Friday Five (#??)

[miss_grimwood]

Ok so it may have been a few months since I was last online at the right time to answer the friday five and it feels like fate because the theme is pretty relevant to me right now

1. How far back can you trace your family tree?
I'm currently working on my family tree again, and the furthest I've got as of right now is my 5th great-grandparents according to ancestry. Early 19th century

2. What is the most interesting (or strange) thing you've heard about one of your relatives?
My paternal great-great grandmother was arrested 12 times and imprisoned twice for drunkenness, which was not particularly surprising given the current generations, but we were surprised that it was from my nana's side and not my grandad's

3. How do you feel about legacy names like John Henry Smith IV or naming children after other relatives?
In theory I like it and I think its very sweet. Especially middle names honouring grandparents. That being said, it's a NIGHTMARE when it comes to finding people on ancestry

4. Would you consider yourself and/or your family to be traditional?
I do think traditional can be a bit of a loaded word in some cases. But in a way, yes. generally through the lines and going on to now, it's always been nuclear families, closeness to cousins, things like that. But half of my generation of cousins (on both sides) are queer now, so I imagine families will be at least a little different going forward. But then looking back into the family tree, there are a lot of step families and half siblings, back when that wasn't very common
5. What is one tradition you have passed on to your children and/or plan to pass on to them?
I don't particularly plan on having children of my own, but if I were to it would definitely be the big-ish family get togethers. My maternal side all gets together on the last sunday before christmas eve, and even though we're all adults now we still insist on it. In fact I think it even started specifically because the music charts used to come out on a sunday so we'd all stay at my granny's house to find out the christmas number one, but now that happens on a friday instead.

Comments

[miss_grimwood]

The spelling has truly been interesting! My nana still doesn't know if her Grandfather was William or Wilfred, and the rest of the family only knew him as Willie, which didn't narrow it down 😂

[tellshannon815]

And the other one that doesn't help is people going by their middle names - Dad was having trouble finding the line descending from his grandmother's son from his first marriage, under what he'd been told was the name he went by. (From what I understand, he knew my grandad's other siblings but not that one - he was surprised the day my aunt told him Grandad had this half brother, and that was something like 2014, but then remembered an incident from his teens where he'd been talking to his grandmother about some girl he'd met at a party while playing Spin the Bottle, and his grandmother had said "That's your cousin".) When he was trying to do the family tree, he looked into that branch but the Palfreyman branch of the family seemed to have vanished into thin air, and he put that down to his uncle going by a middle name.