As part of the sorting process this lot of photos emerged...
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My Maternal Great Grandfather Alexander McFarlane. He seems to have been in the 2nd Garrison Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers?
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I assume this photo was when he served in India.
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He died there in 1919 during the flu epidemic (officially dysentry) and we got this! At the bottom of this post are a few more details!
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His daughter Jessie was put in an orphanage while he was abroad. After some time in service she became a nurse in Queen Alexandria's Royal Nursing Corps where she met my Grandfather - Belgium, 1919. He was in hospital having been gassed. Like his Father in Law, Northumberland Fusiliers. Haven't got any photos of him in army uniform, should have some somewhere of him in his St John's Ambulance Brigade uniform or WW2 Air Raid Warden, just haven' t found them yet. I have got both their discharge papers though...
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Technically, not military. My dad was in the Sea Cadets for years, wanted to do National Service in the Navy but they tried to force him into the army! So he joined the Merchant Navy. This is him with my mother.
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OK, This is the only photo I have of me in uniform - a unit photo from my time in the OTC. It was the worst photo I've ever seen - someone cropped the photo and did some very poor editing - I clipped those bits out! I'm second row from the front. fourth in from the right.
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| This is me! |
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This is the official War Office notification of my Great Grandfather's death.
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Letter from his Company Commander to my Gran.
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Second page. Sad to think he died a week before he was due to come home.
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Discharge certificate for my Grandfather - difficult to read now.
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Discharge cerificate for my Grandmother. She only seems to have been in for 6 months before being demobilised! Quite an eventful 6 months!
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A final surprise while going through the papers included something I had previously known nothing about. I never knew my paternal Grandfather - my Grandmother had remarried by the time I was born and no one ever mentioned him. Found his Medical Certificate of Cause of Death. He died when my father was about 5. His name was John Young: My Dad's older brother was also called John, and the name carried on when Uncle John's oldest son, my cousin, was also named John.
So, overall, today has actually been a very useful day when it comes to putting together parts of my family history.
There are days when I wish the younger me had listened more attentively when my mother would list off the names but then she focused on all the wrong things and didn't know alot about my father's side. My sole great nephew will have his work cut out if he develops an interest in his genealogy.
ReplyDeleteAgree with that. The number photos we've got and no idea who they are of! We're pencilling in info like that on photos for Steven.
DeleteYour great grandfather has a fine moustache Rob….
ReplyDeleteI am lucky that my mother wrote down the names on the back of them when she was sorting out my grandparents photographs, though there are still quite a few that say things like ‘a friend of the family’ or ‘a relative of grandfathers’.
The one thing we don’t appear to have are any medals…
Of course having someone in the family who is actually interested in genealogy is an advantage.
All the best. Aly
Sadly, the 'big penny' is the only medal I have - the rest went elsewhere. On the other hand, this one has the memories. I used to use it to buy sweets at the corner shop when I very young, and my parents would then actually pay for them.
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