As some of you may know I am a trustee of the Norfolk Family History Society which is based in Norwich but which has members throughout the world. My particular responsibilities as a trustee are to write and edit the quarterly magazine "Norfolk Ancestor" and run the society's Facebook page.
A couple of months ago, I received a message for the Facebook page from a production film company who are putting together programmes on "ordinary people" with an ancestral connection to the Royal Family.
I'm not sure if I have shared my "Royal Story" in my blogs before. So apologies if I have, but the Queen is the third great niece of the husband of my fifth great aunt. Ok I know this is rather a tenuous link but I sent off details to the production company and they are going to phone me for a chat on Sunday.
The point about my very small link to the Royals is the number of interesting side stories it throws up. But it all hinges on whether a man by the name of Ormond Smith was the illegitimate son of Richard Wellesley and Hyacinthe Roland. Wellesley was the First Marquess Wellesley, brother of the Duke of Wellington and a very prominent 18th and 19th century political figure. Hyacinthe was a French actress.
What I believe is that Ormond Smith was adopted by a couple in Great Yarmouth, although I haven't been able to verify this. What I do know as a fact is that Ormond Smith married my fifth great aunt Keziah Edmonds who was the sister of my direct ancestor John Edmonds.
They had numerous children and Ormond was a master mariner. Three of his sons went into business with him and they founded a steamship company which became very famous in Australia. One of the sons was quite an entrepreneur and, when he died, left the equivalent of what today would be £15 million.
If Ormond Smith does turn out to be the son of Wellesley, his mother would have been quite a well known French actress of the time. He brought her to England and later they married. She refused to learn English and was shunned by society. Eventually the couple divorced and Wellesley remarried.
There is a ancestral line from Wellesley and therefore Ormond Smith that eventually runs down to the Royal Family. So here we have a story of high society, Parisian life, Australian shipping companies and (just maybe) royalty.
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I mentioned in a previous blog that I had caught the end of a TV interview with Chris Sutton and thought that it referred to his father having Covid. I have now seen a further interview and Mike Sutton has dementia.
Being a founder member of Hethersett Dementia Support Group has given me an interest in the subject. Probably the word "interest" is the wrong one to use but I can't think of a more appropriate one. I have had first hand experience of dementia with a mother-in-law and a sister-in-law who suffered from the disease.
The present debate about heading footballs being a contributory factor is a difficult one. Many footballers will suffer from dementia as they get older, but many won't. Many non footballers who have never headed a ball in their lives will suffer from dementia and many won't. Again I have a major interest as a former youth team coach and football club chairman.
I think it's going to be difficult to come to a conclusion either way on this topic. Many more people are suffering from dementia because we are living longer and the longer we live the more susceptible we are likely to become.
Of course dementia has always existed. In the past we weren't so medically savvy and would have passed it off as senility, growing old or with the terrible old Norfolk phrase "going doolally."
One thing that is certain is the debate will rage on for some time.