#Somme100

Isaac Richardson was a flax dresser from Belfast. He was first husband to my sons' great grandmother (my mother in law's mother).  He was in the Royal Irish Rifles and was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, aged 31. He is buried in the Connaught Cemetery, Thiepval. Lizzie, his widow, never visited his grave and I wonder how long it was before she heard the news of his death.  She was at home in Abingdon Street, Belfast, aged not quite 29 and a mother of 6, 2 of whom had died, one at birth, one aged 16 months. The surviving children, 4 girls, were aged nearly 6, 3, 21 months and 4 and a half months. 

Lizzie had an interesting life.  She remarried in September 1919, another Isaac, a neighbour who was 5 years younger than her.  They had 3 sons between 1921 and 1925.  

And then Lizzie left around 1927.  Her sons seem to have been left with their father and at least one went to school in Dublin.  The girls stayed with her parents.  They stayed in N Ireland although the second youngest died, unmarried, aged 25. Lizzie, using her single name, went to Liverpool and thence to Canada. In 1929, in Winnipeg, aged 42, and probably pregnant, she married a man from Aberdeen, nearly 15 years younger than her.  The marriage may have been bigamous as there was no divorce in N Ireland at that time.  7 months later, in 1930, twins, my sons' grandmother and her brother, were born.  And then a couple of years later the family returned to Aberdeen. Lizzie died there in 1951. I know she kept in touch with the 3 surviving daughters from her first family, my mother in law's half sisters, but she doesn't seem to have done so with her older sons, in fact the family did not even know they existed until I did some family research about 10 years ago. What happened to them? One of them died in Belfast but of the others, nothing. 

Life has interesting twists.  I am not related to Isaac Richardson and I have never seen a photo of him.  However, his death on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, had an impact on my life 60+ years later.  If he'd lived, my family wouldn't have existed.

May he rest in peace.  (The extra is a photo of Isaac Richardson's grave in France was sent to me by Lizzie's great nephew who still lives in Belfast.  It says he was 36 and maybe he was, but that's not significant now, is it?). 

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission  do an amazing job tending and maintaining these graves.  MY great grandmother's brother moved to France after WW1 and worked for them for many years looking after a cemetery near Arras.