Indolent genealogy
My world is much improved. I got sleep, I went to work on Saturday and wrapped up an outstanding (as in late) project, I visited the lovely 85 year old Mary K, and the scene was potentially set for me to spend Sunday cleaning the house.
Ha ha. I spent the day in the indolent pursuits of knitting myself a cardigan (30 rows, replete with fancy shaping!!!) and playing genealogist. Yesterday Mary K showed me a photo of her grandmother (my great grandmother) looking very elegant, and another of her with her sister. I had never heard of this sister, but it turned out that Honor Ann T. left Cornwall some time after Emma Jane T., my great grandmother. She went to Australia first, where she had family, and then to New Zealand. I've found some details relating to her first widowhood, her second marriage and her death. I also found that both of these Cornish women lost sons in World War One. Emma Jane T. was also married twice. She too left Cornwall as a single woman and spent some time in Australia before moving to Christchurch and settling with the Cornish community at Harewood, where the airport now stands. Emma Jane T.'s two husbands were friends, two Cornish men who had travelled to New Zealand on the same ship fifteen years before husband #1 found himself dying of pneumonia. Not long before he died, my great grandfather went to visit him. Husband #1 asked him to look after his wife and very small baby. And so he did. What was initially an arrangement of respectable support grew into a marriage of love. Awwww.
About 5pm, I got up from my spot by the computer and saw the room with new eyes. I'd ignored the mess before, screening out the effects of Brighid's creative endeavours with scissors and toilet paper. Hmmm. I was jolted back into a functioning adult and started to wash clothes, cook dinner and throw instructions around.
Ha ha. I spent the day in the indolent pursuits of knitting myself a cardigan (30 rows, replete with fancy shaping!!!) and playing genealogist. Yesterday Mary K showed me a photo of her grandmother (my great grandmother) looking very elegant, and another of her with her sister. I had never heard of this sister, but it turned out that Honor Ann T. left Cornwall some time after Emma Jane T., my great grandmother. She went to Australia first, where she had family, and then to New Zealand. I've found some details relating to her first widowhood, her second marriage and her death. I also found that both of these Cornish women lost sons in World War One. Emma Jane T. was also married twice. She too left Cornwall as a single woman and spent some time in Australia before moving to Christchurch and settling with the Cornish community at Harewood, where the airport now stands. Emma Jane T.'s two husbands were friends, two Cornish men who had travelled to New Zealand on the same ship fifteen years before husband #1 found himself dying of pneumonia. Not long before he died, my great grandfather went to visit him. Husband #1 asked him to look after his wife and very small baby. And so he did. What was initially an arrangement of respectable support grew into a marriage of love. Awwww.
About 5pm, I got up from my spot by the computer and saw the room with new eyes. I'd ignored the mess before, screening out the effects of Brighid's creative endeavours with scissors and toilet paper. Hmmm. I was jolted back into a functioning adult and started to wash clothes, cook dinner and throw instructions around.
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