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Story Index

   Name  Relationship to me   Where  1   Helen Margaret Ann Clark b 1924   My mother    2  Priscilla Isobel Wardle b 1884  My paternal grandmother    3   Lucy Annie Langthorn  b 1890   My maternal grandmother    4  Emily Kirby Newman b 1861  My great grandmother    5  Isabella Allan b 1859  My great grandmother    6  Annie Theel b 1864   My great grandmother    7   Ann King b 1865   My great grandmother    8   Catherine Hurst b 1833   My great great grandmother    9  Ann Nestor b 1835   My great great grandmother    10  Priscilla Bryan b 1837  My great great grandmother    11  Alicia Kirby b 1836  My great great grandmother    12  Maria Hunt b 1826  My great great grandmother    13   Ellen Read b 1844  My great great grandmother    14  Janet Sim b 1818  My great great grandmother    15  Ann Tregarthen b 1797  My great great great grandmother    16  Euphemia (Effie) Talbot b 1801  My great great great grandmother    17  Maria Esther Lavis b 1793  My great great great grandmother    18  

Why 20 Mothers?

I began writing short biographies of 20 of my female ancestors in 2015.   My aim was to write about my family history in a way that would be meaningful for my descendants - in terms of their interests and the ways they search for information. Family historians accumulate names, dates and places, going back and sideways as far as records will take them.   There comes a point when this all becomes a bit meaningless.   You want to understand their lives too, especially the ones who are your direct ancestors, because they are most likely to have had some kind of influence on who you are today. Hang on a second, you say, I never knew any of my great great grandparents, not even one of them. How could they possibly have made a difference to my life? They just handed down their genes, that’s all.   Well, the circumstances of their lives influenced those of their children, your great grandparents, which in turn… You get what I mean now, don’t you? One of my feistiest great great grandp
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