taggerty

The first “family historian” I met was John Arthur Blackett “Jack” Forster who visited my parents in the early 1960’s to look at our family documents and returned to regale us with details of his trip to Northumberland where he spent time cross-checking our documents in parish registers at Rothbury and Alwinton. From him we first learned about the Forster ancestral home Bygate Hall, which he also visited.  He was then a retired metallurgist. My father’s cousin, he was the eldest son of Arthur Edward Blackett Forster who was the eldest son of William Mark Forster.  You can find him in my family tree (the link to it is on the rhs of home page).  I’ve copied the major documents from his research for anyone who is interested. See “Early Forster documents” under the “Image gallery” tab above. His research was methodical and accurate as far as I can tell, except for the label on the portrait discussed in the last post.

I don’t have an adult photo of Jack, but this caricature from an unspecified newspaper in his Shire Councillor days is so very much as I remember him.