Catching up

Jungliness; green, green, green!

     I've been neglecting this blog lately, because I've started doing my family history. This has proved to be quite addictive. I don't know a lot about my family, because my Dad was estranged from his and he and my Mum both emigrated to New Zealand in the 1950s, so I never knew any of my other relations personally. Three of my grandparents were already dead by the time I arrived, but since they were in England anyway I only knew my surviving grandmother by her letters to me. She died in 1968. So being "orphaned" on many levels meant that I knew little about the past, and then only what my mother knew or chose to tell me.
     Some of the "family stories" that she told me have been proved to be quite wrong. Whether she made them up or whether she was told wrongly I don't know. Her belief that both of my great great-grandmothers (on her side) were Scots is totally untrue. There is a Scotsman, but a long, long way back.
     It's fascinating but also frustrating. My paternal grandfather seems to be a man of mystery entirely - where he came from has so far eluded me. There have been some interesting discoveries; my favourites so far are Joseph Morgan Melville, who worked as a shipwright in Chatham Naval dockyards in the early Victorian period, and William Douglas, a ropemaker, also employed at Chatham around the same time. Chatham Historic Dockyards website is interesting, and I found several youTube videos about the ropemaking process.
      This is the part I enjoy most about family history, finding the social history behind the names. It takes you to places and subjects you never would have thought about otherwise. Investigating my grandfather's role as a gunner in the First World War took me to books on field artillery, to see what kind of guns he would have been using - not something I would ever have had an interest in normally.
  Anyway, here are some garden pics. A lot of rain has made the garden quite jungly, but things are coming out in flower regardless.