"Alive with your Ancestors"

[Wiggy]

While the Duke of Wellington was giving Bonaparte his cumuppance at Waterloo, my G3grandfather was settling into a life in Hobart after arriving from Norfolk Island.

The great Lachlan Macquarie became Governor of Australia in 1810, and granted my G3 his full pardon!!

[Deb D]

My gt gt grandfather - a surgeon - shared his timeframe with Charles Darwin, and once actually owned a copy (can't remember whether it was a first edition!) of "On the Origin of Species".

I'm not at all happy with 2xgt grandad, though; - he either sold it or gave it away! ... and it's just recently been discovered in a library archive in Boston, Mass., ... where a journalist found 2xgt grandad's name on the bookplate, and contacted me when he was researching.

[Ruskie]

I have ancestors who were b, m and d'd in Marton in Yorkshire, the same village where(Captain) James Cook was born. I often wonder if the families paths ever crossed in this then small village. 

Great thread Wiggy - it's something I often consider ...

[Wiggy]

I find it hard to think about a world without the wonderful music available today - Beethoven was just writing his Eroica Symphony, 1804,  while many of our people were slogging it out creating a colony far from the delights of the European music salons.

Thomas arrived in Australia the year Mozart died - 1791.   (I'm guessing that he didn't hear much/any of Mozart's in the poorer parts of London from which he came, though!)

I wonder what they had for music in the earliest days of white history here - I presume some of them brought their fortepianos - thought they would have been more likely spinnets or clavichords.  Violins were easily portable and flutes/tin whistles, concertinas, etc. And they could always sing the folk tunes of the 'old country' and those they made up to describe their experiences - Bound for Botany Bay springs to mind -  I don't know when the lyrics were written  - though I think it was set to an old tune.

And of course the soldiers would have had drums and maybe trumpets/cornets etc of an early type.

[youngtug]

http://www.dglenn.org/defs/inst.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdy_gurdy

[youngtug]

http://www.concertina.com/history/index.htm

[Wiggy]

Write something about your ancestors YT - go on I dare you!!! 

Are you politely telling I've got my concertina dates all wrong?     What I meant was that they were being played when my great grandparents were having house parties/balls!  Phew did I save myself from appalling ignorance?    

I'm pretty sure of the others though- 'cos those composers wrote for them!!  

And I could have mentioned mandolins as being common and portable!   

[Rufous Treecreeper]

I like the fact that my 4 x great grandfather was born in England in 1788, the year that Australia was settled by Europeans, and that he ended his life 81 years later as an Australian.

Mo

[youngtug]

Seems that one of my gtgtgtgrandfathers was a concertina manufacturer.


My gtgtgrandfather was born in 1855 when Australian colonies were granted self governing powers.
A gtgtgtgtgrandfather was born in 1797 when Horatio Nelson lost an arm at Santa Cruz.
Another gtgtgtgtgrandfather was born in 1759 when Josiah Wedgewood set up is Pottery company.

That do for now?