Vocal Voices

Back in August I was browsing Facebook when a photo of my Great Grandfather appeared on my Newsfeed from a page someone locally has set up for posting photos, old and new, from the area on. I looked at the name of who had posted the picture and it was my Dad's cousin, R. I've never met him but I've heard of him, he was the lovable rogue of the family when he was younger. Anyway, I messaged him and we got chatting and he said he'd worked on the family tree, on my Dad's Mom's side - his Dad and my Nan were brother and sister (and are in fact buried next to each other) - and he'd print a copy out for my Dad. He got his address from me and dropped it in a few weeks later, I don't think they'd seen each other for quite a few years.

He's traced the Maiden family back to a village near to Bridgnorth in Shropshire in 1542! It makes interesting reading and there was even a great great great great xsomething grandparent from Arkansas in there. One relative along the line was jailed for the attempted murder of the farmer who caught him poaching on his land.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago he turned up at Mom and Dad's again with my Grandad's family tree, Dad's Dad so it's not even his blood family, he's just done it because he enjoys doing this and I think it's so thoughtful of him. This one he's traced back to the early 1800s, the mostly come from the Dudley area although there was someone from Ashwick in Somerset. The scandal on this one is an age difference. Looking at an ancestry.co.uk print of significant dates for one Great xsomething grandmother there's a comment by the marriage section saying that she was 29 when married but ages had been lied about to save embarrassment because there was a large age gap between her and her husband. I assumed that she'd married someone much older. Wrong. When I looked at the page for her husband there was the same comment and his age when married was 14

Fascinating, Jo!

My S. is heavily into this and has researched both our mother and father's ancestries back as far as she can go. As she lives alone these days, she's used the small spare bedroom in her house and plastered the charts of the ancestry lines all over the walls .....

One relative along the line was jailed for the attempted murder of the farmer who caught him poaching on his land.

One anecdote from our side: we had one distant relative - I can't remember exactly when but think it was in the 17th or 18th century - who we found out had committed some sort of felony and had been banished from the Parish where he was living to the nearby parish of Rock for punishment. Rock is a small village in Worcestershire in the Wyre Forest area, near Stourport, so, as it's not too far away from us, we went there a couple of years back to see if we could find any further record of him. No trace, but what we did find in Rock Church was - perfectly preserved - a set of old medieval stocks and a whipping post .....

http://www.wyreforestwest.org.uk/?p=p_1 ... ock-Church

We suspect that's where he might have finished up!!

This kind of stuff is really fascinating!!!!

Jo, my friend did a tree for me when my parents died, I think I've mentioned it here before, and a few fascinating facts (well for me anyway lol) emerged One was that a great great grandfather was a vet cum horse doctor in Westminster (maybe where B gets her love of animals) and another was that my great grandfather was a caretaker at the Houses of Parliament and used to look after Big Ben It didn't go back as far as either yours or Ossie's though, only about 200 years.

Ossie

The mention of Rock brings back lots of happy memories for me.

When I was about three years old, my sister and I had diphtheria. My sister died but I survived and our doctor suggested that
I was sent from my home town of Kidderminster to a healthier environment on higher ground at somewhere like Far Forest .
My parents then moved to Rock, where I spent the next four or five years. I shall never forget my time there, which gave me
a lasting love of nature and the countryside. Last year we went to a holiday cottage there, and I even met a woman of the
same age as me, whom my parents used to say was my childhood sweetheart eighty-odd years ago. How time flies !

Ossie, that did make me laugh

Aggers, what a lovely story about meeting up with the lady after so many years, amazing! Very sad that you lost your sister though.

Kaz, that's a lovely piece of family history

It makes me smile when I look at these family trees though because so many of the men are listed as being coal miners and here we are, living on the site of a coal mine. In fact, my Grandad Taylor (Dad's Dad) worked here until he retired in the 70s.

Its fascinating and somehow there are always so many odd coincidences once you start delving