Blood and Life
A
few years ago I started to realise that I didn't know where
I had come from. I wanted to know who was part of the blood
that has run through my veins all these years. So, I have
compiled an extensive genealogical study of my own family
starting with the basic knowledge I had as a child. I have
managed to trace my blood relatives back to the 1600's. They
were tracked in London, Gloucestershire, Ross and Cromarty,
Poland and Devon. All have connections through to the
Georgian era into harsh cruel Victorian times, through the
worry and death of two world wars and into the prevailing
Elizabethan age.
Other people's family history is not unlike looking at other people's wedding or holiday photographs - on the surface they all look basically the same and, try as you might, other people's family history, like those holiday and wedding snaps are never as interesting as your own so I will restrain from boring you with the, for me at least, exciting little stories. Stories of a way back grandfather who for some unknown reason was sent to the colonies and the story of a poor great cousin of mine who was so hungry he was reduced to stealing a little grain and then sentenced to hard labour. My tragic great uncles, brothers, who died so very young from the deadly flu in the late 1890's.
Like a majority of ordinary family history the outcome of the research paints a picture of commonplace folk - hard work, desperation, the fight for survival and short, slightly diverse, sometimes tragic although in many ways similar lives.
Somehow it gives me a strange feeling of actually belonging, a feeling that my predecessors were far more triumphant and in a way glorious than I ever will be - they fought and worked hard for their survival. They never saw or possibly envisaged what has become the result of their daily fight and drudgery - this politically paranoiac, self destructive, instant, pre-packaged, self-centred period we call the 21st century.
