Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ddraig-Goch not 100 % Welsh!!!!

Quite possibly not very Welsh! My paternal family ( the Fallows) are all from Cheshire, around Hazel Grove, Manchester, where they worked for the Christie Hatting Company ( now a museum of the Hatters Trade) - we have a few of their tools in the family including some natty scissors which are curved - for cutting out felt. The Harrington side of the family were railway people, in fact a relative one Elvidge Harrington was killed in a rail accident around the turn of the 20th Century. So an English paternal family pretty well 100%, with my father brought up in Manchester and Oxford before coming to Wales when his father moved with the Post Office (telecom side) to Cardiff just before the 2nd World War.
My maternal side the Grindle's also have a fascinating history having moved from the Somerset coalfield around Radstock, to the Forest of Dean mines around the 1930's, before moving again to the South Wales coalfield, which was sucking in hundreds of miners at the time. But I always knew that my maternal grandfather was born in the USA. I can just about remember him - he died when I was around 5 years old ( a long time ago!), a typical flat capped( Welsh) miner of the time. We knew that he was originally from somewhere in Ohio but never really where, until now. My uncle has had for years a copy of the probate certificate with Grandfather's birth details on, and here they are :

John Grindle ( John being my middle name!)
Born - Washingtonville, Columbiana County Ohio
April 5th 1884
To - Thomas Grindle and Eliza Cooper

There you have it - I don't really know if it makes me - English (uggh!), or American? (50:50) The only way that I can truly tell is when the Rugby 5 nations and World Cup come around - then.... definitely Welsh...... I wonder if I could go for triple nationality by parentage?

I absolutely love finding out about where we have come from, and how families are affected to a greater or lesser degree by larger socio economic pressures in their lives......

3 comments:

Durff said...

Paul you are a hybrid - unique in every way!

Anonymous said...

I pride myself on being a kiwi but no one is entirely one thing or another. Mum's great, great grandmother was the first pakeha (person of European descent) girl to be born in Nelson. Local Maori helped deliver her as there were no hosiptals! She was born in a Maori whare on the side of a swamp 200m away from where I now live.

Father was born in Londonderry and ran away to sea when he was 17- travelled most ports around the globe but jumped ship on arrival in New Zealand and waited for his ship to leave port. He then fell in love with NZ and mother and the rest his history!

I would love to go his house in bogside Londonderry to stand where he once stood- one day- maybe!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely part of the world is Hazel Grove! ;-)

A dear friend

It seems very apt to be writing this blog post in tribute to a dear, dear friend. The world has lost a true global educational  IT innovator...