I have been tinkering with my family history for many years.
Every now and then I pick up a thread and follow it until it seems to end, then set it down for months, or years. I am nudged forward, and inspired to do so by two of the important women in my family: my wife Karen, and my Great Auntie Bee Ashmore.
Karen is dedicated, organized, precise, and thorough. All qualities to be prized in a genealogist, and which are fleeting in my own repertoire – if indeed I possess them at all.
Auntie Bee, now her late nineties, has been the treasure-keeper of our family’s riches of memory. It is with her preserved and shared trove of stories, artifacts and photographs that the stories of the Horns and their related branches have been passed on to the three generations that have now followed her.
So it always with Bee in my mind and heart that I have been pressing forward over the last year or so to get a fuller understanding, a more focused picture of our ancestors reaching back to the 1750’s and beyond. I have been piecing together a narrative, researching places, names, addresses – which the worldwide web has made so much easier for me than when Bee wrote down her Notes, from memories of conversations and stories passed down, or when her son (my 2nd cousin) Rob Ashmore did his research several decades ago.
My hope is that by weaving together my own research with Bee’s notes and remembrances and Rob’s research that I can build a narrative that will add detail, context and a fuller picture to what she has so long preserved and passed along.
And so I find myself focused on my 3rd great grandfather, Thomas Story Horn (b. 1824). Tracing his journey through life has revealed what I imagine to be a somewhat restless spirit, which he answered with travels to the Americas and back during the mid-years of the 19th century. There are obvious parallels to my own path, for which reason I have tried to piece together his narrative first: the middle seems as good a place as any to begin…Thomas Story
Rob Curran, Savannah GA
A Horn Family Chronicle 
Hello! I’m curious to know about Ivor Ashmore who was my photography tutor at West Surrey College of Art and Design in mid-70’s. Could you please tell me what became of him after 1980. This was the last instance I was in touch with him.
Many thanks,
Kaveh
Hi Kaveh – thanks so much for your message. Ivor retired and moved down to Flushing in Cornwall with his wife Betty in the mid-1980s. He passed away in 2011, and is much missed by all of our family.
Thanks for your interest – I know he’d be happy to be remembered by one of his students.
Rob
Hi Rob,
I worked with Ivor at Farnham and am much saddened to hear of his passing. He was most generous to me as the new kid on the block then and I will always remember our times there fondly.
Thanks for your kind thoughts, Lance. Ivor is much missed
Hi Kaveh,
To the best of my knowledge Ivor died in 2011. Dennis Anthony, Peter Hall and I are the only tutors from your era at Farnham still alive now.