A letter from 1882

At the request of the daughters I’m writing a Blurb book about my life and times ie the olden days. To give it context I’ve put in family trees and photos of the ancestors. This is so interesting it might be a long time before I start on me. We can trace my father’s family through 9 generations and my mother’s 6. The letter above was written by my great-grandfather to one of his 26 children. Yes 26, 13 from each wife my Dad’s mum was the youngest. They were all born at Peelbraehope, an isolated shepherd’s house, gone now, where Keilder Forest now is.

Many of Willie’s sons left with their collie dogs and shepherd’s crooks to find a new life in New Zealand, Australia or Canada. In the 1970s a distant cousin visited from NZ where he owned a large sheep farm. The descendants of Willie who stayed in Scotland are still shepherds but work for large landowners.

I find this letter heart-breaking. He knew he’d never see his sons again. In some cases there was no further contact. The handwriting is beautiful.

On a lighter note, we had a good 5 mile tramp over the moors. The daughters have had a good day too. #2 isn’t being too strict about home schooling but she did send me a video of James, naked apart from socks, doing the 9am PE workout from the TV channel. In the afternoon they cycled 9 miles on the Waggonway. Ella and Nathaniel made dinosaur eggs and learned about icebergs melting. They did their questions about the olden days and decided school was much more fun for them than me.

I hope you are all in good spirits.