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This reminds me of once being challenged by a friend for talking about my 'father's brother' rather than my 'uncle'. She thought I was showing a lack of familiarity by defining my relationship with him at one remove, i.e., in terms of how he was related to my father rather than to me.
In fact, having only two uncles (one, my father's brother, and the other my father's sister's husband), it seemed natural to me to give a more precise description of my relationship to the uncle under discussion. My friend did not know any of my aunts and uncles by name, so I felt there was no point using the form that I would have used when speaking in person to either of my uncles: i.e., the title 'Uncle' followed by their first name.
Looking at my wider family, including my now much padded out family tree, I find a definite role for similar precision. For example, I now know that one of my 'father's mother's mother's brothers' (William Blackburn) lived at Holden, Briercliffe with Extwistle in 1881. For me, this is a better description, than 'a brother of one of my great grandmothers' (Ann Pickles nee Blackburn). I do, though, quite like the idea of a 'great great aunt' - wouldn't we all want one of these?
Like many of my ancestors, on both my father's and my mother's lines, William Blackburn was a Trawdener by birth. However, I think I shall have to claim him here as my best (and probably only) ancestral link to Briercliffe. (When I first found the Briercliffe Society Forum I still believed that I was descended from Briercliffe Whitakers - in fact I had made an error 20 years ago when I found a 'wrong' Whitaker-Bannister marriage - my Whitakers, on my mother's side, were also from Trawden. I had no idea then quite how common both these names were locally!).
Ruth
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