Recently I've written up my family history research into a sort of book, realising in the process how little I know about my grandparents and their siblings, parents and grandparents. Now the basic facts of birth, marriage and death dates are discovered (or at least most of them - some are still elusive), I'd like to go on and find out more about them and the lives they may have led.
Going back up the female line, this is my great-grandmother, the earliest of my fore-mothers to feature in any photo we now have. She was Annie Edwards, born in 1853 in central Birmingham, and died in 1919 in Brixton.
She married a jockey (lots of racing in central Birmingham in those days!), and had 8 children, 3 of whom died in infancy. Her husband was involved with horses all his life, and kept a hunter in the stables at his place in Brixton (a trendy area in the early 1900s).Then Annie's daughter Maude (born 1886) went on the Music Halls, where she met my grandfather, married in 1910, and my mother was born later that year. So this photo of the family must date from about 1912. Fashionable outfits - but as stage folk they had to keep up appearances.
And here's a family classic - me at Swanage in about 1952. The scowl was the result of a recent appendectomy, coupled with a stony beach and a very scratchy bathing suit made by Mum.
I still tend to scowl when concentrating, which has frightened a lot of people, though not intentionally - well not always!
2 comments:
Blimey, you do look like the Stitchwort Fairy after a bad day at the Flower Shop. The 1912 pic looks remarkably 2006 somehow, very modern.
Are you sure this isn't the young Kate Moss?
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