In my last blog - Lucas Beginnings – I traced my Lucas family back to 1630 and introduced my direct ancestor James Lucas (1747-?) who presents something of a genealogical mystery. I know he married a Quaker named Mary Delight, but there is no record of his marriage and no census records apart from his birth date. The explanation is that Quakers did not marry in church but often…
Do my Lucas family origins stretch all the way back to pre-Roman Italy? There is a theory that the surname Lucas originates from Lucania, a Greek colony occupying land between the heel and toes of southern Italy from about 500-001BC, before it was beaten up by the Romans and suffered a diaspora across the Mediterranean? The occurrence of Lucas - in differing forms in many European tongues - suggests…
In order to revisit Rannoch Moor I am obliged to tell an odd anecdote about my French Teacher, Hubert Riley, who was accidentally responsible for my escape from Wellington House, my detested first boarding school. My family had a social link to Hubert through his sister ‘Fluff” who was married to Arthur Brocklebank, a stockbroking client and close friend of my father’s. In August 1937, Hubert and my father…
“Bloggety” has assumed a patchwork quilt form devoid of chronological order so I shall resume the story of my childhood and continue with my education at boarding school. My principal problem with Wellington House, my first boarding school, derived of course from my separation from the new delights of Tanfield, the first family home of our own. Tanfield was our first family home. Although the strict division between…