RootsChat.Com

I believe that Alexander J McMinn, late of 132 Bty RA was my great grandfather.  My grandmother was born in Maryhill Barracks where Alexander was a Sergeant Major. MY grandmother married David (Pop) Bole and they moved to Airdrie in Lanarkshire, where my father (David), Alexander (Sandy), Jimmy and Mary were born. Pop was an undertaker in the town.
Mary - served in the WRENS (at Bletchley Park), married and passed on, but has one surviving daughter.  She was a McMinn-McGrath before her marriage from the days when you could change your name with ease

Jimmy - joined the RAF and served with with a joint UK/Can squadron (one of the Bison Squadrons) before being commissioned and later joining the SAAF where he was sadly killed at the end of the war.  Survived by his son David (my cousin) who became a leading Neuro-surgeon

Sandy - still going strong, has a son and daughter, still lives in Airdrie

David (my dad) now 87 and still going strong (although he falls of his bicycle occasionally). Mum still going at 89 and I have 2 sisters, all three of us rapidly approaching the age where we should consider taking life a little easier. 

My father said last week that the McMinn side of the family all came from Clonmel, my great great grandfather being a site manager for one of the big wealthy estates in the area.  I will endeavour to ask him how much more he has found out.

Of course we are all Bole's now but the Scottish side of the family is lamentably small now.

We still have and still use, one of the woollen covers that the large rolls of paper used to be wrapped in, an hand-me-down from my great grandfather.

Boyle / Bole / Boles / Boal are all derivatives of the same name.  It may be worth remembering that back in the 18th, 19th & even into the 20th century, the only people who could write tended to be the clergy and their clerks, Hence Ireland and Scotland having far better records of hatch, match and dispatch. However, they did not always record names correctly and on occasions, recorded the names as they sounded or as they thought.
There is a wife and sone (Bole) buried in Kenyaka Station in Austrailia (late 1880s) but no record of the husband.