Sunday 28 October 2012

CONDRONs in unexpected places


CONDRAN, CONDREN, CONDRIN and CONDRON are not common names, but you are more likely to find CONDR*Ns in some places than in others. When it's a sparsely populated area, you are even less likely to find a CONDR*N there by chance. So I was very surprised to spot this sign ("The CONDRONS") hanging outside a house this summer. At the time I was driving up a rather inaccessible dirt road in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  In order to respect their privacy, I shan't give the location more precisely.

A correspondent recently told me of CONDRONs in another unexpected place. Those CONDRONs are a family living in Sweden -  the only CONDR*Ns in Scandinavia, as far as I know.

I have recently been researching CONDR*Ns in the records of passengers leaving the UK on board ships. The records cover the period 1890 to 1960, and are for long-haul voyages from the UK to destinations outside the UK and continental Europe. Mostly the CONDR*Ns recorded there appear to have been emigrating, or in a few cases are emigrants who have returned to visit home. The most common destinations are the US (174 instances), Canada (37 instances) and Australia (28 instances). But a few destinations are more surprising. One CONDREN girl aged 15 sailed to Bombay in 1935 with the declared intention of living permanently in India. In other cases, CONDR*Ns sailed to Kenya, South Africa, Jamaica, Martinique (en route to St Lucia), Malta and the Canary Islands, to name some of the more unusual ones. Are there CONDR*Ns there still?

Perhaps in your travels you will find CONDR*Ns in these or other unexpected places!

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