Hi Jean,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but I have been here there and everywhere recently.

The alert email to let me know of your recent post was sent to my spam box so did not see it until I was tidying up my computer.

Also, I really find this message board hard to navigate, especially when you have posts on different threads.

When they notify you there is a related post, it gives a post number, but I do not see any number when I go to the board.

It's probably just me, but it puts me off coming to the site as I hate to get frustrated.

Everything happened today - it kept rejecting my password. The other time it kept rejecting my post.

Family research is so time consuming especially
when you are trying to get beyond the time of
proper records - certificates and censuses.

I have to travel up to Northallerton next week to the record office to look at two parish records. I have got to the 1770's so far with Newton family.

Did I send you a photo of the Curpheys farm?

I told you my links to the Island come from my
grt.grt grandmother Jane Clarkson, whose mother was Isabella Kelly daughter of William
and Jane Kelly (nee Gick). Jane's mother and father was William Gick and Jane Moore of Cordeman.

I have now found that one of the Clarkson's was a British soldier in the American War of Indepndence who settled down in West Virgina, America. Amazing what you find out.

What is difficult is trying to see these ancesters
as they would be in their historical period - dress etc., and how plain and basic would have been their homes unless they were aristocracy or very upper middle class. But this middle class ( what I term, the buffer zone) did not start to emerge really until very late 18th century. as the Industrial Revolution began to
expand and create wealth.

Before that, you were mostly either one or the other, with a smal 'merchant' class inbetween.

When you dig deep into how their lives would have been, it makes you feel how lucky we are. I feel so sorry for their poor miserable lives - no electricity, no gas, no matches to light candles if they could afford them. No washing machine, TV or radio. Their only 'music 'would screetching kids from their huge families, often living in just two rooms - if they were lucky. Unlucky just one.

No wonder they drank so much. But they endured, otherwise we would not be here.
God bless 'em.