Roots, shoots and stories

Occasionally when you are researching one thing, you come across something or someone you didn't expect.  I am still trying to pin down how I am related to the huge group of Mormon matches I wrote about in Week 23. (https://rootsshootsandstories.blogspot.com/2023/06/week-23-so-many-descendants.html).  I know they are connected to my maternal side and, with that in mind, I was reviewing the DNA matches of my maternal first cousin, Karen. Karen's dad David was my mum's brother. Looking through her paternal matches, I hoped to find someone who might link to research I had already done on my matches. So... imagine my surprise when I saw a name I recognised! The name of this match was familiar to me, not because I had come across it in my own list of matches, but because it was the name of someone I personally know, a lady named Tracey. I know her because I was her French teacher and years later we became teaching colleagues!! So, now I have another puzzle to research - finding

If our ancestors could travel forward in time and see the lives we lead today, what would they think? What would they feel? No one would dispute that they led harsher lives than we do. Our ancestors struggled. But they must have had a strength to keep them going through adverse times. Not necessarily physical strength, but a mental strength that kept them going. No large centrally seated houses with more bedrooms and bathrooms than family members. Quite the opposite - large families, sometimes even with lodgers, living in cramped sometimes unsanitary conditions. My great grandparents John Anderson and Helen Young were living in Wishaw in 1881 in a house with two windowed rooms and seven children, ages ranging from 3 to 19.   1881 Census for Cambusnethan Parish via Scotlands People My grandparents John McAra and Christina Walker were in similar living conditions in 1911 - plus they had another adult boarding with them! We may complain about the NHS today, but these people had no healthc

 This week's post is late because I was waiting on my husband Martin getting back from a ...REUNION!  This is the second time he has travelled abroad to meet up with 'cousins' from his paternal side, many of whom he had never met before. A few years ago, it was Martin himself who decided it would be a good idea to make contact with the various descendants of his Polish side of the family. Martin already had a photograph from 1905 of his grandmother as a young child alongside her parents and all eight of her siblings. Thanks to the internet, he was quickly able to connect with relatives from across the world, all of whom were descendants of his grandmother and those siblings. The first reunion was held in Poland in 2019, in Krosno and Haczow. Haczow was the birthplace of his grandfather and where his grandfather met his grandmother and Krosno was where his great grandparents lived for some years. Descendants of five of the siblings in the photograph attended - around 20 peop