Globe trotting

 In today's genealogical wanderings I discovered a most wonderful saga.

It began when an Irish widow and a Somerset widower had a drink or two together in their middle years in a corner of the world the other side from when they came.

His childhood sweetheart Esther had given birth to at least 10 children in 20 years and the youngest surviving child to 12 before she had considered her duty here on earth done when she left it.

One of those 10 children she gave birth to whilst voyaging to the new land (having left her oldest at home in the earth, with a toddler at her skirts and a curious girl of six).

That brand new creature was my great -great-grandmother.

But two years on from his wife's death, the majority of his daughters had married or were soon to do so, and with only the company of a teenager he found friends with a bottle.

That friend and he decided to cement such a beautiful relationship with vows.

For a time things went along. She too had older children. 

The Irish woman and the Somerset man had at least two more of their own. A boy and a girl.

Alas there are organs that do not do so well. (perhaps to do with the fallout from a love affair with the panacea for disappointment) The poor Irish woman succumbed to such a fate.

So distraught was he that at least one of their children was omitted from the death certificate a decade later. Or maybe his Jnr wasn't easily pinned down. 

There we news reports of behaviours that screamed intervention required for father and both of his surviving sons - one from each marriage.

He indeed hit the skids for a while and authorities deemed he was unable to competently care for the children so to an orphanage they went. (Obviously they were subsequently reunited as the son is mentioned in the obituary a decade later).

The girl who went to the orphanage never married a man named Smith (the Irish Catholic mother may have spun in her grave) but she took on his name and gave him a half dozen children.

One of whom was born on New Year's Eve 1925 with a movie star's name.

She married a Yankee soldier and took him back to Idaho - or Illinois? Maybe Indiana or Iowa - one of those vowel starting places over there.

Because we enter the US realm with this search, we get to see yearbook photos of similar named people from similar named places. And because they have a whole heap of extra people over there to here, there are a lot of yearbook photos.

The daughter of the movie-star-named girl and the dashing GI - or at least A girl with a similar name from a similar town - has one photo that is the poster child for a mousy dork - no offence, I have a few of those photos in the hoard.

I kid you not, the next photo along is definitely the same girl that is the makeover after shot and she is ROCKING the whole 1950s cheerleader vibe.

What do you reckon - put a bit of polish on it and sell it to Netflix?