.

                I also read this great article by Richard Morrison in the Times a few years ago, which I still keep. It's about that generation of men and women between the wars who "...grew up in families hit by the hardships of the Depression. Then they had to fight Hitler. And then they had to rebuild the world, and their personal world, out of the ashes and craters of 1945." And may I recommend "The Female Line: Researching Your Female Ancestors" by Margaret Ward, a fascinating read about women and their times, even for experienced researchers.

                I remind myself of my family history motto every time I think about stories like those shared here - "They loved, they laughed, they lost, just as we do now." Real people, real lives.

                Kate x

                Comment


                • #9
                  I think the more we find out about our ancestors - especially if we have a photo or personal belonging of theirs, the more real they seem to us. It's hard to get worked up about just a name and a few dates.My gt gt grandfather John Purvey (1833-97) joined the army briefly but was invalided out as a Chelsea pensioner because he lost the sight of an eye. This didn't stop him marrying three times though, fathering a total of 15 children, the last one born when John was 59. The mother of this last child was the same age as John's eldest daughter, my gt grandmother Ellen. I've often wondered how she felt about this!I do know that Ellen was very close to at least 2 half-sisters, born to John's second wife, so I think they must have been reasonably close-knit at one time. But it must be difficult to be presented with a second step-mother who is the same age as yourself!
                  Last edited by Little Nell; 02-08-10, 10:56.
                  ~ with love from Little Nell~
                  Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

                  Comment

                  Working...
                  X