Time was always going to be against us on our whistle stop tour of Witney but we packed a lot into our one afternoon. The one thing we hadn’t managed to do was visit Hailey, the place where my great great grandmother, Mary Ann Beechey, My great grandfather Elijah Haley and my grandfather’s brother Harold were born. It is also the place that gave us our family name, Haley. The spelling may have changed over the years, although many of the old records are spelt Hailey, like the place, but this really was where my family story began. Commando had a trick up his sleeve though. As Hailey was less than four miles from our hotel, he decided to make a little detour on our homeward journey. I was unreasonably excited when I saw the sign saying we were entering Hailey but traffic meant we couldn’t stop for a photo. Undaunted, I whipped out my phone and took a rather blurred and wobbly picture through the windscreen. It would serve as proof that we had actually been there.
Continue reading Its all in the name, Hailey