Roots, shoots and stories

 Although I have never participated in any grand family reunion, through my genealogical research I have met a couple of people that I would never otherwise have met. Back in 2018 I contacted one of my DNA matches who lived in Australia. I had reason to believe she was connected to me on my maternal side, and comparing our trees I found the connection was my 3 x great grandparents John Anderson and Ann Russell. As I had taken this line back further, I contacted the lady, Robyn, to share the information I had. Robyn, in turn, provided me with a lot of information about her line of descent from this pair and added that she planned to visit Scotland in the coming year. Forward on to 2019 and Robyn and her husband did indeed come over from Australia to Scotland! We met up with them for a walk and  lunch in Glasgow. We had a lovely afternoon, talking about our families and life in general. Their visit to Scotland was only part of their trip as they were visiting Ireland and England...

When in 2001 my father in law Jan Stepek had the first of a series of strokes, my husband Martin realised that if Jan died, he would not know much about his past. Martin already knew some basic facts about his father's early life: Jan had been born and raised on a farm in Eastern Poland, he and his family were deported when WW2 broke out, his mother had died during the deportation period and somehow later on he served in the Polish Navy. The bare bones of a story which Martin has only recently fully told in his book "Jan Stepek  Part 1 : Gulag to Glasgow". So... Martin determined that if his father recovered sufficiently, he would ask him to share the whole story of his early life. Thankfully this was the case. And what a story emerged! As well as interviewing his father, Martin interviewed and filmed his father's two sisters who had also been deported. This meant he had three different perspectives. Over and above this, he researched online and discovered various key...

 I have to go back a long way on my family lines to find anyone who was other than working class. My tree is full of miners, labourers and weavers. All people who did not have much money and, in cases where the breadwinner - the male - was unable to work or even died, family circumstances could be dire. Evidence for this scale of poverty can be found on death certificates, census records and Poor Law  Application Records.  I don't have to go back far to find evidence of hardship. In March of 1889, when my grandmother, Christina Walker, was only 20 years old, her husband, a miner, was hospitalised with a fever. At this time the couple had a baby who was only five months old. My grandmother therefore had to put in an application for Poor Relief to the local parish. Poor relief came in the form of a weekly or one off payment or families could be helped with goods like coal or even payment for a doctor. Parochial boards had been introduced in 1845  and each board kept a ...

Like many other people I have had my DNA tested at 23andme. In my case, it was mainly to access another database of possible DNA matches to help in my genealogical research, but I was interested to see what their health data showed up. I seem to be very fortunate in that I do not seem to have anything in my genes which suggests I have a high increased likelihood of suffering from the many things that are tested for, although I do have a slightly increased likelihood of a few things that seem to 'run in the family'. Many people test specifically with 23andme for the health data as other DNA testing sites do not provide such options, but it is necessary to be aware that even if your results show you have a high likelihood of a disease, there are always more factors at work than just your genes. Having a predisposition to something does not necessarily mean you have it. Our ancestors, of course, did not have such genetic analysis available. They also did not have the medical knowl...

In 2022, The Folly, a museum in the South Yorkshire Dales, ran an exhibition entitled " Three generations of studio photography 1864-1960", featuring digitised images from their recently acquired 'Horner Collection.' The Horner photographers are my daughter-in-law Lucy's 2 x great grandfather, his brother and one of his sons. It had been with funding from the Arts Council/Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant support and successful crowdfunding that this exhibition had come about. The collection comprises over 1000 photographs depicting the people of Settle in Yorkshire and the surrounding area.  Michael Horner (1843-1869) had started his photography business in Settle in 1864 after having spent four months working in one of the leading photographer's studios in Manchester. He shared premises with his father, Thomas Horner, who was a painter, gilder and glazer, so it must have been quite cramped. By 1865 he was advertising stereoscopic pictures and postcar...

My mum's name was Helen, but for as long as I can remember my dad called her Nellie and as a child, my dad and I used to sing 'Nellie the elephant' together, in a nice way, not unkindly.  My dad's brother George also addressed her as Nellie and, although we never called her that when talking to her, both my husband Martin and I referred (and still refer to her) as Nellie.   But not everyone called her that. Her brother and sisters called her Ellen. Her friends used her 'real' name Helen. My dad's name was John. You wouldn't think there was much that anyone could do to change that, but his sister in law, George's wife, Margaret always called him Jake. And she also called her husband, George, Mac! John (Jake), Helen ( Nellie, Ellen) George (Mac) and Margaret. My paternal grandmother's name was Christina and virtually all of her children who had children themselves named a daughter Christina. I had 4 cousins christened Christina, all of whom ended u...

My husband Martin's great grandparents, Jozef Ciupka and his wife Joanna Kozlowska lived in Gliwice, Poland for the latter part of the 19th century. We do not know whether they inherited any of their businesses, but they came to own land in Gliwice and elsewhere, a granary and mill and we have learned they also bred elite horses for the wealthy in Germany and in Russia, including the Russian Tzars. Ciupka family circa 1904 Their wealth and influence was such that they have a street in the city named after them. Family photograph In the later 1890s, the family moved from Gliwice to Nieszawa, a village north of Warsaw on the River Vistula. They had land on either side of the river and a private ferry. On the eastern side of the river they had a mill. Their house on the other side of the river was three stories high and had eighteen rooms. This is where Martin's grandmother, Janina, was born. However, within a decade or so the family moved again, while retaining all the property t...