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Longevity

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Grace Mary Purnell lived to be 103 years old.  She was a daughter, a sister, a nurse and a midwife.  She was a member of the British Red Cross and St. John Ambulance.  She was my great-grand aunt, one of my great grandmother's older sisters.  Grace was born 3 August 1877 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.  Oxford is the home of the oldest English speaking university in the world, and is known as the city of dreaming spires. Photo by Tejvan Pettinger (Flickr Creative Commons) Grace was the second child and oldest daughter born to William Purnell and Maria Frances Sykes, who had 9 children in all.  William was an outfitter and robe maker in Oxford.    In 1881 the family was living in Kingston Road, Park Town, which is a suburb in the north of Oxford.  In 1891 they had moved to Cowley, on the eastern edge of Oxford where Grace was in school.  In 1893 when Grace was 16, her youngest brother Robert Carey drowned at the age of 7.  In 1...
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Favourite Photo

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I am finally getting around to my second #52Ancestors post!  This week I would like to write about a favourite photo.  Actually, I find that photos are like my children, I can't have one favourite!  They all tell their own story, and they all evoke strong emotion for me, knowing that I carry a part of each person in the photo within me, even if I never had the chance to meet them. I have been lucky enough to have been given several old photos from different sources. I found this one very intriguing: I was given a copy of this photo over 30 years ago by my Aunt Margaret McKenzie, my mom's sister.  She in turn had received a copy of the photo from her uncle Charles McKenzie.  She didn't know who the women were, but I found the photo so interesting.  The room where the ladies are posing looks very Victorian; cluttered with ornaments, flowers, pictures, plants and draperies.  All of the women appear to be dressed in their best.  The ladies in th...
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52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - START!

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Welcome to my first family history blog post! I have accepted the challenge from blogger Amy Johnson Crow called 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. The goal is to write about a different ancestor each week for a full year. I love this idea because it will force me to look at each chosen ancestor through a new lens, perhaps seeing detail not noticed before, and hopefully leading me to new areas of research. The subject for the first week is START. I am choosing to write about the start of my research, which came about because of one person - my mother. My mom had questions about her family that inspired me to start my research 17 years ago. I always knew that my mom didn't know much about her grandparents as they had all passed away before she was born. As a result I had little to go on when i started my research. It was so exciting to find little bits here and there! I did everything on my own and learned as I went. My kids were very small when I started, so sometimes I would...
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