Ancestors

Dad recently showed me some old family photos from long ago. I think they might explain my genes, as several of the ladies were heavy. Most of the men seem to have been about average size. We don't have many pictures, but here are a few of them.

The first is my Great Great Grandmother on Mom's side. She was called Anne and there's a photo of her when she was 11.

This is Anne taken in 1919 when she was 30.

She had a daughter called Ella, who married a guy called Schmidt, but we don't know his first name right now. They had two daughters called Anne and Jane, and several sons. This Anne was Mom's mother, my Grandmother.

Here's Ella, aged 10.

And here's Ella aged about 30 with her Mom, Anne.

Anne seems to have lost some weight by then.

On Dad's side his father, my Grandfather, married Rebecca, who was the daughter of Geraldine, my Great-Grandmother. She died in 2003 aged 90, and I remember meeting her. I was 11 when she died. She was tall and quite slim then, but she had been quite heavy when she was younger. She used to go Tut-Tut every time she saw me getting bigger.... She had a sister called May who was 5 years younger than her. May was very fat and weighed 300 lbs when she was 8. She had a 64" waist then! That's much bigger than I was at that age!

That's May aged 8. She looks lovely! She died in 1952, probably of a heart attack. She was only 34 :( Great Grandmother told us that May was a jolly lady and was always hungry! She didn't remember what May weighed as an adult, but she had a job to move around and went purple in the face if she did too much. She loved to eat bread and dripping - that's the fat that comes out of roast meat when its cooking. I guess they knew less about healthy eating back then! Dad thinks she probably had high blood pressure. I only weighed about 135 lbs when I was 8!

This is me when I was 8. I looked quite cute back then LOL!


So I guess that's where the genes came from - heavy ladies on both Dad's and Mom's side.

Barkerville

Dad took us (Mom and me) to Barkerville in April for Mom's birthday. Its an awesome place, an old prospecting town where gold prospectors lived and its full of old preserved buildings. Now there are guys acting like the original people so you can see a real blacksmith making things and a photographer with a real old fashioned camera with a big black cloth. Its soooo cool, we stayed there all day!

This is the old church. There was a minister preaching in it! He was an actor really - he had a big beard!

 

These two are of the photographer's shop. There's the old camera with a black cloth on it so they could see the picture and loads of chemicals.

Two views of the school room. There's only one room for all the kids!

 This was a cool stage coach! It was quite noisy but looked great! I think it must have been very bumpy and I don't think I would fit in it easily. I'm so glad we have cars now!

The blacksmith shop. He had a real fire going and was making things for people to buy!