If on-line archive sites such as ‘Ancestry’ are anything to go by, a great many people are interested in their family histories; and yet, when you ask someone how much they know about their ancestors you find that many know very little and you often get the same response .. “I wish that I had asked the old folks, like grandma, when they were still around”.
Well, to some degree, I was lucky, because I have been able to trace my father’s family back as far as 1635, but I’ve not had much luck with my mother’s family.
That is until I remembered that when I was a kid my ‘gran’, who was born in 1882, used to tell me (amongst other tales) that I had Spanish blood running through my veins because her grandmother (1830-1899) had told her that her father (my granny’s great grandfather) had been a soldier who met and married (?) a Spanish girl when he was fighting in Spain.
Which means that they met during the Napoleonic Wars, as the ‘Peninsular War’ (1807-1814) was the conflict at that time when British troops were fighting against the French in Spain: and, much to my surprise I found my great-great-great-grandfather’s fairly uncommon name in various National Archive military records, and .. Yes! .. he was at the Battle of Salamanca in 1812 and served in a light dragoon regiment.
Now here comes the interesting part, for I also checked other army records, and found his name on a Muster Roll for Light Dragoons together with the name of another one of my great-great-great- granddads: which means that, a little later, the son of one of these ‘comrades in arms’ married the daughter of the other. Result ? …
… My granny’s granny !
bigjohn 
