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Met your ancestors?

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AlieOxon Tue 05-Nov-13 14:53:09

I find myself troubled by a comment on another thread, about where we fell is home, which dismissed ancestors as 'people we've never met'. I had said that my family was more of a home than any one place I have lived, even more so since I have been researching them. (Mind you, we moved around a lot when I was a kid.)

I feel I have now met many of my ancestors.

I know what my Scottish greatgreatgrandfather was like, from what I know about him now. A fairly strict Victorian parent, conventional and a bit straitlaced, who couldn't cope with his eldest son - to the point of writing 'Parent' as an addition in the 'occupation' box the 1871 Census.

I appreciate my Irish greatgrandfather who was a painter and contractor but much preferred going off and sailing his boat.....and his wife who made an impulse buy of a goat at an auction, subsequently leaving it to the children to look after!

Have you met yours?

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Elegran Sat 25-Jan-14 13:02:25

I found a mention of one of my female ancestors (directly back in the female line to 1816 - so I have her motochondrial DNA) .

She came from Brasted, in Kent, but had gone to live in Croydon. There she must have taken up with a militia man, because in the Croydon church accounts there was a record of sending her back to Brasted to have her baby. She was the responsibility of her home parish, who grilled her about the father and got his name and rank from her - they presumably tried to get upkeep money from him, with what succes I don't know, as it was notorious that men joined the army to escape paternity claims.

Then two years later she fell pregnant again, and was again sent back to Brasted - this time with a different militia man named as the father.

Plenty of personal detail about her there!

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