What is your deepest connection with the past?

[Dappy777]

My grandfather, who died when I was 21, was raised by an old aunt who was born in 1872. Possibly, when she was a kid, she met, or was in the same room as, someone born in the 1790s. She was born two years after Dickens died, and 57 years after the battle of Waterloo.

I once read a newspaper article in which the journalist said that his first assignment, as a young reporter, was to interview a lady who’d just turned 100. This was in the 1950s. That lady told him she could remember her grandfather telling her about fighting in Spain during the Napoleonic wars.

My oldest piece of jewellery is from 46BC

Love this thread! My mum remembers seeing Queen Mary when she was 4. My gran was born the year the Titanic sank. Not as impressive as other contributions I know!
I love you tube videos of 'Victorian teenagers ' i.e very old folk who were teens in Victoria's reign.fascinating!

@WishINeverPlantedMint- amazing!

I have blue eyes so my ancestor goes back 6000 plus yrs ago

I can't think of much for my family aside from being quite related to a viking dug up in Belfast thanks to my DNA testing. Apparently I also have less neanderthal DNA than 95% of people

Just yesterday I saw an old TV interview from a 102 year old man born in the 1850s. He was in his 30s when Jack the Ripper was active!

https://www.instagram.com/reels/Day8ZJXBvcb/

Fascinating thread!

Saint Oscar Romero now I think.
A brave man speaking out in defence of human rights.

My grandparents were handy for this. They were a generation older than those of my friends. They have lived through one world war (very handy for history homework! Their fathers had also served in WW1), four monarchs, and 52 Olympic Games. They both came from large families, often talked about how things were in their day- and crucially, kept a lot of newspaper clippings, photographs and other bits over the years. It's quite interesting when you go through the newspaper clippings! Oh, and there's an excellent pre-WW2 encyclopaedia that we are still learning things from.

My grandmother also seemed to have a lot of friends who had been born into the British Raj or what was then Rhodesia, so I would ask them about what growing up abroad was like (very different to rural England, from what I remember...).

fascinating topic.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/02/07/146534518/rasputin-was-my-neighbor-and-other-true-tales-of-time-travel

I bookmarked this when I read it years ago because I found it so fascinating (US stories but still). @Nincompoo I would love to own something that old. In fact that is something I want to do - buy myself something small that is very old (too much watching antique roadshow) but have no idea where to start.

My husband's grandmother was born in 1900 (I knew her well - lovely woman). Her grandfather was born in 1822 so would have been an adult during the Great Hunger/Irish Potato famine.

Same but mine was born in 1873. He was widowed and then married my decades younger grandmother. I didn’t get to meet him though as he was killed in an accident a few years later.

I knew an elderly lady who, when she was a young woman, nurses Thomas Hardy's second wife in her old age.

When I was volunteering on an archaeological dig I found a broken chert blade from the Neolithic period. It felt special to think I might be the first person to have seen/ handled it since the original owner lost it or threw it away.

I've also helped excavate a Roman cremation burial urn.

Not me, but the last pension payment relating to the American Civil War (1861-1865) was made in May 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett

Also, the last grandson of president John Tyler, who died in 1862, only died last year at the age of 96.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler

One of my grandfathers was born in the 1890s and grew up very poor in Bethnal Green in London. Recently one of my cousins unearthed part of a memoir he’d written about his childhood. It’s an amazingly vivid picture of his education, games he played, out in the streets a lot, how they passed the time at home…I felt as if my grandfather, who died nearly 50 years ago, was right there talking to me.

In later life, he had the urge to write, and consulted a vicar or similar who he trusted (he was a very religious man). My mother recalls that this man told him there was no point in trying to write because he wasn’t ‘educated’. So sad, as he clearly had a gift.

I remember my mother mentioning it ,its a shame shes no longer with us to ask more .But she came from central America she moved to California then the uk

My g g g grandmother was born 1801 and baptised in the same font that I was. My grandfather was born in 1882 and he cuddled me when I was little. His g grandmother overlapped him by a few years so I like to think that she cuddled him when he was a baby and that I am really just two cuddles away from her.

No famous links to my family that I know, except that some went to the USA around 1870 and one is reputed to have once encountered Billy the Kid. Would the dates fit?

My grandmother will have watched her father and brothers and husband go to vote before the law eventually allowed her to.

Lovely thread. Interesting, everyone.

My maternal grandfather was American and died when I was 4. I remember him telling me about Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Harry Houdini, both of whom he'd seen live. He also told me about his mother's recollections of the Civil War. The family were from the South.

I have a living relative who was born in the 1920s. He remembers rural life in Wales before the Second World War. His father fought in the First World War but never spoke of it. His favourite recollection is talking about the evacuees coming to the village with their “funny ways” and unable to speak Welsh. He became very close to one of them, a Jewish boy from London and stayed in touch for many years.

My grandad once told me that his dad fought in the boer war. They found his old uniform in the attic. Grandad would have been born around 1910.

My other grandad was in the middle east in the 1920s. I have his diaries, he was on national service and was a driver. He was in Egypt and saw Montgomery when he visited. He also claimed to have been at the tomb of King Tut but I think he made that up!