Building a new wall with the bricks of the old one

[pottoka]

Family lore had it that my grandfather's half-sister had a sweetheart who fought in the First World War and came home gassed and an invalid, so they never married, but she looked after him for the rest of his life.

My father can remember his aunt and the invalid as he used to visit them regularly until the Second World War broke out. However, he could not for the life of him remember the man's surname - just that he was 'Uncle Bob'.

My father is not getting any younger, and I didn't want to wait for the 1911 Census, which might not have given me much help anyway. I found someone who looked at the Electoral Registers after the war, when I knew Bob was living in the family home. I checked the name with my father who recognised it immediately.

Then to A* and the WW1 records. I found Bob's medal card and service records. But he had been demobbed. That didn't sound right for a soldier who had been gassed. And one of the papers was a claim for an award on disability grounds, but it was rejected, as the disability was neither due to nor aggravated by the war. He actually had Paralysis Agitans, or Parkinson's Disease.

I then trawled through the records to find his death and that of his sweetheart, and sent off for the certificates. She died just a year after him - obviously because her reason for living had been taken away from her, as far as I was concerned. I also decided to apply for their wills, convinced that Bob's would say something about the loving care and devotion shown to him.

What a shock! Bob died in 1941. He had made his will in 1926, leaving everything to ... my grandfather's sister, not their half-sister!

So where did the family myth spring from? Certainly Bob was an invalid. He was of an age with the half-sister, but 10 years older than the sister. The half-sister was never trained for a job; on her death certificate, it says for occupation "spinster housekeeper, domestic daughter of ..", so she would have been at home, looking after everybody and Bob in particular if he needed extra care. My father wonders now if he didn't make certain presumptions as a young lad - it was certainly a time when children didn't ask questions - and pass them on.

The sister who got the money was a teacher; so was Bob - perhaps that's how they met. She died in 1966, unmarried.

So I broke down the brick wall of who Bob was and in what condition he came back from the war. I even found out what was wrong with him (it was on his death certificate as well). But I have a new brick wall - just who was his sweetheart?

His will makes us believe that it has to be the teacher sister. His grave is no help as he was buried with his parents, a sister who died aged 4, and a sister-in-law. The tombstone gives his name and dates and "Infirmity patiently borne".

I know that even the Berlin Wall gave way in the end, but this one won't, as the only people who could tell us the truth are dead and buried. And I built it up with my own fair hands, by knocking down the one before

[caliope]

Very interesting story! Don't you love how we all assume things in our family history searches (as the evidence would have us believe) and then are spectacularly proven wrong?! I'm sure everyone has instances of this in his/her own searches.

Are there any other aunts, uncles or cousins who may know more information than your father? Sometimes a relative who you least expect to have knowledge of the family, does!

I hope you are able, in time, to solve this mystery and update this story on this forum. I would love to know how it turns out!

[pottoka]

I fear that the mystery will remain.

That particular branch of the family were singularly unprolific for the times. My great-grandfather only had three children, a girl in 1875, whose mother died of a childbirth infection. He married again in 1886 and had another girl in 1888 and a boy in 1890. The sisters are those of the story and they both died unmarried. The son was my grandfather who had two sons of his own: my father who was the eldest so would remember Bob and the aunts best, and my uncle who died some years ago.

Mind you, on my great-grandmother's side, there were several brothers and sisters who had children. I don't know anything about any descendants, though. I think it's a lost cause.

I hope that when (if) I get to heaven , there'll be someone there to tell me the answers to all the questions there are no answers to: what really happened to the Mary Celeste, did Anne Boleyn sleep with anyone other than Henry VIII - that sort of thing.

I'd rather have that than a line of ancestors wanting to know why I spent my time poking around in their affairs!

[benny1982]

Hi

Sounds very interesting. It is sad to say but sometime family stories can be wrong. I dont think you have been proven wrong by findings in any historical records as such and then more records that then say othwerwise. I think you are just proven wrong through the war records about a family story that was told which was he was gassed, when he was actually demobbed on medical grounds.

I would think that it was either the sister or the half sister than was his sweetheart. It has to be one of the two so I think you are on the right tracks there, its just finding out which of the two it was.

Sometimes relatives assumed and told other people what they assumed as fact.

Ben

[pottoka]

I think you're right: either family stories come from mistaken assumptions or from a grain of truth passed down and getting more and more garbled along the way, like Chinese whispers.

I forgot to say in the original post that Bob was demobbed in the normal way after the war; he wasn't discharged on medical grounds at all. Presumably, as a child, my father imagined that Bob had been gassed - it would have probably fired his imagination (especially as he wasn't allowed comics like Eagle!) - as he remembers him speaking wheezily and with difficulty.

Not every grain of sand grows into an pearl!

[benny1982]

Hi

I cannot agree more. My nan said that her mothers father was Irish but I have proven that wrong.

I think as children, our relatives had fiery imaginations and assumed things from family whispers.

Ben