Roots, shoots and stories

 Most of my recent direct ancestors and their families are noticeably working class. This is true for both my paternal and maternal sides. There are miners, blacksmiths, labourers, iron workers, carters, weavers....  My 2 x great grandfather John Young (1801-1879) had various occupations throughout his working life - labourer, fireman, timekeeper in an engineering works. He married his wife Janet Baillie, a pin winder, in the 1820s. Janet's father James was a labourer, surfacing roads. Pretty standard working people.  However, go three generations further back and we find my 5 x great grandfather James Baillie marrying an Elizabeth Bradfute, the daughter of a local minister and this is where it gets interesting. Elizabeth's mother, Jean Mure, was the daughter of a certain Scottish born James Mure of Rhoddans (County Down in Ireland), part of the landed gentry, his own father being William Mure of Glanderstoun. We are no longer in working class territory. I call women like Eliza

Sometimes when you find yourself in the very worst of circumstances, it is the actions of other people which can make all the difference. It is the 6th of December 1941. In a cattle train on the outskirts of Moscow are a hundred or so Polish refugees. They have all been recently released from Soviet labour camps and are trying to find their way to safety. Among these people are my husband's grandmother and her three children. They haven't eaten for days and death from starvation is near. The train is stuck in a railway siding due to heavy snow on the tracks. Hours pass by. Then they hear the sound of another train approaching. It also grinds to a halt because of the snow. It is full of Russian civilians fleeing the German advance which is nearing Moscow. The hungry Poles leave their train to beg for some food from the Russian passengers. But Martin's grandmother, Janina, is too near starvation to stand let alone get out of the cattle train. So her younger daughter Danuta st

 Jozef Ernst Ciupka, my husband Martin's great grandfather, was born in Gliwice, Poland, in 1855 and married his wife Joanna Kozlowska sometime in the early 1880s. Although we have names and dates for both sets of their parents, we do not know their parents' stories, so this blog will only deal with what we know about Jozef and Joanna. The young couple settled in Joanna's birthplace, Nieszawa, north of Warsaw, and brought up nine children there, the youngest, Janina, being Martin's grandmother. Ciupka family around 1904-1905 They were very successful in business and became one of Nieszawa's most prominent families. We do not know how and when they acquired their wealth, but we do know that earlier generations must have been important in their communities too, as there is a street named after the family in Gliwice. The Ciupka family and Martin's direct line go back at least eight generations in Gliwice, back into the 1600s. Jozef and Joanna's businesses inclu

My great great grandfather James Walker died in 1862 at the age of 85. The occupation given on his death certificate is that of Master Blacksmith. He was retired by that time - he retired between 1851 and 1861 as witnessed by the censuses of those years. Unfortunately by the time of his death, he was also described as a 'pauper'.  James had been born in Linlithgow in 1777, the son of a farm labourer. Becoming a blacksmith was therefore a step up as blacksmiths were skilled craftspeople, providing important services in their community. Valued by both townspeople and farmers, they created and maintained the implements needed for daily life. As well as making the horseshoes we are all familiar with, they would make parts of ploughs, cowbells, tools, hammers - in fact anything that required iron being hammered to create. Most started an apprenticeship around the age of 14 and this would last about seven years. At that point their 'master' would test their skills and if they

 Martin's grandfather, James Murphy, was born in Ayrshire in 1889, the son of a coalminer and one of twelve children. He, in turn, became a coalminer - a hewer, a hard job at the coalface - and the father of twelve children by his wife Mary Ann Pyne. They had married in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire in January 1914 and their first child, Thomas, was born some ten months later. Their twelfth and last child, Gerard was born in 1931. James Murphy died of a perforated bowel in 1937. At the time of his death, he left his wife Mary and eleven children  (a daughter, Elizabeth had died in infancy), ranging from age 6 though to 23, five of those being under 12. Nowadays being a single or widowed mum is difficult enough, but Mary lived in harsher times - and she had all those children to look after and support. This was also in the middle of The Great Depression, the worst economic state Britain had endured in the 20th century. Furthermore there was no benefit system nor free health care. All Mary