Further Down the Rabbit-hole

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I've been bending my brain on the family tree again this afternoon, after a customary break to untangle the synapses after the last session. I've returned to my father's mother's side: the Rudges. I have to report that the Tom Rudge who died in the early months of WWI, and who I identified as my Great-Uncle, is/was my second cousin, twice removed. I still find it difficult, even at nearly seventy myself, to get a grip on the hierarchy of cousinhood, but there we are. I've now made some inroads into my Great-Grandmother Prudence's antecedence, thanks to a couple of other family trees on Ancestry, that also, crucially, include the Australian connection; a key indicator of veracity.

Funnily enough, the further one digs into family history, the more confirmatory connections get thrown up as you go, and cross-referencing gets easier. However, the flip-side of that is the increasing complexity of the tree, and the mental gymnastics needed to get one's head around it all. Still, it keeps the old grey cells ticking over, and the background research is interesting in and of itself, resulting - natch - in the purchase of yet more books. I've learnt more about the Gallipoli campaign in the last few weeks than ever I did at school, which can't be bad in itself, can it? And there will be more to report on that topic and the Southall side of the family's involvement in it, to follow presently, as I unravel who went where and when...

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