Blood. Murder. Torture. Vampirism. Serial killer. Lady Gaga.
A few words that spring to mind when one thinks of Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous Hungarian noblewoman from deepest Transylvania, the home of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. What a surprise, then, to find a link within my own family to this infamous murderess …
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I’ve been away from 52 Ancestors for a while – nothing bad, just that most of the intervening topics I’ve covered before here, and there will be some in the upcoming weeks that, likewise, are duplicates of previous posts so they will be skipped! A full list of this year’s posts will be made at some point (presumably in December!) which will include those equivalent versions.
This post has, I suppose, been a few years in the making. I’ve uncovered many ‘family secrets’ over the years. Illegitimate children, stillborn babies, extra-marital affairs, court cases, entire family lines rediscovered, but this one is a real doozy …
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Clearly I could have saved last week’s topic for this week … The Neal family is one big challenge – even worse than my disappearing Holborows and troublesome Hallidays!
(And, yes, technically I’m late with this prompt. Sorry about it.)
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Overlooking ancestors or entire lines can easily be done when researching. I find that I am more likely to look at one of my American lines, or my mother’s Holborow family than my father’s English side. That is just personal preference (and the number of people also seriously researching the Holborows is fairly small).
However, there are family lines that rapidly run out of steam due to a lack of records. In this case I wouldn’t so much say they are overlooked as under-represented: if the records were there, I’d be all over them like ants at a picnic. Case in point, my 3 x great-grandmother Mary McMillan/McMillian Payne. She appears from nowhere, married and gives birth and then disappears! Where did she go? Where is her family?
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The genius that was Sir PTerry Pratchett (GNU) had a lot to say about beginnings. One being that what we see as a beginning is often the result of many things that came before. As he opened Lords and Ladies:
“The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired* – but that’s not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. The point is, there’s always something before. It’s always a case of Now Read On.”
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It’s been a while since I’ve written or posted anything here. My apologies – it’s been a bit of a wild time here with me of late, but the sun is shining here in England this weekend so I thought I’d ignore it and write up an old post I had on the go!
If you think that I don’t write about my paternal side very often, then spare a thought for the family of my poor husband – they barely ever get a look in! Consequently, a message on Ancestry regarding some matches on that side made me revisit one particular line, that of Elizabeth Ellis Wood … or was she?
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This shouldn’t be a long post, but I think that I may have blasted through the research quagmire of my Hallidays in Sherston that I mentioned last time. (Soon it’ll be back to business, i.e. more Holborows, more Murrays, some asylum records …)
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I should be preparing for a dinner party (do people still have dinner parties?!) tonight – for which I did a heck load of preparation for yesterday – but instead I am sat here with a messed up foot (we call it a Dom Special – I fell out of my trainer, and also off the edge of my stone path in the garden). It happens on … well, not a regular basis but more often than you’d think a grown adult would fall over (I once fell off the edge of a flip-flop and messed my ankle up, and once I fell over in a flat field and managed to break both my elbow and my wrist).
But I have been re-examining some inherited research again lately. I mentioned it a while ago as it forms part of my Halliday family work which I considered a bit of a done deal. Only … there were a lot of gaps in the data. Dates and no locations. Parents but no baptisms. Spouses and no marriages. You know the drill by now about double-checking everything, and not relying on other people’s research. Well. Egg all over my face.
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I wasn’t sure that I had a family history story that met this week’s theme … until I started to review my Holborow ONS entries for the 1851 census and realised I’d missed an entire spelling variant in my search! And – as usual – the Holborows (or Holbrows in this instance) managed to come up trumps – and drive me right round the buggering twist!
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin …
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I have decided to do 52 Ancestors again this year, after taking a break in 2022. I’m already a week behind hence why this post is a bit of a twofer.
In terms of “I’d Like To Meet”, assuming we mean a deceased family member and not – picking a name at random from the ether – Henry Cavill, then the answer is clear and blindingly obvious to anyone who I have ever bored to tears spoken with about my family history.
A story a day keeps the boredom away: SF and Fantasy story reviews
family history research and stories
Site of the Holborow One Name Study!
Unlocking the Door to Your Past
Family History and Genealogy
The Family Mess 