Key Family History

When I started researching my family history it was about my grandmother Bridget Florence Key (Florrie is pictured right in c.1936) that I was most interested.  She never met me and yet was the moral yardstick by which we were measured.  To all intents and purposes, Florrie was Irish, from Clonmel, Co Tipperary and have moved to England before the Second World War.

The family history trail has taken me all around the UK - Florrie was indeed born in Clonmel, but her father was a English soldier and his family are in fact from Staffordshire.

I have tracked them down to Stoke-on-Trent in the mid and late 19th Century and before that from mid Staffordshire, I think around Caverswall.

In many ways it is this branch of the family that I have found the most unsatisfactory and have been unable to get a clear picture and unable to find other collateral relatives - I have a few leads and need to follow them up very soon.

Principle memory sources have been Adrian Fordham (my father), Veronica Bareham (nee Fordham, my aunt), Alan Fordham (my uncle), John Shaw (my grandmothers cousin on her mother's side, now deceased), Uncle Arthur and Aunt Doreen (my grandmother's brother and sister-in-law, both now deceased) and several of my Dad's cousins (in particular Theresa, Maura and Rosemary).