Genealogy Chat

For Julie,
Maybe your Dad would be able to write some things down, even in Polish, rather than talk face to face. Mum was very sparing with her family stories and said the same one or two things about her experiences in London in the Blitz when asked. But in her final years she did a memory book for my Dad when he turned 80, and after the success of that started to gather things together for one for herself. When she suddenly died there was actually quite a lot of information we children had never heard her talk about tucked away in several envelopes, including a partial family tree which has proved to be quite correct. She had started writing letters to cousins and old neighbours and asked questions about her own family to satisfy her own curiosity I think. She was the youngest of a youngest, her cousins were more like aunts and uncles and she never really knew them either. No wonder she emigrated after the war.
Good luck, don't give up, there may be a way..... Hz

Maybe there wasn't a 1941 census, but there certainly was a national registration around that time. How else would you get a ration book, eh?

I have seen on one of the new Counties on-line on the Irish 1911 census two little girls "adopted" by different families in the same area, both girls were born in England.Both girls had same surname, but different from both families names.
Adoptions did not start in Ireland until 1944, but children could be privately adopted before that.

Lily

Julie
i only know cos my MIL ,a lovely lady, told me about living in Ireland with her gran and going to school without shoes, which where only worn on Sundays to go to mass. I knew Nana & Grandad too although Grandad died in 1958 just a day before our daughter was born. Nana was open about why she married at 18 to get away from home cos her parents kept having children and she as the eldest was the unpaid nursemaid ,AND, she was too emotionally drained cos so many of the babies they had & she had to look after died in their early months Not her fault i hasten to add as they lived in poor circumstances and children succumbed to various illnesses like fits and bronchitis etc.

You cant! Some things are best left unsaid, it is obviousely very painful for him, and I suspect many thousand of people who suffered through the war years feel the same.

My grandfather was in WW1 at France and Mesopotamia with the Black Watch...........most things we found out after he died, he never talked about it to my dad, I think it was just too traumatic for him......he was wounded twice..........recovered then sent back to fight, it was five years nearly before he came back to Scotland apart from one short leave, and when he did come home to his wife and 4 year old son, she had given birth to a new baby by another man!
Ann

Ooo Shirley how interesting :)
I wish I could find that kind of detail!!

My husband grandparents had three children the first a boy they lost at 2 months in 1903 and then my MIL was born in 1905 ,Her only sister was born in 1909 and neither are with the parents on the 1911 census ,I know Mum was sent to Ireland to the paternal grandparents at around 4 years of age and the baby was with Nanas parents,Why cos Grandad and Nana could only afford to rent two rooms and no children were allowed,Both parents worked so the children were sent to family to be looked after,Mum was sent away before her sister was born so there was always sibling rivalry cos the baby went home before she did

So how do I make a stubborn old man talk to me???
the only time I have ever heard him talk about it was with my Aunts husband who was also Polish. Unfortunately I was too young and don't remember any of it!!!

Unlike my mother, who seems to be leading me up the garden path with her info LOL

Hi Julie,

I think you probably will be unable to, some things are too difficult to share, especially with the people you love & care for.

The book is called "Spectator In Hell" by Colin Rushton and is based on the story of Arthur Dodds who was in the Cheshire Regiment WW2.

I for one did not realise that British Soldiers were held in Auscwitz.

Ann

Julie
How i wish my Dad was still with us , so i could ask him, but like you say about you Dad mine never spoke about his wartime days, he was a regular in the Royal Navy 1937 to 1948,
I now know he was torpedeod twice,fortunately survived, 800 on one ship he was one of only 180 survivors, but he spent 3 months in hospital
I wish i could ask him about it but never did because i didnt know, only found out these things after he died, when i found his service records he had.

George

Kathleen
yes you could say i was evacuated, but not done officially as others were, it was a decision made by my parents to send me to live with my Grandparents,and as my name suggests, to Westbury in Willtshire

George

OMG Ann, what a terrible tale :( I bet its really interesting though :)
My dad is Polish and had to leave very hurridly as a boy and fled to africa.
The problem is wecan't get him to tell us anything now, he has totally clammed up and thinks its to horrible to share :( How do you convince a 76 year old man that you want to know?

Oh to be a fly on the wall Julie! We can only guess at peoples circumstances all those years ago, but I have just finished a book about a british soldier who was taken prisoner in 1942 and eventually ended up in Auschwitz, apart from all the horrors of 2 years there, he eventually had to march some 700 miles to American lines before he was liberated, suffering great hardship along the way. He arrived back in the Uk weighing around 6 stone, walked up his fathers garden path knocked the door and had it shut in his face by the "new" wife!! ,saying he was not wanted, the father in the sons words was a "weak minded man"

Ann

My grandmother died in 1931 leaving my grandfather with 7 children - the youngest (my aunt) just 6 weeks old. This aunt was brought up by a neighbour a couple of streets away and lived with this person until she got married. It happened quite a lot back then.

Kath. x

I didnt think there was 1941 census, im so dissapointed they wont have a problem,

I wasnt in the Uk in 1951 so no one will ever find me, im lost forever, YAHOO

George

I think - could be wrong here - sometimes perhaps a father in those days saw his role in the family as provider and generator of income and thought that child-rearing and domestic tasks were "women's work".

I have got a man in my family tree who had three children with his wife before she died in 1870. In 1871, the eldest child (aged 3) was with him but the 1 year old twins were living with their mother's sister and they stayed with her in Shropshire when their dad was in Liverpool. I am guessing that he didn't feel like he could look after two very tiny children and a three year old as well as holding down a job.

The same thing happened with my late uncles - my grandma went off with another man, so she would have probably been deemed "unsuitable" to have custody of the children and her husband was working (this was in the late 1930s/early 1940s) so my uncles were raised by my grandma's sister and her husband from that point on.

SNAP, Ann. :-)

Kath. x

I'm not sure George but I don't think there was a census taken in 1941 and the 1931 was destroyed I think.

Were you evacuated????

Kath. x

Blimey George, we'll never know now, I dont think the census was taken in 1941!

Ann

LOL George thats soooo mean LOL