Its a small world!

It really is a small world. Many of you may remember this post I did a few months ago....where I had posted some really really old family pics, photos about 70 plus years old which my mom dug up for me. Here are a couple which are relevant to this post I am writing...

This was my great great grandfather (mom's mom's dad), an eminent lawyer Manjeri Rama Iyer!

And these are my great grandparents (the couple standing in the back). In other words, the lady is my great grandmother, daughter of M. Rama Iyer in the picture above!

So imagine my surprise ( I really almost fell off the chair) when a few days ago I got this e mail from a person and this is what he said..."Hi there....I am "so and so" ! Guess we are related as Manjeri Rama Iyer is my great grandfather. It would be nice if you can mail me." WOWZERS!!! And then he sent me these 2 pics which showed.....

 My g.g. grandfather Manjeri Rama Iyer in the middle with my g. grandmother Rajalakshmi to his right, and this person's grandfather standing in the back row.

But of course, I remained cautious (too many weird people out there) and sent him a reply asking him to tell me who he was, and give me some family details. And so we emailed back and forth, him telling me how for years he has been searching for more info on his family, including making trips to his village in Kerela scouting for more info. Then, and this is really a clincher, he sent an attachment of a family tree he had come across on the web, which had some of his family info in it. And I WAS ON IT!!!

And soon the mystery was cleared up. His great grandfather/my great great grandfather are one and the same person. 

For you genealogy philes who can handle the intricacies - his grandfather and my great grandmother (the lady in the pic) are siblings. His father and my grandmother are first cousins......bottom line is he and my mom are second cousins!!!!

Isn't that really something? The power of the Internet and especially Facebook, never ceases to amaze me!

Two thousand names and counting.....

When I first heard about Patty's "A Thousand Words" idea for the month of May, I knew immediately what I wanted to post. A project that has been ongoing in our house for years now, about 39 years......yes, that's what happens when you have a geeky left brained "doggedly pursuing" kind of husband! 


It is OUR FAMILY TREE! 

He started this even before we got married when in the summer of 72' his great uncle came to live with them. An old rambling sort of uncle who went on and on about things that happened in the family, half the time that no one listened to, until one day my husband (then a mere 19 years old) asked about certain names of certain people. The "rambling uncle" shot off each and everyone's name and thus inadvertently planted the "family tree" seed in my husband's brain. 

So all through our married life, this document has emerged periodically and has often been the target of my ire - not because I was jealous of the time my husband spent on it, instead of me....no, because the darn thing which was growing longer each time, like Pinocchio's nose, was always a mess, its pages strewn around all over the pristine clean floors....

What was 4 pages when I met him in 76' - each sheet 12" x 18" - is now 50 sheets and counting. (To give you a sense of how big it is - if you have a room 50' x 75' big, the sheets will cover the entire floor area!!!!) Each marriage in the family brings with it not just the name of the bride or groom, but their entire family....so you can only imagine how big this tree has become. And I am resigned to the fact that it will never end and will continue to grow and - because more names = more sheets = more mess......always be my nemesis!

But all that aside, it has been a painstaking work in progress and I admire him for the tenacity and doggedness with which he continues to update it. Helpful friends and relatives have often suggested new software available that can update all this information easily, but he continues to do it the old fashioned way. Visiting relatives are all grilled and questioned, and they are all happy to oblige to help fill in the gaps in the tree, their stories peppered with funny stories about the ones they remembered....and these have dutifully been added to the tree alongside the name.

Now, as if all this wasn't enough, he has now decided to digitize this tree....into an excel spreadsheet. So manually, mind you, he has been transferring all the 2000 odd names from the tree to the xls. with 1100 rows and 16 columns! Once someone gets married, their name gets "hyperlinked in blue" which when clicked will take you to their married family's information.....quite a task!

Page 1, rows 6 to 22, columns A to F - where it all begins.....

Rows 523 to 552 - about half way through

Now here are some interesting observations we have made from researching 7 generations of families.....

1. Families are much smaller in size

2. Life span is pretty much the same as now....they all seemed to live healthy long lives. There were more cases of infant mortality though....

3. Very traditional womens' names like Bageerathi, Pacchanayaki and Seshambal are no longer popular. "Modern" families now name their kids Ananya, Sheila and Anita! Easier on the tongue and for the passport officials to pronounce!!!

4. There were a lot of adoptions - children being adopted or being brought up by foster parents, the power of the joint family

5. Women never worked, men had jobs like court lawyers, teachers, judges, tutors, schoolmasters etc, today a large percentage of women work, the men are engineers, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists

6. Going to Burma, the Middle East, Baghdad and UK to work was like going to the US today to study

So there you have it Patty! You asked for a thousand words, I gave you 2000 names!!!!