Family branch
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My Grandparents’ Golden Wedding
Marriage… My CLARK grandparents were childhood sweethearts. Sadly though the story of where they now met is lost. Perhaps at school – their Girls and Boys Junior schools were next to each other; perhaps through the Church where grandma became a Sunday School teacher; or perhaps simply through growing up in neighbouring streets. Before they Continue reading
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Blenheim of Hull – Part 1
In my first post [https://myancestors.blog/2023/09/04/hello-world/] I mentioned that I’d inherited a small pen and ink sketch dated 1806, showing a British whaling ship being captured and burned by a French frigate. The drawing The drawing measures about 6 x 8 inches. It’s in good condition, apart from its missing top left corner. The words at Continue reading
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In search of Ada Grace Quickfall
My 2 x great aunt Ada Grace QUICKFALL (1867-1919) emerges from my research as a formidable woman. The family story passed to me was that she had six children, each with a different father. A search of the readily available records suggests a slightly different story. First, the 1911 Census asked married women to state Continue reading
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Books you might not have read
The internet brings much uninvited rubbish and a few hidden gems. One such jewel was a 100 page publication that had hitherto somehow quite escaped my attention, namely James Haffenden’s 1820 Account of that Most Excellent Cordial and Restorative Medicine, de Coetlogon’s Vulnerary Styptic and Balsamic Tincture, which Is Prepared (Only) and Lately Much Improved Continue reading
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Family tragedy: Just Williams
In May 1858 the Hull Daily News reported: Last Saturday, a sad accident occurred on the south side of the Queen’s Dock. It seems that a boy, seven years of age, named Peter William Clarke, son of a seaman [George Osbourne CLARK], who is at present, we understand, on a Greenland voyage, in the ‘Chase’, Continue reading
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Hop picking in Kent
My great grandad Charles William JARVIS (1861-1940) never seemed to hold down a job for very long. I’ve inherited twenty-two postcards showing scenes of hop picking in Faversham. The cards have been heavily glued into some sort of scrapbook and then taken out.One of the cards has in feint pencil on the back, ‘Bought in Continue reading
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In search of great aunt Harriett
This story begins with a family photograph, dated in bold pencil 1926. Eleven men in cricket whites, aged perhaps between twenty and sixty, their smart whites only let down by – or perhaps I should say only held up by – the cords around their waists. The rug displays telltale signs of freshly whitened boots, Continue reading
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My Grandad’s war poem
My grandad – Sidney Walter JARVIS (1889-1986) – never spoke about his experiences in the First World War. Growing up in Kent Sidney was a sickly child, diagnosed as having ‘a shadow on the lung’ and – as he used to joke to us long after his ninetieth birthday – his mother was told, ‘if Continue reading
My Ancestors 