Blogs which describe people or events related to my maternal line.
Was I named after Empress Alexandra (pictured above), wife of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia? It is a question I have been asked time and time again. It was not something I ever discussed with my mother. How do parents decide on names for their children? I had a few
On the 13 March 1881 (1 March in the Russian old style calendar) Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. His carriage was bombed in St Petersburg by the group known as People’s Will. Initially the bombs missed their target but, when the Tsar insisted on leaving his carriage to check on
On February 14, 1914, my maternal grandparents, Paul and Olga Woronoff (neé Countess Kleinmichel) were married in the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Tsarskoye Selo – I have written about their wedding here and talked about it here on YouTube. So 108 years ago they would have been on their honeymoon. I
I never imagined my family history would somehow be connected to Poland. Of course I had forgotten that, at various times over the centuries, Poland – or parts thereof, were ruled either as a protectorate of Russia, or as part of the Russian empire. In fact, from the end of
This week I began to sort through the numerous photo albums which I inherited. My parents and grandparents, and no doubt other relatives, were very vague with their inscriptions on the photos, if they wrote anything at all. Some are inscribed with random names like “Helen”, or with simply a
Some of the most difficult decisions I had to make in my life were made in the couple of months after my father died, when I had to sort through the house that he, my mother, my grandmother and I had lived in. If you have read through some of