52 Ancestors

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.

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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.

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52 Ancestors: Where There’s A Will

I have a few way to go here in this post for 52 Ancestors. The full phrase, of course, is “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” meaning that if you’re determined enough in the face of adversity then a way forward can be found. Alternatively, it could be used to refer to wills in the sense of probate and legacies. A third option is the name, William.

Determination … Probate … Williams …

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52 Ancestors: Land

This week’s prompt by Amy Johnson Crow for 52 Ancestors got me thinking. Like the vast majority of people, I don’t have to go very far to find a cast of “ag labs” in my tree. Nor do I have to go into deep history: both my ‘English’ grandfathers (Frysol and Taplin) worked on farms, and and at least one of my American grandfathers were in the farming game at some point in their lives. But I don’t want to talk about that.

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52 Ancestors: Fire

I was initially slightly nonplussed by this week’s 52 Ancestors prompt: I have no firefighters in my tree, nor anybody who has lost their life or livelihood to fire (to my knowledge).

I do know that my Grampy Eddie was involved in a fire that cost him and 2 other families their cottages in Collingbourne Kingston in February 1934 (caused, allegedly, by a petrol engine backfiring and setting an oily rag alight). That plus a 300-year old barn full of sacks of wheat and cottages roofed with thatch spelled disaster.

But I thought that instead I would share something else; something more relevant to the devastating bushfires that ripped through Australia recently.

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52 Ancestors: Nearly Forgotten

I know, it’s been a while since I actually wrote a post for 52 Ancestors (in fairness, it’s been a while since I wrote a post at all), but I was having a thorough muse on this week’s theme and thinking about ancestral stories to share.

And then had a bit of a realisation …

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52 Ancestors: Favorite Discovery

This marks my inaugural post in this year’s 52 Ancestors prompt series, as devised by Amy Johnson Crow. I’m a bit late in starting, but that’s not going to stop me!

This prompt – Favorite Discovery – struck a chord with me as I have had a few solid discoveries that have had me sitting back in my chair. After all, I’ve been doing this for over 25 years – it’d worry me if I hadn’t!

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