This article was first published in ‘Family Tree Magazine’, in 2010. It tells the story of two of my ancestors – Sgt James Brumby, and William Potter. One was a law abiding marine, accompanying the Third Fleet convicts out to Australia in the 1790s and the other – one of my ‘favourite’ ancestors, although he […]
Category: Genealogy
Well I suppose a shaggy dog story was inevitable, at some point, for me! This one happened to William Nattriss, farmer. He married Ann Guy who was an ancestor of both of my parents, by some bizarre quirk of fate. ‘Bizarre’ given the fact my dad was from Leeds and my mum from Ryther. […]
The latest Yarn Forward, No 33, features the mysterious and elusive Bob Jenkinson. Some time ago, Filey Museum’s lovely staff gave me permission to use this photo. But there was no real provenance for it – just amongst a batch of things donated long before there was a protocol in place to record the whos […]
Categories
Three of Knives.
In which one of the Thompson brothers gets handy with a gun, back in 1836. One for the genealogists and historians today! Knitters beware – the balaclava is coming on apace. And will be blogged very soon! Some time back, I wrote about my American relatives in Illinois, being victims to an accomplished horse stealer, […]
Categories
Trunk No. 8
My blog posts are like buses – nothing for ages then two come at once. This is another pic found on my sons’ machine. Dad, outside his house, in Leeds, would be early 1930s. This house was technically a ‘back to back’ so it had two addresses. This side of the house I never […]
Now look what I’ve gone and done…. http://www.family-tree.co.uk/ In this month’s ‘Family Tree’ magazine (October issue), an article about tracing your knitting ancestors. If you have any ancestry in a fishing port, or along the rivers and canals and inland waterways of the UK… this may be for you! I took a stroll (metaphorically) through […]
Few scholars, costume historians or keen students of knitting history seriously believe for a minute that English ganseys (or any knitted jumpers for seamen) existed a long way prior to the back end of the 18thC. But the myth does get promulgated, occasionally on places like ‘Ravelry’, and neophytes may get taken in. And I like to think of myself as a kind of iconoclast…
I learned one thing this week. Never take your old family photos for granted! I’ve always had this photo in a box, somewhere. It is my grandma, Lillie and my dad and we always called it ‘The Grumpy dad Photo’. I’d assumed it was taken by my grandad, Billie, and thought nothing more about it […]
So many new spinners are only used to spinning bought commercial dyed tops, that they feel daunted when the time comes to actually become a ‘real’ spinner, and take it from raw fibre to finished product. This is the basic guide to wool-sorting I wish I’d had in 1983!
Wondering about the discussion elsewhere re. fancy sheaths, I had a quick trawl of the 19thC Newspapers archive from the British Library. And I found this, for Darlington (Teeside, bit further North of Yorkshire) about an agricultural show and its prize categories, several times in the 1870s: Middleton-in-Teesdale Floral, Horticultural, and Industrial Society held its […]
PENELOPE HEMINGWAY 