Hello, and welcome to this blog which will gradually chart the story of my life, mainly the early years of it, along with (less self-indulgently) some of the history of my family and my in laws.
 
Why am I writing it? And why now?
 
Good questions.
 
I am writing because I have many memories, and have made lots of discoveries about my family, and I know that if I don’t preserve at least some of it in writing I will forget and will neglect to pass it on. It may be that the only people the least bit interested will be members of my immediate family, particularly my children and, in years to come, perhaps their children, but if nothing else, I will have catalogued things more clearly in my own mind.
 
Why now? Because I am at a point in my life where, my children having grown up, I have the time; because having just lost my mother in law I am conscious that with the exception of my one remaining aunt I now represent the senior generation of the family and I remember pestering my parents for stories of their youth – or pestering aunts and grandparents to ‘spill the beans’ on them – and the loss of each family member represents a loss of their family memories and knowledge.
 
Not that I plan to pop off just yet – although I am what could comfortably be described as middle-aged, most of my family on both sides, females especially – with the sad exception of my own mother – seem to be fairly long lived: most of my female relatives lived well into their eighties. But this is likely to be a long term project.
 
Why now? Also because although my interest in geneology was implanted many years ago, it is only in recent years (see above for ‘free of kids’ explanation) that I have had time to do some research, and the gift of an Ipad a couple of Christmasses ago led me to download the Ancestry app which very effectively does the work of looking up census information etc at a touch of a key, making the whole process so easy – until you go back past 1831, but that’s another story…
 
Before plunging into the family histories themselves, I have to recognise a debt to several familty memebrs who have at various times given me anecdotes, showed me photos, explained relationships and so on, and there are three in particular I should mention, in reverse order of gratitude (with great love and respect to them all):
 
My younger brother Kevin Blyth, who has done some research on the Blyth side of the family and also uncovered the mystery of our maternal grandmother’s birth….
 
My cousin Philip Blyth who took on existing information on the Blyths and – although one link has yet to be fully proven – has most probably traced the family back a couple more generations. He has tirelessly scrutinised old Norfolk parish records and has done the backbone of the work on the Hubbards, our paternal grandmother’s family.
 
And finally – but definitely most importantly – Percy Garrod, who sadly died only last year at the age of almost 103 – see what I mean about longevity? Among so many things that he did in his long life – I intend to devote a whole article to him at some point – he traced the Blyth family tree (his paternal grandmother was a Blyth, and I think he also worked on the other strands of his own lineage) back to the marriage of William Blyth (or Bly) to Mary Mayes on 24 October 1786. Without the benefit of the internet (he didn’t even have electricity!) that was no mean achievement, and his work provided a strong backbone for other members of the family to work on.
 
Percy was also my inspiration: it was poring over his diagrams with my father that sowed the seed of interest in me, and without him not only would I not have most of the information I started out with, but I may never have even had the idea to get started.
 
So this blog reflects the work done by the people above along with my efforts to confirm and support the knowledge given to me by others and to trace the other strands of my own family tree – my mother’s family primarily – along with my husband’s lineage, so that my own children will know from whence they came….