When I retired I had a dig into our family. I had four very interesting grandparents, all with a tough life .
Dad's dad lost his mother as a young boy and ran away from home and an evil step mother at 13. Lovely gentle kind man who shovelled coal into a furnace at a glass works. Had the touch of a pickpocket on the billiard table.
Dad's mum was orphaned at four and was brought up by her chain smoking, card playing seamstress maiden Aunt Lucy.
Mum's Dad was posted to Kent from Newcastle in the King's Royal Rifles in 1916 , married Gran and died in 1933 when she was carrying their ninth child.
The first thing I discovered was that his family had moved across from Ireland a generation before (Dunlavin, County Wicklow), then I saw their marriage certificate. They had married one month after my grandmother's 16th birthday , and three months after the birth of my uncle Clifford, their first born. I then discovered that my grandfather had never left Kent throughout the war, never seen combat service, so the family myth of him being a sniper and gassed as a hero was complete baloney.
I was then banned from doing any more work by my mother. Now she is gone, I may decide to start again.