I've been beavering away over a hot laptop this afternoon... fishing skeletons out of cupboards and struggling to read the horribly cramped writing of a Church Curate in 1558...I suppose he was the Curate and not the Vicar, 'cos the Vicars tended to leave the burials and baptisms up to their minions, while they had the marriages...probably 'cos they were paid more.
When there is a Will available, they are wonderful...especially the really old ones..in 1558 one man left his 'best bed' to his eldest daughter along with' two fine linen sheets'...his wife received 'the two small wooden boxes'...wonder what the wife slept on after the daughter took the bed...
Another relative died owing £26 to his neighbour, which must have been a vast fortune in 1625...there was no indication of whether the neighbour ever received the monies he was owed though.
Back to my step-daughters tree to find one of her Uncles who emigrated to America in the latter part of the 1600's had acquired ten Negro slaves...and built a wooden church on the land he'd stolen from the local Native Americans...one of her first cousins...eleven times removed if I remember correctly, was killed in a truly awful battle on the Scottish borders...it had been recorded first hand as it happened...presumably the chap who was scribbling it all down with great glee, was hiding behind a bush while the battle raged around him. 'The river ran with blood from the slain' he wrote...then the English victors ransacked the Scots camp and stole 'sacks of oatmeal and wooden tubs of butter' and then stripped the dead Scots of their clothing and took their swords.
I become totally absorbed in the stories and those old Parish records...some of Teresa's people have marble effigies in quiet country churches...a few are in great Cathedral's, their tombs roped off from the public...they lie there with their hands in prayerful positions...small dogs at their feet.
By the nineteenth century the lands and the great houses had gone...now the ancestors worked on the land and the widow women took in washing and ended their lives in desolate Workhouses, described as 'paupers' and were buried in unmarked graves rather than elaborate tombs...
All those people who went before us...who lived lives we can only imagine.
Hi yes I have been doing my tree and naughty naughty my gran lived with grandad for 33years this was 1900 to 1933 the disgrace of it !! we always knew there was a family secret I have stayed up in the early hrs. Perusing
Hi vashti it's fascinating isn't it? They didn't lead just different lives but had different expectations and reality in a time totally alien to us. We would be as lost in their worlds as they would be in ours.
Do you ever think about those who will come after us? Those who will be searching for their past in say 500 years? And going wow look at this isn't it strange? I sometimes wonder what they will be like, our distant descendants and what sort of lives they will lead. Who knows? Don't know about you but I would love a time travelling machine to experience different times and to answer fascinating questions about the past. Eg was there really a man called Jesus Christ? And who killed the princes in the tower. I am extremely curious about lots of our past.
They might have this in the future? Think of that hey? x
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I'd love to go back...but only if I could sort of stand on the sidelines and just watch what was going on...don't think I'd be very keen on joining in actually, though I'd quite enjoy meeting Henry V111 to see if he really was as awful as history tells us...and Oliver Cromwell so I could kick him for what his troops did to Ireland...and then dunk him in a bog hole...
I love my family history. Nothing better than a poke about the archives, trouble is I get so distracted by thing I'm not looking for some funny an entry for the Tucker family mis -transcribed with an F, and sad the cause of a babies death as Teething can you imagine that. And after 30 years I'm still learning.
its amazing what you can dig up,, i have gone back as far as 1750, and as you say its very interesting tracing the old parish records,, maybe one" later dated" interesting thing was my great grand father [thomas darling ] was killed by a train at stow in the borders, in 1850,, i was amazed to have a scotsman newspaper original print recording his death,,, in quite a gruesome detail,,, anyway this thomas darling was in fact related to " grace darling" the heroine that saved so many seaman when their ship was sinking,[she was the lighthouse man's daughter],, its only recently that they have erected a monument to her bravery,, in the north of england,,, the part that used to be scotland , this was all on my grans side of the family, all from the scottish borders, covering as many years as i can find,, no doubt some of them would have been the"border reivers",,, but all very interesting isn't it vashti ,,a very interesting read, your last sentence says it all , quite amazing when you think deep down how they must have lived,,, jimmy
Oh Jimmy isn't that brilliant to find your family is related to Grace Darling...she was a real heroine.
Not pleasant to be run down by a train...my Great Grandfather was thrown out of his trap when the horse bolted...apparently he said 'I am done for' and he was!
I don't have to go too far back in my family on my dad's side to find scandal. My great grandma had a shot gun wedding in the 1920's. Then in 1972 my own dad (who is the first grandson of the first scandal) also had a shot gun wedding. Following all this in 1990 I (the daughter of the shot gun wedding) had a son out of wedlock. I married the father 6 months after the birth but it didn't last. The scandal wasn't over tho because when the son was 4 years old I left the marriage and the children too.
Still the scandal hasn't ended tho! The son from my first marriage has confessed to being homosexual.
Times have changed since most of this scandal but still I am hoping that this is the end of it!
I wouldn't go any further back if I were you...heaven only knows what you'd find...lol
Its a fascinating hobby.....husbands English family have unusual names sor they are easier to track. His Irish side not good at all.
My side has to have very common names , and one silly girl has hijacked my family tree as hers.
In the records there are two men with identical names /dates
only a couple of lines apart.......so now my poor uncle Jack has two marriages/
two families/ two dates of death. She knows nothing of uncle Jacks siblings
or of my grandparents. ......but she can not be convinced she has got it wrong.
Her relative dies 20 years after mine. .......I did ask how he had managed to do that.....a clever trick.!.
Have got back into 1500/1600 and agree the old records are interesting.
Where at baptism its recorded how soon was birth after marriage.
Have traced family in Canada, but would love to find cousins in Aus.
J.
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People can be very odd sometimes...my Great Uncle was the Great Grandfather of a girl in New Zealand...she swears we can't possibly be related...lol
The Irish records are awful aren't they? Most were lost in the GPO fire and then many were pulped in the First War...terribly inconsiderate I call it...
Vashti
One of my husbands ancestors was a catholic brother.
We traced him by the style of clothes he was wearing in our only photo
to a retirement home for clergy near Carlisle.
A cousin visited and got no answer, letters there gave us no joy.
Perhaps one day we will succeed.
I don't suppose you have any idea what Order he was in? If you think he might be deceased, you could try looking at quality newspapers obituary columns...very much easier if you have his actual dates of course...most Catholic Orders put priests and nuns in newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph or The Times...then you could contact the Order directly you see...
I'll keep thinking...must be an answer to your problem!
Where do you all get such fascinating families ?- mine are nearly all AgLabs. they are nearly all called by the same first names and as they were excellent breeders there are an awful lot of cousins, uncles etc all with the same names; and when I do sort them out they are not interesting!
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, this was all on my grans side of the family, all from the scottish borders, covering as many years as i can find,, no doubt some of them would have been the"border reivers",,, but all very interesting isn't it vashti 
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