On 6 Feb 2010 at 9:37, Brad Rogers wrote: > On Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:47:57 +0000 > Charani <familyhunter@family-hunter.co.uk> wrote: > > Hello Charani, > > > line or whoever completed the register may have made a mistake: but > > I agree, on the face of it, it is a bit of a stretch. > > Stranger things happen; My father always wanted to be a musician. He > managed it. > > "How?" I hear you ask. > > He joined the army. Whilst there he joined the band, and was taught > to play and read music. > > Going the other way, from musician to (in this case) Coppersmith is, > to my mind, not a big jump. Especially if he was struggling to make > money as a musician. He'd have had to do something to earn money. > My grandfather appears in a 1906 trade directory for Bradford, Yorks, as a boot and shoe repairer. When he married my grandmother in Dublin in 1913 he was described on the certificate as a professional musician. Nobody would have believed it was the same man unless they knew the story! He was so good on the violin that he was determined to make it his career and life, much against the wishes of his parents who thought that playing music in a theatre was not respectable in those days. He was so insistent that eventually they relented on condition that he learned what they called a "proper job" first, so he served an apprenticeship as a boot and shoe repairer while continuing with the violin in his spare time. Eventually he managed to become a professional and spent the next 50-plus years playing in theatre orchestras in Dublin and the north of England, also in the camp orchestras at Butlin's holiday camps. However, he never forgot his first trade and on the rare occasions when he wasn't working in the theatre he filled in for a week or two at his local boot and shoe shop, so he was always grateful to his parents for making him do it! Robin