This week’s 52 Ancestors prompt is an odd one for me. (Insert low-hanging joke about it making me uncertain as to what to write.)
But I thought I’d catalogue my current mysteries.
(more…)
Month: May 2020
52 Ancestors: Tombstone
Originally for this post for 52 Ancestors, I was going to get all creative and not do a post about an actual tombstone, or collection of tombstones, or anything to do with burial markers at all. I was going to go down the Tombstone, Arizona route and find me a cowboy or two.
But it turns out that I don’t have readily identifiable cowboys in my tree, in Arizona or otherwise.
But I do have family politics and farmers.
Yippie kayak, other buckets!
(more…)
William Cropley & Samuel Griffiths: Bacon Stealing Bad Boys
I mentioned a couple of months ago, as part of my Ethelbert Collection, that Ethelbert Holborow, cheesemonger of Clare Street, London, suffered the egregious loss of 2 shillings worth of bacon from his shop in September 1827. The culprits were 12 year-old Samuel Griffiths and 14-year old William Cropley.
But I wanted to know what happened to them after this incident … I was surprised at what I found but not entirely disappointed.
(more…)
52 Ancestors: Travel
I don’t have any travel agents in my tree, so this week’s theme for Amy’s 52 Ancestors had to take a different turn. Of course, my first thought was to talk about passenger lists and some wonderful Holborows who appear on multiple passenger lists, but as I’m working on my Holborows in Australia series (and other countries too!), and that I do have other family lines that aren’t Holborow related at all, I thought that it might be nice to switch gears and switch sides.
I actually got to thinking about the families that didn’t travel. The ones that stayed put. The ones whose lives were nevertheless impacted by the rumbling storm of the Industrial Revolution.
(more…)
Holborow in Australia 3: John Isaac Who?
John Isaac Holborow: where did you come from?! This post has been a long time coming, and the subject of this post is probably the source behind the whole “Holborow in Australia” idea in the first place! He is certainly one of the earlier Holborows to arrive in Australia, and he and his wife had a number of children between 1845 and 1860 who go on to lead some interesting lives and leave their own legacies.
But his provenance back in the UK remains a mystery …
(more…)
52 Ancestors: Service
This week’s 52 Ancestors theme is ‘Service’. I suppose that this could mean military service, or perhaps somebody who was in service (I don’t know how wide-spread this term is, but here in the UK it refers to being in somebody’s domestic employ), or even somebody who was of service to their community.
(more…)
Joshua Lock Murray, uh, Morey
It feel slightly strange to start a post knowing that it will be followed by an update post, but not knowing when that update post will come … however, I thought that I should round out my great-grandparent collection with my father’s maternal grandfather, Joshua Lock Murray aka Jesse Lock Morey, and see what additional information I could find about him.
(more…)
The Family Mess 