tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post4045396400984241410..comments2024-03-23T12:38:46.260+00:00Comments on The History Girls: Family trees and hidden stories.Mary Hoffmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06241989732624913706noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-90298511034344569852017-03-12T15:58:23.195+00:002017-03-12T15:58:23.195+00:00As a child growing in Devon but knowing of the tro...As a child growing in Devon but knowing of the troubles in Ireland, my dad's cousin was an officer in the British army, while one of the many cousins on my mum's side was listed in the IRA wanted lists. I was not really old enough to understand all the ramifications, just loved the idea of my great uncle Paddy Murphy! Which was from my mum side!<br />This is just in my own lifetime, my own tree has no one famous and only a few infamous, but lots of characters full of life and stories, like a great great grandfather(or thereabouts) who didn't make an success in the USA and came back! or a milkman who ran off with the takings and the lady from round the corner! back to the 1700's we have an unmarried mother who took ages to find as no one would talk about her! esp the older Victorian family...<br />Ruan Peathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17999492027801288004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5502671101756463249.post-8431711289059063012017-03-12T10:52:49.100+00:002017-03-12T10:52:49.100+00:00Whose on my tree? Nobody of note. On my mother'...Whose on my tree? Nobody of note. On my mother's side, an Irish seamstress named Catherine Hanley who 'did beautiful white on white embroidery' and lived in sin with 'a red-headed Welsh milkman named Jones,' which is where my mother got her bright red hair.<br />On my father's side a miner of Welsh descent who used to get drunk on a Sunday and tap-dance to the Salvation Army Band while calling out, "Hey Shuck! Look at me!" to his wife and daughters who walked by with their noses in the air pretending they didn't know him.<br />And a giant blacksmith (I have a photo of him in his blacksmith's apron, holding a BIG hammer and standing head and shoulders above the other men with him.) The blacksmith was always said, in the family, to be Irish but was actually born in Wells, the son of a stone-mason. He was a heavy drinker, had brawling as a hobby and beat his wife and children, who all hated him. He did time in Winson Green because a conductor on the top deck of a tram kept pushing past his pregnant wife. He told the conductor to stop it, but the man carried on. So Great Grandad picked the man up, lifted him above the tram's rail and threw him down to the pavement. Well, he'd been told.<br /><br />Susan Pricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07738737493756183909noreply@blogger.com