The person behind the name

[ladybird]

The person I would like to meet is/was my 2x g/grandmother Mary Ann.
Married a Scottish tinker/traveller who joined the army about 1850.

She came of basic Scots/Irish stock I believe, had 8 children, 3 of them in India while trailing round after her husband's regiment.
I imagine her to be a slim (stringy?) build but one very gutsy lady. She died aged 81 in Lancs living with her daughter.

Funny but I always imagine hubby, 2x g/granddad, as something like Sargeant Harper in the Sharp series  wrong time period I know, but the conditions wouldn't have been much different.

Wish I had a pic of them...wishful thinking
Sylvia

[Cal241]

Don't have a piccie of my g grandmother (who has my name) but have one of her mother in law (who after marriage had the same name) C 1860

Be afraid !!!

[indiapaleale]

Cal,
Her butt looks big in that!

Indi 

[Cal241]

Well Mat is her daughter so ............... MASSIVE!! 

[ozlady]

I might be daft but I talk to g.uncle Morgan's portrait. I ask him what he was like, what did he like doing etc. He's got a lovely face, looks really gentle. It's hard to picture him in the muck and filth of the trenches.

[sallysmum]

oh yes great aunt Lilian.  She married someone who was instrumental in the temperance society in Newcastle.  I knew that her sister, my grandmother had signed the pledge at one point so I assumed that this was a god fearing woman who would let not one drop of liquor past her door.  I assumed she'd be a very stern Victorian lady.

Yikes! - I made contact with her granddaughter only to discover that she was a total hypocrite - had a bottle of gin hidden under her table, as did her so called sober husband - just goes to show what our imaginations can do!

Sallysmum

[rubyrose]

One of my favourites is my great grandmother Alice. Her father died when she was young and she went to live with her aunty as her mother had two other young children. She married a postman and had eight children.

Recently I got a photo of her which is attached. She is just as lovely as I thought she would be. I also learned that in 1916 when she was pregnant with her 9th child, she was washing the windows outside the house, trying to make things nice for her son who was coming home on leave from the Army. She slipped and fell on to the iron railings outside the house and bled to death from her injuries.

I don't know what draws us to some ancestors more than others, but I was really upset when I learned what had happened to her.

My grandmother, who was 16 at the time, had to give up work in Lewis's department store to look after the family.

Ruby