T is for Tributes, Treasures, Telegrams, Timelines, and Thanks

 

 

I am enjoying participating in this series from Aona at ttpw.gouldgeneogy.com/2012/05/take-the-family-history-through-the-alphabet-clle

 T  is for:

Tributes

I perhaps was slow to realise this, but I have discovered that blogging gives me a mavellous opportunity to pay Tribute to my ancestors through profiles of my great grandmother Maria Danson, nee Rawcliffe, to my great uncle George Danson who was killed in the First World War, a week after his 22nd birthday, to my grandfather William Danson who won the Military Medal at Givency on the Somme, to my feisty Great Aunt Jennie, to the war time experiences of my father John Weston, to my uncle Harry Danson (right)  who was evacuated at Dunkirk, to the talents of my mother and aunt - Kathleen and Edith Danson. I am proud to have done this.

 

Treasures of the Family

One of the many World War One postcards
sent back from Flanders
by my grandfather William Danson
to his family back home.









Do you, like me, gasp in amazement at the heirlooms that have survived down generations of ordinary families, as shown on TV's "Antique Roadshow" and "WDYTYA", or on blog postings. I marvel in particular at diaries, christening robes, and artist portraits. My heirlooms are much more mundane but still mean a great deal to me and can be summed up as stitching, paintings, and postcards, plus a copper kettle and teasets.

 

Telegrams. We perhaps associate telegrams from the past with dreadful news from war fronts. Here, however,  I was lucky to find, after my parents' deaths,  these happy momentoes from their wedding in 1938 and the time when they were separated through war in 1940.

Wedding telegram sent on the occasion of my parent's marriage in 1938

 

Sent by my father to my mother January 1940
when he was with the MInsitry of Defence in London

 

Travel is a sideline on family history whether we  go exploring in  the footseps of our ancestors or discover  how our ancestors got about. 

 

Winter transport in Earlston, Berwickshire
From the postcard collection of the Heritage Hub, Hawick
www.hesartofhawick.co.uk/heritagehub

 

 

A charabanc outing  - from my Great Aunt Jenny's collection

Timelines  to me are an important feature of a  family history narrative. I am  a firm believer in setting our ancestors lives in a wider context of life around them - what was happening at a local, national and itnernational leve?  I usully present this in the form of a text box in each chapter.

In 1846  when Robert Rawcliffe  married Jane Carr   à     The Preston to Fleetwood Railway was extended from Poulton to Blackpool. à     The sewing machine was invented  à     The Irish Potato Famine reached its height with one million people dying by 1851.     I have so much to be Thankful for in my family history activities.   Tracking down fascinating sources Tracing new ancestors The Tips, support and online friendship from fellow bloggers. The Touching stories that I have come across. The Topics that It has led me to further study on the ancestral Trail such as Christian, surname and place names, the role and status of women, the social conditions that our ancestors experienced.

 

   

 

 

 

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So to summarise  - Family History is Terrific sometimes Tantilizing, sometimes Thrilling, often Theraapeutic, and  I have no intention of Terminating my interest.

 

With apologies for the odd spacing in this post.  I am driven to distraction by the new blogger Interface.  Still learning it!