Well, that escalated quickly…bear with me on this. My paternal grandmother’s sister (Ann) married her 2nd cousin (Den), who is obviously also my cousin. The thing is that the surname of my cousin/uncle by marriage stems from a single family in the south east (yes, it’s verifiable) which is also the surname of my maternal great, great grandfather. I think this means that my maternal grandfather is also my cousin and so is my mother and I am now probably my own cousin. Could someone pass me the gin…
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Discovered last week I have distant cousins in New Zealand, always wanted to go there so have now got somewhere free to stay.
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Be careful - right now on the other side of the world there imay be a family thinking - ooooh there is a place we can stay for free in France!
NZ cousin has just this minute emailed me wanting more info on the UK family tree, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
We’re used to people staying for free, never had an invite from my sister to stay with her or even visit for a cup of tea yet she’s been here several times, family hey!
Update, cousin wants to be friends on Facebook, I’ve just seen his profile picture and he looks like a pirate, WTF have I done!
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50/50 that they are decent people.
Why are they making contact now?
Have they just discovered you live in France?
I put a message on Ancestry in New Zealand in 2008 asking if anyone knew of my ancestors who moved there in the early 1900’s and until a week ago I’d heard nothing, I’ve now found out that I have three cousins and we’re all of the same generation and very close in age, the guy I’m corresponding with knew nothing of the UK bit of his family so is in a state of shock I think.
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A really long story but Somerset House (in the late '60s) traced my father’s family back and found that a child was an illegitimate product of Sir Francis Drake.
A wet Sunday morning seems like a good moment to dig out the few scraps of paper I discovered about my paternal grandmother. Sadly I only found these after my mother and father had died and I wish I had known my “Nana” when I was old enough to appreciate what a formidable woman she was and to have asked her questions about her life.
Her father (my great grandfather) worked in the docks and she saw first hand the labour troubles in dockland in the 19th century, which made her a committed socialist all her life. She was part of the co-operative movement from her teens and gave classes in singing and physical exercise to London children.
In 1912 my grandfather started a branch of the Association of Dairymen’s Assistants (which eventually became part of the Transport & General Workers Union) in their home and when he was called up in 1914 my grandmother took on the management of a branch of Welfords dairy.
She stood as a Labour candidate for Penge Council in 1935 and 1937 and her '37 manifesto includes …“I have lived in Penge for 32 years and as working class wife and mother do claim to understand the district … I am greatly in favour of baths for our school children and a nursery school for toddlers and do sincerely believe that a woman’s point of view is essential in many things”. She lost by only 60 votes to a Conservative.
By 1940 she was chairman of the Penge Labour Party, served as a claimant’s referee in the Court of Referees, sat on the Military Court Hardship Committee and that year became a magistrate. She served on the bench until 1949.
She died when I was 11 and I had no knowledge of any of this. To me, she was just this tiny, elderly lady who lived with us in her final years, bribed me with spoonfuls of honey for good behaviour and who kept her false teeth in the pocket of her pinny (only to be worn when we had visitors). I would love to meet her now.
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Turns out I have antipodean half cousins curtesy of my grandmother’s first marriage - sadly had to block them from FB owing to some very xenophobic & misogynistic posts. C’est la vie!
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The most interesting part of my family research on the maternal side was debunking all of the family myths especially when I found out that the family took the law into their own hands and exiled a member from the UK to Germany.
In 1893, my great grandfather is said to have committed a crime in Germany. The authorities could not send him to prison because he was born in Lauenburg as a Danish citizen. (Lauenburg did become German.) Instead of prison, he was exiled with his wife and some of his children to England.
My grandmother was born in London to a mother who had refused to learn English but it was many years later that the German connection was discovered. One of my great uncles also committed a serious crime in England but the family sent him to exile in Luneburg instead of reporting him to the police. The family myths played an important role in covering up what they had done.
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Going back to the 60s my dad had business dealings with a chap who had been made a life peer by Harold Wilson. He was seconded to Somerset House on behalf of the government in a civil servant role.
The two became friends and the chap offered to trace our family tree.
He went back as far as the XVI century where he discovered that one of our ancestors was an illegitimate son of Sir Francis Drake !
Could be a load of bowls I suppose !
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Totally uninteresting. Mainly a bunch of lucky immigrants with an instinct for survival.
But some of my relatives are interested in genealogy and I look at the incredibly detailed printouts of the family tree and eventually find the tiny rectangle with my name in it.
Quite humbling to think that our existence depends on the remotest of chances and how insignificant most people are in the great scheme of things.
Egyptian travellers and Romany roots on my Dad’s side with French nobility from my Mum. That made me smile, my ancestors fled France because of the French revolution, and here’s me well travelled (thanks Dad) and now returned from whence I originally came.
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Simple! Bastard now aged 80. Story - end of.
Late reply - good move Jane! For the first time in my life i now feel I belong somewhere.