The Family

Brit Mums Live

Tuesday 10 June 2014

A strange feeling

When Georgia was born and I became a mother, I realised how important past family is and for me it made me wonder more about how I got here, if it weren't for my ansestors, I wouldn't even be here.

So I started to trace back my family tree on my mothers side to start with.

Having a young baby, working and not having a computer made it very hard and time consuming. Trips to the local library scrolling through census files, finding names and dates to corrispond with the information I managed to get from my great auntie Edith before she died. Taking the pram and walking to cemetaries checking gravestones ( sounds quite weird that really) for a possible match to census dates but it all paid off and I managed to trace ( over the last 19 years) back to 1763.

There wasn't anything that exciting in it, like anyone famous, in fact we have not moved from the area we live in now! Which I suppose make it a bit easier to trace. That and the great ansestry.com

Anyway, I have been picking it up and putting it down over the last 19 years and a few years back I decided I wanted to have something more than a pile of papers and photos to pass on to my children and I started to make it all into a scrap book.

I had done a few pages and this weekend decided to do another on.
The page I chose was one that featured my great grandma and her 6 brothers. Their mother died age 36 leaving my 12 year old great grandma to bring up her brothers while my great great grandad went out to work.

While working on the page Georgia's boyfriend Josh ( not yet been introduced on the blog) was asking me about the photos of the men, well young boys in the army uniforms. I told him that one of them Willie died in Salonika in the First World War. He asked me where he was buried and I realised I didnt know.

I left the scrap book and 3 hours later i found this

Then this

Then this

I now know where he is and the plot he is in.
It was then it struck me that his relatives would never have had the opportunity in those days to go and visit his grave.
It made me feel really sad thinking of how I would have felt if this happened to a member of my family now. At least these days most of the bodies are brought home to rest. But poor Willie hasn't had anyone to lay flowers on his grave, ever.

I have decided to put it on my bucket list to visit his grave before I die, on behalf of all those who loved and missed him.
Here he is on the left. To the right his brother Herbert, who made it back and went on to have a wife and children.

Thank you for reading, feel free to post a comment

Lisa x




5 comments:

  1. Wonderful story, Lil Sis! It took me decades to find where in France my Great Grandfather was buried, and by the time I did, my Grandma wasn't well enough to travel to visit his grave. So I went for her (in 1996) and took several photos of his grave. I then came home and described it all to her and gave her the photos. She had one of the photos of his gravestone framed and placed it on top of her TV, where it stayed until she died. It made such a difference for her. I may go to Salonika next year -come with me....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw thats sweet. Well its defo on my to do list

      Delete