This is a picture of my paternal grandmother. She married my grandfather on 20 November 1912. She was 31, my grandfather was 36. By early twentieth century standards, and for a first marriage, they were older than the norm. My grandparents had at least five children between 1913 and 1919.
Does your family have a connection with a geographical place? I had to think about this for a recent writing activity which I had to produce for my study. Both my maternal and paternal sides of the family have connections with geographical places. But one example immediately sprang to mind.
Until today it didn’t dawn on me that I am writing a memoir which could be termed historical. In my mind, my manuscript could be memoir or biography or autobiography or even creative non-fiction, but more than that, I haven’t thought about. My manuscript begins with the death of my
My mother’s family were not the only ones to have suffered the effects of history. My father’s family, who lived at the time in Courland, were also thrown into turmoil in the years after 1918. I find the history of that time in Courland, which is now Latvia, difficult to
We are all stories. Our stories are woven from the stories of our parents, our grandparents and so on through our ancestral trail. Some of our stories are more complex than others, their narratives ducking and weaving across and around war and trauma and flight. Some of our stories are
When researching your family history, there is always a chance you will find a dark secret, or a skeleton in the closet, or the random tyrant or warlord. There is more of a chance you will discover your ancestors were honest hard-working people who got up in the morning, slogged