# Family Light on the Past



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Here we are on this bank and shoal of time which is *the modern world*, but in 20 years won't be, quite.

I was reminded by a thread today that my grandparents were a link with the Victorian age. I think it would be lovely if we had a thread where we could share family or neighbourhood stories that shed light on history or vanished ways of thinking.

Here's my example.
My grandfather - born 1895 - was in the First World War, in an artillery regiment, though it didn't spend much time in the front line. He was a Bombardier - something like a corporal, I believe - and a character. When at the end of the war an officer put him in charge of demobbing his fellow soldiers, he promptly demobbed - himself.

Here's the story. A captain, with three other soldiers including Granddad, was walking along a road in Northern France on a detail. Shells kept falling, and as they did, the three 'men' kept diving into the ditch to take cover. This annoyed the captain. He said, 'Those shells were nowhere near us. I can tell by the noise how near they would be. The next shell that comes, do not jump into the ditch _unless I order it_!'

Two minutes later, the whine of a shell was heard. My Grandfather and another man ignored the officer and dived into the ditch. The third man obeyed orders, and had his leg blown off...


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Two stories, one family one not. 

My mother's family came from the far North of Ireland in a fairly remote village (at that time). My mother was over visiting and she managed to get some tomatoes which she loved. She gave one to a cousin who when he tasted it, spat it it out, saying "where did you get them wee rotten apples from?" At that time, tomatoes were unknown in that part of Ireland. We never did get a date out of my mother, but talking to people in the village, we think it may have been in the 1940s, just after the Emergency. 

When I was growing up, our Parish Priest was a World War One veteran who had his right leg amputated above the knee in November 1918 and replaced with an artificial one. He said his daily mass in a small side chapel. One day, the altar server continued to stand by his side after washing the priest's hands. The priest got annoyed and told the boy to move. The server had to whisper - "Father, you're standing on my foot!" - his right leg ,of course, and he hadn't noticed.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Not sure if this is the type of thing you are meaning.

When my sister and I were very little toddlers (in the mid to late 1950s!), our dad used to play a silly game with us. He'd bring home a few marbles or coins or candy hidden within his two hands cupped together. He would gently shake his hands making the coins or marbles rattle to the rhythm of a silly rhyme. We thought he was saying:

"Tull gull
"How full?
"How many can you guess?"

And if you guess the number, he'd give you the marbles. Well - actually I think he did anyway. But it was a game for toddlers.

All our lives we had never heard anyone else use these nonsense words or play this game and we often wondered where it originated. Many decades later - just a week and half ago in fact! -- my sister was teaching a class about Native American Culture, and came across a pdf file on Cherokee games, finding something so similar it nearly made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It turns out we weren't quite playing it right. It goes like this:



Cherokee PDF said:


> Hull Gull Handful How Many
> Materials: 5 popcorn kernels or beans per person. Give each player 5 popcorn kernels or
> beans. Let group mingle. One person puts any number of kernels in their hand (from 0-5), holds out their hand with kernels hidden in it, and asks another "Hull Gull handful how many?" That person must then try to guess how many kernels he/she is holding in their hand. If they guess correctly, the guesser gets that amount of kernels. If the guess is incorrect, the guesser must
> give the person holding the kernels the difference between his guess and the actual amount.
> ...


It was such an incredibly cool feeling to have that tenuous connection to the remote past through our own remote past. You see, our dad's grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee, one of those driven to Oklahoma during the 1831 forced relocation called The Trail of Tears and the game must have passed to his family through her.


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## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

I don't think this is reverent, but it's a funny little story my Mother told me. 
Apparently when I was very young I was with my mother and visiting a friend, I noticed their dark carpet had lots of white bit's in it, and I commented on how dirty the carpet looked.
My Mum was really embarrassed about the incident and when we got home she told me off and said I shouldn't of said anything like that.
The next time we visited I noticed the carpet still looked dirty so I asked if she owned a vacuum cleaner, she said she did, and I replied "Why don't you use it then?"


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Ah, children! That's a lovely story, presto. 

That reminds me of a story a colleague once told me about one of his sons. This colleague - Brian - hated his sister's husband, but they all had to meet up for Christmas dinner at the home of his parents-in-law. On one festive occasion, Brian's son was sitting between his father & Brian's hated brother-in-law, and kept glancing from side to side - first at his father, and then at his Uncle Arthur. Finally, his uncle asked him what he was doing, and the boy said, 'I'm trying to understand how you do it, Uncle Arthur - how you manage to give my Dad a pain in his neck?!?' 

 After that the families were invited separately...


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

My father was born in 1944 in the eastern part of then Nazi Germany which today is part of Poland. After the war my father's family had to flee, and so they came to western Germany, where my father grew up and eventually met my mother.

So in a way, my father is a direct link to my country's horrific past.

But it also makes me think sometimes: if I was only born because my parents met, that is, if I (or my soul, if you like) could not have born to any other two individuals, then I owe my existence entirely to the dreadful course of recent German history. It's a horrible thought, but: without Hitler, my parents would have never met.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

A small snippet from my dad's past
He was one of the "untermensch" displaced at the end of WW11
He was in the queue to be repatriated back to Poland
When one of his friends came and dragged him out and told him not to go back
He decided to come to England, worked on a farm in the Cotswolds and met my mother
A little background info, Stalin was sending the returnees from Nazi occupied zones to the Gulags
So he made the right choice


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

A story from my Granny, one of nine sisters born in Sheffield, Yorkshire in Victorian times.

Two of her sisters were in a class in school, and the little sister was told off for talking. The teacher put her in a corner as a punishment, wearing a gag made from a ragged bit of cloth. The elder sister was aghast because this 'gag' had been used by several dirty pupils already. In a passion of indignation, she pulled the gag from off her sister's mouth, then ran all the way home.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

The parents of my grandmother were Italian and they emigrated here in the 1910's. In the 1930's, when my grandmother was, say, ten years old, her grandparents came from Italy in a visit. The father of my grandmother convinced them to come to live here, since there were rumours of an upcoming war in Europe. Their plan was to go back to Italy, sell their property there (a farm, I think), and then leave Italy for ever. They wanted to bring my grandmother with them, since the full trip wouldn't last more than three months, but her father refused.
So, my grandmother's grandparents departed to Italy. But when they arrived, the war started. They could not return because of that.
My grandmother's grandmother died in a bombardment some years later, and her grandfather died shortly after that.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

'Like' only in the sense of 'thank you for posting this, aleazk'. What a sad story, & sorry it turned out like that. So many might-have-beens.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

My mother is getting on now and it's suddenly dawned on me that if I don't talk to her more often about her early days before too long then who knows how many stories will be lost forever - I was born in the early days of Beatlemania and Prime Minister MacMillan claiming we'd 'never had it so good', but she was born in the era of silent films, horse-drawn milk carts and a omnipresent stench drifting from the old chemical works and tanneries that once lined the river Tees.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Yes, it's great to have the stories. I co-wrote a memoir with my mother to mark her 90th birthday. Sadly, her memory is going now, and she relies on the book to 'remember' the events of her own life. I'm so glad I did talk to her while the chance existed.

*A story that shows how attitudes to children, morality & emotions have changed.*

When my mother was six, her mother was sequestered in her bedroom expecting the birth of my Mum's sister, my aunt. Mum had been left in the shade already by the birth of my uncle, as Granny made no secret of the fact that she preferred sons. Mum used to think to herself, 'I would be so happy, _if only my Mother loved me_.'

So she was missing her mother, and worried. She thought she would do something nice for her. She saw a pretty red flower growing in a neighbour's front garden - picked it - and gave it to the maternity nurse to take up to her mother. But the neighbour had seen Mum pick the flower, and came round to the house. Mum was summoned up to my Granny's bedroom, and admonished sternly: 'I hear that you *stole* a flower!' Granny was not pleased with the gift, and my mother, aged only six, was punished for stealing.

Although I loved Granny dearly, and she gave *me *such a lot of love, I have always thought this story was so sad.
But Granny was a Victorian, and Victorians didn't do 'soppy'!


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

My grandparents on my mother's side came over from Holland right before World War I, which was fortunate, because my grandfather was in the Dutch cavalry, and the Germans with their war machine were about to roll over them. 

My mother told a story about my grandmother which I always thought it was sweet and spoke to her character. When she arrived in America, she experienced a salvation experience in the Christian faith. The first thing she did after this was write a letter to a farmer in Holland apologizing for stealing an apple from his orchard. I like to think that pure and simple attitude is one of the seeds that eventually sprouted in my personal faith.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

I do not have many heart warming stories from my family, but I do have some interesting ancestors. One was a Mayflower pilgrim. Another was a reverend John Lothrop/Laythrop (spelling didn't matter as much back then). Margret Scott who was hung as a witch in Salem in 1692. A patriot who fought in the Battle of Oriskany in the revolution. A Mormon pioneer from 1847. My Grandfather was a logger on the Washington coast in the early 20's. We have a picture of him and a workmate cutting down one of the giant Douglas firs with a trunk diameter of about 15 feet. My father was in the end of WWII as a truck driver. He never spoke of his wartime activities or what he saw except he once told me he drove bodies of the soldiers. He did talk about being in the occupation of Berlin and giving the children chocolate and "cowgummi" from his rations.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Manxfeeder said:


> My grandparents on my mother's side came over from Holland right before World War I, which was fortunate, because my grandfather was in the Dutch cavalry, and the Germans with their war machine were about to roll over them.


The Netherlands managed to stay neutral in WW 1. They did get destroyed by the German army (and especially air force) in WW 2 though. Just a small correction, love your story.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Art Rock said:


> The Netherlands managed to stay neutral in WW 1.


That's good to know. I was confusing them with Belgium. Either way, if my grandparents were going to strike out to the New World, that was a good time to do it.


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