Researching Insignificant Mortals
My big brother has taken to researching our family tree and I must say is doing rather well at it. For someone who has never been overly interested with family affairs, I'm surprised by the excitement each new installment brings.
This morning in my email box were some photos of the grandad I have never met (and in fact never will as an earlier email brought his death certificate).
My grandad was originally called Douglas Maurice Wolff at a time when he fathered my dad, he cleared off shortly afterwards, changed his name to Paul Sheridan and did the same thing with another family. My brother recently met up with the daughter of this second family, enabling him to catch up with our new 'half aunty', weird.
Seems Paul Sheridan was a bit of a scoundrel and I wonder how many other lives he lived and half families there are out there.
Mark (my brother) also found out that he was a journalist and authored a few books. I managed to get hold of one, the "Penny Theatres of Victorian London" for my dad and he has enjoyed criticising it immensely.
Anyway this mornings photos show Paul Sheridan embracing an unknown woman on a beautiful boat and assorted pages from his passport. I can't imagine the amount of effort has gone into tracking down the life of this rather insignificant man and wonder how scandalous I would have to be for anyone to take a photo of my passport in the years to come?
You can take a look at my brothers progress with the family tree at his website.
And here are a couple of the photos:
Comments
I knew Paul Sheridan in the late Fifties through the sixies. May be able to fill in gaps.
Sincerely, Peter Norman
Posted by: Peter Norman | February 9, 2006 9:08 PM
And there's more, when he changed his name to Sheridan a woman at the same address also changed her name to Sheridan. Another family he has started.
It seems Alfred Ferdinand was indeed in Egypt working for the British Foreighn office as Vice-Consul
Posted by: Big Brother | June 8, 2004 12:02 PM