Fàilte! (Welcome!)

Fàilte! (Welcome!)
This blog is the result of my ongoing research into the people, places and events that have shaped the Western Isles of Scotland and, in particular, the 'Siamese-twins' of Harris and Lewis.
My interest stems from the fact that my Grandfather was a Stornowegian and, until about four years ago, that was the sum total of my knowledge, both of him and of the land of his birth.
I cannot guarantee the accuracy of everything that I have written (not least because parts are, perhaps, pioneering) but I have done my best to check for any errors.
My family mainly lived along the shore of the Sound of Harris, from An-t-Ob and Srannda to Roghadal, but one family 'moved' to Direcleit in the Baighs...

©Copyright 2011 Peter Kerr All rights reserved

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Chart of George Bousfield Thomas's Ancestors

I hope this is readable! It shows little George, who died a few weeks before his sixth birthday, together with his parents, his aunts and uncles and his grandparents. His widowed paternal grandfather and widowed maternal grandmother had married in 1827 and some 14 years later his parents, now step-brother & sister, had been married. George was the only child, not only of this particular union but of all of the children of George Thomas and Priscella Frembly. I have been unable to confirm what became of George Howard Thomas and Ellen Dinah Thomas but, as I can find no trace of either of them following their births, I am reasonably certain that each of them died either prior to 1837 (when registration was introduced in England) or prior to the 1841 Census at the very latest.  George was born into a family that was no stranger to sorrow, his father had lost his own mother when he was 10, his mother had lost her own father when she was 2, and only two years after his birth his paternal grandfather died returning from charting the Northern Isles of Scotland; whilst within another two years his only remaining uncle was dead. George must have been a particular source of joy, not only to his parents but to his remaining aunts and grandmother, so his own death must have been all the more traumatic for the family, all the remaining members having moved to live quite closely together in Scotland. I am convinced that these circumstances help explain how it was that Fred & Fanny Thomas came to devote themselves with such passion and humanity to the people of Harris & Lewis...



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