Family history

    I have a copy of The Oxford Guide To Family History by David Hey into which I have hardly delved. I hadn't consciously thought that I am the last male Richardson of our corner of that family until I signed my niece's guest book at her wedding earlier this year. I haven't paid much attention because I loosely subscribe to the idea that tracing a family tree is a bit pointless as one either runs out of public records or reaches a point in the family tree where nobody cared about such things or the oral history is lost. Or why must one be a slave to the patriarchal system and only follow the mail (Freudian slip?) male line. One only has to go back four generations, to great-great-grandparents, to then have the task of following sixteen families. The book talks about something far more interesting than the bare-bones genealogy and that is finding out about the lives of ancestors, their occupations and social milieu.

    The only things I know about my grandfathers is that one served in the RAMC during the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa and was a postman in civilian life; and the other was a Gloucestershire wheelwright; and that family names include Coates, Farmer and Gaze. But my sister, being much older than I am, might put me right about some things. Of my grandparents only my paternal grandmother was alive when I was born.

Nostalgia

Memories come unbidden. Pictures evoke untold memories. "One picture is worth ten thousand words". This picture can not cause memories to come unbidden. My parents about twelve years before I came along. Early this morning I rummaged in a closet to find a particular photo. I found more pictures than I expected: two book boxes full. Why make them public? Of what interest could they be to a stranger?


The first picture of me (do you get the idea I'm a bit self absorbed?). Stangers would stop mum in the High to peer into the pram to see the baby, "Oh, isn't she lovely"; "Actually 'she' is a 'he'". I was born with a full head of hair!