Scrolling Back

Scrolling Back - Family History

The story goes that my Grandmother, Ethel Minnie Blaker - known as Min - was on the train on her way to begin training as a nurse, when my Grandfather Fred went to see her off.

Now, I don't know what Fred said or did, but Min never went off to learn nursing.  She got off the train, Fred took her luggage, and in 1902 they were married in Shimla.  Ethel (Aunty Madge) was born in 1903,  Cyril (Uncle Buck) in 1904 and thirteen years later my father arrived.

Min was twelfth of sixteen children, ten of whom survived infancy.  Her Grandfather, Henry Blaker, had gone out to India in 1846 with his wife and two small sons.  Her father, Richard, was a Captain in the Indian Service Medical Department.






Fred's Grandfather had also gone to India in the 1840's - he was a Sergeant with the 9th Lancers of Cawnpore at the time of his marriage in 1845.

I'm guessing that the two families must have known each other well, as Fred's oldest sister married Min's oldest brother!

There seems to be Buckner/Blaker family history all over India - and this time next week we will have arrived in Calcutta to start tracing a few footsteps.  I can't quite believe it.
                                                                                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Starting Point

"There is a little quirk of the Nepalese people: if asked where is such and such a place they would point with their chin - 'over there'; if further they would say 'over the hill'; if longer 'over many hills' - always pointing with the chin".
These are the words of my father, Derek Buckner, when recalling his childhood in India.  They seemed like an appropriate starting point for this blog, and for its title, as I will certainly be travelling a long way, over many hills.
The plan is to visit some of the places that my father knew as a child, maybe even to identify the exact locations of some of the photographs I have: the picnic on the banks of the Rungpo River; the park with the Victorian bandstand where he went onto the half-built lake in an old tin bathtub, towing a hen on a makeshift crate, who was teaching her 'brood' of goslings how to swim...

I shall be travelling over many hills, with my father's photographs and stories in my suitcase, seeing the world through his eyes - and sharing the experience in this blog.