What got me into family history

I suppose I've always been very interested in family stories. Once when I was still in my early twenties, sitting around the kitchen table, I made a family tree using all the information my mother could remember. She even gave me information about my father's family (he had already died when I was 20 years old). This family tree was very informal and rough and contained many indiscreet comments on various relatives.

In about 1981, my sister and I quickly exhausted our paternal aunts' patience with our questions about Dad's family. They did not even seem to know their maternal grandmother's maiden name. Perhaps it was an unusual family because my father's Dad, Thomas Hiorns Combe was a Protestant who was born in Brockhampton, Gloucestershire and my father's Mum, Emily Walsh was a Roman Catholic of almost certainly Irish background, born in Bathurst, NSW. As my sister and I found more and more records we discovered that Thomas and Emily had been married in a side room of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, St Michael and All Saints, in Bathurst, NSW, Australia in September 1901. The priest had written "pater non Catholic" and I understand that Tom Combe had to promise to bring their children up as Catholics.

Then there was the unusual middle name "Hiorns" which Aunt K could only say was a "family name". It was frustrating being denied information by living relatives so my sister and I started using the resources of the NSW State Archives and the Society of Australian Genealogists. We became adept at microfilm and microfiche reading. We wrote letters to Historical Societies and travelled to Bathurst and other country towns to see what we could find in cemeteries and Court Houses. ( When we said to Aunt K " Your grandmother's name was Hogan before she was Walsh" she said, " I knew that". But why the secrecy?? Eventually, we discovered a scandal about my great great grandfather Matthew Walsh senior who ran off with the barmaid while his first wife was dying of cancer and fathered another ten children. With no help from our aunts!

Fast forward to the age of the internet and Ancestry and findmypast and of course Lost Cousins, not to mention Genes Reunited which was very helpful in the early days of online resources, and I have a vast knowledge of my family, maternal and paternal. It has been so fascinating I can't stop myself from doing the research, even though I've nearly exhausted my own puzzles, I volunteer at a local library on their Family History Help desk a few times every month helping other people knock down their brick walls.
Thank you, Peter, for the opportunity to rattle on about my introduction to Family History. I hope it strikes a chord with other members of this forum.

 

This raises an interesting question that I remember pondering many years ago - family historians excepted, how many people do know the maiden surnames of their grandmothers? I'm not sure I did before I got into family history.

When I was at a primary school we did a 'family tree' project which involved me writing to all my grandparents for family information, and only my paternal grandmother was able to supply maiden surnames for her grandmothers. I later discovered she had got one of them wrong, though the surname she gave was connected to the family and at least she knew something.

My other three grandparents seemed to know almost nothing about their grandparents, though from what I now know, I suspect with one of them it may have been more to do with keeping the skeletons in the closet than not knowing.

 

On my mother's side, I seem to have always known the family names of both grandparents. Grandma's parents were Arthur Barratt and Jane Bowyer, and Grandad's were Benjamin Riches and Ada Turner. I was told my Dad's mother was Dorothy Ann Joyce (well the Dorothy was her own idea) and his Dad was George Roberts (and that has apparently been thoroughly debunked since any Roberts matches in my DNA profile do not seem to be close enough to be considered; my 5th great-grandmother was a Roberts on the Joyce side) I have since traced the Barratt's, Bowyer's, Riches and Joyce's further back using the internet and DNA matches.

 

I only discovered my paternal grandmother's name (Bousfield) when I got into family history, but I've always known my maternal grandmother's name (Gunn) because my mother was so proud of her Scottish heritage, which she always found an excuse to mention. Eventually, however, I discovered her mother was from Lancashire (though her grandfather was indeed a real Scottish Gunn)!

 

Thanks Pauline, Canadian Beth and Gillian for sharing the stories of discovering or already knowing your grandparents' names. I only had maternal grandparents who were still living. So, that made my father's parents a bit more mysterious.

I forgot to say that another huge mystery appeared in our family when we found out that our Combe great great grandfather was illegitimate.

 

Welcome to the forum, LindaC.

All my grandparents had died before my parents even met, as had all my parents' grandparents. This might explain why my parents were always very vague about their origins. My Mum didn't know her maternal grandmother's maiden name, and while she did volunteer her paternal grandmother's maiden name, this turned out to be false (though I later found it was the surname of a great uncle of hers). That really got me fooled when I started to research my family history. Likewise my Dad didn't have a clue about his mother's origins (she was orphaned very young and brought up in an institution) but he did know his paternal grandmother's maiden name, which was pronounced the same as our surname but spelt differently, which he (and I) found quite amusing.

 

I always knew my maternal grandmother’s maiden name (Lamin) as my maiden great aunt used to come and stay with us. I never knew her (grandmother) as she died of flu when my mother was 2 1/2 and grandfather remarried 2 years later: I didn’t know this one’s maiden name until I started researching (and I still can’t find the marriage on ancestry, I found it when I first subscribed to FMP.

Paul

 

I remember doing a similar project when I was in Primary school, which involved writing down the names for my grandparents and great-grandparents. That was when I found out that two of my great-grandfathers shared the same first names (Frederick William), luckily, all the information was correct and both my parents knew the maiden names of their grandmothers. (It’s the next step up from that where the mystery is!)