Author Topic: Comments about our ancestors!  (Read 3955 times)

Offline Aniseed

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #9 on: Thursday 23 October 08 16:58 BST (UK) »
This could be about my first cousin 7x removed, but because there's no place mentioned I'm not totally sure. It's from a book detailing which watermen were exempt from impressment into the Navy, and it's a description of him presumably that he would show to anyone who tried to press gang him (no photo ID in those days!). It's dated 1808.

"The Bearer John East is thirty two years of age, a dark complexion and wears his own dark hair, in height five feet four inches and has three [scars] on the inside of his left leg."

I love it, just because there's no other way I'd ever be able to tell what a family member from all that time ago would have looked like. Even though I don't know it's my John East for sure, I like to think that it is!

Offline Mogsmum

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #10 on: Saturday 25 October 08 10:37 BST (UK) »
An American publication of 1901, refers to one of my great grand uncles, (who emigrated there from Britain in 1853) thus ...

' .. and he had a decidedly interesting and somewhat varied career in many respects, which showed him to be a man of convictions of his own and of character sufficiently strong and decisive to assert those convictions ... '

Newspaper 'speak' for  ...  'youthful troublemaker who turned into decent citizen'  perhaps?  :-\

Offline Phil Goater

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #11 on: Saturday 25 October 08 15:26 BST (UK) »
Oh boy: this is the Bethlem hospital log for my 3 x great uncle Josiah for whom they built Broadmoor....

"June 11th 1857
A man with a repulsive expression of countenance rendered more unpleasant when he speaks. "

However he was
" quite well behaved and contented as long as he can get a profuse supply of snuff."

I like to think that I didn't inherit either of these traits!!! I get the impression that Josiah wouldn't have done too well at a modelling agency.

Phil
Goater, Smith, Henning, Scarlett, Lucas, Abraham, Langdale, Parker, Read, Curtis, Arm, Franklin, Bryant, Hart, Earl, White, Welch, Howard, Bateman, Hutchinson, Hunter, Lawes, Rogers, Brixey......

Offline McVitie

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #12 on: Thursday 30 October 08 12:42 GMT (UK) »
Hi,

I did a search in google books for my 3x gt grandfather, Ranald Macdonald, who was a Ground Officer in Skye. Lo and behold, under some Parliamentary Papers, dated 1847, carried out by the Church of Scotland, his name appears during an cross-examination  of Mr Alexander MacKinnon, a Factor of Lord Macdonald's estates in Kilmuir, Skye;

Q. Do you remember Ronald Macdonald, who was ground officer for the parish of Kilmuir? - Yes.
Q:  Has he been deprived of his office? - Yes
Q: Why was he so deprived?  - Because I did not consider him a fit man for his office.
Q: In what respect did you not consider this man fit for his office? - Those ground officers are people to whom we are obliged to trust a good deal for information , we being resident at some distance from the scene of operation in many cases, and I found this man's information, in cases of disputes among the people, could never be depended upon. He always took on one side or the other and did not give me fair information...
Q: In fact, then, the Committee is to understand that Ronald Macdonald was dismissed from his place as ground officer, because you found that he had favourites in his district? - Yes; in fact, I considered the man unfit for the situation.

It goes on a wee bit more, but I was stunned to be reading about my own kin, and the treatment he received for just being loyal to his own kin/friends. He died in 1856, probably somewhat broken hearted having lost such a cherished position of authority.
Cheers

Mcvitie

Kennedys (Skye), MacIntyres (Skye), Macleans (South/North Uist), Macdonalds (Skye/South/North Uist), MacKinnons (Skye), MacInnes (Small Isles), Macraes (Kintail/Harris), Morrisons (Kintail), Buchanans (Skye), Maclures (Skye)


Offline suzic

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #13 on: Sunday 07 March 10 10:58 GMT (UK) »
Hi Was just looking at your pages. I wondered if you had relatives William MacDonald  of Kilmuir. He married Anne Macpherson in 1877.
Suzic

Offline nanny jan

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #14 on: Sunday 07 March 10 11:12 GMT (UK) »

My 2xgt. grandmother's brother appears in Mayhew's "London Labour & the London Poor".

George Gandy (Gander "captain" of the boy crossing sweepers)....a big lad of sixteen, with a face devoid of all expression......hair was cut short and stood up in all directions......he spoke with a lisp, occasioned by the loss of two of his large front teeth.....

The description did not improve..   :'(


Nanny Jan
Howard , Viney , Kingsman, Pain/e, Rainer/ Rayner, Barham, George, Wakeling (Catherine), Vicary (Frederick)   all LDN area/suburbs  Ottley/ MDX,
Henman/ KNT   Gandy/LDN before 1830  Burgess/LDN
Barham/SFK   Rainer/CAN (Toronto) Gillians/CAN  Sturgeon/CAN (Vancouver)
Bailey/LDN Page/KNT   Paling/WA (var)



All census look-ups are crown copyright from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Offline Rena

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #15 on: Sunday 07 March 10 11:35 GMT (UK) »
I was extremely lucky to find an 1890 lengthy obituary for my Scottish gt.grandmother's brother Kenneth Mackenzie b1817, which not only described the man but how someone of modest beginnings can attain so much more.  It also explains why my grandfather moved outside the naming pattern and had a son called Ken:

<Mr. Mackenzie was born seventy-three years ago at the Clyde Iron works, where, under the eye of Messrs. Dunlop, he received that excellent business training which stood so well to him in after years. He was a man, too, who built his own fortune, who owed his success in life to his native ability, to his straightforwardness of purpose, to his unbending integrity, and to his resolute perseverance, because he began life empty-handed, and at the bottom of the ladder with nothing to help him onward and upward but the characteristics we have just mentioned. But to a man like Mr. Mackenzie this was all that was necessary, for to such good purpose did he apply them, and so absolutely trustworthy was he, that while quite a young man, he was promoted to the managership of the very iron works he entered as a boy. ...........

Always plain and unostentatious, he had ever a smile for, and was always accessible to, his humblest employee, while at the same time he was capable of exacting the respect of the proudest in the land.

The welfare of his people bulked largely in his mind, and his many services to them will not soon be forgotten. By his demise the poor and needy have lost one whose ear was never closed to their cry of distress, and whose purse-strings were never drawn tight in the face of want. Throughout his whole life he believed in the doctrine (and what was better, he constantly practiced it) that it is better to help to build a man up than to knock him down.

Mr. Mackenzie was one of Nature’s musicians ...>
Aberdeen: Findlay-Shirras,McCarthy: MidLothian: Mason,Telford,Darling,Cruikshanks,Bennett,Sime, Bell: Lanarks:Crum, Brown, MacKenzie,Cameron, Glen, Millar; Ross: Urray:Mackenzie:  Moray: Findlay; Marshall/Marischell: Perthshire: Brown Ferguson: Wales: McCarthy, Thomas: England: Almond, Askin, Dodson, Well(es). Harrison, Maw, McCarthy, Munford, Pye, Shearing, Smith, Smythe, Speight, Strike, Wallis/Wallace, Ward, Wells;Germany: Flamme,Ehlers, Bielstein, Germer, Mohlm, Reupke

Offline Sloe Gin

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #16 on: Sunday 07 March 10 11:57 GMT (UK) »
In 1831, in my village, the curate compiled a list of the parishioners for the new incoming Rector - with notes!  This document has survived, and amounts pretty much to a census.  It is being transcribed and edited by the local history society.  Some of the comments are, shall we say, candid.  He didn't hold back on his opinions! 

A few examples

Inclined to Drink, lost his leg, weak character
Not very industrious, father a pilferer, sometimes at Church
Respectable, wife quiet but odd
Sometimes at Church - wife indifferent character before marriage - artful
Hardworking man, wife violent
A drunken worthless creature
UK census content is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk  Transcriptions are my own.

Offline Ebch

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Re: Comments about our ancestors!
« Reply #17 on: Sunday 07 March 10 14:13 GMT (UK) »
Following on from Sloegin  :)
My paternal side were all from Church Broughton in Derbyshire.  Quite a few of them were living there 1820's - 1880's.  I found the following:

"In the 19th Century Church Broughton village was one of the largest in the area with a population of 661 in 1861.  The inhabitants were so unruly that the Duke (of Devonshire) had one of the first police houses in the county built here in 1855.  It is now called Peel House and can be found in Church Street.  Seperate cells were opened for men and women,  though usually, the only offences were of drunkedness

Now I know who I can blame says my son! :)
Mulhearn  Roche Deacey Tracy  Cordingley  Johnson Bullock  Bradley
Mayo  Roscommon  West Yorkshire  Derbyshire  Staffordshire