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Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts

13 Mar 2016

Illegitimate sister, garbled details? Part Two

I was wrong, again
A confident, cocky tone in a blog post is never good.  I am returning to this blog cap in hand, admitting I was wrong.  The illegitimate sister 'born about 1922' was indeed born in about 1922.  Was she called Jane or Calista: er, no.  Did she go to Australia, ummmm.  No, to that as well.


From memory to fact
Here were the facts as presented.
'My sister Jane was born in about 1922 and was sent abroad, to America maybe.  My Mum kept a set of her clothes that she had worn as a girl.'
Maybe the clothes were something like this:
 
One step back
Galling is the word I would use to describe receiving that birth certificate of Calista from 1919 - the girl who went out to Australia from the Clee Hills.  I was so convinced, but actually secretly glad that I was wrong.  It felt too hasty a victory.  The battle was lost but not the war.

It's how you say it
Jane, Jane, Jane.  There were no Janes in the 1920s.  It just wasn't in fashion, like Margaret or Gwendoline aren't today.  But there was a May.  In fact May was the only option at this time.

If you say, May, it sounds like Jane.
 
 Where to now...
And May it seems didn't go out to Australia, but she did have connections with Ghana.  Now they should be interesting.  We are just waiting for for the birth certificate as proof.  Tick tock.




28 Feb 2016

European Genealogy across 13 countries - a story starting in the Lakes

  I idly wondered whether Arthur Taylor, living in London age 18, might come back to marry in his native Keswick.  He did!
And on clicking behind the link I spy his wife looked like Isabel Kroll.  This didn't sound like a lasting marriage.  What was he up to?  But I couldn't find anything more, so gave up on him.


But then I found a reference to a lady living in Italy, who just had to be Arthur's daughter, and the game was on.  Arthur turns out to be the International YMCA's 'man in Italy' while Mussolini is at the helm.
It takes me a good year to recover from these Italian revelations before I finally get the will of Arthur Taylor's daughter, Signora Barone.  I certainly expected that the dalliance with Isabel Kroll would long have past, but concluding Alice's long and passionate will comes the note from the clerk...

And then, buried in the text, Isabella's mother is listed with a very English-looking name, Rosalie Stuart-Cowen!  I already knew about Scots in Poland, but Scots and Germans (?) seemed to hold an interesting tale to explore.  Considering I lacked both Isabella's birth, death and previous marriage, it was remarkable what I eventually crowbarred out of the internet.

Here is Isabella's first marriage, which I did not find by idle Googling, but only by the specific search indicated.
Here is Isabella's tree now.

The following countries are covered on the map below
England - where Isabel married in 1907
Denmark - where Isabel's first husband was born (place given as father's birthplace in 1920 census for her elder children)
Sweden - where her daughter Anna's son Hans was a citizen in 1954, likely as an adopted child, and believed to be his final home
Poland - where Isabel's second husband worked in the 1920s after WW1
Netherlands - where Isabel's sister Georgina was living until about 1900 (at The Hague)
France - where Isabel's two elder children (and grandson Hans) were born (Paris, Vaux-sur-Mer)
Italy - where Isabel's second husband worked in the 1930s and where her younger daughter (Alice) settled (in Sicily)
Switzerland - where Isabel's mother died in 1890 (unsubstantiated) and where her sister Rosalie died in 1927 and where her sister Georgina married (in Lausanne)
Germany - where Isabel's sister Rosalie married in 1883 (at Stuttgart), and where she herself was born (source 1920 census), and where her father was born (ibid)
Greece - where her first husband went to live, presumably after separating from Isabel
Canada - where Isabel's youngest child was born in 1908
USA - where Isabel was living in the 1920 census (Washington DC), while her second husband performed his YMCA duties, and where her two elder children settled, and where her mother was actually born
Brazil - where her grandson Hans (John) came to reside or work in the 1950s
What a surprise to tumble out of a marriage in the Lakes.  Lastly a picture of gorgeous Giarrattana in Sicily:
 This was the second Sicilian connection to emerge.  As well as Il Dottore Barone from Noto, I have Signor Leone from Naro a century before.  Agreeably close to Montalbano's fictional Vigata, which I watched sorrowfully in the denouement to this Sicilian episode.  But as Sicily recedes, step forward Malta - even further south, as new home for a descendant of Annabella Airey.

24 Aug 2014

I, Miss Dinah Widdows

As told to...

I, Miss Dinah Widdows do note the pitiful number of descendants which I have left. You can find many in family from my husband’s daughter Grace. Her poor mother died at 27 but she still has more in family than I.   I have lately been spending a month or more getting acquainted with them, and golly me, it took me by surprise to meet them all. I did not think they expected to see me, a lady born in 1712, one hundred years before Waterloo.  I also took a moment to look at my sister Sarah's family but I didn’t keep up with them. No sooner I contacted them then had another infant been born. They do say as one of her descendants is born every single week that passes. I don’t know. I can’t imagine looking at the girl why nature works so.  Now you will probably all be thinking that I am own sister to Martha Widdows, and you may know all about how she died, done in by her rotten husband.  Ha!  Well you would be wrong and mighty awkward it is navigating around the tree, I must say. Why I could barely find a record my even having been alive. Which I surely was, an I brought up that ungrateful Sarah and the silly brothers the Lord cursed me with. You would have to be a magician to know that I married George Dyke but even guesswork won’t tell you my father’s name. Oh no that is one secret which is very well kept. And if you find out where I was born well I wish you’d tell me. But no, I must grudgingly admit I am not of any genealogical consequence whatsoever.  I had 2 or 3 very good grandchildren, I let them disappear from the records without trace. I tried asking the earth but I’m not getting any answers, even my other sister who never fussed about getting married, even she managed to produce grandchildren who stayed in the records. Oh well tut tut. You see there are matriarchs or fat old queen bees as I call ’em! Even among Sarah’s offspring.  But what’s this I see.  A GenesReunited message saying my grandson George got off his hindquarters and sired a massive breed?  And now here’s FindMyPast trying to tell me granddaughter Martha went off and kept an inn in Emeld Empsty.  And Google shouting that the US Ambassador’s wife was a Miss Dyke, one of George’s lot.  That’s something little Miss Sarah can’t boast about.  Well now I can sleep in peace.

~~
Dinah and Sarah named in the will of Edward Murrow, Almesforde, Somerset 1732.  Lots of information about Sarah, but nothing on Dinah.