Wednesday 2 September 2015

Another Day of Joy...



As my technical abilities are way beneath my intellectual ones you can gather I am in quite a fix at the moment.  With a day or two to myself, although I almost had to work today and might tomorrow, I intended to fix some of the broken bits.  "Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans" sang John Lennon and he is right.
I brought the wheel up to fix the puncture, then I began to seek my grandfather and his first wife through Ancestry.  This meant I forgot the bike, except when I fell over the wheel, until today.  So I removed the tyre, pulled out the inner tube, discovered the puncture in a strange place and checked the tyre.  No wonder I got a puncture where there ought not to be a puncture, the tyre is falling apart, I thought it felt thin!  Anyway I reached for the new inner tube I was going to insert, then fix the punctured one as a spare, when I realised the new one had one of those 'Shrader' car type valves, eejit!  I took action, I dumped the lot and will visit Halfords tomorrow, it was too late today.
The other jobs, let alone the ironing and the trip to somewhere nice, must wait.


So it was back to granddad and his missing children.
He was born on a farm and ended up driving steam trains by the 1880's.  He also drank and this cost him his two marriages.  Plenty of kids from the first one, three from the second, from which I come somewhere down the line.  
I have found it difficult using both ancestry and Scotlands People to find any trace of some of them.  One poor lass is born in 1891 and disappears, I don't think she lived long but she might have gone to relatives in Newcastle with an older sister. Travel would be cheap as I think railway families went free and the journey would not be long.  One man is found in the Royal Naval Reserve but I have yet to get his record, another becomes a jeweler in Cheshire and his sister joins him later but what happens after that?  One daughter marries well, he had money, but she appears to die at 45 sadly.  So many stories but so hard to uncover.
There is a problem in that dad never spoke of his father, or at least so rarely I canny mind anything he said.  His mother moving them out affected him in that he determined to be a good father and look after his family, which he did and at some cost.  Not that I understood that for any years.  
Naturally I got involved in this and suffered yet another burnt dinner.
So tomorrow I may be working, i may be in Halfords and I may be grumbling on genealogy sites!



7 comments:

Jenny Woolf said...

Hopefully Halfords can fit the wheel too. Like you I always get led astray when trying to do anything technical. The genealogy must have been a welcome distraction, and it sounds fascinating what you have managed to track down so far. Looking up ancestors is something I also get tangled up with so probably would avoid both bikes and genealogy websites. I think sitting down with a nice book is what I will do now.....

Lee said...

You've almost nudged me into action, Mr. Ad-Man...perhaps I should do a spot of checking on my Scottish ancestry...I might start that later today after I finish writing a couple of articles I have to finish writing! On my maternal side...the Scottish names of Hose, Hay and MacDonald are where I'll start...this could be a long and winding road! On my paternal side it's the Irish Nicholson line to be researched (Sounds like a railway line)!

the fly in the web said...

Or you may be burning your dinner....

Revrunner said...

I can identify. Just had to replace the back breaks on my bike and had to scrounge around to find my metric hex keys to do the job because, of course, the ones I had on hand were standard. Sheesh!

carol in cairns said...

I am a bit surprised that with all your soldier research you had never looked into your own ancestry until now. I hope you find some interesting stories.

Adullamite said...

Jenny, I recommend the book I mentioned tonight. You may like it.

Lee, It may be expensive also if you have to search UK sites. MacDonald will be fun, there are billions of them. Were any convicts who stayed? There is supposed to be lists of those available in Oz. Good luck with that, one name at a time!

Fly, A frequent habit...

Rev, At such times tools disappear. You may like the book mentioned tonight.

Carol, I did many years ago before the internet, harder then. However I only looked for my side, not granddads first marriage as that was too hard then, today it is hard and expensive but done online which is better.

Lee said...

Strange as it may seem to you, Mr. Ad-Man...none of my ancestors who came to these shores from Scotland and Ireland were convicts. They were probably too smart to get caught!