Rest Easy?
If I thought anybody read this rubbish I'd apologise for the delay between blogs. I've been busy doing other things for the last 3 weeks or so. To be precise I've been trying to get to know about my paternal grandfather. The reason I needed to find out about this particular grandparent was the complete lack of any family history about him. There was no oral history, no photographs, no certificates, nothing. His wife, my grandmother Bridget, I could actually remember. Not very well, I admit, for I was only 8 years old when she died. I also don't remember either of my mother's parents, grandad died before I was born, grandma died when I was just 13 months old. However we had photos etc. and lots of stories about them, so they never seemed like strangers to me.
My dad died 30 years ago and with him any chance of his memories about his parents and childhood. His only living sibling, Uncle Fred, lives in York and for some reason there seemed to have been more than just physical distance between him and us. In fact, the only time I'd seen him since my childhood, was at my dad's funeral. The only contact between my mum and him was a Christmas card every year. What started this whole business was after mum died in, my sister and I realised there was an absence of any identifiable photos of grandad in my mum's effects and the more we thought about it the more we determined to find out about him.
With that in mind, my sister, Andrea, carried on the tradition of sending a card at Christmas but also added a note. This started a communication between her and Uncle Fred's wife, Auntie Marion which culminated in us visiting them, in York. We knew there had been some sort of family falling out at the time of Dad's mother's death but we didn't know the details. We didn't learn any more about that during our visit but we did meet our cousins who we hadn't seen since childhood days. We also learned some details about grandad, including the fact that he died when grandma was 6 months pregnant with Uncle Fred, at the age of only 34 years.
On our return home I did some research on the Net and made enquiries with our local council cemetries and crematoria office and discovered where both grandma and grandad were buried. For some reason our parents had never bothered to tell us about their grave although we had been shown the grave of mum's parents, not 50 yards away. We went to the cemetry to find the grave and imagine our surprise and sadness to find that their final resting place was not marked in any way whatsoever. It was just a plot of slightly longer grass than it's surroundings. Again, I don't know why this should be or who, if anybody, is to blame. Compared to the nice polished stone headstone and surround of mum's parent's grave, dad's parents were lying unrecognised and apparently unloved with only their God knowing where they were.
This anonymous couple had had a wretched life by our standards. Grandad has been described in census returns as either a "carter" for a brewery - drayman I suppose we'd call him now and a steelworker. We know they were running a small off-licence near to the Kirkless iron and steelworks, somewhere at the top of Belle Green Lane, Ince, at the time of his death. Apparently he got 'flu which worsened and eventually killed him, (I'm still waiting for a copy of his death certificate). Grandma, pregnant with her 7th child, (although we think 2 had already died in early childhood), took over the running of the shop. Apparently her brother did a deal with her that saw him take over the shop and she got his house to live in. It's possible that he "did the dirty" on her and left her impoverished. That's as maybe, what's known is that she struggled to provide for those kids and succeeded in raising them to adulthood. Unfortunately, two of her sons, my uncles William and Thomas died in their 20s or 30s. Thomas is actually buried with his parents. I'm sorry to say that I haven't yet found out where poor William ended up, but I will.
My sister and I think that their resting place should be finally recognised by a headstone and we are looking into the why's and wherefore's of providing one. We still hope to find out what caused the family fall out but that's not too important. I find this whole story so depressing. Families shouldn't fall out to such an extent that cousins don't see each other for tens of years and hopefully nothing will seperate us again. We've met 2 of our cousins and I've spoken to another on the 'phone, that just leaves one more, who I'm positive, I have never met at all previously.
I just wonder why one set of granparents repose under a neat polished stone grave, their names picked out in white letters for all to see and the other pair are lying, unnamed and unnoticed under a scruffy layer of course grass.
I hope to change all that.
posted by Eddie @ 8:21 pm
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