RootsChat.Com

       I don't think I could arrange it in time, Earley, my 70th is 4 weeks from today!   


  ps Strange to say, Arnold was no relation to me. It was his widow who told me about it, and since then, helpful Rootschatters have supplied the published story of the incident, and a photo of Arnold

  We have a photo in the hall of a group of people with a little girl standing in the front. Those who look at it casually assume it is our daughter because she looked exactly like that as a child, but in fact the people in it are OH's father, uncle, aunt and grandmother outside Buckingham Palace when my FiL was presented with the DSM during WW2.  The girl is a mystery. We think she was the natural daughter of OH's aunt, brought up by some cousins and given their name, but cannot know for sure. The only person alive (until recently) who knew the truth was OH's aunt, and she would never say, so we shall probably never know.

  The other thing is that you don't buy the microfilms if they are from IGI. You need to go to your nearest 'Family History Center' of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (usually known as Mormons). If they don't have the film (depending on which one you go to) they will order it for you and you view it there.

   Have I got that right, Stan?

My dad was a letter sorter for the Post Office.  These days it's all done by machine.

  No it isn't. There are still many letters that defy the most sophisticated machinery.
  I hand-sorted letters at RM until I retired. Once there was one address which had obviously been written by a blind person (blind people either keep a finger space between lines, or press hard so they can feel the impressions on the paper. The hand had slipped and parts of the address were written on top of others. I took it to a friend who managed to decipher the street name, looked it up on the RM computer, found the phone number of the occupant, rang her to make sure she was the right person, and sent her the letter in an official envelope. Job done.  (it was from her blind friend in Australia)

   For many years, Dissenters were not allowed to go to University (which then meant Oxford or Cambridge) so this led to the formation of "Dissenting Academies" which were renowned for their high standard of education. The ban on degrees meant that many promising young men went into manufacturing or trade (as did Quakers for the same reason) and ran some of the most well-known stores and companies.