Tag: family

Meet the Ancestors

June 16, 2026

I have finally got around to sorting through some of the photos we inherited from my mother and constructing a family tree. This is an interesting process.

Here we have my eight great-grandparents. These people, therefore, represent the set of genes from which mine are a random selection. Two of them lived long enough for me to have known them when I was a child – Fred Hankins, my father’s father’s father, and Susan Plumb, my mother’s mother’s mother.

I wish I knew more about these people, but there are already too many bits of information to mention here. I’ll just say that Annie Magnus looks like a robust lady, and my word she must have been. Starting when she was seventeen, she gave birth in 1899, 1900, 1903, 1905, 1907, 1909 (my grandfather), 1910, 1911, 1913, 1915 and 1918.

Generations

August 22, 2022

Here’s a picture I came across recently that shows four generations: me, my father, grandfather and great-grandfather (who lived a few years more, so that I have some memories of him). At the time, we could have done a female equivalent, ie my sister, our mother, our grandmother and great-grandmother, but I don’t think that happened. When I was a little older than I am in the picture, I suggested with childish logic that my father’s father’s father could marry my mother’s mother’s mother. ‘Well, tell her I’m ready’ he said.

On the Tiles

August 23, 2020

Not really DelftWith the fresh energy I seem to be getting  (Thanks, Vedolizumab!) I finished my little project of portraits of my family on ‘Delft tiles’. Not really tiles at all, of course. These are 15cm blocks of pine on which I have painted a square of gesso and then had at it with the blue acrylics. No-one would suppose that these are actual tiles in wooden frames, but they sort of harmonise with the real ones in the kitchen.

They are actually a bit inconsistent in terms of time. The one of Elizabeth (bottom left) is based on a photograph from a few years ago. whereas my one is me after shaving off the Corona ‘stache at the beginning of September.