The suppositions we have of our ancestors.

[Finley 1]

I have a David Crombie Baker in Fife   my relation - always had a good feeling that at least he was a worker in a trade ..

Decided to 'work' him today ---


OH MY

he turns out to be a Wife BEATER --- I hate him --- absolutely ---

It is difficult to assess I know and there is more than one David Crombie in Fife of the correctish time.....

but only one that professed to be a baker -- and I am hoping (but probably wrong!! ) that he is not the one that was a Brass Founder, (cos he was worse )

oh dear..

My David was born in Fife 1879
he married my great aunt in 1899 Margaret Sutherland.


SHE dies very young age 35 ?!?!  now I am full of suspicion...


i just went to look at the papers for maybe his second marriage or death or something   and this lot comes up..

As I say - I am having to seperate him from a person of the same name..  but Pittencrief Street - Goldrum St.  and Charlotte Street.. are all correct addresses..

So yes   he wasnt the character I had supposed.. SADLY   
doesnt do to presume. 

xin

[Wendy2305]

We do hope our ancestors are good people and it does hurt when we find out otherwise
I have one my 4x gt grandfather the info I have found points to him being found guilty of fraudulently trying to pass a 12 pound note and being transported to Australia in 1844 leaving my 4x gt grandmother with 8 children including a newborn
By the next census the family are split and are never found in a census together again

[Mart 'n' Al]

Xinia, I know how you feel. My G G grandfather was a wife beater.  His teenage son had to give evidence in court against him.  He later died in police custody, the night after it took 4 PCs to arrest him for drunkenness.  I don't think I got many of his genes.

Martin

[Mart 'n' Al]

Wendy, he should have changed the £12 note for two £6 notes.

Martin

[Wendy2305]

Wendy, he should have changed the £12 note for two £6 notes.

Martin

Ha ha maybe would have gotten away with it then

[Regorian]

Everyone ought to know. 19th Century local newspapers always had a court page.

Why do you think the Army and the Navy flogged the men up until about 1870, the French had no need to.

Why do you think Transportation commenced about 1710 to the West Indies and North America. After the loss of the American colonies in 1783, our social degenerates were sent to Australia.

Why do you think Government doesn't seem to have any interest in building new council estates.

There were a couple in my family. James 1858 to 1904, was always up before a beak for being drunk and disorderly. Even Thomas Henry 1871 to 1940 was fined for refusing to leave a pub on landlords say so. He was a volunteer in the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers Militia in the 1890's. and a Metropolitan policeman 1900 to 1926.   

[IgorStrav]

We all imagine what our ancestors were like.  It's impossible not to make up stories about them from the information we manage to track down, even if it's only really limited.

I have great difficulty researching my mother's father's family, partly because of East London locations and common names, but also because I find it very depressing to do.

I am convinced that this is because my mother said about her father that she was 'frightened' of him, and was really rather relieved that he died, when she was 11, of TB.  She had a lifelong detestation of pubs - wouldn't step into one - because of the fact that he often was drunk when he came home.

Despite having poignant letters he wrote to my grandmother when he was in the TB sanitorium, promising to be a good husband when he came home, I find myself still prejudiced against him.

But what am I to know?  He grew up in the worst part of the East End in slum dwellings in one of the worst roads found there (it's reported as such at the time), with a father who was likely only able to work intermittently as a dock labourer.

He obviously got something of an education, he found a job, and after everything he had a family including a daughter who was as talented and clever as my mother.  Drink?  I expect he did.

Happy?  Perhaps it wasn't too happy a family.  But he survived a dreadful poverty-stricken childhood and as a result, I'm here. 

And even if who I am is a result of my mother consciously taking the opposite road to who she thought her father was, I'm still part of him in some way.

My conclusion?  We will never know.  We can never know.  We will always make things up.



,

[Regorian]

Some people had dreadful upbringings and yet did not go off the rails in the past. My lot go back to 1695 (beginning of PR's for parish). I don't know about 18th Century but by the look of it nothing anti-social visible after 1740 except for the examples I gave. An older brother of my gggrandfather volunteered for the 90th Regiment in 1805 and served 13 years in the West Indies and War of 1812 in Canada. I've seen his personal record and his conduct was marked 'good'. My ggrandfather James 1831 to 1901 was an iron miner in the Forest of Dean. He evidently worked hard and saved enough money to buy a plot of land from the Crown (forerunner of the Forestry Commission) and have a house built 1871/72. He added land to it.     

[iluleah]

I think we all like to think all our ancestors were good, hard working, kind, generous people, we forget they were human beings and humans make good and bad decisions, we forget the times they lived in, the conditions they put up with and how laws, attitudes, conditions have changed.

However I empathise with you xinia, I have gone through the rainbow of emotions about one or another ancestor I have researched and was always surprised at how I felt about someone I didn't know who was born, lived, died sometimes hundreds of years ago....shows we are just plain and simple human beings