Stormy Weather

[greenilex]

Roads Scholars is a good pun...I think adult learners are lots of fun but also hard work when really keen.

I was lucky enough to be in a group shown around Winchester College Fellows' Library this month. Quite an eye-opener.

[Uncle Monty]

marthe,it's a difficult thing to be a meat eater, [in moderation],but love animals. I've always felt puzzled about farmers who give some of their favourite animals names, then send them off to the slaughter house. I suppose if they weren't bred for food they wouldn't 'live' at all? I had some very good veggie friends who always referred to a meat meal as 'flesh'. One cooked wonderful 'tray bakes' with various veg and a tasty sauce, the other made wonderful cakes but gave me cheese or eggs all the time for main meals.

Yes, but if we're not supposed to eat animals, why is it they're all covered in MEAT?

Seriously, I agree with you. We are eating less and less meat, and are uneasy about what we do have. There are big concerns about farming practices, and even more about slaughtering practices, but basically it comes down to the question of whether we have the right to kill other creatures, especially those with a face

[marthe]

Greenilex: yes this was quite a keen group. They asked difficult questions and kept me on my toes! In early May, we have a group of international scholars coming to look at the furniture collection. I'll really have to be on good form for that!

Uncle Monty: I could never eat a piece of meat with a "face" but continue to eat anonymous meat from the supermarket. It's a bit hypocritical but old habits die hard. Battery hens and factory farms have really come under the gun here. More and more people are looking for locally-produced food (locavores). The criticism of the locavore movement is that only comparatively well-off families can afford to pay premium prices for better food. The economics of local farming v. agribusiness (and the big agri-chemical companies such as Monsanto) are complex. Personally, with just two in our household, we can support local farmers and buy their produce and dairy. These people are hard-working and not rolling in wealth. Some have been struggling to hang on to the land that their ancestors farmed in the 1600s...the so-called "salt-water farmers."There are various schemes for buying farmshares and being guaranteed a share in the harvest. We don't do this as even a half share gives us far more veg than we can reasonably use in a week. I do go to the farmers' market which has good locally-produced veg and dairy. Oh well off my soapbox!

[BBMmk2]

Talking of decades, my wife has been using www.ancestry.co.uk, and has come up tgrtumps with my father's side of the family. With Marthe talking of the 1600s, found that an ancestor was Mayor of Faversham(Kent), and trace the family tree 6 generations before 1005!! Unfortunately before then, there were no dates.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

With Marthe talking of the 1600s, found that an ancestor was Mayor of Faversham(Kent), and trace the family tree 6 generations before 1005!! Unfortunately before then, there were no dates.

That's impressive. I thought I was doing well, having gone back as far as c.1515.

[salymap]

Talking of decades, my wife has been using www.ancestry.co.uk, and has come up tgrtumps with my father's side of the family. With Marthe talking of the 1600s, found that an ancestor was Mayor of Faversham(Kent), and trace the family tree 6 generations before 1005!! Unfortunately before then, there were no dates.

Very impressive BBM. The woman researching our family tree has [hmm]
left the family, [divorce], and taken all the paperwork with her. However she traced my mother's family on both sides back to 1500 something in the Shortlands, Bromley area. It's addictive, like these MBs.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Very impressive BBM. The woman researching our family tree has [hmm]
left the family, [divorce], and taken all the paperwork with her. However she traced my mother's family on both sides back to 1500 something in the Shortlands, Bromley area. It's addictive, like these MBs.

It is indeed. I have written a substantial book on my family history, based mainly upon notes left by my father and research done by a cousin. Frau Alpensinfonie was not in favour at first, suggesting I was living in the past, etc., but was so impressed by the result that she now shows to all and sundry.

[marthe]

Tracing back the ancestors is indeed addictive and expensive. My mother was bitten by this bug after she retired and spent quite a bit of time and money researching her family. She did use ancestry.com but also travelled to the countries from which her ancestors came: Holland, Ireland, and Switzerland. She even found some remote English and Welsh ancestors going back to the 1500s. Dad's ancestry has been well and truly documented by uncles and cousins in Belgium and goes back through the mists of time to someone of note. One of my great-uncles, an historian who did some of the family geaneological work, always told us that "every king has a shepherd among his ancestors and every shepherd a king among his."

The family of a sister-in-law is very much into ancestor worship and is very proud of its New England origins from the passengers of the Arbella rather than the passengers of the Mayflower! E. is rather sniffy about the Pilgrims whom she considers to have been riff-raff. The passengers of the Arbella came over with John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and are considered to be more respectable. Even so, there are many Americans who are proud of the their Mayflower roots...never mind descent from presidents of the US or even kings of England!

[salymap]

Hello marthe, It may interest you to know that when music publishers 'folded' or were taken over, I did temporary PA or typing jobs until something better turned up. One was with Lieut Commander Kenelm Winslow, whose ancestor was on the Mayflower. This was in the 1950s when it was an anniversary. For two long months I typed everything about the Winslows and the Mayflower and even went with him and his American wife to help at an event at Olympia in London. I was so glad to get back to music but it was interesting for a bit.

[Richard Tarleton]

Hi saly and marthe

I've been working on our family history with the help of an amateur genealogist friend. We don't quite make the Mayflower, but my 9x great grandfather (born in Dorset) emigrated to Plymouth, Mass. in July 1635. Aged 18 he sailed to New England in the “Blessing” with 32 other settlers. There were several family groups on the passenger list but he seemed to be on his own. All the settlers "have brought Cert: from the Ministers and Justices of their conformitie in Religion and that they are not Subsedy men”.

He seems to have been in trouble a couple of times: he was brought before the General Court in 1637 for an unspecified offence, and later before the court at Plymouth, Mass., for lending a gun to an Indian But he went on to found a dynasty of respectable burghers in and around Malden and Chelsea, Mass. The family boasts a couple of Daughters of the American Revolution.

Just to even things up my Highland Scots 4X grandfather (from a solidly Jacobite line) fought in the Peninsula War but went on to become a soldier of fortune, serving as an officer in the Mexican army in the 1820s and 30's during the wars with Texas. I'm trying to discover whether he helped capture the Alamo

[marthe]

saly: what interesting things you've done! I'm not familiar with Lt. Cdr. Kenelm Winslow, but I expect his ancestor was the Kenelm Winslow (or one of his brothers) who came over on the Mayflower. I wonder if Lt. Cdr. Winslow passed through Newport, esp. the Naval War College www.usnwc.edu/ at Newport, during his career? My grandmother's neighbor was a retired admiral named Henry Eccles who might have been a contemporary of your Lt. Cdr.

When I was going on seven, I remember seeing the Mayflower II as she made her way from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Mass. and stopped over in Newport en route. This was the summer of 1957.

Richard Tarleton: that's a fascinating bit of family history! Every American schoolchild learns about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower but very few know of other ships such as the Blessing or even the Arbella and their passengers! Yes, I expect your ancestor would have been hauled before the General Court for helping an Indian. Relations between settlers and Native-Americans were tense. Two very bloody wars were fought between colonists and native peoples: the Pequot War (1634-1638) in Connecticut and King Philip's War (1675-1676) in southeastern Massachusetts (Plymouth Colony) and parts of Rhode Island. Your ancestor in the Peninsular Wars and then Mexico sounds straight out of Sharpe's Rifles! I've no claim to being a D.A.R. because my family only came to NE in the late 1930s, though I do have Dutch ancestors who settled in Ulster County, New York (middle Hudson River area near the Catskills) in the 1650s.

Back on topic here: we're having a bit of stormy weather right now with raw, damp winds blowing in rain squalls from the northeast.

[salymap]

Morning all. Marthe, yes that was it. Summer or earlier in 1957 fits and it was the preparation for the Mayflower II project. My Lt Cdr. was RN, long retired, and he even bored his wife by talking of nothing else. Natural really, looking back. If you are linked so directly to history it must be rather overwhelming.

[antongould]

......and has the sun returned to Sidcup? Here we have another glorious almost summery morning with down on the cricket field the young stars of tomorrow being coached in their helmets!

[BBMmk2]

MrsBBM was saying that my father's side was eaqsier thyan my mother's. Especially my mother's fathers side. Can get as far back nas only three generations. I think it was because the variants in the name of the family kept on changing.

(Mods, do you think a seperaste thread could estarted on this?) :)

[salymap]

BBM. our family had trouble of name changing, not always correctly. My dad's father died when he was very small and his mother married again. On the 1901 Census my father was down with his stepfather's name, whereas, in fact, he kept his original surname. They all died long before I was born and only knew my mother's father.