Like many people, we are really interested in the genealogy programme, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?‘ I’m fascinated by my own family history, and that of my husband and I’ve done a lot of research in various ways to discover more about our ancestors. We have visited places which have some significance – the furthest we went was to Tasmania where my great-grandfather Louis Walford was born, and his parents, Samuel and Rosetta lived for many years.
Louis died comparatively young in the 1890’s, but Lois, his “wife” (they never actually married) lived to be a very old lady and my mum and her sisters and brother knew her. Lois came from a more ordinary background, her father was a basket weaver – and I’m not sure on what sort of scale. I know the family ended up with a factory and a commercial set-up, but I think when Lois was a child, in the 1850’s it would have been more of a cottage industry. Lois’s “husband” as I’ve mentioned came from a very different strata of society, very rich, very well-connected, and Jewish. Their daughter married (yes actually married) a man from a family who lived on the south coast and managed a timber yard – and had five children including my mother! I think it’s fair to say that my mum and her sisters and brother grew up in ‘genteel poverty’ but they had,on the whole a happy childhood.
My dad’s family were very different – way back they were all ‘ag labs’ agricultural labourers working on the land – which was hard in east Anglia with those bitter east winds coming off the North Sea, formerly called the German Sea. The arrival of the railways literally took them on a different life journey, working on the railways and driving the trains before going into the pub business.
Going back to “Who Do You Think You Are”, at the end of each programme the person who has explored and discovered their ancestry, reflects on what they’ve discovered, and how they think it has made them who they are – as the title of the show indicates. So, who do I think I am? Well, I’ve always worked hard, although I have inherited certain abilities and gifts which meant I passed exams, and have had a supportive family. The idea of family has been incredibly important to me, and I’m fortunate that now I have my own family – and am close, very close to my extended family of cousins. I like being in company and having friends and meeting new people which my commercially minded family who were in Tasmania must have had to succeed, and my pub running grandparents and great-grandparents too! Can I have also inherited a pub gene?
I must think about this some more, I must mull over these ideas, I must have a good ponder!!
Lois Elsden 