Now I never tire of listening to the stories of other people’s family history, it is after all pretty much what I do.
And so I was fascinated when Caroline called last week and invited me round to share some photographs and documents from the Great War.
But as ever that was just the start of what turned out to be one of those rare opportunities to explore the history of two families stretching back into the early decades of the 19th century.
I say rare but only in the sense that I seldom get to talk in such great detail about the history of two families.
Like most of us the story began in the countryside in the hard times following the long wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and led to accounts of poaching and a flit from one county to another.
And in the course of the next hundred years the two sides of Caroline’s family played out their lives against the backdrop of rural depressions world wars and the hard bitter decades that followed the end of the Great War.
Here were stories of bright talented people who were forced to leave school early but still managed to gain university qualifications, of the continuing tragedy of high infant mortality rates and the terrible impact of the First World War.
Above all it was the history of the last century and a bit explored through people whose pictures I had in front of me and whose lives Caroline could describe, from the grinding poverty of the Depression and starting work in bomb blitzed Trafford Park to watching as the last farms closed across Chorlton and experiencing colonial Africa on the cusp of independence.
And this was also my history, for while I was born after the last world war there were still the stories from my parents of the Hunger Marches, the anger at the Means Test, and much else about that “low dishonest decade” which began with an economic crisis and ended with a world war.
We shared our memories of grey post war London which blossomed into the exciting years of the late 1950s and the 60s, decades which were filled as much with high politics and great issues as they were with the Bubble car, the Beatles, television Habitat.
So all in all a wonderful day and one that I hope we can replicate and more importantly to the that simple observation that everyone’s history is a story worth telling.
Pictures; courtesy of Caroline Smith
But as ever that was just the start of what turned out to be one of those rare opportunities to explore the history of two families stretching back into the early decades of the 19th century.
I say rare but only in the sense that I seldom get to talk in such great detail about the history of two families.
Like most of us the story began in the countryside in the hard times following the long wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and led to accounts of poaching and a flit from one county to another.
And in the course of the next hundred years the two sides of Caroline’s family played out their lives against the backdrop of rural depressions world wars and the hard bitter decades that followed the end of the Great War.
Here were stories of bright talented people who were forced to leave school early but still managed to gain university qualifications, of the continuing tragedy of high infant mortality rates and the terrible impact of the First World War.
And this was also my history, for while I was born after the last world war there were still the stories from my parents of the Hunger Marches, the anger at the Means Test, and much else about that “low dishonest decade” which began with an economic crisis and ended with a world war.
We shared our memories of grey post war London which blossomed into the exciting years of the late 1950s and the 60s, decades which were filled as much with high politics and great issues as they were with the Bubble car, the Beatles, television Habitat.
So all in all a wonderful day and one that I hope we can replicate and more importantly to the that simple observation that everyone’s history is a story worth telling.
Pictures; courtesy of Caroline Smith
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