A Face To The Name

Finally - An out of the blue contact by a distant cousin who shares Alexander as her Great Grandfather and I was very kindly sent a copy of his picture

Alexander D -  Married Maria C. Together for 60 years before Maria passed away

                                         Inscription on gravestone of MAria

                                                In loving memory of Maria The dearly beloved wife of Alexander Dingle

                                              Who  peacefully  entered into rest December 27th 1917

                                                         "With Christ which is far better,  goodnight beloved not farewell

They had 15 Children - my grandfather was number 12 ..

Alexanders first job was as a servant in a large famhouse. He soon became a gamekeeper as was his father (Also Alex) and as would my grandfather and a number of his sons and for a time my father.

He died in 1931 and the grand old age of 87.... They had lived in an old fashioned jacobean 5 roomed cottage beside a church in the middle of nowhere ... I've been there to see it many years ago with my father ...

Both are buried at the church beside the pathway ...along with many others of the family ...

Alexander D - 1843-1931 ... What changes you must have seen

 

 

Odd Sods

Has anyone grown or know of a tomato known as Cherokee Purple ??

Whats happened is that in rummaging through cupboards in the laundry (That leads out into the garden) I came across 3 packets of seeds .....Another 3 packets to my collection !!!  We are going to be so overloaded with tomatoes this year :O\  All the more sauces and chutney for us I say :O)  Any good recipes to share ??

Anyway - one of the packets is called Cherokee Purple and is sposed to have originated from that Native American tribe (is that the right word).... They sounds damned nice so will be trying them but just wondered about the advertising blurb ... as you do .... 

 

Of course there must be a hundred plus varieties of tomatoes ... What are everyones favourites ???

 

I've been off sick ....A cold of some sorts but it never really came to anything in the end .. .But my face feels like someones poured cement into my nose and sinuses (do we still have them as grown ups ?)  so my face aches in the mornings and I'm waking up headachy and miserable. I'm also aching especially around my lower back and kidneys  .... And then I've slept...and slept and slept .... 

And Boy am I bored ... I'm fine when I'm well enough to do things ... God knows I have a heap of stuff to get into .. but when I can't even see the writinging on the Monitor properly through Stinginging blurry eyes boredom sets in very quickly ... 

Whinge - Whine - Whinge - Whine ......

A recent A4 envelope from my sister has caused me some interest in my family history tracking again ...It's full of trees and writeups and certificates of the family on my mothers side .... We will never sort it out for my grandmother ...all too messy I think .... I aslo got a letter from a cousin in Portsmouth England which contained some marriage & death certificates on my Mums side .... The strange thing about that one was that there was no letter within it ...Nothing no name etc .... Now we had emailed briefly as to what I was doing etc ... and as we'd not been in touch for some 25-30 years I would have expected something ... Oh Well.....there's nowt as strange as folk........

Back to Grandmother ..... Her Birth Certificate staes her name as Nellie Eason Hodges..Sounds fine we'd originally assumed that the middle name of Eason wasn't hyphenated or anything but was a true middle name .... Death Cert stated her Maiden name was Hodges  ... But then we obtained her marriage certificate (2nd husband). Within that she has listed her father as a Charles Eason ...... !!!!!!  Why ?? Funnily enough I just re-read the certificate and a witness to the marriage was a L. Eason ...... And so on ... then you spend a few weeks scanning through censuses and the like and can't find any firm reference to any of them ........... That she was born out of wedlock is the obvious but then to have the name of her (potentialy) Real father as her middle name seems odd somehow ...... 

She had a rough life my Grandmother .... seems that things weren't quite the best from the start .... She lost her first husband to WW1. He was killed in action. Only 28 years old...... Her second husband was also in the military. The marines... A violent and evil man by all accounts... My Mother cursed him till she died.  I have fond memories of my grandmother, though I saw her only perhaps twice . One memory was of her using a pin to finish off a Players cigarette ...So she could smoke it to the very end. Way past what her fingers could handle .... This was in the street of the terrace house where she lived ... There was another woman there but I don't know who she was ..... The second time was to visit her with my Mum. She was in hospital ... She doted on my sister and I, but as a child of around 8 or 9 I was too shy and uncomfortable when my mum had me sit on the bed beside her .... My memories will always be of the happy old lady we visited ..... Her heartache and misery over the years I can only imagine... 

I wonder If I will  ever find out who my real great grandparents were on this branch of the tree......

 

  

 

Today is the last day of my holiday ...Tomorrow it all starts again .. Work work work ....McD and I are to get back into the gym again as well so next week will be a shock to our systems ........

I've been continuing my family history work ..I'm trying to trace my real GGG-grand parents ...It's proving a little difficult ...... GG-Grand parents had the same surname when the married ! my name is not that common a name but there you go two separate families tied by blood some 300 + years previously I'm told ... So ... GGG-granparents are William and Ann D' and George and Ann D' ..no issue there really except that there are also in the same villiage another two families William and Ann D' and George and Ann D' of about the same age ...... All with kids and all married etc just before the censuses began .....

I think I have the right william as when GG-GF married they used a church that marked a parish that GGG-GF William attended ...... So the link I think is there and strong enough to use .... Would like more evidence though .....

But try and sort out the Georges !!! no chance ........................The two churches in question are about a roads width apart from each other and the 4 families lived in the same villiage ...Probably even drank in the same pubs together ......

I've not just stuck with my surname either I've worked along my maternal line and along the maternal lines of my grand parents .... All nicely packaged in a database but Oh Boy it's getting complicated and time consuming ...

My next plan is to host it all on a web site ... I've been scouring E'bay and the like buying up old pictures and postcards of the Norfolk area and portsmouth and Fettercairn in scotland .... one day I'll get time to do it ......

Pictures are from Mt Holdsworth again ....in the main .. The others of from a reserve created utilising the old railway tracks in the area ... It's a very peaceful place when not overly visited as can happen at times .....

My ankle is letting me know it's there... It's sore but only when I walk on it (kinda gives the hints to me not to be upright)... Although I did manage to turn it rather quickly when wandering about the house and causeda loud 'Pop" to come from the ankle ..... No damage though I think ....
Emerging frond of a tree fern

It's sooo Hot !!!! Another 30C 86F day in the making and the humidity is now up as well .... the north of the island have just experienced torrential rain and floods ... I hope it's wandered off to sea now .....

My McDinzie hard at work with her stylish new camera.....

And now the cicadas have started to emerge.. They won't be as plentyful as other years but there are enough to be noisy around the place..... One of the disadvantages of living beside the native forrest is that we get heaps of cicadas ...greens and browns, big and small... And the forrest creates a sound shell for them so the noise is amplified even more ..... Last year when watering I sprayed the trees around the front garden .. .For a few seconds only there was a pleasant silence... until they resettled and started their rapid clicking again ......

The upper reaches of the Hutt river.. Big trout reside but are hard to catch

Another pleasant surprise today when the man we hired to sort out the overgrown lawns arrived ... In less than an hour with the right tools and they are looking pretty damned good again .... Edges to the borders all trimmed properly, grass picked up ...Its looking good again ... Well by our standards anayway :O) AND he closed the gates after him as well .... He can come back :O)

A native Rata tree.. Covers itself in orange/red flowers once a year

Where does the time go in the day??? I've sat at the computer all morning (with my foot up and resting) doing some work work (I can dial in and acess everything from home.) And also doing some research on my ancestors in Scotland ... Some frustration as to getting certain census entries but otherwise have found a few things of interest especially around where they lived ... All my family on my Dads side were country folk ...Farm workers or Gameskeepers and the like ....

Swing bridge at kaitoki. From where you can see the trout....Sometimes

Now I have a heap of people I can take some interesting stats .. Like the oldest any of my family lived was 88 years Female and 87 years male. But the average age is 67 for both male and female .. Of course that would include infants who died within 1 or 2 years of birth...

The maximum number of marriages to any individual is 3 (my grandfather.. 2 wives died in child birth) but the average for the whole family is only 1. The average age being 22 for getting married the youngest being 16 (Female...)

Mature tree fern

I'd love to make the trip back home to see these places now ..I've been to Norfolk ages back but only managed a day in Scotland ...Would be good to see where they all lived...

Stream at Mt Bruce reserve full of eels