Christmas time is family time. This family time can often turn one’s thoughts to ancestry.
Our parents left us with very little history about our families. In recent times we have devoted considerable time and effort to uncovering information about our ancestors and background.
We can again be grateful for the technological age in which we live. Searching the internet now makes possible what was much more difficult 20 years ago. We now have on-line access to birth, marriage and death records, as well as census and electoral rolls. There are also sites such as Ancestry.com, where we are able to trace further information through the work of other descendants from the same pedigree.
My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was somewhat unusual. Through the web and other descendants, I have been able to trace back nine generations of that ‘pedigree’ to the mid 18th century. Many of that family lived in Warwickshire, and many descendants remain there to this day. It seems that my great grandfather was one of the first of that family to be born in London.
On Boxing Day, I discovered I had a new living relative in Warwickshire. It turns out that we are 4th cousins twice removed. Put another way, her 4x great grandfather and my 2x great grandfather were brothers.
I never met my great grandmother who died, in England, when I was nine years old. What a fine woman she appears to be in this photo from c.1935.
The reason we never met is simple. My grandparents migrated from England to Australia in 1921, and neither they nor my father ever returned to England. Do my brown eyes come from this lady, via my grandmother and my father? What other traits have filtered down to me from this source?
On Boxing Day, I discovered that I have a relative, interested in the same family, living in Warwickshire. It turns out that we are 4th cousins twice removed. Hopefully, having made contact, we may each be able to fill in gaps in our family trees.
