I've been doing a fair amount of family tree research since I've been at home with the twins. Sometimes its just easier to not move when they get off for a nap and use one arm to soothe them and surf with the other.
I've been looking into my family tree for about 7 or 8 years now but it kind of goes to bursts of activity. Either because of some genealogical brick wall or because of a lack of free trials on the family tree sites.
Recently I have had two big breakthroughs though. the first was a very fortuitous discovery. Last year I wrote to a lady who had written a booklet of the village of Bradenstoke in Wiltshire where my nanna was born and raised. It's right next to RAF Lyneham and Wooten Bassett (where all the war dead come back into the country). She had collected lots of memories as part of a Millennium Project. As it happens there were a few passing references to a few relatives. So through a long route I tried to contact her to see if there was any further editions in the pipeline.
Months past until just before Christmas I received and email asking whether I knew that she had been to visit my great auntie Lucy many times before she died, recording her memories of her childhood in the village.
I got the tape just before Christmas and surprised my family with it. I had only just got into all this stuff before Auntie Lucy died so only managed to ask her a few basic questions so to now have an hour and a half of her talking was amazing. More striking was to hear her and Wilf's voices after all this time. You could imagine them move around their little flat as they were talking. Auntie Lucy was quite an amazing woman. She worked for the Salvation Army all her life and got married for the first time when she 77! They were married for 13 years before they both died within a month of each other.
My other breakthrough was looking into Lisa (and the twins side of the family). One visit to Lisa's grandfather's grave open up the whole tree back to 1696. From the dates I was able to make the leap back to the 1911 census and from there a managed to get in contact with a distant cousin who had already done a lot of research into the tree. Strange to see old photos of strangers that actually remind you of people you know. Oh we also found out that there are apparently lots of twins on the Ratcliffe side of the family. So that could be where that all came from. Oh and a couple of people called Ratcliffe Ratcliffe back in the 1800's. so good they named him twice. Not quite sure what they were thinking but not a mistake, they named his nephew Ratcliffe as well. well someone has got to carry the name i suppose.
This was all courtesy of a free trial on ancestry.co.uk where I also pulled the document pictured at the top. It's the war records for my great grandfathers brother, George Iles. Really interesting details once you decipher the writing, like a reprimand in 1919 for playing cards on the stairs.
One of the reasons I love family tree stuff is that it is such a good leveller. Everybody has a story of where they come from that can so quickly get lost in the present everyday lives. Yet every-bodies story is interesting in its own way whether they be rich and privileged or working class folk.
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