Its the little things......

Its amazing what you don't know about your family when you start your family research. I never claimed to know much but I quickly learnt that I knew absolutely nothing. I started with my grandfathers name and my grandmothers names, I even had my Grandmothers maiden name wrong.....I thought it was Rizk when it was actually Zarka.

I wrote in all my uncles and aunts their spouses and children. These were things I knew so didn't really have to ask anyone. The only gap I had was that of my aunt who lives in Israel who was never able to return to Lebanon after the war in 1948.

I then decided I wanted to go further back to my great grandfather easy enough as my Mum could answer that....they always called my grandfather Najib Boulos so his father was Boulos Khoury. My great grandmothers name was a little bit of a mystery but after a week my mum remembered her name but didn't know her maiden name.....quick email to my cousin and that was answered. I was starting to think this is easy......how wrong I was.

I asked my mum what were my grandfathers brothers and sisters names....."oh he was an only child" my mum answered. Well that messed every thing up as I had compiled a long list of Khoury's from Derdghaya using the last electoral roll from 2009. How was I to link all of them now.

Another thing I noticed was that between my oldest uncle and my aunt who was the second youngest there was a 6 year gap. This is some thing you dont see in families of that generation. Children were born every year or every 2 years never a gap of 6 years. On further discussion with my mother she said that my grandparents had a baby boy called Boulos that died as a baby. This was tied into a story that my grandfather never allowed any of my uncles or my father to name their children Boulos as the name was cursed. So in our branch of the family their isn't a Boulos Khoury to be seen, considering its the name of our founding father.

Well that filled one gap but my mother just figured there was a mistake in registering children's births. When I was in Lebanon I asked my father and he told me there was a baby girl that was born called Randa that also died as a baby. He didn't know how she died but baby Boulos had died when he was suffocated by his blanket.

These are just some of the little things that help connect the jigsaw together. There are more stories of murderers and wars against raiding bandits which I'll going into later.