Ruth A. Symes

Ruth A. Symes

Published: Your Family Tree Magazine, August 2006

Excerpt begins

I have known this old Lancashire washing song ever since I was a child.

It was passed down to me by my mother who told me that my great-grandmother, Mary Wilkinson (nee Knowles), had taught it to her when she was very young.

For a long time, this song, and another ditty¹ about washing were the only bits of evidence I had about Mary and I didn’t think of them as being very important. It is only recently that I have put them together with something my grandfather (Mary’s son) once said. As he sat in the nursing home where he spent his final months, he smelt the tang of carbolic soap and was suddenly taken back to his childhood.

Rather embarrassedly, and with some bitterness, he confessed that his mother used to ‘take in washing,’ whilst his father, an errant miner, disappeared on a whim to America to try to make his fortune on the railroads².

Excerpt ends

Technorati Tags: america, cleaning, domestic service, family, family history, family tree, father, geneaology, grandfather, household, lancashire, miners, mining, mother

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~~Dictionary~~
1 ditty
Definitions

1. an especially simple and unaffected song

Pronounciation: ˈdi-tē
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
Etymology: Middle English ditee, from Anglo-French dité story, song, from past participle of diter to compose, from Latin dictare to dictate, compose

2 railroads
Definitions

1. a permanent road having a line of rails fixed to ties and laid on a roadbed and providing a track for cars or equipment drawn by locomotives or propelled by self-contained motors
2. such a road and its assets constituting a single property

Pronounciation: ˈrāl-ˌrōd, ˈrel-; ˈre-ˌrōd
Function: noun
Date: 1825