Hello again.
What else can I tell you? I started researching my family history a few years ago and as a result have made contact with close relatives in Scotland but from my father's side of my family. i.e. not the Lamoons. I do have a living cousin who is a school teacher near Dover, Kent but we are not in contact.
Both of my family names go back to Ireland and that is where things get difficult record wise.
The two sailors records of the sons of Joseph and Sussanah are my family. William is the same one who was my grand-father. ( Unfortunately, although I met him when I was very young, I cannot remember him, I remember only where he lived and that he had a garden with vegetables and chickens in!!)
Sussanah has an interesting history that I have been unable to explore fully but her father, as someone here has found out, a Henry Ladd, was born in Ostend in Belgium. He was British though so maybe his father was a sailor who sailed from Dover to Ostend ( they are both ports on the English Channel) or maybe he worked in Ostend. Either way, Henry's mother's name was Margaritte. Now that is NOT a British name!
So it looks like Henry's mother was Belgian. This is the part of the world known as Flanders. It is the Low Countries consisting of part of the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France.
Here's the punch-line to that one.
Group A negative blood has been found to come from Flanders. This was proven by a team from Oxford University some years ago. The number of people in Britain with A negative blood is highest in Kent, by the channel ports and gradually fades away as you move inland. The university found two abnormal pockets of high incidence of A negative blood in Britain, one in Cornwall in the south west of Britain and one in Tenby in South Wales. Both are far from Kent.
The researchers went first to Cornwall to find out why this pocket of this blood group existed. They found themselves in a small port where they noticed some of the streets and houses had French names. After some inquiries they found that a French ship had run aground nearby during one of the many wars that England had with France. At the time the militia were send to find the French survivors but couldn’t find any as the local people were hiding them. Subsequently there were babies born with A negative blood.
The team then went to Tenby and with some confidence, went looking at street and house names, yup! Same story!
As you may have guessed I have A negative blood too!
Another thing about poor Henry Ladd. He died in the work-house in Dover. The work house is where poor people where made to live in appalling conditions. At the time it was also where Old Aged people were sent. There was no pension for them! The work house or “Union” was in a part of Dover named then “Union Road” ( Now Coombe Valley Road – renamed because of the original meaning) this area is known as Buckland. You will see it in some of the census addresses’ along with Charlton)
The “Union” building was made into Buckland Hospital and I remember my Mother being frightened of ever being sent there. To her generation it was still a “workhouse.”
I have not been researching my family now for some time but you have all given me new leads. I have now seen my great grandfather’s baptism record and found that maybe the Bristol side of the Lamoon family were all soldiers and some of them were in the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. I will look into this and get back.
By the way google “Lamoons” in South Gloucestershire, Avon and Bristol and you may be able to contact living relatives. Beware though one lady I contacted in the area turned out to be from the London, Deptford side of the family. People move around more these days!!
