Young Roots

A project for Young People to explore their cultural history and make a permanent record of what they want other people to know about them and their families.

All of the family stories on this site have been written by the young people and detail their unique stories in a way that is relevant to them.

Enjoy!

Becky's Story

My name is Rebecca and I am 17 years old. I was born in Bournemouth in the summer of 1989.

My main interests at the moment are art and textiles, I generally prefer being creative to being academic. I hope to eventually go to university to study an art based topic although I am not sure what area I want to go into right now.

I got involved in the Young Roots project because I was interested in finding out more about my family and where my family came from. And I wanted to share some of the stories that I have been told about my family and the events that they have lived through.

The main people that I consider as family are; my brother, my sister, my mum, and myself, however my extended family is quite big. I have two sets of grandparents although on my mums side there is only my grandma as my mums dad passed away many years ago. Most of my relatives live around England although my family originates from quite a few countries around the world.

I have four cousins that I have meet, I think I have more but I have never meet them. I also know of one aunty on my dad’s side and one aunty and three uncles on my mum’s side as my mum was one of five children in her family.

My mums’ fathers’ brothers wife ‘aunty Ellen’ is still alive and travels all around the world to visit her children. Her husband passed away a few years ago. They lived in Singapore in a really big house, as they were fairly wealthy. Aunty Ellen still lives in Singapore as far as I am aware although I have never met her either. I have heard a lot of stories from my mum about times when her family went to visit them in their big house, My mum said it had big marble pillars at the entrance and that her and her brothers and sister used to worry about touching anything in the house in case they damaged it. I hope to one day meet her as I don’t know very much about her side of the family.

I am not sure of all the ages of my family. In my close family my brother is 11, my sister is 20, I am 17, and my mum is in her 40s.

My grand parents on my dad’s side are in their early 70s as far as I am aware. And my grandma on my mum’s side is in her late 70s possibly early 80s but I couldn’t say exactly.

My cousins are all of a similar age to me and my brother and sister.

Most of my extended family lives in England at the moment, but that has not always been the case. My brother and sister and I have always lived in England but not Leicester. My sister and I were born in Bournemouth. We lived there for quite a long time until I was about three or four. When we move to Wales. We moved around a lot in Wales renting houses and I went to quite a lot of different infant schools as well. My sister ended up changing schools more than me as she had already started school when we left Bournemouth. We eventually moved back to Bournemouth, to the same house. We had rented out to students in the time that we had been in Wales. We only stayed in Bournemouth for a few months when we moved and came to Leicester. My brother was born in Leicester in 1995.

My mum wasn’t born in England. She grew up in Singapore, and moved to England when she was 13.  Her parents weren’t from Singapore either, her mother was born in Borneo and her father was born in India, however, as he passed away when my mum was nine, I don’t know very much about his past, or family background. One thing, which has made us wonder if he was perhaps mixed race as well, is the fact that his surname is French.  I know that my grandma’s parents were also mixed race. I know that one of her parents was Dutch and her other parent was part Dutch and part Sri-Lankan.  Which is quite confusing as it means that me and my brother and sister are part Sri-Lankan, part Dutch and part Indian, half English and possibly part French.

My grandma and grandpa lived through the 2^nd WW in Singapore. They were put in a concentration camp in the middle of the Malaysian jungle. And left there for a very long time, it was possibly a year but I can’t be certain. My grandma’s parents were taken there as well, but they both died during the war.