This week’s theme is Light A Candle. Light a candle in memory of …. whom? Just about any and all my ancestors … No, no, that would be rather too many (!) So I chose to interpret the theme as something which any one of my Great Grandparents would most likely have said many, many… Read more

Theme for this week: Membership. My first foray into genealogical research in the 1990s was at a local Family History society where I was amazed at the number of old records still existing (or so I thought), but when computers and then the internet and email became available the scope exploded. Eventually I discovered e-mail… Read more

The theme for this week is LUCKY. My Great Uncle George Johnston 1855-1885 was born in Launceston, Tasmania a few weeks after his Glasgow-born emigrant parents arrived on the “Storm Cloud” in 1855 after a voyage of 71 days through the stormiest seas in the world. Perhaps that is why the sea fascinated him. He… Read more

This week’s theme is ‘Translation’. I have a mysterious Great great grandfather named Thomas Darchy who was born in Augsburg, Bavaria in 1820 but lived the first eleven or so years of his life with a Prussian-born guardian in Neuchatel, Switzlerland. When he was aged 10 the guardian received a letter from someone apparently connected… Read more

The theme for this week is Gone Too Soon. My maternal grandmother Lily Hunt was the tenth and last child of school teachers Edwin Hunt and Margaret Morgan who married in Reading, Berkshire in 1862. The seventh and ninth children, unfortunately, did not survive early childhood. The ninth only survived a few months, but the… Read more

The theme for this week is “I can identify…” Or rather, I can’t. So frustrating! Trying to identify all the family members in several photos of my father in law’s funeral in August 1953. Squadron Leader Wiliam Frederick Hoffmann AFC (“Bill”) remained in the British Air Force after WW2, and was on holiday at Penzance… Read more