Week 8: I can Identify #52Ancestorsin52weeks

I thought quite hard about how I could interpret this theme. The obvious choice seemed to be writing about an ancestor that I felt I had a lot in common with. Having watched TV programmes like 'Who do you think you are', 'Finding your roots' and 'DNA journey' where the individuals concerned, whether they be actors, politicians, musicians etc. find out that they have pursued the same career or have faced the same struggles as an ancestor, I thought that there must be someone back in time that I've come across in my research that I have a lot in common with. But no.

I haven't struggled with poverty like most of my ancestors, who were ordinary working class people - the miners, the mill workers, the blacksmiths, the labourers. There is no chance I will end up in a workhouse or be buried as a pauper having died aged 38 of consumption, like my maternal 2 x great grandfather, Matthew Keir.

I haven't had children that I needed to send out to work, sent an illegitimate child to live with another family member or had one or more of my children die young. I haven't had a husband who died at a young age leaving me to look after eight children on my own, possibly having to remarry just to get a roof over our heads. I won't die from TB or many of the other diseases that claimed their lives. There really isn't anyone with whom I can identify in that way.

But what I can do that they couldn't is identify them. I can find out who they were, where they lived. I can research about the kind of lives that they they led. I probably know more about my ancestors' grandparents than they did. I certainly know more about about my parents' grandparents than they did. And by identifying them, I recognise they existed. And therefore I know who to thank for me being here now.

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Week 50: You wouldn't believe it! #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

I have already written about my 3 x great uncle, James McAra, who was sentenced to deportation at the High Court in Edinburgh in 1811. His crime had been to attack his brother, my 3 x great grandfather, Alexander, with an iron bar during an argument, with Alexander being badly hurt and dying a few days later. James was an iron worker by trade in Scotland and continued this trade in the small town of Sorell in Tasmania. We cannot know much about the life he led in Sorell, but he is mentioned in a variety of documents. For example we know he was given a Free Pardon by the Governor of Tasmania and New South Wales in 1836. He also acquired some land in 1839, which, in his Will, he left to daughters of a friend. We know his affection for 'drink', which had led to the fatal fight back in Scotland, never left him as 'excessive drinking' was given as cause of death on his death certificate. However his tombstone bears witness to the fact he was well-liked and a 'good and h

2024 Week 14: Favourite recipe #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

So, despite the heading, I'm not going to write about a favourite recipe that an ancestor has passed down to me, simply because there isn't one. What or rather whom I'm going to write about is my mum, Helen Anderson, who absolutely loved baking. And it is this love of baking that has been passed on to me. My mum. My mum was always baking. Like most children, I got allowed to 'lick the spoon' and taste the raw cake mixture. I got to learn to how to make crispie cakes. I watched how to make pancakes and enjoyed getting the first ones off the pan. I took in helpful baking hints like 'half fat to flour' for pastry or ' 4 4 4 plus 2' for the measurements of flour, sugar, butter and eggs needed for a sponge cake or little butterfly cakes. She had learned how to bake from her mother, as many women in her generation had done. There was always something 'in the tin' should a friend or neighbour pop in for a cup of tea. But she didn't just bake f

2024 Week 43: Lost contact #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

When we research our ancestors and their families, it is all to easy to become a collector of names, dates and places. After all, we want to 'know' who they were and where they lived and when, in order to get a glimpse into what their life was like. We look for photographs of our most recent ancestors to see what they looked like. We trawl censuses, Poor Law Applications, Wills and Testaments to get some detail about their rank in society, their jobs, their financial circumstances. We discover their families, the children they had, the children they lost. We may read their obituaries and gravestones and scan their death certificates for cause of death. Through research, we can slowly start to build up a picture of them, a notion that we know 'who they were'. But something will usually elude us - we will never truly know their feelings/emotions, even if we know the key moments in their lives. Take my grandmother, Christina, who lost her first four children and then anot

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