Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all who visit this blog. I will be back with new blog posts in the new year. I enjoy writing about my family who came before me, but my own family comes first at this time of the year.

By the way, the ornament in the photo is one I made in second grade. It was chosen to go on the huge Christmas Wish tree that was a tradition at my elementary school in Tallahassee, Florida. Ornaments and wishes were chosen from each grade level to be read by the principal to the whole school and then placed on the tree. The only time mine was picked was that second grade year. My wish (on the card behind the ornament in my very best handwriting) . . . "I wish my Grandmother in England could come see us." My wish came true in 1960. However, I did see my grandmother, Maud Kirkpatrick Langdale, for the very first time when my mother, brother and I went to England when I was 10 years old.

Mama's Side of the Family

When a person researches his/her family, there are (hopefully) many "hallelujah" moments. Moments when you're so excited because you've found something of great value concerning your family. I've had many of those in the past few years. One came when Mama, Frances Langdale Jowers, showed me copies of her mother's birth certificate, her father's birth certificate, her father's death certificate, and her parents' marriage certificate. Her brother, Charlie, who lives in England, sent them. I don't remember why Mama said he sent them. I just remember being so excited the first time she showed them to me.

Ten or so years ago I asked Mama about her family, her grandparents and any others she remembered. She told me she didn't know her grandparents. She didn't even know their names. Sometime later she gave me a paper where she had written down what she knew about her family. Her family lived in England. On the Langdale side, she mentioned an Uncle Charles, Aunt Maggie, Aunt Pat, and Uncle Fred. She mentioned a cousin, Harriet and 3 sons of Aunt Maggie and another girl. On the Kirkpatrick side, she mentioned Uncle Sydney (aka Sidney), his wife Bertha, one unnamed daughter, and a granddaughter, Wendy. At the top of the page she wrote "Unknown before 1892."

The certificates listed in the first paragraph changed everything! The birth certificates (certified copies) told us the names, addresses, and occupations of Mama's grandparents and the maiden names of her grandmothers. The marriage certificate gave her parents ages, addresses, occupations, fathers' names, and the date they got married and where. I now had something to go on.

I didn't start researching the families until about 2009. Using the Murphy, NC Library internet access to the Library Edition to Ancestry.com, I had access to records in England, mainly censuses and parish records. Since then, I've traced my direct line of Langdales to my third greatgrandfather (1700's, birth year unknown) and to my fourth greatgrandfather (1700's, birth year unknown) on the Kirkpatrick side. All have been sourced.

I've often wondered what Mama would have said to what I've found out about her family, and I've discovered a lot. I wish she knew. I plan to share some of my finds as time permits.

These are my grandparents, Thomas Henry Langdale and Maud Kirkpatrick Langdale. The photo was taken at the wedding of Margaret Maud Langdale and Henry (Harry) Norris in 1942. My grandfather was 45 and my grandmother 49 when the photo was taken. My grandfather looks tall in the photo but he's standing on a step. He was actually 5 ft. 1 1/2 inches tall and my grandmother stood under 5 ft.

Uncle Syd

Today is one of those whoop and holler days! I was looking on Ancestry.com at their Immigration and Passenger lists. A few days earlier I found Cousin Gill's dad on a 1957 list coming from England to Canada. She suggested I look for our great uncle Syd who immigrated to Canada a long time ago. I FOUND HIM! He and his wife, Bertha, went there in 1928. Not only did I find that. I also found that Uncle Syd listed his brother, John, as his closest kin and . . . it gave John's address in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. Great information. I didn't have anything about John past the 1911 census when he lived in the house where my grandmother was a servant. He was about 13 years old at the time. I was also trying to find out if Aunt Peggy went with Uncle Syd to Canada. Haven't found any evidence of that yet. (It was believed that she had gone to live with them in Canada for a while when she was a child.) Now I need to see when Uncle Syd and wife left Canada and moved back to England. I met Uncle Syd as a child when visiting in England and saw him again as an adult.

That made me wonder if I could find when Aunt Peggy came to the States to visit Mama after I was born. I FOUND HER! She arrived in late August, 1948. I also have evidence of where my family lived in Tallahassee at that time.

Exciting discoveries, for sure, as I try to learn more about my English family.

Here are the two documents I found. Left document: Uncle Syd (Sid) and his wife, Bertha, are at the bottom of the page. Right document: Aunt Peggy is Line 3.