I watched Stephen Fry on Netflix in his one-man show to launch his book called ‘More Fool Me’. It was a fantastic show of storytelling and anecdotes of his family, his life, the ups and downs and the ridiculous. Of course Stephen’s knowledge is incredible and he shared many interesting facts.
There was one fact though that stood out for me and that was the very simple fact that most of do not know the names of our great grandparents. Wow, I thought, is he really true? So I put it to the test with my own family and he was 100% correct, I really do not know the names of my great grandparents. I don’t even know the proper names of some of my grandparents, what’s wrong with me!
Well a few of them died before I was born, that’s grandparents and my parents never really spoke about them, let alone speak about their own grandparents. I definitely feel I missed out somehow or did I?
It’s a shame that we’re so caught up in life’s stuff that we don’t even know our great grandparents’ names. So now I’m on a mission to find out their names. There are a few relatives still alive who I can ask, I’d better be quick, because you never know what might happen to them and then the info is lost.
I know these websites exist that you have to pay for to find your ancestors, but I’m not keen to share my personal data there, as who knows whose going to be hacking in to those in years to come.
And I know I have a chart somewhere that my father worked on during World War II, when he was hiding in an attic from the Germans, yes that really happened, he spent his teenage years in hiding. whilst he was in hiding he did do some work on researching his ancestors.
Ok I’m off on the hunt.
Happy hunting!