What Grandma Didn’t Want Me To Know!

The Speaker at our January meeting was Steve Manning, Chairman of the Peterborough & District F.H.S. His talk was entitled “What Grandmother didn’t want me to know, and other family stories.”
He talk included lots of pictures to accompany his many interesting stories, two of which I have included below.
A Canadian cousin mentioned in one email that her mum had an older sister who didn’t live with the family. Already aware of the parents’ marriage date and the birth dates of the previously known children, Steve realised there was something ‘a little wrong’ with this new piece of information. He eventually tracked down the older sister – who was in reality a half-sister – alive and well in Queensland, Australia!
It was Steve’s Great Uncle Ernest who was to blame for the title of his talk. On one occasion, some 40+ years ago, his uncle told of a relative who killed a man for molesting his wife in a pub. But he either didn’t know – or wouldn’t reveal – anything about the person involved. All Ern did say was the victim was his brother-in-law! Steve was very excited by this little bit of scandal and couldn’t wait to tell his Grandmother all about it. But she was not amused and responded angrily, ‘What did he want to tell you that for?’ Suffice to say, Steve was now ‘hooked’ on Family History – although he didn’t discover the sad truth about the real story for many, many years!
[Malcolm Bailey]