A very touching piece of writing

[Viktoria]

Gosh--- that exactly expresses my feelings, someone in each generation needs to do it othewise our ancetors are lost or at best just names on a sheet of paper.
Thankyou for posting it. Happy New Year. Viktoria.

[Ruskie]

I thought this sounded familiar. Some examples:

http://fibergenea.wordpress.com/genealogy/role-of-the-genealogist/
http://genforum.genealogy.com/englandcountry/messages/86585.html
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gypsysearch/
http://www.GenesReunited.co.uk/boards/board/general_topics/thread/832418

One of the above links said that this comes from a newsletter called "Sons of Norway" http://www.sonsofnorway2.com/home_newsletter.html  If true, presumably it was translated from Norwegian. 

[diana2646]

Yes Jane, very harmful to housework!  If I get into looking for something, suddenly it's teatime and I think - good grief, it will have to be beans on toast!!  It was as you say a very sad story about my brother, but I feel we have marked his short life now, and got a nice memorial stone for him.  I often wonder how his life would have turned out, as my brother has done very well with his work and it has taken him all over the world, so it just makes you wonder.
You are right Viktoria, someone in each family needs to do the history and there was no one in my family who had done it at all.  When I think about the stories that my parents used to tell me years ago, it keeps the family alive somehow.  Mine all started with a little funeral card that my aunt gave me for my grandfather.  He was only 40 when he died. He was a sergeant in the Met in London, and in 1917 several bombs dropped on Edgware Road, and he went in to help rescue people trapped in the basement.  Consequently, there was some sort of gas escape and my granddad was gassed and taken to hospital.  The gas he inhaled damaged his lungs and he died 8 years later.  I found that he was on the Met Police Roll of Honour, and found his obit and all sorts of things about him.  So that was how it started really.
Thanks Ruskie for sending the websites.  I have had a look and it looks like, as you say, that it originated in Norway, although still not atributed to anyone in particular.  At least I haven't infringed any copyright laws!!
Happy New Year to everyone.
Diana

[maxcam]

What a great piece and goes some way to explaining who we are!.

I set out on my journey just over a year ago compiling my Fathers tree as a Christmas Gift. I was aware that he was the youngest of nine children and his own father had died when my own Dad was only 10 years old. This left my Grandmother, in the 1930's, in a very difficult situation.

My Father, who unfortunately died in April 2012, only began to speak about his upbringing in his much later life but he seemed to gain some comfort from talking about it. I found myself being drawn to the very strong, determined characters that were discussed. Especially the females and consider that I am the product of their histories and life styles

I now consider my role to pass on the information to the next generation as well as some of the courage, optimism and hope that went into the making of me.  At the moment my grandchildren appear to appreciate this but whether they are merely humouring "An Ancient" who knows?

[diana2646]

Hi,  I set out in a similar type of way, as not long after I started my family history, my brother's 60th birthday was coming up and I compiled a book for him, of all that I had found out up until then.  My father fought in World War II and luckily for me, he kept war diaries.  They consisted of two books, about 150 pages in each, and it gave me an insight into him as a young man, and also what he went through.  He also took lots of photos during the course of the war and had put them into an album, which he had made, from a shell casing.  These are wonderful things to have in the family.

Your grandmother must have been a very determined and brave woman and you must be very proud of her.  We probably won't ever be tested in the same way as our ancestors were, but it is good to think that we have inherited their qualities.  There was a saying on my mother's side of the family, about which I was told by a recently found relative.  She said that her mother used to say - the women in this family died with their boots on! 

I would like to think that the work I have done will be carried on by future generations, although like you said, they listen with interest when I tell them about some new and exciting detail that I have found out, so I hope that they might aquire 'the addiction' as they get older!

Diana

[Viktoria]

Some research was recently done re food and nutrition with regard to how children thrive.

Briefly it was decided that it was not so much what a child ate but in what atmosphere it was eaten.
A child of wealthy parents would have very good quality food but most probably would eat it ,up in the nursery, with the nanny and see their parents perhaps once a day .
 Conversely a child of poor parents would have a rather poor diet but had more chance of eating in the presence of their parents in an atmosphere where love and  caring were very evident .

It seems an oversimplification but my mother-in-law lived to over 100 and they were very poor indeed. One egg was shared between four children. However their parents were very loving and caring, their mother was a lovely woman and their father had stirling qualities which made family life full of love and fair discipline. M-in L never needed hospital treatment until just before she died.
 There was a strong tradition of caring and it goes back at least four generations that mothers were cared for by daughters in their old age.
If you look at what poor specimens some of the royal family were, George V and George V1 were not robust men . They were not happy in childhood but they would have extremely good food and not know want like my M-in-L . but not be surrounded by the love she knew either.
I can see some truth in it and I think the women we research when we are doing our family history are pretty well all heroines,how they managed with so little and yet brought up honest hard working families. I`ve said it before so sorry to those who have seen this before but the poorer my family turn out to have been the prouder I am of them.
                                       Viktoria.
.

[Ruskie]

An interesting take on the subject Viktoria.

[That implies that all our desperately poor ancestors were all loving and caring parents, which I very much doubt would be so, and the wealthy were not?  ] 

I also think that no matter how much love there was in a family, a very poor diet could not sustain.

Sometimes I think we like to see our ancestors through rose coloured glasses 

[diana2646]

That is very interesting Viktoria, about the research that was done.  They do say that 'laughing' is the best medicine and can lift you out of all sorts of things.  I have been watching the programme which has been on over the last three weeks about Queen Victoria and her children.  I was quite shocked by the way she treated them and it seemed that their lives were mostly very miserable and they must have felt terribly unloved by their mother.  As you say, they were mostly very sickly children.  She never seemed to have any praise for them and treated them like they were someone else's children and not hers.  I know it doesn't apply in all cases, but I think there is a lot of truth in what you say and there was a lot more love in the poorer families.

I know even in my generation, that my mother went without, for mine and my brother's benefit, although I never realised it at the time.  The culture now, of putting family into home's when they get sick and old, (which would never have happened years ago) is a terrible one.  In countries like Italy for example, it doesn't happen.  The elderly parents are cared for at home.

In general I think that the women were the ones who held things together in the family.  I know the men had to go out to work, and work very very hard in most cases, but the women had the job of bringing up the children, dealing with everything else and trying to eek out the meagre amount of money that they had. 

My great, great grandparents had 14 children and I am full of admiration for them and how they must have coped, especially in those days. That is one reason I have tried, in my family history, to bring their story to life.

Diana






   

[Viktoria]

Yes Ruskie, and that`s why I felt it was an oversimplification.
Nothing is quite as black and white as that but you can see that a reasonable ,basic diet would do a loved child more good than a would a rich diet for  an unhappy emotionally neglected child.

 I can`t remember who did the research but it was on the radio and I think  in the newspaper.

There are always exceptions to the rule, and we can all think of many but there must have been sufficient examples to  cause someone to do the research in the first place .
It is also often( but granted not always) the case that a pessimist has more illness than a happy outgoing personality. What it all tells us is that we humans are  a mysterious lot!

Diana,I was so full of admiration for my grandparents, especially my G.Mother ----twelve children and adopted another 4--- What a wonderful woman ,so loved and respected  by her children and that was because she was all for them, she had no life of her own but was content to submerge herself in their needs. When older they tried to get her to do things for herself and she did start to visit the local  cinema, matinees, but was always back to have their tea ready.She never saw it as sacrifice but her duty. From 1883 when her first baby was born until 1932 when she died it was pretty well all children and babies. Her last born 1910, but then she adopted the four more ,the youngest only about two.Almost 50 years of looking after others. Deserved a medal .Instead got a sanctuary lamp that never went out until the church was demolished in the 1960`s.
Cheerio Viktoria.