Tree

On a cold, wet and dismal day, this is my contribution to the May HeartFreek Photo Challenge and I was thinking "outside the box" again - not one of my best photographs - yesterday, being a glorious, sunny day, I could have blipped lots of trees, but decided that I would blip a "family tree" today!

The alarm went at 5.30 a.m. because we wanted to ring a friend in Switzerland to wish her a Happy Birthday, and they are one hour ahead of us - but she has been away and isn't back until later - so thought I would get my blip done before I go to school this morning.

So - this lovely "tree", which was a present from our son and daughter-in-law a couple of years ago - has now become a family tree, with various photographs, some of which are very old and a couple of family tree documents.

In Mr. HCB's family, I have managed to go back to the late 1400s in his family history research and on my maternal grandfather's side back to the late 1700s. However, on my maternal grandmother's side it stops there - in other words, what genealogists call "a brick wall"!

It doesn't help that her maiden name on the marriage certificate to my grandfather is "Williams" the third most common name in the U.K. However, in an old family Bible, it says her father's name is George Rout - so this has made it quite difficult to try and find her. Was she adopted or born out of wedlock? I think I may need to take a trip to London and in particular, Lambeth, to see what I can dig up in the Local History section of the library there.

Family History is certainly a fascinating subject and we should be asking questions of our oldest relatives and writing down their responses, otherwise when they die, all will be lost. Interestingly, through Blipfoto I have managed to help Estelle, who lives in Australia, to connect to relatives who live in Bath and also to other relatives who live about 5 hours away from them in Australia - oh the wonders of modern technology! Even more interesting is that one of her relatives from way back lived about 20 miles from where I live!

Have a great day, fellow blippers - just hope the rain stops so that Mr. HCB can go to watch cricket - otherwise he may be a little tetchy later!