The Memory Stays

Book excerpt: With the passing of time, family history can become a vague distant memory, disconnected to present-day affairs. If passed by word of mouth through the generations, family matters will ultimately erode and disappear, or at best, become blurred in favour of the current bias teller. Hence, the true past will fade into obscurity and be lost forever. This book is an attempt to preserve the authentic history of two Dundee families through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the “Pullar’s of the Hilltown” and the McElroy’s of Dallfield Walk. Hence, preventing their loss to the abrasive passage of time. However, this is not simply a glimpse into their everyday lives. It is set against a profile of local, national, and international affairs, and, in so doing attempts to clarify the significant effects of such events on the lives of simple working people. Not only is it a biography of both my parents and their respective families, but it reflects the consequences of such events that many similar poverty ridden families had to endure, during a period of Britain’s supreme industrial might and prosperity. Therefore, it echoes a bygone age in the history of this ancient city, which tells of a time when life was hard and often short. But it also tells of an age when people had time for each other, time to stop, time to speak, and time to listen.