I have received this story from Australia late 2004 about our Manx Family History, no doubt it will attract some criticism here. But here goes, I could not keep it to myself and sharing is the key !! on this site.

During fairly recent years some well-known family names have ceased to exist, due to the fact that, whereas the females in the family did marry, the males did not.

This happened in the case of the Goldie-Taubman family of the Nunnery, and some years previously with the Hughes-Games family.

Archdeacon Joshua Hughes-Games was Vice-Principal of King William's College and although he and his wife had seven children the family name has ceased, alas.

The most notable example possibly was the CHRISTIAN family of the Isle of Man and Cumberland - the family, which produced Edward Christian, the great William Christian (Illiam Dhone), and many succeeding generations well placed in politics and national life. This line ended in the early 1900s with an old bachelor Rev William Bell Christian MHK, of Milntown.

As the old gentleman's end drew near his domestic staff started preparing for the eventual removal of chattels and the closing down of the big house. A housemaid spent some days seeking out old papers from chests, trunks, bookcases, cupboards attics, and the library. These papers consisted of Royal Commissions and Warrants from the great Earl of Derby's time, Court and Parliamentary Orders, family records, diaries, thousands of letters, account books and so on - papers going back over several centuries.
At the end of her search the housemaid piled the lot in the back yard and put a match to them.

This must go down in Manx history as perhaps the greatest act of unintentional vandalism on record - hundreds of years of history" gone like a puff".

Reproduced from "The Spokesman" - a Methodist News Reel and Log, by kind
Permission of the Editor, Mr J S McLean, Baldrine, Isle of Man.

www.kneen.com ....Brian