Returning A Family Heirloom To Its Rightful Owners

Is it odd that my genealogical fantasies include stumbling across local, 19th Century glass negative plates at a 2nd hand market or that someone contacts me about some amazing long, lost family heirloom? Unfortunately, this hasn’t come true, but I was able to make it happen for a lucky lady in England!

Earlier this year I visited a 2nd cousin of mine who is into genealogy as much as I am and just before leaving she brought out the most amazing old book that she purchased from an antique dealer many years ago.

The large, earthy, marbled tome was a bit tattered, but it contained over 300 pages of musings, thoughts, poems and events of a woman living through the mid to latter half of the 1800s.

Where’s My Crown!? – Related to Royalty

Last week I was working on a distant line in my tree that centred around a notable figure, Rowland Taylor. Now Rowland himself is an interesting man. He was born in Northumberland in 1510, growing up under the reign of Henry VIII who separated from Rome forming the Church of England (only so he could divorce his wife and marry another).

Rowland went into the Ministry and became quite a popular pastor who tended the poor and believed in strong family foundations. But when Henry VIII’s successor, son Edward died young, the crown ended up in the hands of Queen Mary who quickly reverted the country back to Catholicism.

This was not good for Rowland…

The X Files

I don’t have ancestors from Roswell, New Mexico, nor am I related to Fox Moulder, but I do have an X-File in my tree. I’m talking about those frustratingly unsolvable mysteries that gnaw at your brain until your eye starts twitching.

Actually, I have two of those, one is the mystery of where my GGGGreat Grandfather was born, but it’s only the fact that it’s on my surname line that this really gets to me. I mean, if you could get all lines back to the 1700’s you’re doing well.

The other one is more current and involves my Grandfather who was adopted. Following on from a previous post on one half of his adoption story, this post focus’ on trying to find his birth father. I’ll ruin the story now and say that as yet the mystery is still unsolved, so don’t assume a happy ending just yet!  This one’s a work in progress.

My Grandfather’s Adoption

My grandfather George, was born in 1919 at 77 Bridport Rd, a former Workhouse turned Military Hospital in Edmonton, London, seven months after the end of World War I.

His mother, Eva-Rose had been serving with the British Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as a cook. She had met George’s father, an Australian soldier, the previous year whilst working at one of the War Rest Camps, most likely No.3 Folkestone Rest Camp, where soldiers would stay after fighting in France.

Eva-Rose later mentioned that she was engaged to the man who she knew as Jack Scott and that he lived in a rural area of eastern Australia.

George was named after his maternal grandfather who was not happy about the situation. It was a particularly stressful time for the family who had also just lost a wife and mother, Sarah, who had recently died from tuberculosis only a few weeks earlier, leaving father George with six children under 18 and four others of adult age.