Incidental Happy Birthday...

Don't you just love when you're playing around in your tree and you suddenly come across something that matches the current date?

A very happy 109th birthday to my first cousin, once removed, Florence May Morris, wherever she may be.

Florence was born in Brinsworth, Yorkshire on this day in 1907.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a lovely day! xx

March Relative Focus - My Maternal Grandfather

The one thing I'm suddenly realising about the writing challenge, is that there are so many to choose from. 

Ah. Yes, in fact a quick bit of tomfoolery with the calculator reveals that were I to never add another relative to the tree (yeah, like that's ever going to happen!) and simply tell about one relative at a time, it would take us from now until mid November of 2101.

...at which point, I'd be rapidly approaching 119 and we'd all be sick to death of the whole thing!


I might then, broaden the 'Write about at least one relative a month' and see where it leads us.


March though, in my mind, is always the month that 'belongs' to my Maternal Grandfather.

This is Grandad in August 1986 at his home in Darnall, Sheffield (that's me walking up the backs of my Uncle and Father - by request I hasten to add!). 





There are several key dates for him that fall in March:


                   4th - Got Engaged (1945)

                   7th - His Death (1992)

                   30th - His Birthday (1916) 
       Meaning he would have been 100 this year!





So yes, today is the 71st Anniversary of Grandad's engagement which fell on Sunday, 4th March 1945 - just 65 days before VE day.


In recent months, I inherited Grandma's engagement ring from my Mum . It's been more emotionally intense than I anticipated having it. Grandma died when I was only 28 months old, so a lot of my memories of her include her hands (sometimes, even more than her face) and it can be oddly peculiar, but at the same time nice, to catch sight of my own hands and be flooded with a memory.

You can bet your life I've been wearing it today!

Grandma's & My Engagement rings.

Nails courtesy of my lovely friend Trish:
https://trishmarickovich.jamberry.com/us/en/shop/products/butterfly-bliss#.Vtn6GH2LTcs

...and a slightly closer one that shows the detail a little more clearly (apologies for it being slightly blurry:

This family group shot is circa 1942.

Grandad is on the right hand end of the back row and Grandma is on the Right hand end of the front row.

Also pictured, from Left to right are:
Back Row 
My Great Aunt (Grandma's Twin), My Maternal Great Grandfather - Robert William DAWSON
Front Row
My Maternal Great Grandmother - Dorothy HAWLEY, Robert's sister Florrie WARD

Grandad made a very beautiful entry in his diary for 4th March 1945 describing the evening as "the best night of my life", describing how they went for a walk together and he asked her (he'd already spoken with her Dad)  and how happy her saying yes made him. After, they'd returned to her house for tea and her parents were there, together with her twin sister and various relatives.

They went on to marry on September 8th of the same year at Burngreave Congregational Church.

Starting Out

This is what my crochet looks like this morning.

In some ways, this is a fantastic analogy for where my genealogy is at just now.

Over the flu season, particularly into the run up to Christmas and crossing into January this year, I've suddenly had one of those periods where various lines exploded one way and another (including a period where a friend who was also unwell spent a few days digging on a side line as a change of scene and gave me this fabulous gift of a whole load of new information to play with).

The position as at today is, a quick glance at my all 'All Relatives' tree on Ancestry is currently sitting at 1028 members, but, since I'm behind on updating all my various trees in various formats, I know that figure is off. I also recently connected with a potential cousin, who, if we can definitely prove our link, may introduce over 400 new to me people.

The plan of action as of now is:

* Sort out why my GedCom isn't being 'liked'/accepted by certain platforms.
* Continue working to copy all the existing ancestors across to all platforms (I currently have fragmented information spread across RootsMagic, GenesReunited, Family Tree Circles, GeneaWiki and various other places). In an absolutely ideal world, it would be great to have everything match absolutely, so that I can really work on pushing out to new generations.
* Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed.
* Figure out some kind of nice mounting system for the current paper tree so that we can display it properly.
* Finish off my four generations project for my licensing exam. - Shooting for sitting the May level 1 exam if at all possible.

When all of that is sorted, there's a lot of tasks that should be a lot of fun that need attention.
More on those as we hit them. 

In the meantime, since we're still technically in February and I'm therefore only technically a month behind, I'm now (having spent January and February learning all about it) confident enough to have got this thing going (even if it's dry so far, at least it's started) and can now join in properly with the Knitting Genealogists group (find us on ravelry) 2016 challenge of trying to write about a relative at least once a month. 

If nothing else, at least if I try and hold myself to genealogy Mondays, hopefully I can get more of the knot untangled.