X is the letter for...........Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday in recent months has been following an A-Z theme and we come this week to the challenging letter of X with a prompt photograph of  vintage X Ray machines.

I was an unadventurous child, unlike my brother, so never needed an emergency  rush to hospital and an X RAY for a broker limb - just  as well as I had a horror of hospitals as a child.

My brother and I in the 1950s
 

I would love to have played the XYLOPHONE, but it was over 30 years before I came close to fulfilling this ambition.    I bought my 5 year old daughter a little Glockenspiel**, enjoyed teaching her first steps in music and  having  a play myself. 

**  The Glockenspiel (German "glock = bell)  has metal bars, whereas the Xylophone (Greek xylos = wood) has wooden bars.  
  

One XMAS we taped ourselves playing and singing Christmas carols for my parents.  I came across this tape years later after the death of my parents, so it was moving to hear again.

 

Mum and Dad in the 1970s - with  the Forth Rail Bridge, near Edinburgh in the background.

 In my own childhood, our Christmas's were very traditional - but we did not have stockings but a pillow case at the end of our beds.  

One apocryphal anecdote was regaled every year  - my mother and and aunt woke up early one Christmas morning - it was still dark (their house didn't have electricity anyway), and decided to investigate their stockings. One present they were convinced was a box of chocolates, so they opened it and bit into one - it turned out to be a box of dominoes!

 Edith and Kathleen (my mother) Danson c.1916.

 

But X is also about eXperiences in Blogging and Family History

EXcitement at finding ancestors who were unknown to me. After many years of appearing on message boards etc. with minimal success, my blog was discovered by three different third cousins and resulted in new photographs and new stories.  

 

My first emigrant ancestors - John Mason and Alice Rawcxliffe & family - my grandfather's American cousins  who emigrated  to New York in 1887-8.  A photograph from the 1920s. 

 

EXchanging Information: In pre-Internet days this activity came from joining Family History Societies and studying their listings of Members Interests. Now the world is open to us. My first venture into Internet research on my Bryning connections resulted in more information in four weeks than I had unearthed in four years. A wonderful tool - as long as you check sources!

 

 

EXamining Records: The fascination and pleasure in touching documents written over a century ago that relate to an  ancestor's life.



Roxburghshire Militia List of 1797
Courtesy of Heritage Hub, Hawick -

EXceeding EXpectations: When I first started on my family history trail, I thought I would be lucky to trace my very ordinary Danson family back to the 1841 census. I have far exceeded that, discovering my great great great, great grandfather John Danson, born 1736, son of Peter.   Here is his signature from his will found in Lancashire Record Office.
 

EXpressing the family stories: Research is an all absorbing task, but turning the facts, names and dates into a family story that people are interested in reading, whether through blog or book, is my favourite FH occupation.  

 

EXcursions into Local and Social History - The possibilities are endless. for adding colour to a family story.............,,,,,

• Was your ancestor alive when a Napoleonic invasion threatened  towns and villages ready to light beacons to warn of the French attack?
   
• Might your ancestors have seen the Jacobite army marching through Scotland and the north of England in 1745 as Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) attempted to take the Hanoverian throne?
  
  
• How did your ancestors enjoy their limited leisure time ?

• The coming of the railway to a community must have been a thrilling event to witness, with local newspapers giving extensive coverage of the excitement generated.
  
  
  
  Courtesy of Heritage Hub, Hawick -
  
  
  
• Might your female ancestors have seen suffragettes campaigning locally? 

A suffragette meeting, at Towerknowe, Hawick in the Scottish Borders, 1909.

Note - the number of men there.  Photograph courtesy of Hawick Museum Collection



The possibilities for stories are endless.

And finally after all of this - EXhaustion!

 

My father enjoying a snooze in our garden in Edinburgh c.1960's 

 

 

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity

to share their family history through photographs.

 

See more stories  from Sepia Saturday bloggers by clicking HERE