General Chat

Love reading these true stories.
Edit.

Makes my family almost normal. thank goodness mine are nearly the same as everyone elses. but Australian runaways.

One of my great grandma's sisters had 5 boys out of wedlock over a 20 year period. When these boys finally married they named their grandfather as their father on the marriage certificates.

My great grandad's brother named his sister as his mother on his marriage cert. The sister in question was more than 10 years younger than him and his mother was still living.

Me too Sue, thank you everyone for sharing and please keep them coming .

I am a great fan of Shirley Bassey and her Family history would make a great WDYTYA,

Her Mother was married and had a couple of children and left her 1st husband, now according a TV program Bassey's Mother names her 1st husband as her father on her marriage cert to Henry Bassey also Shirley's real father I can not remember if it was Henry Bassey or another man but he was arrested for child sex offences and never seen again.

In one of the censuses I came across a family around Midhurst who were called Tubergden which really is not a known surname.

There were and, probably still are, several families of Stubbingtons around Midhurst.

Try saying that if you have a heavy cold.

Shirley Emma Ann sounds a right dragon :-|

Pat my Mum in Law always celebrated her birthday on Christmas Eve is was one of the first things she said to me, however she was showing me her new passport had arrived and I saw her Birthday was actual the 23rd like my daughters, she just liked to celebrate her birthday on Christmas eve :-D

Madge,
Shirley's uncle once came to our house as he was a very good friend/work/sailor with my step father.

Sorry but that was the first time I had seen a black man and I was 17 yrs old.

:-0 :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0 :-0

My Southampton grandad's best mate was black!
His name was George, but was known as Stan. They'd known each other since childhood, and both ended up working in the Docks, and as Merchant Seamen.
I did a bit of research on his family - his dad was from Barbados, his mum I could trace at least 5 generations to Chester - so back to the very early 19th century.

Mum knew him as 'Uncle Stan' - yet she was very racially prejudiced.
When I asked her why, bearing in mind she'd known - and liked Stan - she said others were 'different'.
In reality, she didn't know any other black people, to know whether they were 'different' or not!

Oh - another thing about Stan, in 1926, he married a white woman, in the local church.

Madge

She really was a dragon

Mum and dad were next door neighbours .in the 1920,s mum and her sisters were in domestic service and often lived in

I remember mum saying they liked dancing and had the flapper dance dresses and on a Sunday they would wash the dresses and hang them out on the garden line to dry
Mum was putting a dress on the line and dad was in his garden and he chatted her up over the garden wall by commenting not another one when she was putting a dress on the line .
He asked her out but she didn't show and he was so annoyed with her that for weeks after he went into the house if she went in her garden
Eventually they did speak and asked why didn't you show?? She said sorry I didn't think you meant it !!
So they courted and married Christmas Day 1929

They had 8 bridesmaids which was to include his sisters but who were told if you go you are out of the house. Only one sister defied her mum
On the day of wedding she drew her front window curtains which is what neighbors would do on the day of a neighbours funeral!,

Mum always said she knew that her parents knew more of her personal business as they had been neighbours for many years and she didn't like it


BUT when the grandma developed Alzheimer's and her daughters didn't want to know who did she descend on?? Yep my mum and dad!!

Mum cared for her and she did cause problems She would take packs of fags and give them to one of my brothers but they belonged to another one and they accuse each other of pinching their fags
One time nan was sitting with mum watching tv and said I,m going to bed . Ok said mum ,goodnight . Dad was snoozing in the lower kitchen in a chair

The dog was out on the back garden but then started to bark furiously . Mum though oh FGS Fred let the dog in!!

She got fed up and went downstairs to find dad unconscious in the chair and gas escaping from an unlit gas top ,
Seems Nan thought she hadn't had her 9pm tea biscuit ( she had cos mum had done it)

She went down to put the kettle on , turned on the gas and then mentally switched off and went to bed


The dog barking saved my dad's life

So mum took her in when her daughters didn't want to know
She got an ulcer on her toe and it turned gangrenous and she was hospitalised
She was then put into into an old people's home run by Lewisham council and it was a lovely home
Dad visited her every Sunday . Mum would go on a wed afternoon
I went with her one time inthe 1960,s as it was her birthday and mum took in a birthday cake
She said to her shirley has come to see you .do you know who she is ?? Yes she said she is a big girl how is she doing at school ?? I was married and had a 4 years old

My mum must have been a very forgiving lady cos she looked after her till the end when her other children didn't what the bother of a lady who sadly developed Alzheimer

Shirley what a shame. She doesn't sound the most maternal woman,,


I am so glad I put this thread up Londonbelle has done an amazing job for me this afternoon and may of solved at least 1 of my mystery, of my brides 2 different Fathers names ...one afternoon patience and the know how.12 years it has baffled me. isn't she wonderful. :-D

It was my mum's parents who lied

We always had to be at their house on Christmas Day for Grandfather's birthday. That was easy when we lived across the street, not so easy when we moved across town and either had to walk or take 2 buses (on a holiday!).

Grandmother was a small lady but very proper ....... my brother and I were the only grandchildren although they had had 4 children over a period of 22 years from 1903 to 1925.

She died when I was 14, but she was always very definite about "proper" behaviour for young ladies before marriage. Mum always followed that up with warnings about getting pregnant before or without marriage "grandmother would not like it"!

My mother was the eldest and only girl, one boy died in his teens, one married but had no children, and the youngest was brain-damaged at birth and lived at home all his life.

Mum as the only girl was expected to do all the running around and helping to look after Grandfather and her brother, especially after her mother died, even though we lived a distance away and she worked and had a family. The married brother only lived 3 streets away!

Grandfather on one occasion told Mum that he would leave the house to me if she would promise that I would look after the brother for the rest of his life. I was only 16 and still in school. It was my good fortune that she had the courage to say NO, and only told me about it quite a bit later.

My brother started looking at the family tree around 1980, didn't get far, but he did leave a note that grandfather was 17 and grandmother 18 when they got married. Not quite true but not far from it.

When I began doing the tree about 15 years ago and bought certificates, the truth came out.

Grandfather was born on January 9 1885 ........ he'd always said Dec 25 1886. He did know the truth because a birth certificate was found hidden away after his death, probably got when he was drafted in WW1.

They married in 1902 ....... and birth certificates showed he was 17 and grandmother was 19. The marriage certificate said he was 20 and she was 21.

I can't understand that because it didn't make him of legal age, and family were present. In fact grandmother's older sister was married on the same day. Both grandmother and her sister were married in CofE church with a Superintendent Registrar's Certificate ........ the certificates don't show a time but the certificates are issued consecutively. I don't know how to tell if they were in a double wedding or one after the other.

Then I got Mum's birth certificate.

Yep ........... born 7 months after the marriage.

I haven't checked Grandmother's death certificate (forgotten to until now!) to see what age was given for her. But grandfather's death was registered as the Dec 25th because that is all his son knew!


The other thing was that Mum believed they were teetotal .............. it was only after she died that I told Dad that when grandparents babysat me they had given me egg cups full of a stout (I think, it was a very dark beer). He looked shocked, and I added that one of them would go up to the off licence at the top of the street with an empty bottle and come back with it full.

They would then sit at the table in the large kitchen, put the bottle on the floor at the back of the table under the cloth so it couldn't be seen, then both had at least 1 glass, often 2.

They started giving me an egg cup filled with it when I was about 3, but only 1!

When Dad closed his mouth after the surprise, he said that he and Mum had noticed that I slept very well after I'd been over there! :-D

:-D :-D :-D :-D

I was told to drink a bottle of stout every day, when expecting my first child (born in 1980, so not quite the 'dark' ages) :-D

The doctor thought I was underweight.
I was about 6 and a half stone when first pregnant - but I was an ag lab - and it was all muscle!!

yes, drinking stout during or after pregnancy was often "prescribed" in pretty recent times!

OH's paternal ancestors were farmers and millers in Westmoreland, parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

His gt gt grandparents had 20 children between 1832 and 1860.

I got back quite easily to them, but then couldn't find the marriage. Eventually someone contacted me on this site, and said she thought that gt gt grandmother was a member of a family from which she was descended. That turned out to be correct.

Then I discovered that gt gt grandmother was about 5 months pregnant when she got married. My correspondent on here was not surprised ......... said that most of the women in that family that she had so far found were pregnant on marriage, and some had the midwife waiting at the church door! :-D

My Mother in Laws family tree makes good reading :-0

She was very open about it. I thought it was amazing the scandal in the 1920's. Through the information she gave me about her father I managed to trace him he actually only lived the next street away from us now. She had an awful hard up bringing but still really loved her Mother and cared for her till her dying day.

she also was pregnant when she married she was very open about that as well, she said her mother was furious with her, my father in law used to get embarrassed about the fact.


In my own family I have a 14yr old who gave birth in 1837.

My neighbour told me proudly her lovely granny run a boarding house
when she was young

I looked in to it and that boarding house was a brothel
I even found her convictions in the old newspapers

Do I tell her or keep quiet????? ;-) ;-)