The Jollyman Letters: project progress July 2017
Well, it’s ready. No, not the first Jollyman Letters book, I’m afraid, but the house. All the sorting and mending and cleaning and packing and painting is...
Read MoreWell, it’s ready. No, not the first Jollyman Letters book, I’m afraid, but the house. All the sorting and mending and cleaning and packing and painting is...
Read MoreGeorge and Mary Millman returned to the Isle of Wight with their children Hepsie and Kitty to visit Mary’s family in Ryde. They saw Old St Boniface Church in Bonchurch, just before their ascent of St Boniface Down (see The Millman Letters)
Read MoreMy great-great-grandparents, George and Mary Millman, visited the Isle of Wight in August 1892 with their daughters Hepsie and Kitty. That Christmas, Kitty received a beautiful new book as a school prize for Music and Drawing: Island Scenery: The Isle of Man, Isle of Wight and the British Islands, published that year by James B Knapp of London.
Here is an extract about the town of Ryde:
Read MoreThe Jollyman Letters family history project has been buried lately – under a load of clutter.
You see, we’re moving house soon, and it’s time to shed some of this junk to make the house more saleable.
And I must confess, I’ve been a bit… well… enthusiastic about our need to get rid of unnecessary items.
Okay, perhaps ‘obnoxious, strident and aggressive’ is a more accurate description, to be honest.
We’re down-sizing, so we can’t take everything.
The house was already over-full, as our whole family are world champion collectors of everything from Pokemon cards to sewing materials, and we were also storing lots of left-over toys from the shop we used to own.
The shed was stuffed to bursting with the best selection of dangerous rusty old tools you could ever wish for, several bikes and a lifetime’s supply of ‘useful pieces of wood’.
The whole attic – and it’s enormous, the size of our house – was crammed with mementoes of times we couldn’t remember, clothes that didn’t fit, every piece of schoolwork our kids produced since they first picked up a crayon to the time they left college and a whole bunch of other junk we really didn’t need.
We didn’t look at it, we didn’t use it, we didn’t need it. It had to go.
Read MoreThis month has been a fascinating trip over the Solent into the past.
We’ve been on a family history research trip to the Isle of Wight, where we managed to meet up with some Hansfords and Youngs.
Sadly, these family members ‘departed this life’ long ago, but their beautiful, weathered headstones were a bittersweet joy to find.
This gravestone, with two funny little chubby faces at the top, was found in Brading churchyard. It’s a shared grave for Martha Young and three of her children.
The inscription reads:
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