MY FAMILY-TREE TOGETHER WITH MY CHILDHOOD, EARLY ADOLESCENCE, and later life

I first saw the light of day on October the 21st, 1900. It was exactly 95 years, to the day, after Nelson was killed at Trafalgar and three months before Queen Victoria passed away. Incidentally, the Poppitt's, at least on the male side, seem to be rather prone to arriving in this world on memorable dates. My own father, for example, was born on July the 4th, 1866 - American Independence Day, and my grandfather Poppitt first appeared in 1837, the year Victoria came to the throne. My great-grandfather, Joseph Poppitt, was born in 1791. Although, date wise, in a rather different category in that regard, his case too is historically quite memorable, since he was married in 1810, only 5 years after Trafalgar, and 5 years before Waterloo. His first wife, a lass of 18, when they were married, bore him nine children and died at about the age of forty two. Whereupon after a 'decent' interval of two years, at the age of fifty seven, Joseph again escorted a young bride of eighteen 'down' the aisle. After which that prolific old gentleman, sired another ten youngsters, all of whom lived. He departed this world at the ripe old age of eighty seven. He must've been ‘quite a man’ - there's a portrait, in the possession of one of the family, in oils, I'm told, of him.

My own grandfather, John Poppitt, was the first-born, of the second batch, of this, by modern standards, colossal family. He fathered seven sons (no girls), of which my father was the first born.