Forget-me-nots...

...I gave up my family research earlier in the year because of the convolutions and literally Machiavellian intrigues. I had just done my Great Grandfather on my dad's mother's side of the family.

My genealogy subscription runs out soon, so I thought I would wrap up my mother's mum's side of the family. I had already done the research last year, and I thought a few print outs and last bits of wrap ups were all that was needed. I already knew my Greatgrandfather had joined the navy under an alias and married my Greatgrandmother under an alias and even the first few children were under the alias...births and baptisms. So as you can imagine my head was spinning earlier in the year.

Anyway I want all this on paper because I want a paper record anyway, and it is marvellous ideas for writing stories and such. So when I am in my dotage (no I am not there yet!) I can turn to writing novels and stuff...

So this is my next 30 year plan and will take me into my late nineties...although I have other stuff to master and complete first....

But this wasn't just a simple wrap up....

Obviously more records have been added to genealogy sites since earlier this year and I can find so much more. I couldn't find anything on my grandmother's siblings before. Now I can.

I still cannot find any reason for my Greatgrandfather's alias. Tried everything I can think of. But again, another family was brought up with lies and secrecy and appears to have really affected the outcome who they were to become.

The youngest of my Grandmothers siblings married a man 30 years older than herself, and had four children. A few days after her husband had signed my Grandmother's marriage certificate as a witness her husband died (he was in his early 70's).

Another sibling, the only son emigrated to America to New York where he was drafted into the First World War, survived and became an upholsterer. He married (I found his gravestone online!) and it says Mother and Father on the grave, so they must have had children but I have no details of those. He made several journeys on his own back to the UK (presumably to visit his family).

His little sister, the youngest of my Grandma's siblings appears to have run away (unless it was with her mother's blessing, I have no way of knowing...yet). Because a year later she followed her brother on the same ship, The Baltic, from Liverpool to New York. She was 16 years old. How did she do this? How did she fund this? I cannot find any more trace of her.

Then there is the middle sister. As yet I have found only birth and baptism and censuses, but not what she does later in life...that is my project in a few minutes when I have posted this blip.

Then there is my Grandmother who married a man ten years younger than herself and was just off to war. All that is another massive story...black market dealings and stuff...

But the reason for this blip today, flower Friday, is Forget-me-nots. My blip photo is a screenshot I took this morning. When I researched my Grandma's other sibling Lily, I wasn't getting very far, until I looked in the 1939 census. I thought initially it wasn't her even though the birthdate was the same because there were two men residing with her under the same surname. I knew her death date so I knew she had never married. A friend yesterday said well they must be cousins. So more research. Zilch.

Duh! Sons? Two son's under her maiden name? 1914 &1915. Surely not....so I investigated this morning. Yes, my Great Aunt Lily had two sons. In the 1939 census, they are Music Hall Artistes (Dance). So then I realised my Great Aunt Lily must have been in that profession or something to do with that.
Anyway, the son who died in the war, Cyril, I managed to find where he was buried. I joined the Find A Grave site so I could leave a bunch of virtual flowers for him. In the blip photo above.

Why did I leave Forget-me-nots? Well, the last memory I have of my Great Aunt Lily was her in her upstairs flat. (My Grandma lived in the flat below) Lily was in her late 80's, a very flamboyant person and the furnishings and fabrics in the flat were something to behold. She was sitting at a highly polished oak table with barley legs...painting Forget-me-nots on the corner of a handkerchief.

She had loads of these painted handkerchiefs on the table, and China plates that she was painting as well. The big stores in the city took everything she painted.

So I left these virtual Forget-me-nots for her son Cyril this morning, and I shed a tear.