I have an extensive Ancestry and online tree for both sides of my family. But if you weren't into genealogy viewing it would be intimidating as it has over 9,000 people on it. Although not all are my branches as I also do a Durnford Name search. Many in my immediate family are interested in our family history but not necessarily to the extent that they want to dig through a genealogy tree. So I'm starting this blog to highlight certain people in our family.
Let me tell you a bit about the family. There are two side, Durnford and Bulbrook.
The Durnford side is from Newfoundland, the south coast to be exact. They lived for generations in a little village called Rencontre West. As in most Newfoundland families that lived in outport villages everyone is interrelated which can really mess up DNA genealogy research. My grandparents were second cousins.
The Durnfords arrived in Newfoundland from Devon, England in the early 1800s. The first Durnfords (and every Durnford in Newfoundland are related BTW) were Samuel and Anne Durnford who settled in Francois (pronounced Fransway) just down the coast from Rencontre West. Francois still exists but Rencontre West was abandoned in the early 1960s during the "resettlement" in Newfoundland (still a dirty word in my family). One of Samuel's sons, Thomas moved to Rencontre West and that's where our branch is from. Other name in our family are Skinner (from Richard's Harbour...we married into that family a lot and they came from a daughter of Samuel Durnford), Billard, Buffett (we are probably related to Jimmy Buttett who's ancestors are from Rose Blanche, a village near Rencontre West), Childs, Clothier, Dollimount, Fudge, Marsden, Matthews, Pink and pretty well any other name that crops up on the south coast.
The Bulbrooks are from this part of London, mainly the Newington and Walworth area.
They pretty well stayed in that area for hundreds of years as far as I can tell. They were cockney working class people: carmen (lorry drivers, both gas and hay powered), general labourers, bootmakers, gasmen, and a few ended up in the workhouse. My grandfather married a Brooker who was from Brighton, England and as far as I can tell they didn't move around a lot either. Names in this tree include, Brooker, Rowland, King, Spencer, Rogers, Langridge, Matthews, and so forth.
Both sides of the family had brothers who died in WWI and those two are the ones that I'll focus on first in the next blogs.
And, if you would like to write a page about a member of our family please let me know.
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