It must be Autumn - or something! I have had a tidy-up this week and suddenly come across family history research last touched around the Millennium. It took a bit of effort to get my brain to the right channels, remembering what I was doing (notes and a letter helped) and here I am again, researching my husband's family roots in Yorkshire. I am currently working on the Ward family of the Malton area, whose daughter fell under the charms of a postman, and was soon "in the family way" as it used to be called and doubtless, at that time (1880) a source of great family shame. But blood is thicker than water, and the little boy who was born became my husband's grandfather. I am now trying to locate where he grew up, in the censuses, wondering whether he went to her parents. Or perhaps, as he is noted on his birth certificate with a middle name of Robinson, he was brought up by his grandparents' next door neighbours . . . I dare say their neighbourliness was perhaps just remembered in a kindly way.
One year, when they were staying in Scarborough, my husband's mother - as a young lass still, could remember being taken on the back of a relative's motorbike to see an old old lady who was sitting in an armchair on a rubber ring. The old woman looked long and hard at the girl, who we assume, was her husband's grand-daughter (for he had been married and with young children when he overstepped the limits of the marriage vows . . .)
I don't have an Ancestry membership, nor am I likely to at £79 for 6 months! So yesterday My husband and I went to the Records Office, and opened a can of worms! We think we have found him, growing up in Malton with family members, where he appears to be listed as their youngest son. We think we have found his mother marrying in 1893, so there will have been half-siblings for him. We are just trying to fill in the gaps between him growing up in Malton and then falling in love in Scarborough and following his future wife to Manchester, where she went to set up a Laundry (hah - she was "head-hunted"!!!).
More to follow - as long as I can get my browser to co-operate. I have had great problems this past week . . .
