Ancestors

Spent a good portion of the day going through old letters and photographs of my mothers, we are very lucky to have so many great pictures of the families forbears.

Top row left or right, my mother and her older sister with the dolls pram, my auntie bonnie and my mother as children, my mother as a toddler with her parents joy and Edgar.

Second row, my grandmother Joy age 14 in 1920 playing the violin, my grandmother Joy putting on a record on a gramophone in a boat in the 30s, my grandfather Edgar (named George Edgar but always called Edgar) in the Navy during the First World War age 17.

Third row my great grandfather Edgar Thomas Slack Father of George Edgar, my grandfather Edgar and his sister Doreen always known as Dolly who unfortunately passed away due to breast cancer in her 40s, my grandmother Joy’s father Joseph Travell.

Bottom row my grandfather Edgar, his sister Dolly and their parents Edgar Thomas and Elisabeth Slack nee Haslam. Elisabeth or Lizzie died just before my mother was born, story goes she knew my grandmother was pregnant before she did and my mother was named after her, Elizabeth won a competition in 1893 at the Royal Albert Hall, she was singing opera and she won a singer sewing machine which still in the family.
Next is little Joseph Travell and I’m guessing this must’ve been about 1880, and that he is again as an old man.

Most of the old letters which I don’t have time to read at the moment and can’t bring myself to throw away or in a small suitcase and the photographs are in another, if I stopped to read all the letters and catalogue the photographs properly I dread to think how long it would take so for now the thing condensed and stored.

Lots of snow today and Gulli’s school was closed at lunchtime, he turned up with a few friends and I made them hotdogs and they had a chocolate biscuit and then they went off to play in the snow for the afternoon.