family tree

A Family Tree

/ Dee / 63 Comments

Once again we fire up our little grey cells and try to come up with a germ of an idea.  An idea that will grow into another piece of fiction fit for Friday Fictioneers.

Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for her dedication and time, keeping Friday Fictioneers growing straight and true.

Courtesy Scott Vanatter, permission-copyright Indira

Courtesy Scott Vanatter. Permission-Copyright Indira

Genre: Fiction

Word Count: 100

A Family Tree

After the war we had nothing. Stripped of our possessions, we wandered the land searching for food, shelter, kindness. Maria, mourning her child, lost her mind. Men found her dancing in the field and amused themselves, then fearful of the consequences, tied her to a tree and left her.

“This can’t be true, who would do this?”

We found her after animals and birds had fed, we buried her.

“It happened” said the genealogist, handing me more yellowing pages, “there is a gravestone, with details.”

That night, the dream came again; a tree tied with red ribbons.

Now I understand.

 

The bride wore something old…a 127 year old wedding dress

/ Dee / 2 Comments

There has been a great deal of wedding coverage in the press recently; a certain William and Catherine made headlines round the world, last week it was the turn of Zara and Mike. I oohed and aahed over the wedding dresses like most females I know and made comments on design, fabric, fit etc.

Then, yesterday I saw the story of the bride who had worn a 127 year old wedding dress for her wedding.  The dress was bought in 1884 for her great-great-grandmother and has been worn by several generations of her family down the years.

The bride looks stunning, the dress amazing. The family should congratulate themselves for keeping this heirloom safe all this time. I feel privileged to have seen it.

 

(click on the photo to read the full article)

The Convict in my tree – Part 1

/ Dee / 1 Comment

I started researching my family tree almost ten years ago and today, like thousands of other people across the world, I am still trying to find my story; where I came from and what shaped me.  I started where all good ancestry researchers should, with my living relatives.  From them I got a lot of basic, necessary information like dates and places of birth and names of spouses etc which was a great place to start.

As I built my family tree, with more and more information gleaned from various sources, not least of which was ancestry.co.uk a story from my childhood kept coming back and niggling at the back of my mind.  My paternal grandmother was a great storyteller; I used to sit at her feet enthralled, listening to stories ranging from fairies at the bottom of my grandfather’s allotment to the tale of the man who, being wrongfully accused of a very, very bad crime, was sent far, far away from his family and friends to a desolate place across the sea, never to return.  I remember my sister and I having very bad dreams about him and my mother telling us not to fret as it was only a story and not true.

Over the years my research dragged on.  Then one day, I got a letter from my aunt, in response to a plea for help with the seemingly endless list of children borne to my great grandparents.  She listed all the children that she knew of and then, at the bottom of the last page, mentioned just how bad life had been for some people in those days and gave as an example,  the visits made to Lancaster Castle by female members of my great great grandmother’s family.  She had been told the stories as a little girl, about women walking miles to vist a male relative imprisoned in the jail there. 

 This must be the man in my grandmother’s story.  He was real!  I knew then that I wouldn’t rest until I had found out all Icould, I just had to know who this man was and if indeed he was one of my ancestors…………….(to be continued)