"Alive with your Ancestors"

[Wiggy]

Excellent!!   and interesting!!      Knew you could do it!   

[angelfish58]

In 1847 a 4x great uncle was living in Great Windmill Street in London where,in the Red Lion pub, the Second Congress of the Communist League took place. I wonder if he saw Marx & Engels?

[Wiggy]

Pity they didn't keep diaries isn't it - though I suppose they may not have considered such a meeting worthy of note!!   
I am learning something every day - I didn't realize the Communists had a party let alone a league before 1917 -     Of course they'd have had to  - had to build their revolution on something!!   

My Gx4 aunt was born in the year Jane Austen died.    No chance of them meeting anyhow!      Think of all those stories my Gx3 grandmother couldn't have read - even if she'd had time for reading!

[angelfish58]

   
I am learning something every day - I didn't realize the Communists had a party let alone a league before 1917 -     Of course they'd have had to  - had to build their revolution on something!!   

Until I Googled Great Windmill Street I had no idea either  4x great uncle Henry was still there in 1851 and running a coffee house.  It's intriguing to think they might've been there in 1847 muttering into their beards about the oppression of the proletariat while Henry served them with the Victorian equivalent of a cappuccino.

[Seoras]

Don't forget the didgeridoo Wiggy,though the Eroica could prove difficult on it

George.

[Wiggy]

I have a new way to remember when the first box of matches was sold - the same year as my GGGgrandfather died - 1829!!     Well you never know - I might need that for a trivia question some time!!   

Wiggy 

[Ceryswyn]

Great thread! I hadn't even thought of this much beyond what was going on in their lives in the immediate viscinity. I'll have to keep my mind on that as I go now.

[Ringrose]

I have a 5 times great grandfather who my have taken part in the Battle of Jersey. There is a painting depicting this and I wondered if he dressed like the soldiers did in 1700s. I imagine that our ancestors who came from small villages and never ventured far(though some did) werent too aware of what was happening inthe country and worldwide. I also think of of my Victorian ancestors in London--did they go the Great Exhibition.There really is a lot more to family history than a list of names.
Ringrose

[bandick]

It must be a wonderful feeling to have discovered your ancestry… and youngtug has done a lot on mine… stuff I had no idea of… and I’m just beginning to get my head around it… but I wonder if many of you have any knowledge of this chap… how mind blowing would that be…

Cheddar Man is the name given to the remains of a human male found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The remains date to approximately 7150 BC, and it appears that he died a violent death. It is Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton.

In 1996, Bryan Sykes of Oxford University first sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of Cheddar Man, with DNA extracted from one of Cheddar Man's molars. Sykes got DNA from the 9,000 year old Cheddar Man's tooth, and from a 12,000 year old Cheddar tooth from the same cave.

Bryan Sykes' research into Cheddar Man was filmed as he performed it in 1997. As a means of connecting Cheddar Man to the living residents of Cheddar village, he compared DNA taken from twenty living residents of the village to that extracted from Cheddar Man’s molar. It produced two exact matches and one match with a single mutation. The two exact matches were schoolchildren, and their names were not released. The close match was a local history teacher named Adrian Targett.

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

http://www.arcl.ed.ac.uk/a1/stoppress/stop12.htm