Roots, shoots and stories

 The topic 'Overlooked' is a strange one. How do you know who you have overlooked??? There will certainly be occasions when I have overlooked a certain record, maybe because I was looking for the wrong name or in the wrong place or even made a typo in the search parameters, but how do you know if you have overlooked a person? So I am going to treat this topic by looking at a set of great grandparents that I have largely ignored - yes, I have their relevant dates and family, but do I have their 'story'? Have I stopped to think at all about the life they led? I don't think I have. So here's what I can put together. My mum's maternal grandparents were James Adams and Margaret Keir. James was born in 1850 in Carfin, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the only surviving son of a coalminer, though he had two elder sisters. At age 11 he was following in his father's footsteps down the mine as can be seen in the 1861 census. 1861 Census for James Adams   Source: Scotlands P...

 My husband Martin and six of his brothers were sent off to boarding school in Dumfries in southern Scotland when they were between the ages of 10 and 18. The second eldest, James, known as Jimmy, was nicknamed Jasa by his classmates, presumably because someone saw Jas. Stepek on some school document. Not only was that nickname given to him, but following a tradition at the school, all the younger brothers were given Jimmy's nickname of Jasa too. At one time there were three brothers at the school at the same time, all called Jasa!  Family photo of David, the fifth 'Jasa' This could cause a little confusion when someone shouted "Jasa!" as all three would turn round thinking they were being called. Most of the brothers enjoyed their time at St Joseph's although they would have preferred to have attended a local school, closer to home. T  St Joseph's College Source:www.stjosephscollege.com

 This topic is one I have posted about before - a photograph of my mum, dad and me  and also one of  my dad with his mum  . This year I'm choosing to post a slightly more up to date one - a photo of a professional photo taken of my own mum with my two children, shortly after the birth of my daughter. The photo itself hangs in my living room. My mum would have been 80 years old at the time. Although she had three other grandchildren by my sister, they lived down in England and she only saw them a couple of times a year, whereas she saw my children growing up from being babies, until she herself died some eight years later. In those eight years she had with them, she was a lovely gran to them. She would get down to their level on the floor with them and play whatever they wanted. She delighted in their company and even had them to stay overnight with her. They, in turn, gave her last years, which were healthy, real purpose. She just loved being 'Gran'.  When she w...

 When I first started researching my family tree it was early in the 1980s. My dad was still alive, so I remember asking him to tell me about his siblings and parents.  I knew he had been the youngest in the family. At that time, I also knew he had two living sisters, Agnes and Jean, two living brothers, Will and George and had a sister who had died, Mary (Polly). It was only then that he told me he had had other siblings - other six in fact, four of which he had never known, and two who had died as adults. My dad had never spoken about them to me before. Nor had he spoken to me about his parents - his dad had died many years before I was born and his mum had died when I was only three. So that was starting point, to fill in a family tree with any information I could find about those grandparents and my dad's siblings. Of course, it was much harder then than it is nowadays to find records. Firstly you had to physically go to the registry office - in my case, New Register House...