Scotland

My maternal grandfather was born in Glasgow in 1920 but headed south to Lancashire upon his return from the Far East in World War 2 to settle in Bolton. I've never really traced his family - although he had three half brothers, I had met one of them once (at my grandad's fuenral) and spoken to another on the phone once.

Then out of the blue I got a call from my great aunt, wife of one of these half brothers. She said she'd heard that I had done a family tree and could she have one for her husband (now 80!)?

So I wrote up a little story about my great grandmother, mother to the four brothers. And decided to invest a wee bit of cash in finding out soem more about the Scottish clan. I used ScotlandsPeople and found the marriages of my grandad's brothers and the births of their children - my mother's first cousins. I also went back a few generations. All for about £18.

It's grand to see that I carry the same given name as several direct male ancestors, and to see how my middle name came down to me.

If various illegitimate births had been legitimate, by rights I should have Scossa as a middle name!

Is age just a number?

Just discovered that my great grandmother's little brother, the wonderfully named Leonard Frank Silverton Walker (born 1897) married Martha Porter in 1926.

A few searches for her didn't find any relevant births or deaths.

Then a fellow researcher on www.genesreunited.co.uk checked the registers of Whaplode for me. Turns out Martha was 65 years old when she married the 29 year old Leonard. The census records of 1891 and 1901 suggest she was actually born in 1858.

So Leonard married a woman who was 39 years his senior...