General Chat

At the weekend I visited my sister to give her some of the biographies I have written up about our ancestors, from parents to Gt grandparents. Now read below.

She has always been 'sort of' interested, as long as she doesn't have to do any research (her words not mine). While we were there she suddenly had a flash of inspiration. When my Dad was in a retirement home for 3 years before he died, she took most of his paperwork to her house (his was sold to pay the fees of course), in case he wanted them. I was dubious about this because i was the one doing research, also i am the elder daughter, and I felt I wanted to keep the papers in case there was something important there. To be fair, after he died she passed anything she felt was of interest to me to look at - photos etc, and I have most of them for safe keeping. However, Friday she produced a scrap book. "you might want a look at this" she said. In this scrap book were all my Dad's references - even one from his headmaster, so i now know which school he went to. His Naval History record when he was invalided out and references from different firms he worked for. ALSO there were (stuck in with glue) birth, marriage and death certificates for his family, one dating back to 1830. what a search these could have saved me!! Over the past 2/3 years I have paid £7 for some of them and now I have the originals. A couple of them answered queries for me, I would never have guessed that my Gt Gt grandfather, who lived all his life in and around Botley hampshire would have died in his 80s at his daughter's house in Portsmouth. So - how much do your family understand the importance of paperwork relating to the family? How much do they know what your research involves/ My dad helped me with research but it never occurred to him to tell me about this scrap book bless him, he didn't realise the significance. Ann glos

I read your post open-mouthed. Stuck in with glue! At least you've got this now. A friend had to clear her aunt's house. With the solicitor breathing down her neck, she took what she could, knowing that she must have missed things. It was ages before she could bring herself to go through the piles of shopping lists, horoscopes and old birthday cards that formed most of the ephemera. There were some artificial flowers. We know where they come from - off an altar in France in WW1 - we have the letter that mentions them. They were wrapped up in an old document. This, and I kid you not, dates back to 1327. Where did it come from? Why did her aunt have it? We have no idea. And until I'd translated a bit of it we certainly didn't appreciate just how old it was.

Brenda, I wondered if anyone would pick up on that, yes, glue and firmly stuck too. The only one i could ease off was my Mum's birth cert. The strange thing is my Dad had already given me a shortened version and this full version was a copy from the 60s (she was born 1909). Yesterday i spent 2 hours scanning everything in the book so i can now print them off for my files and put the book safely in the old tin trunk that holds all the memorobilia. I also put the whole scrap book on disc for my sister. Ann glos