When there is no one left to ask ……. part one ….. letters

I know I won’t be alone in coming to family history a tad too late.

Two unknowns friends with dad, circa 1930

At 58 I launched into the business of exploring our past, building on the work of my sisters who had done it the hard way in the 1970s. 

Back then there was no internet and a search involved not an online investigation but a trawl of parish registers in situ, followed by visits to church graveyards.  Now that was daunting, given that our family stretch back in time across Scotland as far as the east Highlands.

So, my sisters explored father’s side of the family in the 1970s, when Dad and our uncles were still alive and could offer up plenty of details.

I followed them in the early 2000s looking for mum’s side, by which time the internet was offering up a wealth of information, but by then there was almost no one left to ask.

Still, I did confirm many childhood memories some of which I had begun to think that I had invented.

Of course, relying on the anecdotal memories of relatives is fraught with dangers.  They can get confused, forget things, and muddle up the timeline, placing a grandfather in the wrong occupation, an uncle in the wrong regiment and putting the date a great grandmother died in the wrong century.

But here we were lucky because all our uncles were great letter writers and prompted by questions, they provided a rich narrative of father’s side back into the 19th century.

A testamonial, 1925

Added to this were the collection of letters, documents and official forms which dad had carefully kept.  

Most were about him and stretched back into the early 1920s, along with the odd one from mother’s side.

I suspect we are luckier than many families in the amount of material that has survived, but it is a collection which is nothing compared to that of the wealthy and the aristocracy, who’s carefully archived written sources will roll back several centuries. 

Many of them I had not looked at for over 40 years and the first task has been to start scanning them, which is a long process but allows me to read the documents more easily.

For any historian the reward is in the detail and the degree to which it brings you closer to a relative.

In Dad’s case there are a clutch of testimonials written in the 1920s which vouch for his character, and work record, all of which chime with the dad I knew.

The demands of war, 1941

Added to this along with documents from the last world war they firm up the timeline of those years, placing him in Gateshead, then London, his war service back in the North East, and his return to London sometime after 1945.

He was in the entertainment industry, driving coaches on touring holidays, and when I was growing up was one of the two drivers for Glenton Tours engaged in tours across mainland Europe.  I now know that as early as 1935 if not earlier he was travelling across the Continent and had resumed those trips by 1947.

And the letters from our uncles have also corrected mistakes.  So, I now know one uncle was in the Black Watch in the Great War, and the Argyle and Sutherland’s in the second, while uncle George was in the Seaforth Highlanders not the Black Watch.   Trivial details perhaps but important to us.

Another letter sheds light on a family mystery which is the story of our lost uncle, who no one talked about and who deliberately disappeared.  

For years I thought the family had coluded in the disappearance, but no, so final was his decision that he requested that they never contact him.  

A decision which led to him dying alone, and a burial accompanied by the cheapest of services.  It would be almost a year before the family learned of the death.

A request from grandfather, 1922

And of mysteries there is another, which comes in the form of a tired looking letter from my grandfather written in 1922 to the Infantry Office. He had just been demobilized and had returned to Derby.  

The letter places him in an unexpected place, living with his mother and two of his siblings, but throws up the mystery of just when his wife and children arrived from Germany.

All of which leaves those simple questions of so what, and what relevance are these letters to anyone but a family.

Well, it is how you place them in the bigger picture of the last century.  I have never just done family history, but instead have sought to place each family discovery against the backdrop of what was going on and look to see what our domestic stories help tell us.  In that respect we were “little people caught up in a great century”.

Dad’s journey from Gateshead to London in 1933, and his return in 1940 give a personal perspective to all those who directed by the demands of war into “essential services”, which in his case was a driver for a Royal Ordinance factory.

For our disappearing uncle it offers an insight into the difficulties of getting a prewar divorce, while for granddad it illuminates his decision to stay in the army after the Great War, the British army’s occupation of Germany and his fraternization and eventual marriage to my German grandmother.

So quite a lot.

Location; the 20th century

Pictures; from the collection of the Simpson family, 1922-41