My grandmother was Lilly Wilson, née Armstrong, later Horner, 1873–1955. When I was still a boy, I used to look at my uncle (my mother's brother) and wonder if we had Indian blood in our veins. A photograph of him will explain why.
It was later that I heard the family legend. It seems that the fair young daughter of the lord of a local manor eloped with a Gypsy. I mentioned Gypsy features on the page of photographs of my mother when she was young. Photographs of my aunt, young and old, also show those Roma (Gypsy) characteristics. Here are two somewhat fuzzy enlargements from small photos.
A Roma correspondent (and academic) told me that legends of runaway maidens and Gypsies are common, and require concrete proof.
Another mystery came to my notice in the 1980s, when I was told that we are somehow related to ancestors with the unusual surname Ordoyno. One of the books in my Barratt Family Tree series gives a full account of how I searched for the truth behind these tales, and found a link. There isn't room to retell it all on this small website, but here's one of my 'direct line' charts which will illustrate the link.
My great-great-grandmother Charlotte née Ordoyno was the daughter of the seminal book on the flora of Nottinghamshire. He was also owned land in Newark and Coddington. While he was not exactly a lord of the manor, he certainly lived in a privileged manner in Coddington, a village near Newark. His other children were married at St Mary Magdalene's parish church, Newark, a grand building as large as a cathedral. But Charlotte was married at a little church in a village on the opposite side of Newark to Coddington. All the clues and evidence point to her marriage to Thomas Armstrong as the 'runaway' elopement.
Having sifted through all we know about my mother's other forebears, I am now as certain as I can be, from clues and evidence, that Thomas Armstrong was either a Gypsy or the direct descendant of a Gypsy. And I'm proud to have Roma blood from my great-great-grandfather, so I hope you, good reader, are not racist.
This photo of the last resting place of Thomas and Charlotte, in the villlage of South Collingham, was taken by a distant cousin who shares my Roma ancestry.
