What's your favourite ancestor story?

[GulesMeansRed]

Mine isn't a direct ancestor, a distant great uncle on my mum's side. He grew up in a large family of about 10 children in the 1850s/60s in a very rural part of Scotland. He obviously decided he didn't want to be an ag lab like everyone else and joined the merchant navy aged 14. I have found him on records at ports in Sydney and Shanghai in the 1860s, the things he must have seen and experienced as a teenager, so different from his siblings.

The very BEST thing I found though was the captain's diaries included in the Liverpool, England, Crew Lists 1861-1919 collection on Ancestry, it is an account of the voyage full of people deserting, drunken cooks, people refusing to work and a grisly account of Joseph's death from some sort of tropical disease. The captain describes his burial at sea and gives the exact latitude/longitude at the time, somewhere in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar.

My parents are both descended from this guy, one parent from each wife (!!)

Joe Fry is an ancestor of mine. Not only a descendant of the Fry chocolate family but also a F1 driver with an unbroken F1 record. Though not really a record you want to hold I guess. He’s the only f1 race driver with a 100% record of a top ten finish. But that’s because he was killed after his first race!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Fry#:~:text=Joe%20set%20a%20number%20of,Freikaiserwagen%2C%20on%2027%20August%201938.

The diagram of who married whom in the twenty years around 1790 in the village where I was born is fascinating. Haven't yet managed to avoid a big loopy line denoting "same person"

I've got a loop where one woman is (roughly - I forget the exact degrees of relation) her own 4th cousin if you follow one loop and her own second cousin once removed via another one.

Quite a few sailors in my line, who are fun to follow by ships records - and they're also pretty good for having findable wills. One in the 1700s left all his money and property to his daughters with loads of caveats that it was for 'their own sole and personal use' and stipulations to ensure that their husbands or future husbands couldn't touch a farthing of it. I like him - giving 4 young women financial independence at a time when it was almost unheard of.

Two of my great grandmothers on my dad's side both had their last child at the age of 55. One was a money lender and I have letters from the 1930's from debtors,apologising for being unable to pay or sending payments,from what people who remember her say,she wasn't someone whom you'd mess with.

Most of my ancestors were either English Romany or Irish horse dealers.The Irish ones came backwards and forwards from Clare,bringing over horses for the British Army.
My Romany great great grandfather appeared in court countless times,for furious driving,allowing his horses to stray onto the highway,evading the Toll,ect and almost all of his sons followed in his footsteps. He was last in court two weeks before his death at 76. He died a wealthy man with a big house,stables for 26 horses,a carriage house and a lot of land. One of his sons was my great grandfather who bought the farm that we still own almost 100 years later.

One of my Victorian ancestors made it from cooper (barrel maker) to customs officer (tide waiter) he was the one who worked out duty due on goods brought in.

Another ancestor was a miner of at different times in his life coal, tin and iron ore. He died in India in 1900 where he’d gone to be a diamond miner.

I am descended from the Wasdale family of Wasdalehead. He left his wife well provided for as she was living off an annuity in the 1800s

My great great great (I think that’s the number of greats!) grandfather was a baron (lots of them) in France crest was 3 swans on a lake and their surname refers to this. They were vignerons (wine). Changed surname slightly in order to avoid the Guillotine. Relation then served as courier under all 3 Napoleons, went to Russian front and returned from it and got medal and certificate for doing it which my mum has. He then rowed Marquis of Bristols son back to England from France where he’d been killed and for doing this was set up for life with a house etc. sadly his French wife who came over was disliked by English as common then and she killers herself with a knife. We have the death certificate. We are related from his second English wife. There’s talk of a son or someone of his murdering someone in self defence (saw someone trying to kill him in a mirror?) and we are said to have the knife/dagger. We have sort of interesting info re Germany too but not as fascinating as this! My grandad did say once he was in Paris and saw a watchmakers sign with the surname which is unusual for a french one.