I haven't told you...forgot actually...this tree I'm researching for a friend has thrown up some very interesting snippets. For instance, one of her great grandmothers was scalped by Indians...they also murdered two soldiers they found in her house...her daughter-in-law and one of her grandchildren. They were said to be a group of 'rogue Sioux'...
Another of her relatives was the man who found Guy Fawkes hiding behind the kegs of gunpowder in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament...he was also the prime instigator of the terrible torture which Guy Fawkes underwent...
One of her people built a big wooden house in the early 1600's, he was one of the early Quaker settlers...and there it stood until one of the new-fangled trains went past and a spark from the engine set fire to the house and burned it to the ground...
Her people of the 1200/1300's are heaving with Lords and Ladies born in castles now long gone...
Another man died of Yellow Fever in Cuba of all places...he used to trade horses with the Cubans and his son died in Columbia...it would seem there was some sort of insurrection there which he became embroiled in...
But I made a mistake...thought there was a branch by marriage which originated in Wales and then found I was quite mistaken...she was cross that she isn't partly Welsh...has dismissed all those people from so long ago...just wants to be a little bit Welsh...
Then there are the Vikings...one of her gt grandfathers is said to have a Viking ancestry...she wanted to know which branch of Vikings he was descended from and I said I hadn't the foggiest idea actually...so she was a bit cross about that as well.
It was probably good old Sven of the Forked Beard...he tends to crop up in family trees on a regular basis.
I did like the story of the Vikings landing in Dublin...the Irish women were bowled over by these handsome men who washed their hair and used toothpicks and bathed and smelt of herbals rather than the ancient sweat and shite from the Irishmen they were used to...
Funny isn't it...peoples expectations...hours I've spent trawling through records...one mistake over one record and I've blotted my copybook.