Tell me something cool one of your ancestors did

[JustOneLastThing]

Stolen this idea from Twitter, I don't really have anything of my own to share apart from my grandma is pretty bad ass, raising my Mum and Aunty by herself in the 60's, facing a ton of social stigma and hardship. She is a hard act to follow.

My grandfather owned a corner shop (Open All Hours style). One of the local boys who used to hang about once stole an apple from the display outside. My GF give him a right telling off. He never did it again. A few years later he was pretty famous - the lad was Eric Bartholemew, later known as Eric Morecambe!

My great grandad was an RAF pilot during the war and my great great grandad on the other side was called Harry Potter 😂 (don’t know if he flew a broom stick lol)

One relative invented the stomach pump & introduced the diesel tractor to North America.

Another was an friend of John Wesley & was fired for being a Methodist. His diary consists of mainly attending prayer meetings.

A Great Aunt was a Bletchley - only mentioned it us once the Robert Harris book came out. Parents persuaded her to visit again, be interviewed by the historians there & collect her medal before she died.

Another ran a Workhouse in Leeds.

Another relative helped revive the Helston Furry Dance after WW1 by helping institute the Children's Dance - if you've done it since you were seven, then it's normal.

One of mine (600 odd years ago) got so fed up with merchant ships being plundered by a particular pirate that he fitted out some ships and with a thousand soldiers went and caught said pirate.
He got made a baronet for his troubles.

My partner’s grandparents met while working in secrecy on Frank Whittle’s jet engine.

Nope. None of them ever came to much either side of the family! Grandpop tried his luck panning for gold but got nowhere!

My great Uncle Bernard accepted a samurai sword from the Japanese in Burma as they surrendered.

Said Sword was left with one of his brothers when he and his young family emigrated to the USA. When he wanted it back, it was "missing" aka sold 😠

A direct ancestor in the late 18th century was a merchant, ship owner, fur trader.... & a spy!!

He negotiated the release of 12000 British prisoners from Revolutionary France & spied on the French for the Spanish.

He then ran a fur trading company sending ships across the Atlantic for the British in competition with companies from countries such as Spain & Russia.
He had a Port named after him in Alaska.

He sadly then lost all his money & died in Debtors Jail in London in about 1818.....

A shepherdess named Floressa. And if I’ve got it right, Edward 1 and II.

One of my Great Uncles who is now 95 is an extremely clever man.
He left school at about 16 when ww2 broke out but studied the sciences at A Level & Degree level at evening classes while in the RAF.

After the war he got a job with the Mars factory in the North of England & became their chief Chemist.
He developed the Galaxy bar, Bounty bar & Topic bar.
He then became chief Chemist of Pedigree Petfoods which was also Mars.

He is now a multi millionaire with a mansion up North & a home abroad, when his wife died the chief executives of Mars from the U.S came to the funeral.

Sadly he neglected to keep up his relationship with my Nan, who was his only sister & who lived in a tiny 1 bedroom flat. When she died 3 years ago he was said by his sons to he devastated but it was far too late.
I've never met him or his family & my Mum hasn't seen him since the 1960s.

My Grandad joined the Communists in the early 1930s aged 18 / 19 because he was homeless & they gave him hot meals.
Then he would help to break up the meetings of Oswald Moseley's Fascist Blackshirts, & give them a good beating.

Not sure if it's cool (certainly not way back when) but I recently discovered that my maternal grandfather has 4 families (and probably only ever married one of the women concerned) This was in the early-mid 20th century and he lived in Germany where he had three of the children France (another two) and South America (not sure how many)!

Fought at Roukes Drift.

My DF joined the RAF in 1948. He was sent to Kenya. The flight he was on crash landed on arrival.

While he was there he went from Narobi to Monbassa on a Steam Train.
After that posting he travel on the HMS Windrush from England to Singapore in 1952.

What a way to see the world.

On Maternal side, one many times great grandfather survived Culloden. His Father, brothers and other family members did not.

I am going to Culloden for the first time in April.

One of my great-grandfathers was a Methodist minister and he wrote a whole series of books for chapel study groups. Each book was a series of slice-of-life short stories about a woman called Mary-Martha and her circle of friends. Each story illustrated a moral dilemma or important principle that the group could discuss.

He wrote absolutely loads of them - enough to fill a whole bookshop window with nothing but these books, which we have a family photo of somewhere. I'm a writer too and I often wonder if he'd be proud of me for following in his footsteps, or appalled by my lifelong atheism.

My Granddad was in the army and involved in the clean up after the Lynmouth flood disaster.

No great shakes in a lot of people's eyes but I love the place and am pretty proud he did that.