military

Joshua ‘Jesse’ Morey – The Update

The last time I wrote about my great-grandfather, Joshua ‘Jesse’ Lock Morey/Murray I mentioned that I’d found out he had joined the Royal Marines and was going to have to find his service record. That was back in May 2020. Shocking. However, at the end of July, my wonderful friend Carole added my request to her search list for a visit to the National Archives at Kew. And I remembered yesterday that I hadn’t done the follow-up post!

So here it is, and it seems that his scallywag ways weren’t restricted just to leaving his wife and kids for another woman (the latter being my great-grandmother).

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52 Ancestors: Multiple

This week’s 52 Ancestors post is, as you might have guessed, on the theme of multiple. As opposed to last week’s solo post. But multiple what…? Multiple children? Multiple births (although twins seem to be a pretty rare circumstance in my family)? Multiple marriages (definitely less rare!)?

How about … multiple identities …?

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The Kerry Bull’s Calves

This post has been a long time coming – yet it is one of my favourite things I’ve ever researched, and one that I am inordinately proud of (probably second only to finding my husband’s [adopted] aunt’s birth family … or tracking down my paternal grandfather’s family). Some of it might be a bit squirrelly but bear with me …

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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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Eddie Taplin, His First Wife & Her First Husband …

It’s funny what becomes the root cause of a post of mine. Sometimes it’s a new piece of research that solves an old mystery, maybe a new record set becomes available shedding new light on a family – or sometimes it can be something a bit more unexpected.

For example, this one. A few days into the New Year my mum messaged me saying that my father (who has never really been hugely interested in the family history) had asked about Grampy Eddie’s first wife and did I know anything about her. Of course I did, I swiftly replied, and sent her what I knew. Only, it turned out that what I knew wasn’t exactly the truth …

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Mirth in Wartime

I was looking for something to do with WWI yesterday and came across this brilliant German postcard from around 1918.

Mirth in Wartime c.1918

Vintage real photo postcard, c.1918, written (as yet untranslated), uncirculated, divided back, photograph by Photohaus Emil Wünsche Nachf., Dresden, Germany.