Roots, shoots and stories

The topic of 'random' sent me back looking into my tree for a woman I had come across who had a connection I never would have expected to find in my family tree, a tree  which is full of Central Lowland Scots, Irish and a scattering of English people. The woman in question was Effie Hanchett, a lady born in 1870 in Plymouth, Nebraska, USA. I had come across Effie when I was researching my maternal Adams line. Effie had married a William Henry Adams in Fairbury, Nebraska in 1893 and William is my first cousin three times removed. William's grandfather was my 3 x great grandfather.  Effie Hanchett (1870-1848) Source: shared on Ancestry.com In 1872, William, aged 8 and his younger sister had emigrated from Lanarkshire in Scotland with their parents, William and Marion, to start a new life in America. His father William was a coalminer like many Scots who emigrated at that time and he continued that job when they got to Illinois as can be seen in the 1880 census for La Salle, I...

 In Scotland, Hogmanay, the 31st of December, is synonymous with bringing in the New Year. As a child, I can remember staying up until midnight for 'the bells', getting a small glass of non-alcoholic raspberry 'wine' and a piece of sultana cake, waiting to see who would be our 'first foot' (the first person to come over the threshold of the house in the New Year, hopefully someone tall, dark and handsome for good luck!) before being hustled off to bed. And that would be the end of my evening. Earlier on that day/evening, my mum would have been busy. She was a great baker and would have made sultana cake and cherry cake, which she would have cut up into fingers. She bought in shortbread and also a sticky dark fruit cake called 'Black Bun', which I hated but which was my dad's favourite. The raspeberry 'wine' that I mentioned earlier would have been made by her too from a bottle of raspberry cordial, which was only sold in the shops in the run ...

 Margaret Annie Jean Reid Macmillan, my 'colourful' Aunt Margaret, was born in 1914 in Grangemouth, Stirlingshire to Robert Macmillan, a master plumber from Lanarkshire and his wife, Mary Matheson, a farmer's daughter from the Island of Skye. Margaret was the only daughter, though she did have two elder brothers. Census records show that the family were still living in Grangemouth in 1921 and at this time they also had a boarder lodging with them, a young Norwegian man. Whether he was the Macmillan's first boarder I do not know, but sometime between 1921 and 1930, the family moved to Glasgow, where the Macmillans opened a boarding house in the West End. Margaret and her mother Mary. Source: family photo  In 1935,  still living in her parents' boarding house, Margaret, then aged 21 and working in a shoe store, married George McAra, my father's brother. From this point onwards until George retired, they lived at Sunnyside, a lovely stone built cottage in Cleland, ...

My husband's grandfather, Wladyslaw Stepek, was born in November of 1893, the eldest of nine children. Unlike five of his siblings, Wladyslaw survived childhood, a childhood spent on a small farm in Haczow, a village in present day south-eastern Poland, but at that point in time was occupied by Austria. He had, however, caught tuberculosis as a child and did almost die. His next challenge came when both his parents died and at the age of 19, he found himself an orphan and head of the household. We think at this time he was studying pharmacy at university. However, in the following year1914, everything changed with the onset of World War I. Wladyslaw Stepek Wladyslaw was quickly conscripted into the medical corps of the Austrian army against his wishes as he was a fervent supporter of the resumption of Polish independence. His situation worsened when he was captured by the Russian army in 1915 and sent to Mariupol in present day Ukraine. There he was sent to work in a chemical facto...