Chicken Family Tales

 Thinking about some of the wonderful women in my family tree today. My mother, who left the family home in Ireland at the age of 14 to come to England to a job arranged by her Aunt. She'd never been outside County Roscommon and now left not just the county but the country. The Geordie accent must have been a huge change from the Irish one she was used to! She went to live in hospital accommodation with people she didn't know and didn't see her mother, sisters or brothers again for years. She took everything in her stride including WW2, marrying and having children, financial constraints, disability, illness and widowhood - nothing stopped her living the best life she could and being an amazing grandmother and great-grandmother who's still missed. My maternal grandmother who brought up 6 children in a 2 roomed cottage with no running water. My paternal grandmother who watched her husband and sons leave for the pit each morning never knowing whether an accident would mea...

 Gone Too Soon Doing a family tree, looking back in time at the history of a family, always makes me reflect on how lucky I am to have survived thus far and how immensely lucky I was to have my mother survive to her mid-nineties. So many of the people I find have died young, some of them too young to have left an impression anywhere other than in their parents' hearts. Disease, poor housing, air pollution caused by the industry in which their fathers worked, all played their part in shortening young lives and some families suffered many losses. Life was incredibly hard compared to what I've experienced. I've also been surprised at the number of distant relatives who were involved in the armed forces, when growing up I had no idea that was the case. The relatives I knew about were miners, a reserved occupation, so they couldn't join up even when they wanted to. Some survived their service and went on to  have a family life again. But at least one didn't. Cedric Willi...