Holding in my hot little hand

I have pictures of our newly connected cousins. There will be more but just this one will have to do for now

Let me introduce you to Kesha and her husband David with their oldest daughter T, daughter L. and youngest son D2. There is an eldest son D1 too. I am reluctant to name children on this open access intarwebby thingy.

Anyhow, Isn't this a fabulous picture and aren't we lucky to have such good looking relatives? I am so excited and can't wait to get an edition of the Gazette out to everyone because ...... wait for it ..... there ought to be a drum roll here

I have a copy of Bessie Hope's autobiography - yup, in my hot little hands as we speak. Well lying next to the keyboard really but you get the gist of it yeah?

I am delighted to tell you that she inherited the lying gene and I can't wait to share it with you all. There are ten handwritten pages and I intend transcribing them and serialising it in the gazette. I also have copies of the pictures from the scrap book - and now, perhaps we can get to the bottom of the picture of what looks like a football team. More of that in the gazette.

For now let's just sit and be thankful for this here intarwebby for connecting us to Kesha and her lovely family and bringing our strange and disfunctional family together.

Another newly connected Cousin

First a picture of being eight years old and living by the sea. Isn't that just wonderful? Seeing my Grandson Matthew thoroughly enjoying himself dashing in and out of the water, just amazing.

 Then we move on to Wednesday morning when we stopped in Morrisons in Rhyl for coffee and to say cheerio to Patricia and Ela. We spent Tuesday afternoon and evening with them and we simply never stopped talking. I am sure that Patricia was wondering why I kept on staring at her. It is because she looks so like Cousin Pam in Australia.

We came home from North Wales and I sat down on Saturday to go through the emails stacked up in my inbox. To my absolute delight there was a message from someone called Kesha Pugh. She says she is a 4xgreat granddaughter of Bessie Nathan. She has seen the scrapbook that Bessie Hope was given that belonged to Bessie Nathan and says she has lots of information about family stuff.

A pause while I connected the dots and she has to be descended from Alice and her daughter Pat. I don't think Alice had any other children but I am open to correction. If the number of greats is correct then Kesha has two more generations between her and Pat so that puts her on the same generation level as........................... my head hurts now ................. my great grand children Anwyn, Bleddyn and Alma. I hope for pictures.

Just before we went away I connected with Wendy Herlinge Krause who is descended from Harry Edward Lewis Holder. She was away from home when we connected and she will be bringing me up to speed with her family story and I hope for pictures.

Don't you all just love this family? Just when you think the tree is nearly sorted a new shoot appears and we haven't gone back that many generations yet. I must make a concerted effort to find stuff about the siblings of Bessie Nathan AND find out more about the Irish family connection and Charles John Guilfoyle.................... That should be really exciting LOL

Getting those stories collected

Ann, Cousin Sandy and Emily

We have all heard the "family stories". You know the ones about "OH Gran was an actress" or "we have a Spanish Jewess in our family" or even "Well Grandma Bessie was married about five times I think". The time has come for those little snippets of our history to be gathered together. I think I will be finding a way to get the PDF files of back issues of the Gibbon Gazette uploaded somewhere.
Do you remember that Cousin Colin gave us a website and we did diddley squat with it? UHhuh, well we could have had a place where we could dum put all such things and also upload pictures. Instead we all waited for someone else to do it. Seems like it is going to be me but some of you younger ones had better consider stepping up because I am 70 - nearly 71 and half of my first cousins are older!!!

In the mean time I will just say that Cousin Roxanne has connected us to a new member of our family. Descended from Bessie Hope Seymour and Harry Holder. There will be more details in the next Gazette. I'll just say that her name is Wendy and she lives in the Pacific North West.

What I need you all to do is to get out the old photographs and see if you can remember any stories that your parents told you about them. Then you contact me - email, messenger, facebook or even that old fashioned thing called the telephone. My email and my phone number are both on the back of the latest gazette.

So go on! What are you waiting for? you tell me and I'll write it.