Family History Scrapbook

 

Along with researching my husband's Fiji/India roots, I am also working on stuff from my own family history. I won't bore you with all those details on this blog, but I was so excited about this one project I had to share.

My father is also a genealogist, and has been doing it for at least 25 years. He is the reason I got into it. So, for Father's Day, I made him a digital scrapbook of his genealogy. I only did 5 generations, because after that, information is a little sparse. I had the 10x10 inch book printed at Shutterfly (with an amazing 50% off deal). We don't have a lot of family photos, so I filled it with the actual records, including translations of everything not in English.

In the book I included what few family photos we have, identifying the people in the photos, family group sheets for his grandparents, immigration and naturalization information and papers, family trees that include siblings, census records, a timeline from 1800-1960, and a large 9 generation fan chart at the back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or So The Story Goes

In my inquiries to my husband and his family for more information, I have gotten a few interesting stories, and even fewer hard facts. One of the stories is about his Grandfather.
The story goes like this...
He is born in India (around 1900), gets married and has kids. All that normal stuff. Then somewhere along the way in the (late?) 1940's he gets accused of killing someone. We don't know if he really did or not, we think not. Instead of going directly to jail, he leaves his wife and kids and goes to Fiji to work on the sugar plantations. He keeps in touch with them a little over the next few years, but contact stops after a while.
In Fiji he meets a nice young girl, gets married and has another child (1950s). Polygamist? Yup. A few years later the young mom goes crazy (certifiably) and he takes care of the child with help from friends. Then when the child is a young teen he (the dad) dies (late 1960s?). She gets raised by aunties and uncles (family friends, not blood relations).
And what of the first wife and those kids in India? It is told they immigrated to England.
So, there is a chance that we have (half) aunts, uncles and/or cousins (of various degrees of separation) living in the UK.
Or so the story goes...