Ancestral amusement

[vanessarama]

It's Family History Month in Australia, and I have just come across a family of distant Victorian/Edwardian cousins who I'm not sure whether to (metaphorically) applaud or slap. Their surname was Aris, and they named almost all their children with double-A names: Albert Alfred, Arthur Alexander, Amelia Adelaide, Agnes Alexandra, Augustus Archibald, Arnold Adolphus and Algernon Aubrey. The only exceptions were the eldest child (Annie Eliza) and the youngest (Francis John)

So nearly all their kids had the initials AAA. Monogrammed hankies must have been tough to sort out in that household :)

I have also discovered a baby who could not possibly be her father's biological child (he was fighting in WW1 and did not have any leave in the year she was conceived) and a family line who were nearly all Bad Lots - the entire family, at least the male contingent, was constantly in trouble for drunkenness, poaching and fighting. And then there's the man who barely three months after his wife was buried married his wife's much older sister. Family scandals au-go-go!