Comments about our ancestors!

[Gadget]

Hi all 

While doing a bit of web searching, I found an interesting site listing comments made by James Boswell about people he met on his Scottish journeys:

http://www.jamesboswell.info/People/biography-173.php

This is what he had to say about my possible 5 or 6 x great grandfather:

"Samuel Spalding of Dullarg. "A drunken laird" "

I've still got to do more investigations on this link in Dumfries but   

Have any of you got any odd comments about your ancestors made by others.



Gadget

[aghadowey]

The local landlord sent a deputation from London in 1863 (also in other years but I have the 1863 notes) and viewed all the properties with their local agent and some of their comments make great reading. My family got "tidy people and place", "tidy house", and "tidy but poor asks for help to rebuild his house" but one of the local ministers had "Most untidy house. Wet coming through the ceiling. A musty and damp smell pervaded the sitting room. The cultivation of the land about the worst we saw."

[Erato]

Comment on a first cousin twice removed made by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg,  Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1951:

"Up until the time I entered high school, I had no exposure to science and, therefore, little knowledge of its possibilities. I chose literature as my major subject, and I took no science until my junior year when, in order to meet the college requirement, I took a chemistry course.  Largely due to the enthusiasm and obvious love of the subject displayed by my teacher, Dwight Logan Reid of Jordan High School in Los Angeles, chemistry captured my imagination almost immediately. I had the feeling, 'Why hasn't someone told me about this before?'  Dwight Logan Reid didn't just teach chemistry. He preached chemistry."

[Grothenwell]

1887 comments in the poor law register about my then 73 year old 3 x gt grandfather;

"Earns what he can, which is very little. He has been a great drunk-and all his life- had it not been for this would have been able to maintain himself in his old age."

He refused the poorhouse help; they probably wanted sobriety from him! Lived on till 85, probably well preserved from alcohol.

Grothenwell

[Aulus]

A man after my own heart!  (apart from the earning very little bit) 

[Siamese Girl]

My OH's 4x gt great aunt Mary Child nearly appears in Beryl Bainbridge's novel "According to Queeney" The famous Dr Johnson and the his friends the Thrales go on a journey and "drove to St Albans, where they halted to enjoy an excellent dinner with Ralph Smith a first cousin of Thrale" Mary Child was Mrs Ralph Smith, so I assume she was responsible for organising the meal  ..... does that count? 

Carole

[caroclay]

not quite an ancestor my younger brother has had afew comments

at one parents evening the teacher asked my mother if she had a lot of australian blood in her

when she replyed no none

the teacher said he was really surprised as her son keeps going walkabout in class

[millymcb]

My great aunt had a back street pub in Ardwick, Manchester and was up in court for serving after hours.  The judge said he "deplored the disappearance of the little public house in the side street around the corner". "Often they are better than the brilliantly neon lit chromium plated  big houses. The little houses are all disapperaring. I am sorry, I am frightfully old fashioned". ...and that "Some of the little public houses around the corner where the woman licensee rules with a rod of iron, her patrons who assemble there for a chat over a pint of beer, perform an extraordinarily useful social service"

Of course that didn't stop him fining her 5 shillings on each of the 8 counts...and the eight customers were fined a total of 47s 6d


 

[Llwyd]

A Great Uncle of mine is described thus in his obit.;

"He was a man of commanding presence and fine gifts. He had the voice and utterance of the orator, touched with Celtic fire".

I know obits. are usually overdone, but I especially like the "touched with Celtic fire" bit.