General Chat

How about gt gt uncle who was confined to barracks for a week in 1917 for improper conduct of 'urinating in a pot and throwing it out of a window'

.........well when you gotta go, you gotta go ?

or poor great grandad who died in a mental asylum in 1918.............mum says no one ever spoke about him, she thought he had committed suicide but now we know what happened to him.

or gt gt grandfather who died in the middle of a musical performance in Newcastle...... bet that cast a cloud over the proceedings too.

You learn so much dont you

Jan

How sad all of these poor children...thank goodness now days people are encouraged to grieve and talk about their lost children.

I don't know how some of them coped, who lost multiple children when mortality rates were so high...

ScattyP how funny...I had a great uncle who my mum insisted was killed in the war when poison was introduced into an army training camp....Hmmm I found out the poor chap enlisted under age but had permission from his employer and parents, and then contracted mastoiditis which turned into meningitis and he died after only two weeks in the army.

My father was a great teller of family history and extremely proud of the fact his father survived WW1 albeit it with a life long gammy leg due to an injury received.
I grew up imagining him "going over the top"in dire circumstances and last year managed to obtain a copy of his enlistment papers.That was when I found out some very surprising information indeed.
Great grandad enlisted in 1917 and was discharged two weeks later having been shot in the leg during basic training and having been found to have lied about his age (he was in fact only 14 years oid )
I dont know whether he accidently shot himself or was a victim of a stray bullit but Im glad he survived or I wouldnt be here to pass on the tale of his war time exploits.

Liz.

Im surprised the midwife told your dad to bury the baby in the garden. It would cause a man hunt today if the baby was dug up.
As for your gran being unsympathetic,perhaps it was because she had experienced the same thing and had to get over it so she couldnt sympathize.
Perhaps that is the way she was treated over her dead babies so thought that was the right thing to do

liz, probably does not help much, but I grew up in an era where you just got on with it. My parents gave no sympathy over such matters either. Stiff upper lip type of thing I suppose. But also agree that time is needed to grieve, difficult to do when others will not, or can not talk to you about it.

Gail

Fascinating!

Someone mentioned a lady having a stillborn child and then being taken back to the wards, but her husband being told never to mention anything about the baby.

My Mum and Dad had a stillborn baby boy, their firstborn, while they were living with my paternal Gran in a village in Buckinghamshire. Mum always told me my Gran was very unsympathetic to her and the midwife told my Dad to take the baby and bury it in the garden. I assume that's what he did. It would have been in 1946. Mum and Dad moved back to Mum's home city after that and I was born in July 1947. At least my brother was given a name and I know about him.
Next time I visit the area I will ask at the church if there is any mention of my brother anywhere and also might speak to the people who now own the cottage Gran lived in, hope they never dig up any little bones, it would be awful.

I found out a few years back after my parents had died, that my Gran had two miscarriages and a stillbirth herself and also lost a son from appendicitis when he was young. She also went out when widowed to help families when babies were born, by staying and looking after the other children, and she moved to Wales for a while to stay at her sister's house and care for her through her final illness. How can someone who has done all that have been unkind to my Mum over her loss.

Lizx

nudge...

I recently discoverd my late aunty Dinah's son, Raymond's birth registration in Dublin Ireland on the familysearch pilot web site. (I already had his death certificate, he died in London and it was common knowledge in our family.)

However, after a bit more browsing the Dublin Birth Registrations I found another record that could be another son of my aunty Dinah's. My hunch proved right!

So my aunty had another son born in 1937, before Raymond was born.....he was named after his father, Francis. Yet none of my cousins knew this either.

I can't find a death registration for him in Ireland or London..but he is now in my tree and I hope my late aunty Dinah knows that I have found him and he will be recorded in my records for other family members to remember him ....along with his brother Raymond.

Before my Mum was married she used to visit her sister Dinah in Ireland regularly...but I know she never mentioned Francis. How sad is that?

.

nudge to keep this one going!

nudge...

I am so glad this thread has kept going...

I have made one more discovery, a gg aunt had 8 children with her husband in Victoria. They then appear in Queensland a few years later and mt gg aunt is marrying a very well to do lawyer and made teh society page.

Funnily enough, the newspaper describes her as the daughter of the late...(which actually was her husband) and there is no mention of what happened to her first family of children, as she then goes on to have another two with her new husband...

How convenient that he "died" so she could remarry someone else, no deaths in any of the states though to prove this!

Have found a distant one whose father ended up as a lavatory attendant in Fulham while he was doing ten years in Wormwood Scrubs for setting fire to a plantation of trees in Herefordshire.

What was he doing in Herefordshire anyway?

We always knew that Grandad had an unmarried sister, and a brother who had a family who Granny was in touch with. After Granny and her daughter had died and we cleared the family home, I found a handwritten will from Grandads mother naming those 3 children, plus another daughter who no one in the family knew anything about. Granny never talked about her, and she knew loads of family history. I found this daughters marriage soon after, then found in the 1911 census and freeBMD that they had children, she died in 1914, he apparently remarried and there were also grandchildren.

I share a GGGGG grandad with Hilary Clinton, I'm descended from one of his daughters and she from another of his daughters!! oh heck!!

With a father with no birth certificate, given out to a baby farm and later adopted and a mother whose own mother never married, my parents warned me I would be hard pushed to find any ancestors.
Dad said to go down the route of his adopted family, that was his wish, and mum said not to bother with her side because there was no one to find.
Well, they are both deceased now, and I hope that they have met up with some of their ancestors who include, Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin. My mothers aunt married a Kipling.
Have also found, with the help of another GR sub that some relatives emigrated to Salt Lake and I have a whole line of Mormons, some with 5 wives and over 50 children., and
Kenny Wharram ( canadian) professional ice hockey player.
My son-in-law is the nephew of a famous musician, but as he is still living would not be right to name him.

Keep this thread going, makes very enjoyable reading.

SylviaG

Just come across this thread whilst browsing during my lunch hour!
Yes its amazing just what can turn up ...

The 1911 census has shown me that my Grandmother had 5 children and not 4 as believed. The unknown child died before his first birthday - I now have the certificates, though no-one ever talked about him not even my Dads eldest sister or my Nan. Makes me wonder if my Dad ever knew.

Another surprise on the 1911 census was that my widowed Great grandmother (my Mums Nan) moved briefly to Lincolnshire from Croydon, London and was running a boarding house for railway workers. We knew she did run one whilst in London around 1910 and then ran another one over in Breconshire, Wales around 1914-1917 before moving her family back to Tottenham. All the family were surprised when I mentioned this. Even my Mum had no idea of the link with Lincolnshire, and she's the eldest suriving now.

You just never know what you are going to discover. Its fascinating.

My late father-in-law born 1912 always insisted that he wasan only child and orphaned at the age of 9.


NOT TRUE!

Since researching his family tree I have proved otherwise. His father died in 1936 and his mother died in 1961.

Not only that but he had an older sister too, Kathleen born in 1901.

Traced her marriage and discovered that my husband had 3 cousins that he never knew about as well.

One of the brothers had died but with an Electoral Roll look-up we traced the other 2 and met up with them a couple of months later.


The 2 brothers were delighted to meet us and know all about their uncle Jack who they hadn't seen since before WW2.

We then learned that they didn't know their grandmother either as the grandparents had split up back in the 1920's....but they didn't discover this until after their grandmother had died.

Why all the secrecy is beyond belief!

Found none of my ancestors were sent out for stealing a loaf of bread or a hanky. Have one highway robber, an embezzler a court martial, house breaking, loads of theives and one felony, which was a woman. have a couple sent for life, and 3 death sentences then commuted to life in the colony.

Funny thing, not a word was ever stated about all these rouge ancestors.

Has made a very interesting tree.

Gail

I was told by a cousin of my late Mum, that my Gt Grrandparents Michael & Bridget Brady had about 20 children but not all survived.

I took the info on board...as you do..but imagine my surprise when the 1911 Ireland census came out.

According to the 1911 Dublin City Census, they had 18 children born alive. 8 children still living.

12 births found…6 to find!

I can't imagine what it must have been like to lose 10 of your children.

It certainly made me shed a few tears.

i am surprised by the infant mortality.

my gggrandfather had 10 children in sunderland, durham between 1857 and 1875 only 4 of them survived childhood. they died of such illnesses as failure to thrive

at a similar time another gggrandfather had 11 children in misterton , notts (farmers) between 1870 and1895. all of them survied through childhood.

just goes to show the towns were rather unhealthy places.