2025 Week 3: Nickname #52Ancestorsin 52Weeks

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.

St Joseph's College Source:www.stjosephscollege.com

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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...

2024 Week 14: Favourite recipe #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

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2024: Week 41: Most #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Looking at my DNA matches over various platforms and my family tree research, it is obvious to me that my paternal grandmother's line - the Walkers - are the line which have the most descendants (or at least the most descendants who have tested) and who have spread out furthest over the world. My great great grandparents James Walker (1777-1862) and Ellen Muir (1790-1866) from Linlithgow in Scotland had ten children - eight boys and two girls. Such large families were not uncommon in those times. Two of the boys never married, but between them the other eight siblings produced at least 52 grandchildren! The eldest of the siblings, George Walker was, however, the only one of the children to ever leave Scotland and that was later in life, when he followed his son John, a miner, over to the USA. It is, however, many of the grandchildren of James and Ellen who decide to leave their homeland for the USA and for Australia. Their USA destinations included Kansas, Colorado, Ohio and Maryl...

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