Well, such fun it was to make time travel pictures for both my daughterx, the dark and the fair, and how well this worked out for them, with beautiful artistic portrayals manifesting. Thank you Myheritage, I so love it. My daughters were as divas with their precious unquique beauty, as art. So this I was long involved in. Viking Rosina Indian Rosina, as is half of her genetics via her father. Sisters down through the ages. It's such a delight for me to have these pictures which show so beautifully these girls I have brought into the world. And it's so that for genealogical purposes I could well use all our pictures as representative of the ancestresses.
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I was inspired to work on the genealogy of Boris Johnson, which I had begun at an earlier date and which it seemed now apt to elaborate on. In patriarchal descent Boris is a Turkish Kemal and not really a Johnson as such. Looking further back, his male line had sprung from the union of a Turkish villager and a Circassian slave. It was their son, Ali Kemal, who married a Swiss English girl, Winifred Brun. Ali's end was met when he was lynched and hung by a rowdy Turkish mob, some element to this being revenge for his outspokenness against the crime of the Armenian massacres, such perpetrators having now aligned to the revolutionary Kemalists. Ali had accused the Ittihadist chieftains for being authors of the massacre and had relentlessly demanded their prosecution and punishment. He called the Armenian massacre 'a crime before which the world shudders'. He was marked for plenty more than his stance on what had happened to the Armenians, being also a liberal pro-Britisher, outspoken journalist against nationalism, and friend of the last sultan. For a while he had been the countries interior minister. All was changing for Turkey at this time, departing an Ottoman multi ethnic past, which was a home to so many Greeks, Jews and Armenians, to becoming a land simply of Turks and Islam. A newspaper article in the Sphere at that time writes; 'Arrests have been made by the Kemalists of moderate Turks. The Kemalists have their black lists. On one Saturday evening, six men, civilians, entered the Circle D'Orient, the Diplomatic club in Constantinople, and asked for Ali Kemal, a former Turkish minister of the interior, who was later editor of the Peyam Sabah, the Morning News, and a well known Turkish journalist, who has consistently denounced the policy of the Kemalists in his articles and in his speech. He was not in the club at the time, but the six men waited for him in an alcove outside. At last he drove up, paid off his driver, and was about to enter the building when the men approached him. Pluckily he withdrew his revolver, only to find that each of the six had already drawn their arms on him. He was taken off in a motor car at once, and put into a boat on the Bosphorous. He was taken to Ismidt, half lynched by a crowd of fanatics, then hanged'. Elsewhere it is reported in more detail that Ali was lynched by a mob with sticks, stones and knives and then hung from a tree. An epitaph put across his chest read 'Artin Kemal', Artin being an Armenian name and a deliberate mocking of his standing up for these people. It was Ali's son, Osman Wilfred Kemal, born in England and there raised by his English granny, his mother having succumbed to puerperal fever after his birth, who adopted his grandmother Brun's maiden name Johnson, more appropriate for life in England: from Osman Wilfred Kemal to Wilfred Johnson; he being the grandfather of Boris, alias Alexander Boris De Pfeffle Johnson. Rather than Boris Kemal. 1911 Census for Wimbledon showing Osman Wilfred Kemal as a little boy living with his big sister Selma and Granny Brun: 18 Bernard Gardens Wilfred Kemal, age 1 and a half, born Bournemouth (English) Selma Kemal, sister, age 5, born Cairo, Egypt (English) Margaret Brun Johnson, grandmother, age 54, married for 30 years and had 4 children, 3 of whom have died, born East Witton, Yorkshire Florence Tanner, child nurse, age 30, born Ockham, Surrey Amy Tunny, domestic servant, age 30, born Southwark The De Pfeffle part to Boris's name reveals aristocratic ancestry, and further beyond that even royal ancestry, Osman Wilfred Kemal-Johnson having married Irene Williams, granddaughter of Baron and Baroness De Pfeffle who had lived in Versailles at the Pavilion du Barry. Irene's mother, Marie Louise de Pfeffle, would often compete as a teenager in lawn tennis and ping pong and here is one of many old newspaper references to the latter: 1902 Pall Mall Gazette "Ping pong, which broke out recently in Paris now claims many victims. The first tournament has been held by the tennis club and resulted in the lady championships falling to Mlles Yvonne and Marie Louise du Pfeffel. The ladies paper, Femina, which publishes their portraits, also gives an enthusiastic account fo the game for the benefit of those people who do not play it." Marie Louise married her English amour Stanley Fred Williams in Versailles: 1906 The Queen, The Ladies Newspaper "Fashionable Marriages" "A pretty wedding which took place at Versailles on January 21st (1906) was that of Mr Stanley Fred Williams, eldest son of Mr frederick G Williams, of Upper Norwood, to Mlle Marie Louise, daughter of Baron and Baroness de Pfeffel, Pavilion du Barry, Versailles. The Rev J W Browne, English chaplain of St Marks church, Versailles, performed the ceremony. The bride looked very charming in her gown of white crepe de chine with Irish point lace and a wreath of orange blossom. The reception was held at the Pavillion du Barry, and later the bride and bridgrom left for Beaulieu for their honeymoon, after which they will return to make their home in Shortlands, Kent." It was Baron de Pfeffle's mother Carolina who had royal blood, she being the illegitimate daughter of an actress Frederika Port and Prince Paul Von Wurttemburg. Boris's ethnic variety continues in his children, by his wife Marina, who are part Indian, their mother being half Punjabi Sikh.
Boris and Marina are separated, though married still, and he has taken up with a woman younger than him, having moved her into his prime ministerial residence. Boris's ancestry, as I interestingly now have seen, despite first appearances, is most colourful and not all traditionally British. Ross Davenport, yet again visiting me in France, whose genealogy I had formerly researched, asked me to put all that I had discovered for him onto his memory stick. I had not looked at any genealogy for so long, but now, on opening up Ross's chart, I was intrigued to see what more I could discover for his tree. Thus I became absorbed in uncovering details of his 5x great grandfather William Davenport's prosecution for counterfeiting money, a sorry tale in which he protested his innocence, but for which he was tearfully separated from his 'pretty' wife and six children, one being just a baby, for a sentence of seven years transportation. A number of counterfeiters were sentenced on that same day, one even being sentenced to death, it being his second time caught for such a demeanour. This was more of interest to share then with Ross's mother, who is keen to know all such things. She'd already had such a shock to hear she had Indian ancestry, so much so that on being told of this she'd fallen off her chair. British families had so covered up such history from younger family members. I worked more on eleborating Ross's genealogy chart, finding more detail of the money counterfeit case. These crimes had been exposed on account of a betrayal of 'friendship', an Irishman, who long had been a customer, trapping these money userers who had been such a vital help to him in the past. This he did to wriggle out of consequences for him, for his daughter having been caught with a fake coin back in Ireland, which she had taken from his own coat pocket. This coin was part of a stash he'd brought back from one of his trips to Birmingham, not specifically from Ross's ancestor, but from another well known userer. It was for this that the Irishman was set on a mission, with an Irish policeman in disguise, to bring them all down. And Ross, coincidentally, had just been reading a story book about counterfeiting which he had found most interesting.
![]() Settling at the kitchen table with my builder Ross I began to unravel his genealogy, and he was excitingly messaging his mother with this and that which I was discovering. I took the project to bed with me, staying up into the early hours in this detective work I so love. Ross has a thread of Anglo-Indian ancestry in there. It was some days later, that I was unravelling more of Ross's ancestry in my old passion for genealogy. It was so interesting what I was discovering, this India connection, of British soldiers falling for the pretty half-caste girls. His ancestor George Jenkins not only fought to suppress the Indian mutiny, saving the besieged Europeans of Saugar, but he was then off to fight the Maori's in New Zealand, a place his descendants would end up living in. His medal for that time was auctioned back in 2000, sold to someone or other for £150. New Zealand was his last campaign. A year after that, his widowed wife back in India was marrying another man. It was George's daughter, Amelia, born in Bangalore, who caught the heart of Walter Perry, who'd been fighting in Afghanistan. He brought her back to England, where their son, also named Walter, married a Topliss girl descended from refugee French Huguenots. So plenty of interest is there. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. ![]() My daughters friend, Tom, is an interesting mix, looking very English, but being, like her, part Indian, and even part Singaporean (by an illegitimacy), part Polish, English naturally, and some Spanish. The exotic descendance is from his mother, whose Indian ancestor was a princess, apparently this being written of in William Dalrymple's 'White Moghuls'. This princess had married to a General Palmer, who had set up the first Indian restaurant in London, Veeraswamy's. Wow! What interesting genealogy. And this his mother had a phone conversation with me about. General Palmer had three wives altogether, the first having died in childbirth, and the family reunions make a point of distinguishing who is from which wife. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Being once more curious about the Indian ancestry of my friend, Angus, I researched an update for him, of Cullens and Van Serens, a colonial breed of many generations, who were totally at home in India. I got so much further back with this than previously I had.
I soon enough moved on from Angus's family tree to embellishing my own, looking more into my Welsh origins. I looked at my branch of the Rosser family who lived in Llangattock, Llanelli, Llanthony, and LLantilio Pertholey, all those double 'll's', who latterly farmed at Upper Triley Farm on 190 acres of land, and who intermarried with the Harrison's of Llanthony. In this I became totally absorbed, as well as with my Thomas's and Morgan's, boat builders of Govilon and Wonastowe, those that passed on their long life gene that my Pop benefited from. I'm doing some work on Akila's genealogy. She has some illustrious ancestors, the Drummond-Hay's, as well as a long Indian colonial connection, India all over, and a tea plantation, very interesting. In researching Akila's Anglo Indian link, I founf her ancestor George Gascoyne, band leader in the 6th Madras Native Infantry and upon retirement a clerk in the church of St John for the Anglo Indian community in Bangalore. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. My friend Fanny's genealogy, which I was researching, linked to that of another old pal, Michael Poynder, and even to the writer William Dalrymple. This was just about the most interesting tree I had looked at so far. It was crazy, with its anglo-Indian roots, including a chevallier lover to Marie Antionette, and a man who was said to be the worst liar in India, whose gin pickled dead body burst out of its barrel when his wife was trying to ship it back to England, freaking her out so badly that she died from the fright. The tree included the stunningly beautiful Pattle sisters, and then further along, characters from the Bloomsbury Set, including one fellow Bunny, who on seeing his gay lovers baby, said he would marry her one day, and indeed did... what a family.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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