Family History Focus on Family Traits

Family Traits
Looking at old black and white photographs of your ancestors could tell you who you inherited your facial features from, possibly, if you got your height from your father’s ancestors or your mother’s line.

War Service Records
Delving into War Service Records of, say, your great grandfather, can furnish you with a physical description of your relative. His height, weight, eye and hair colour, even his skin type were all noted at his medical. So did you inherit great grandfather’s hazel eyes and brown hair?

Hobbies, Pastimes and Skills
My father-in-law is an extremely talented woodturner. He started this hobby several years ago, for no other reason than wanting to try it. Since then he has sold many pieces that he has hand crafted. Firstly, at car boot sales and craft fairs, and, more recently, through shops, galleries and websites. I had not given much thought to where he acquired his talent until I thought about the things we inherit from our families.
My own daughter has a talent for mathematics; she finds the most complex formula fairly easy. This is a skill she inherited from my mother. My mum, when told that my elder brother achieved 82% in a maths exam, wondered how he had managed to drop 18% of his mark. However, this fact could not be found on any records and has been passed down as a family story. My mother did not pursue a job in maths, having been offered a place at university, she was informed by her parents, that as the second eldest child of eight (originally nine but one child did not survive into adulthood) the family could not afford her to attend university (at that time, the preserve of the rich) and she had to leave school and contribute to the family’s finances.
So where did my father in law acquire his skills? Does he have a woodturner in his ancestry? Well, actually, no he doesn’t. His great grandfather, however, was a granite stone polisher, firstly in St Fergus, Banffshire and then in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, at a time when Aberdeen and Peterhead granite was being shipped all over the world. The Red Peterhead granite is used for ornamental construction (St John’s College Chapel Pillars) and the Blue Peterhead granite was used for decorative building and ornamental work (used in the Prince Albert Mausoleum). The trade of a granite stone polisher was highly skilled and shows someone who is good with “their hands”. So whilst not, strictly, the same skill, my father-in-law is definitely good with his hands and that talent seems to originate from his great grandfather. Who knows, maybe if my father-in-law had chosen to try granite polishing as a hobby, he may have been selling granite items at craft fairs.