| Notes |
- Am seriously thinking of seeing Carol (sister)
in January as well and hitting a few balls with Hamish. [2]
- From an e-mail from Carol to Vern, 2 May 2002
Hi
Got another email from Carol Buchanan. Immediately below is the first email
which was prompted by Ian Neil-Smith sending her a copy of the Smith Family
photo which I had sent to him. Below that I have copied the most recent
one.
------------------------
Greetings Vern
I am Carol Buchanan nee Neil-Smith, Kathleen's eldest child but Neil's 4th
and Ian is next up, being Aline and Neil's 3rd child. Therefore Ian is my
half brother but none of our family really make the distinction except to
identify ourselves to others! Ian has e-mailed the family photographs to me
because when I was speaking to him at the weekend he mentioned that he had
them, and our 2nd daughter Alice is very keen to have photographs of her
great grandmothers, and Christina was the only one that we hadn't managed to
find up until now! So firstly very many thanks.
I am really very vague as to who all the subjects of the photograph are.
Obviously the one on the extreme right is my father, no doubt about that,
and my grandmother and grandfather are also quite obviously Christina and
John. the 2 girls I also know about as my father sometimes spoke of his
sisters Matty and Gerty I met Matty at Leigh when she was 90, we were up
there and so called on her, and she showed me many photographs of her
children but not really of her brothers and sister. I know that Ben was the
eldest but which is he in the photograph? I also know that there was an Ivan
and that Clive was the youngest. Many years ago I met and corresponded
briefly with Alvin, and Kevin called to see my parents before I was married
(nearly 40 years ago now!) but they are the next generation, are they both
sons of Ivan? What a barrage of questions, I do apologise for being so
vague about the family, the only excuse I have is that when Father was alive
I only had a passing interest in such things, and he wasn't terribly
communicative about his family anyway, or himself for that matter. I did not
know that he had been to the 1st World War until Alice was on her OE to
Britain and went to Caius College Cambridge and looked up the records of her
grandfather Neil and learnt a great deal about him that I didn't know!
Briefly about myself, I am married to Hamish Buchanan and we have 4 married
children, who are all parents themselves, Kirsten Berry, Alice Buchanan (was
married to a Neil Smith, no relationship had 2 sons, divorced, and has very
recently remarried but keeps her maiden name), Rupert Buchanan and Eve
Clive-Griffin. We have 6 grandchildren 3 of each sort! We are farming in the
Wairarapa (100 kms north-east of Wellington).Best wishes Carol
-----------------------
Here is the second which I have only just received. I had replied to her
first email and sent her several photos of Christina and John Smith.
----------------------
Hello Vern,
Very many thanks for the extra photos of my Grandmother and the one of them
both when older. As they were coming through Hamish was standing and
watching and his first impression was that I had a look of Christina! I
can't see it myself and I was supposed to resemble my mother but maybe it
was just an expression! Co-incidentally my "nickname" within the Neil-Smith
family when we were young was also "Tina"! My second name is Christina.
Alice is delighted to have it and we are going to ask Rupert who is a
photographer if he can fix it up a bit, I am sure he can as he has managed
to do several other Buchanan family ones either himself, or the really bad
ones he passes on to a mate who specialises in photographic restoration,
they do it from a photo of the photo so that the origional remains
unaltered. Rupert travels, and is away this week so we will catch him when
he is here next. Also thank you for all the information about the family, I
would really love to know more - birth dates, occupations, children and date
of deaths. I imagine that we must have lots of 1st cousins that we don't yet
know about. Are all these questions a bother for you or can I find these
things out without bothering you? We have a programme on the computer called
"Family Tree Maker" and Hamish is currently very slowly researching his
family, as time permits, and he says he could open up a tree of my side and
then when and if our children want to know, it will all be here!
You said that Vic, Neil and Norman were called up for war service, I
understood from somewhere that 4 sons went to the !st W W and that all
returned, which is very lucky, considering the history of other families, is
this correct?
Our children are older than Raewyn and Russell. Hamish and I were married
when I was 20 in January 1963. My 60th birthday is in a fortnight, and
Kirsten was born in February 1964, so is now 38 and Alice in December 1965
and is now 36. Then we had a gap of 4 years and Rupert was born in August
1970 and Eve in March 1972. All our daughters live very close to us,
Kirsten and Mark have a vineyard about 6 miles away, Mark is a teacher at
Rathkeale College and Kirsten is the secretary for the local primary school,
Alice, and her new husband also Mark (who is an aeronautical engineer) are
just 300 yards down the road living in the homestead, which is rather large
and she has turned it into a function center for weddings, conventions and
assorted parties, (she does the catering) she also farms some of the land,
she has a website >www.wairarapa.co.nz/tekopi< which is where we lived for
37 years until we built our much smaller, warmer and altogether more
suitable "retirement" house. Eve and Travis, her husband own and run a
restaurant in Greytown called "Salute!" which was featured in the May
'Cuisine' magazine, and they are only 25 minutes away. Rupert and Kerryn
live in Wellington. I have Oliver, aged 8 months Eve's child, today and so
before he deletes all this I will send it on its way Regards Carol
- Ian Neil-Smith email to Alvin 011212
Our daughter Jennifer is in San Jose working for Intel which she loves.
Managing one of their Revenue Forecasting teams which of course is a very
high profile job with lots of exposure to senior management. We hope to
visit her in Feb next year. Am seriously thinking of seeing Carol (sister)
in January as well and hitting a few balls with Hamish.
|
1942 - (82 years)
d. 11 Jan 1984 (Age 87 years)