Going back to the beginning

I've always been curious about family history, but foolishly, I'd always thought that it was something to be done 'later'. The sort of thing that old people did - people who were settled and mature (conveniently ignoring the fact that I'm never, ever, ever going to be under 30 again......).

It was only when my paternal grandmother died, followed less than a year later by my father, that I realised that I'd now lost all links to my paternal family. And it made me wonder what the history was. Where did the family come from? What was the background? Where were my roots? How come my siblings and I are musical, but my mother (bless her) struggles to hold a tune of more than three notes? How come we all three wear glasses or contact lenses (like my father) but all my mother's family are proud of their ability be able to read very small font at 1500 meters (well, maybe not - but close...).

So at Easter this year, I gathered up everything I knew about my father's family, sat down in front of the computer, took a deep breath - and set off.

At the time, my paternal family tree looked like the picture above -pretty sparse - actually, there were 7 names in TOTAL.

Now, don't ask me why - but for some reason, we all thought that my grandfather, Thomas, was Lincolnshire born and bred. We knew that he never really knew his father - he was born in 1913 and his father was killed in the battle of the Somme, (1st July 1916). We knew that he'd been brought up by his mother in a very rural village in Lincolnshire, and had had a very impoverished childhood. And that was about it. He never spoke about it - and neither did my father ever refer to it. We knew the name of his father - Harry - and that was about it. My sisblings and I had assumed that the family must have been farm labourers, on the rare occasions that we idly speculated about our family history. My father was proud of his Lincolnshire roots, and would often refer to them.

I looked at the 1911 census - there was Harry - a farm labourer. So no shock there.

But I was somewhat surprised, after getting a marriage certificate for Harry - to find that while he was listed as being a carter, his father was listed as being, not a farm worker, or carter, or groom,

but

a theatre conductor and musician

in Newport, Wales

which is about as far as you can get from Lincolnshire, East to West across the UK.

So how did the youngest son of the family end up right the other side of the country, married at 23 to an 18 year old girl in a registry office with no family present, with a child born 6 months after the wedding, and killed 3 years later?

I posted some of the family details on genesreunited - and was contacted by 2 distant cousins - both of whom had been researching the family tree, but who had always been told that Harry had never married or had children. His name is on the War Memorial of the small village that he came from - but there is no info about family or background. His name is recorded on the Commonwealth Monument at Thiepval, in France - and again, there is no information about parents.

There is a mystery here - and I don't think it will ever get solved. Was there an estrangement? A falling out?

Since starting this, I've gone on to track down over 500 names of ancestors for the family tree - but it's this puzzle that I keep coming back to.

And it does make you try to be thankful for the family that you have - however irritating or annoying they may be at times - and to actually talk to them about what you're doing.I always find that falling out with family is more distressing than anything else.

The gasman cometh..

Life chez Z&Z has been somewhat fraught this week. I came home from work last Tuesday to find this adorning my cooker:



Mr ZZ had noticed a funny smell in the kitchen, and had called out the emergency gasman, only for him to condemn our hob and cut off the gas supply to it. We thought we could manage for a while with just the oven, but by the weekend had succumbed and bought a little table top oven with 2 tiny electric rings. This will have to do us until funds permit the fitting of a new kitchen.

Jubilation at the new addition, and the possibility of having rice and pasta again, was somewhat tempered by the discovery that the boiler had also seized up: 'it's the PCB' I was informed somewhat loftily by Mr ZZ.
All I can say is thank goodness that we have plenty of half finished quilts to snuggle under, until the next gas man comes in a fortnight, hopefuly to get the boiler running again, so that we can have heating.

In the meantime this is what I've been doing:



This is half a top for a lap quilt: here's what it should look like, albeit in different colours, when completed:


I really regret choosing white for my background - cream would have been much better - the white just seems to 'kill' the colour.

And here's my bargain purchase from the Quilter's Guild Bring and Buy stall at the recent Regional Day:


It's a Thimbleberries BOM from c2003 - all 12 months, as well as borders and bindings. At present, the Thimbleberries BOM retail at about 15 pounds a month - I paid 50 for the whole lot (and had a free cloth bag thrown in!!), so I think that represents a bargain.

I put the first 2 blocks together on Saturday:





and by Sunday had completed another 2:


Apologies for the yellowish tinge - that's what happens when you take photos under artifical light in a room with no windows.....

Ferreting around

Where did last week go?? One minute it was Monday, all stretched out before me - and now it's Sunday morning, getting ready for Monday again??

I spent yesterday at a quilting workshop, but no pictures to show yet (hopefully, if I can get the chores out of the way this morning, I can get on with it this afternoon). Unusually, you have to pretty much make all the blocks before you can evern start to piece together (yes, I know that's probably what you're supposed to do anyway, but I like to get some of it together as soon as I can, as I find that it then encourages me to keep going with it).

So instead, let me show you what I did a couple of weeks ago. It's not quite finished - the plan had been to do it on Wednesday night this week, but the time just seems to flutter away. On the Sunday it was the Quilters Guild Regional Day - I love these days - I love talking to all sorts of people to whom you'd probably not usually speak, and seeing just what others are making. (I also picked up some real bargains at the bring and buy table - more on that later as well).

Ferret gave a talk in the afternoon. I've been a massive fan of Ferret for a couple of years now - I like the way in which she challenges what we'd expected to see in quilting, and I enjoy reading her blog.

And I was lucky enough to get a place on her workshop on the Sunday - and by the end of the day, this is what I'd created:

I found this incredibly hard at first - the idea of throwing neat piecing out of the window was very hard to get my head around, but once I got going, I really enjoyed it, which is one of the reasons that I want to get this finished and up on display in my house. It still needs to be quilted, and a border put on it.

This is what others ended up with:


Pretty impressive rose, huh??

I also have plans for a number of other projects along the same lines...