Research Hat On

Hello my friends,

My last entry about Mike's Grandfather sparked us off on research again.  I had finished my own family tree and put everything to one side.  However, we decided to see if we could find out a little more about Mike's family.

We had already received, a few years back, quite a lot of information from Mike's second cousin Wilhelm in Germany but I have written to him again asking for further details.  I have also been researching online as we discovered a little mystery about the second husband of Mike's aunt.  I think I have managed to track where he came from.  I have also managed to find Mike's two half-sisters.  Both are dead now but I was able to add that information to the family tree.  Mike never met them through circumstances that occured in the family and neither of them ever married so there is a full stop under that one.  I also want to find some information about the place the family originated from in Germany.

I have also been applying for certificates which will give more information.  Once I started my journal, the family tree got sidelined.  However, now we have Nathan and Daniel it is important that all the information is put together correctly and printed off as well as being saved to disc.  The boys are the inheritors of all who came before them. 

One day they will be grateful for all the information and I hope they will add to it themselves and keep it going.

So, for a while I am going to put this journal on "hold" so that I can concentrate on getting that done.  I am still limiting my computer time until my neck is really better.  I have to look after it.  Once before it got so bad I had to have physio for three months and could do practically nothing for around four months. I do not want to go down that road again.

I know you will all understand that I shall obviously not be commenting on journals.  The family tree has always been very important to me.  The people on it are no longer forgotten names, they are individuals again, individuals who had all the same hopes, dreams, problems we all do.  I hope their names will echo down the years and give future generations an insight into past lives.

I hope to be able to share some further information with you about Mike's family, if he is agreeable.

In the meantime, please do not think I am ignoring you or do not wish to comment or that I have lost interest in my own journal, it is just that I have "got my research hat" on right now and that is taking all my computer time.

Have a good week everyone.

He Gets A Look In

Him indoors has sometimes commented that since I began this journal, I have written quite a lot about my family and my ancestors but his family have never got a look in so to speak.  I tell him that he did not have a family - he was hatched!

So today I thought I would redress the balance a little.  To be honest, we do not have a great deal to go on.  Mike never knew his Grandfather (on his Dad's side).  Grandfather passed away when Mike was just a toddler but I will share with you all the facts that we know. 

Christian Friedrich O  arrived in London on the 3rd July 1890.  He was sixteen years old and had sailed entirely alone from Germany where he was born and where his family remained.   He was the son of Wilhelm Gottleib O and Eva Maria Gebert and the second of their nine children. We can never know what prompted him to uproot and settle in England.  In the town where he was born, the family were quite prominent, several of his ancestors being Mayor of the town.  His father was a master baker and that was the trade he was to follow.

Whether he stayed with a cousin or some other relative is not known but he remained close to the London docks in Rotherhithe. I cannot speak for today, but in those days it was one of the worst areas of  East London,   It was poverty stricken and the crime rate very high.  It must have been tough especially for a young lad, newly arrived on these shores and speaking no English.  That is probably why he lived where he did. The German community tended to stick together exactly as the Irish and the Chinese and all other nationalities did.

He worked very hard at his trade learning all there was to know and becoming a master baker and confectioner himself. It is very likely that he had known his future wife from back home.  She would have been fifteen when he left Germany. Whether they had already taken a liking to each other or fallen in love, cannot ever be known.  But at a later date she came to England as well and they were married on the 30th July 1897.  He would have been 23 and his bride 22. There has always been some mystery as to her name because it varies on different documents.  Sometimes it is Christianne Rose, sometimes it is Christine Rosa and others just Rosa and her surname was Weiss.  So they settled into married life and Christian Friedrich opened two shops, one in Harringay and one in Wood Green. They prospered.

They had four children Lena Rose (1899) Christian William (1901) Frederick George (1904) and Harold Albert (1912). Three of them followed their father into the bakery business, Christian and Frederick became bakers both owning shops in their own right.  Lena married Albert K and after the death of her father, Albert who was also a baker, took over the two shops that her father had established and the business continued and was then eventually run by her two sons, Robert and Leslie.  It was the ever increasing growth of the supermarkets that finally put an end to it all. The last child, Harold, had no interest in bakery whatsoever.  He wanted to be a doctor and so it proved.  He became an orthopaedic surgeon at Whipps Cross Hospital in London and later a well-known Consultant. 

Here is a picture of Grandfather and family. I have no idea when it was taken:

Back row, left to right: Harold, Albert K, Christian (Mike's Dad)
Middle row, left to right: Lena, Grandma, Grandpa and Alice (Christian's first wife).
Front row, left to right: Robert K, Eileen O, Leslie K and Phyllis O.  Robert and Leslie being the sons of Lena and Albert and the two girls being the daughters of Christian and Alice. (Mike's half-sisters)

There is not much more I can add about Mike's Grandfather. In 1911 he formerly changed his name and from then on was Christian Frederick and the surname became more English sounding. The papers relating to his change of name and British citizenship were signed by Winston Churchill who was then the Secretary Of State. Grandfather was, from what we have been told, a very kind and gentle man, a hard-worker and a great family man. We do not know if he was a religious man or whether he had any hobbies. Apart from the facts I have stated, we know nothing else. This is the only other photo we possess of him.  Taken later in life.  His eyes look so very sad in this picture. Mike wishes so much he had known him and I feel the same.

He died in 1941 at the age of 67.  We have no idea where he is buried.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this little insight into the family of him indoors.  I have enjoyed writing it and I know Mike is pleased that his family has had "a look in " at last.

Snug As A Bug

It has been a while since I wrote in this journal.  Had a few health problems which seem to be improving now but I still have a very painful neck and left shoulder so I am still trying to keep my computer time down because typing hurts.

Well, the cavity wall insulation was done last Thursday.  I need not have worried.  I was absolutely amazed at the speed.  From the time they arrived until they time they left was forty minutes and around ten minutes of that was taken up with drinking the tea and eating the biscuits we provided for them and then getting us to sign all the paperwork when it was done.

As for taking all the ornaments down, it proved unneccessary.  No vibrations at all.  In fact the noise I had dreaded was not much greater than my washing machine on spin cycle!  So we were well pleased.  We have noticed a difference and are keeping our heating thermostat down low.  Just as well we had it done.  British Gas, without any warning or notification to us, have raised our gas bill by £9 per month and our electricity by £7 per month.  Absolutely scandalous. We only found out when we saw it had been taken from the bank.  We shall certainly be changing our energy supplier in the very near future. 

The community charge will be going up again in April.  It amazes me that they think pensioners can pay these sort of prices when the pension never increases to cover them.  It is a worry but I know there are thousands in our position.  The government do not give a hoot about it, why should they?  They all sit there earning enormous salaries and getting perks and when they retire they write their memoirs and get paid heftily and then they often take up a position on the board of some big company and continue to rake in the cash.  None of them ever have to struggle like the rest of us, none of them will have to live on just a state pension and have to wonder whether they can afford to heat their home.

The schools around here are all closed due to the "winter vomiting bug" that seems a regular thing every year now.  What causes all this sickness?  We never used to have all this years ago?  Is it pollution in the air, is it the additivies and chemicals in the food, is our resistance getting lower? It does seem that there is more illness around these days than we ever had.  What are your views about it?

Mike is finally over his cold, my friend's funeral went off very well - her husband told me the other day.  Apart from that, not much news.  All very quiet here.  The weather is awful, strong winds, just started raining and it is so dark you would think it was evening.  Roll on Spring.

I will try and visit a few of you if I can but please understand that because I am in pain right now I might not be able to make it to you all.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Hope you are all having a good week.

Back To Normal

It always seems a bit of an anti-climax after the Christmas and New Year celebrations.  No more holidays to look forward to and long winter days stretching ahead.  Most people have returned to work and reality hits home.

I have taken a break to come on here in the middle of taking the decorations down. They took absolute ages to put up in the first place and it is strange how they always seem to come down much quicker!  At least I will be able to dust again.  I will not miss the decorations as such, it is the lights that will leave a gap.  It was lovely to sit in the evenings with just the festive lights on, so warm and cosy. Thankfully, we do have our glitter ball that was not a Christmas decoration and can still remain but it will not be quite the same.

We did see the New Year in, thankfully the fireworks were not as bad around here as in recent years.  The ones from the London Eye were truly spectacular and it must have been something to be there although how some of the people got home again I have no idea. We actually stayed up quite late because we then went on the computer and into a games room where Mike and I played Blackjack against each other!  Well, just friendly fun but we are both enjoying so much that we can play games together now and have a shared hobby.  So most evenings we will be going there for an hour.

The first day of 2007 was quiet.  We did not do a great deal.  I felt a bit under the weather (probably because I am not used to drinking and I did have a couple of glasses of wine the night before even if they were diluted with soda water).  I began reading one of the books I had been given for Christmas whilst Mike took down the outside decorations, then we just watched some t.v. and played our Blackjack.

I did have a nice surprise yesterday, a nice start to the New Year.  I won £50 on the lottery!  Bit of a fluke really.  I play the same set of numbers week after week, have done so for around two years and had the occasional £10 win.  Well, I did my numbers as usual or thought I had done.  A while back they changed the style of the tickets.  I had become so used to where the numbers used to be and did not like the new format.  Anyway, I thought I had ticked off my last usual number but I made a mistake and ticked one very close to it.  Hey presto, it won!  I had no idea until Mike came back from the local shop and waved the notes in my face.  That cannot be a bad New Year gift.

Becky is unwell with the bug that is going around so we did not see the family over the holiday although we did talk on the phone.  Mike is still suffering with his cold and cough. This bug really hangs around.  I remember I had it last year and it was a month before it really went.

Day after tomorrow we have the men coming to put in the cavity wall insulation.  I am not looking forward to it I can assure you.  It will be a good thing to have but as I hate loud noises, it is going to drive me around the bend for a few hours.  I shall have to stick some cotton wool in my ears or something.

Oh well, back to the grind.  Now I have to start putting all the ornaments back in place, I might alter some things around. They say a change is as good as a rest.

Have a good day my friends.