My Nan

Today marks what would have been my lovely Nan's 80th birthday. We should be eating birthday cake and celebrating, our chatter assisted by constant cups of tea. She liked tea, my Nan. And Marks & Spencer too. Did she love that shop! To the point where when my sister announced she was returning to college to enable her to go to university and retrain as a social worker, my Nan's immediate reaction was disbelief that she would leave a job in M&S to do so!

She was warm and cosy, always baking goodies like all good Nans should. If you were bored, she'd invite you to help with the baking - "Let's go and make some jam tarts / scones / a crumble". Half an hour or so later, you'd have forgotten you were ever bored and you'd have some warm baked goods to enjoy too. Her apple crumble in particular was amazing!

Whereas everyone else at school when I was a child seemed to have an elderly grandma, Nan was "young" (she was 49 when I was born) and still went to work. She worked in a school kitchen as a supervisor serving up goodies to lots of children - well, she'd have to with her love of cooking and baking, wouldn't she; it was the ideal job! As I got older and school kitchens were closed, she went to work in a nursery, cooking lunch for pre-school children who she referred to as "babies". When out shopping with Nan, we would often be stopped by a mum who would come up and tell Nan that their little one wouldn't eat a roast dinner at home because "it wasn't like June's". She didn't retire until she was 69.

She shopped in M&S (her favourite shop as I said before) and Wallis, and always looked smart and stylish, not old. She got her hair done every weekend and coloured it a particular shade of red, which to us was ginger!

She was good for days out and I have fond memories of trips to the zoo, to ice shows at Wembley, pantomimes, shopping and trips to London (including when she came with me and a Dutch penpal to Abbey Road when I was 14).

Me & Nan at London Zoo (c. 1984)

She would say funny things, and get things muddled up. As she got more grandchildren, I got used to answering to three other names as well as my own. But even as she got into her 70s she was still full of energy, and once ran for a bus aged 71 to stop it for me (aged 22).

Then, just before her 74th birthday she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Doctors had missed it for several months, despite her presenting with symptoms. It was stage 3 and she had to undergo a huge operation to remove her bladder as well as a full hysterectomy. The operation took hours and we were all terrified of losing her, but she pulled through and recovered well. For a woman in her mid 70s, her recovery was remarkable. Even her surgeon joked that she was like superwoman. I preferred to call her a "tough old bird". She was back to M&S in no time.

Of course even tough old birds aren't immortal though and in 2010 as she approached her 77th birthday, a routine check-up showed the cancer had returned, this time to her lungs. She was told that it was terminal, and given only a few sessions of radiotherapy to prolong the inevitable.We couldn't believe she had a terminal illness as she still looked so well.

Luckily, it was only the very end of her life where she was unable to carry on as normal. Even as she went into a hospice a month before she died, she got a hairdresser to make her hair look "presentable".

Watching my beautiful, amazing Nan fade away was horrendous. My Nan didn't belong in a hospice, or a nursing home. She belonged in M&S.

On her 78th birthday, two years ago today, I spoke to her on the telephone for the last time (I had seen her just five days before, but a cold meant I was unable to visit as those who are so ill obviously have weakened immune systems and cannot be exposed to germs). By now she could barely talk, and high on morphine, not everything she said was clear.But the last thing she said was very clear - "We'll meet again". Even at the end if her life, she wanted to reassure me that this wasn't the end. She died the next day, the day after her 78th birthday,

In the two years since she died I have started to research my family history, and found out lots of things I would love to share with her, as well as uncovered things she kept secret and which I may now never know the full story of. In life she gave me love and warmth, and in death she has given me an amazing hobby and interest.

RIP Nan x

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How times (and attitudes) change

One of the things that you discover as you research your ancestors is how much things (and in particular, attitudes) have changed, in a relatively short period of time. The biggest examples that I have found of this so far have been with regards to mental health issues.

One of my Great Grandmother's sisters died in a mental institution in Ealing in 1928. I don't know too much about the nature of her mental illness at the moment as it is relatively new discovery, but I know that she spent several years in the institution before dying there, and that her husband remarried (bigamously, it would appear) whilst she was there.

Her grandfather, John Graham (my 3x great grandfather) also died in a mental asylum, as it then called, six decades earlier (in 1867). Like his granddaughter, he was only in his early 40s.

 John was a weaver who lived in Eaglesfield in the parish of Middlebie in Dumfries. At the age of 40, he was admitted to the Southern Counties Asylum (also known as "The Crichton") and is described in the admission records as being "one of the  worst, miserable, wretched and exhausted creatures I have ever almost seen" which given how many people they must have had going in to the asylum, does not sound good. It certainly sounds far removed from the language we would use today to describe someone with a mental illness. He died four years later.

The awful truth is that my ancestors who entered the asylum, and thousands of others like them, were doomed as soon as they first experienced mental illness. There was a stigma attached to mental illness - even common mental illnesses such as depression were hidden until they could no longer be hidden, with incarceration in an institution the only likely outcome. Once an inmate (and that is what they were called) had spent time in an asylum, most became so institutionalised that they could never be released.

Today we live in a world where mental illness is much better understood. There are a range of therapies and treatments available, and people are encouraged to talk about their illness openly. Detainment in a hospital is a last resort, and even those whose illness does end in a hospital stay, return to their homes to continue treatment at home.

We have come a long way.

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Older relatives + newer technology = Great genealogy!

I spent last Saturday morning visiting three great aunts and some cousins who I don't see very often. The three aunts were my late nan's sisters and since she died two years ago, I hadn't been to see them. Not because I didn't want to, but because I knew that seeing them together would be hard, knowing that my Nan was missing.

And it was hard at first seeing them all together and feeling like Nan should be there too. But you know what? After about ten minutes it wasn't hard any more because they had memories of her, and memories of when they were young and memories of people who I only know as names on a tree. It was actually really fantastic - not only to see them and reconnect with them, but also to talk to them about family history and ask some questions!

I did a PowerPoint presentation of their mum and dad's branches of the tree complete with pictures of places I have visited and census pages on which they could see their parents and grandparents, and they seemed to really enjoy it. I also took my trusty FlipPal along and scanned some old photos they had, and showed them some old photo I had uncovered from various other sources on my ipad.

I realised during my visit just how well older people and technology works when it comes to genealogy; places long visited in person are just a few clicks away on Google Streetview, and there are forums of people wanting to share memories on neighbourhoods, schools and decades. I wish I had realised all of this when my Nan was still here, but to be able to share it all with her sisters was really nice.

Me, my little sister and our three great aunts :-)

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Finding living relatives is fun too!

As my mum and her siblings had very little knowledge of their maternal grandparents, I recently decided that it would be a good idea to cast the net wider and involve some of her cousins. The only problem with this course of action was that my mum had “lost touch” with her cousins some years ago (before I was born), so I only had the names she had provided me with to go on. Or that’s all I thought I had to go on until one day I mentioned that I would start to look for them and she said “You won’t have to look too far for Mac, he’s on Facebook”! A quick look on her Facebook friends and there was the said cousin, along with two of his sisters. Three “new” relatives in under a minute!

I contacted my mum’s three cousins, and one of them (Janet) immediately messaged me back to say that it was nice to hear from me and did I know that Margaret (another cousin) had done lots of family history research and had got back to 1745?! Of course I didn’t know this, but it was music to my ears and the cousin said that she was sure Margaret would like to hear from me. I was reluctant to just call Margaret out of the blue as I didn’t want to intrude, so I asked the cousin who had messaged me if she could pass on and let her know that I was researching the family.

The next day I had a call from Margaret, who was really lovely and was able to tell me lots of info on the family and the places they had lived. This meant I was able to confirm that what I knew was correct as well as learn some new stuff. She has been researching the family tree for years! She said she had lots of documents and photos, and would copy some to send me to get me started on our shared branch of the family, and that I could call her any time and wasn’t intruding!

This week, a week after my telephone conversation with Margaret, I received an envelope in the post jammed full of family history info. Copies of documents and certificates, copies of photos of people I had been unable to put a face to, print outs from emails and a hand drawn family tree with scribbles added over time. It was the best post I have opened in a long time!

Sorting through the info that arrived by post from distant cousin Margaret!

I think it is going to take me a loooooooooong time to go through all the information and process it but I am so happy to have so much info to go on and also so touched that someone who has never met me can be so helpful in my quest for family history!

And the best bit? I’ve found some new relatives to keep in touch with and share my research with! In a hobby that involves spending an awful lot of time dealing with dead relatives, it is nice to find some living ones every so often J

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A trip to the Museum of London Docklands

We had a lovely day out yesterday at The Museum of London Docklands. It was freezing cold outside and being Easter Day the museum was quieter than I'm sure it is most weekends, but it was still a fantastic place to visit.

I've got to be honest and say that I didn't know that the museum was there until a few weeks ago. I have been to the main Museum of London before and it was whilst visiting their website I discovered that they had a second museum tucked away in the docks.

As I have recently discovered that some of my ancestors lived and worked in the Docks, I was keen to find out about the area's history and the lives that they would have had.

The museum is housed in a grade I listed warehouse in West India Quay (one of the few buildings in the area not to be have been destroyed by the bllitz or regeneration of the area) and is housed over three floors. You start on the third floor and finish on the first floor, and the museum tells the story of the Thames, the docklands and the local area and people from 46AD when it was a small port through it's heyday as the biggest port in the world and on to the areas resurrection as London's financial district.

The most interesting part of the museum for me was "Sailortown" - a full size reconstruction of the streets if Shadwell and Wapping that Patrick Crawley (my 4x great grandfather) would have walked. It was dark, it was smelly and it was very, very easy to imagine the reality of life lived on the streets of East London in the early to mid 19th century.

Also interesting was the London, Sugar & Slavery exhibition, a permanent exhibition which tells "London's untold story" of it's part in the slave trade. I knew very little about slavery, and found it really interesting, as well as shocking.

The museum also has a cafe, shop and restaurant (the appropriately named "Rum & Sugar") and also houses a research centre where you can access port of London records by appointment (so I will be back!).


It is well worth a visit if you want to know more about the East End, the docks and London's past.

Afterwards we got the Docklands Light Railway and as we winded through the tall glass buildings housing financial institutions and luxury apartments worth £2,000,000 plus I couldn't help wondering what old Patrick Crawley and his friends would make of the transformation of the area!


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Genealogy often makes me sad

Is it weird to get upset at the difficult lives our ancestors have lived when we haven't known them? I find that as I am researching people, I start to feel as though I "know" them and feel a kind of connection to them, which means I feel quite sad about their personal tragedies.

This week for example, I have discovered (thanks to scotlandspeople.gov.uk *) that my great-great Grandmother died aged 41 of breast cancer in 1914 at the Royal Cancer Hospital in Glasgow. Now that is sad enough as it is, a relatively young woman dying of an awful disease. But it was other facts that made it even more sad and poignant for me:

• When Barbara Robertson died, her youngest child Elizabeth (my Great Grandmother) was just four years old.
• She died on 27 December, just two days after Christmas.

What I knew came later for the little girl who lost her mum at such a young age also made me sad:

• Elizabeth, having lost her mum at a very young age at Christmas time, herself died at Christmas - she had a heart attack an died suddenly at home on Christmas Day 1970.

Now I never knew Elizabeth, or Barbara, but I have grown up knowing that Elizabeth died on Christmas morning. I know the story of my Dad seeing his Nan on Christmas Eve and exchanging gifts with her, for her to die a few hours later unexpectedly. I know how Christmas changed from a happy family occasion to a time of mourning and grief in a moment and I am certain that this has had some bearing on my Grandad and my Dad not being huge fans of Christmas. But I didn't know that Elizabeth herself may have had bad memories of Christmas, and that upset me.

This happens a fair bit with genealogy. You spend time researching a name and as you do, they become more than a name. You feel a connection to them because you're following their story and wanting the best for them. And then, they hit hard times or die. And it's sad, even if the tragedy is a hundred or two hundred years old because they as your ancestors are a part of you. Without them, you wouldn't be here!

*If you have Scottish ancestors and haven't used the Scotland's People website, I would urge you to have a look as it is a fab website with lots of info as well as a huge selection of digitised records all available on a pay as you go basis. As in the case described above, you can even get a statutory death record online (due to Scotland's legal and register system being slightly different to ours in England) which includes all the info you would expect to see on a death certificate but is much cheaper and faster than ordering one.


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Utah brilliance!

I've spent the last two evenings watching talks from RootsTech, the genealogy technology conference now in its third year, which is happening this week in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Have I been lucky enough to be actually there? No, I've been at home in the UK, but that doesn't matter because the RootsTech website offers live streaming of some of the talks online which are so good it's like you're actually there in Utah (rather than on your sofa in Essex).

I even have the RootsTech app on my iPad which not only lets you stream the talks, but also gives you full bios of all the speakers at the conferenece, full details of all the companies exhibiting and lots of other useful info. It's amazing!

The session I enjoyed last night was Valerie Elkins "From paper piles to digital files" about her quest to organise her genealogy research. Up until fairly recently, I would have said that I am quite an organised person. However, as I've done more genealogy research I have noticed that I find it more and more difficult to locate a particular piece of paper or book when I need it so I have obviously slipped!

Being organised more and having my research easily accessible at all times is something I'm aiming for though (a bit like a kind of late new years resolution!) so I found Valerie's talk quite inspiring and hope to try using some of the tech she suggested in order to make this huge task a little easier.

Evernote was something she mentioned a fair bit and to be honest, I have tried using it a little already but found it all a bit confusing (despite being a lover of technology, I just find myself wanting a notebook and pen!). However, after the talk, I have decided I need to maybe give it a go again with what Valerie said in mind or maybe try One Note and see if I get on with that more.

I have also discovered just how many tutorials there are on YouTube, so I think I will watch a few of the "Evernote for Genealogy" ones and see how other people are using it. Pinterest is another thing where I have signed up for an account but don't really get how I can use it for what I want so that's another tutorial to search for I think.

I would love to know how other people are using apps and tech to organise themselves so do leave me a comment with your top tips!


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Valerie Elkins @ RootsTech