More about Dorset with pictures (part 1 of 2)

[Horus]

I'm voting Horus write a coffee table book full of his wonderful photos with descriptions!

The problem is it would only have about 6 readers

[LovelyLadyLux]

Hmmm - serious I think there would be LOTS more

[Grandad]

I bet most of us, when we reach a certain age, have an urge to write about our lifetime experiences. I have and even have draft notes mostly centred around my experiences through the war years.

But the hardest part is writing those first few words.

But coming back to MD's plan to write up some family history for her grandson, a few years ago I did two things to pass on to the children and grandchildren. First I had a lot of 8mm film that my father took in the sixties of our three growing up. I sorted all that to a 200 foot reel and had it transferred to DVD that they all have a copy of.

I had collected a lot of family history including pictures, birth, death, and marriage certificates, and military service. This only goes back 6 or 7 generations but I put it all together in a book, using Blurb online, and that is something else that they have copies of.

Maybe, just maybe, I will get the book started during the winter. But I want it to be a boys adventure type story, not biographical.

[Horus]

Several years ago I started to do a family history and did a lot of research, I wrote what I had down in the format of telling a story , but to adults rather than to children and explaining how we should not judge our ancestors by the standards of today. Many skeletons can be uncovered and children born out of wedlock and the consequences of such things were included and hopefully explained in a context of the times that those people were living in, such things were a cause of family shame and were covered up and can often confuse a family history. It can also help to explain family attitudes and why things are as they are today and there can be many surprises along the way.

I really did bite off more than I could chew and had lots of information on both Paternal and Maternal lines for both my late wife’s and my own families, but I hit a block on my research until the latest census was made available as I needed to confirm some turn of the century facts and they were not yet available. This caused me to put the project on hold and like many things we tend to lose interest after the initial rush of enthusiasm has passed.

However for some reason last year I took my partly finished history of my own family to show to my brother. We sat in his living room and I was reading it out aloud to him, it probably took me about 20 minutes or so. As I finished reading his wife stepped from behind a door where she had obviously been listening, “did you write that” she asked, “yes I did, but it is not yet finished” “well you should” she replied “I was bringing you both a cup of tea when I heard you speaking and I had to stop to listen and I did not want to interrupt you, it was really interesting” So I suppose maybe we do all have at least one book in us and maybe I should finish mine off one day.

[Grandad]

I think we all find skeletons sooner or later Horus. On two of my lines I got into local Victorian Workhouses. I studied the records of those establishments at both the Dover Records office and the Cathedral Archive. (I became a reader to get access to these records)

These led to 'questionable paternaties', abscondments, re-admissions; a workhouse story in their own right. Another great great great grandfather ran away to sea at 14. All fascinating stuff.