Roots, shoots and stories

 My late father-in-law, Jan Stepek, was brought up on a farm in Poland in the 1920s. He never had the opportunity to play football as a child or even watch a game. All the more ironic, therefore, that four decades later he would be the Chairman and main owner of a professional football club in Scotland. When he arrived in Scotland, he quickly learned that football was a national passion. But he paid no attention to it. However, in 1969, he found himself drawn into a crisis concerning the local football club - Hamilton Academical - or "Accies" as they are better known. By this time Jan was one of Hamilton's and Scotland's best known businessmen. One day, his next door neighbour who was a shareholder in the club, knocked on Jan's front door. Over a drink, the neighbour explained that the directors of the football club had agreed to merge with another local club, Clyde FC. This would mean that Hamilton Academical would cease to exist. A minority of the Board disagree...

The surname Stepek is not a common one. The name itself is from the Greek Stephanos of Ukrainian and Rys origin and is most commonly found in Poland.  According to the website  forebears.io , there were just over 900 people with that surname in 2014 and funnily enough, the country with the fourth highest number of Stepeks was .... Scotland! And of course, all of them were my husband Martin's family!  Incidence of the surname Stepek in 2014 from Forebears.io Incidentally, even within Martin's family, the surname has now arrived in England, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal and Denmark! That said, none of Martin's nephews are called Martin. Therefore, it was a lovely discovery, when, Martin 'googling' an article that he himself had written, came across an image of a postcard online - of a cafe in early 20th century Vienna owned by another Martin Stepek ! Over the past few years Martin has started a collection of postcards featuring "his" cafe. He now has sev...

 The topic of  'Free Space' allowed me to write about anything or anyone I wanted. Where to start? I thought. After reading a previous blog, a friend asked me what happened to the descendants of  my 2 x ggf John McAra and his wife Elizabeth, (who was not my 2 x ggm). So I decided to look back over my research into John and the brothers of his, who had all moved through from Cramond in Midlothian to find work in the coal pits of Lanarkshire in the first half of the 19th century. I was only about halfway through my planned research on his children, when I came across another John McAra, coalminer, in the same town, Coatbridge. Who was he? So I entered the rabbit hole ... Turns out he was my John McAra's nephew, the son of his brother Thomas. I already had him on my tree, but I took another look to see if I could add in anymore information - shouldn't take me too long I thought. Of course, once you go down the rabbit hole there's no turning back. Before I knew where I ...

 My 2 x great grandfather, John McAra, born in 1800, never married Jane Gregory, with whom he conceived my great grandfather, also named John McAra. Instead, he married another lady in 1827, the same year as my ggf was born - and had a large family with her. My great grandfather thus had no full siblings to help carry on the McAra/Gregory line. This John in turn married Mary Boag in 1847 and they went on to have six children, including my grandfather, another John McAra, before Mary's untimely death at the age of just 40, barely a month after the birth of her last child. My grandfather was their oldest male child and the only one of their male children to make it past childhood. Thus this other John McAra, born 1864, was the only one left in this line to carry on the family name. Things seemed to have taken an upturn for the better as far as the continuation of the McAra name, with John marrying my grandmother, Christina Walker and the couple going on to have five male children who...

 When I first visited Cramond Kirk and its churchyard a few years ago in search of my McAra ancestors, I came across a large gravestone, listing some family members and their dates and places of death, two of whom I can associate with the topic of 'Boats'.  The stone itself was erected many years after the deaths of the people listed and some of the dates were definitely inaccurate. James McAra, the first name on the stone was certainly not dead on the stated date - he was, in fact, living in Tasmania having been deported for the accidental killing of his brother, my 3 x great grandfather (More details about that are given here :  James McAra  ). However, it was not the dates that drew my attention, it was one of the places mentioned as place of death. James' son, Archibald McAra, was listed as dying in Valparaiso, Chile! McAra gravestone in Cramond Churchyard. Inscription unfortunately not too clear. That came as quite a surprise. When his father James had been conv...

My husband Martin's dad Jan grew up on a farm in Poland in the 1920s and 30s and he might not even have seen an automobile (car) in his early years. However, after WW2, he found himself in Scotland and couldn't return to his native Poland as it was now occupied by Communists. Within the space of a few years,  he opened his own business. This meant he had both the need for and the finance required to buy a car. Over the next two decades his electrical retail business became increasingly prosperous. In 1972 he and his wife Teresa, decided they and some of their family would take a trip to Poland. They reasoned it would be better to go by car rather than fly. This would require two cars of course. Jan, now a successful businessman, was known for being a bit ostentatious, showing off his new found wealth, particularly in the form of cars. At this time he owned two Rolls Royces and a Triumph TR6 sports car. The car he chose to use to drive to Poland was his classic Silver Cloud Roll...

 At 2 a.m. on the 10th of February 1940, Janina Stepek and her three children, Jan, Zosia and Danka were woken up by loud knocking at the door of their home in Eastern Poland. It was the Soviet Red Army and Ukrainian Militia, the Soviets having invaded Poland some five months earlier. The family were ordered to pack what they could and be ready to leave within thirty minutes. One officer, in an act of kindness, told Janina to pack as much as they could for cold weather. They were taken by cart to the nearest train station, along with the entire population of the village. There they discovered that the inhabitants of many villages had been similarly forced to leave their homes. After several hours in the freezing cold, they were bundled on to cattle trains. Each wagon took fifty people, crammed together. There was no toilet, there was a stove in the centre of the carriage and there were some shelves which could be used as beds for some. The doors slid shut and locked everyone in, le...