Family Gathering

In Bella’s Garden

Bella, who was actually Agnes Isabella, was the older sister of my Nana, Euphemia Jane aka Jean, by five years. They both lived in Fife, and their families would gather together, often in her garden. Her garden brought her so much pleasure and she even kept a couple of chickens down at the bottom of it. Her husband, James Kidd Brown, was a gardener and worked away from home for a large part of their married life, in some of the large houses …and even in England.
This gathering is in 1925, not long after their niece Lily was married, where both Ella and Marjory were Bridesmaids. (Marjory is wearing her dress as a Best Dress now)
This tag shows who's who


James and Bella had three children Ella, Oswald and Helen.
In 1918, when Helen unexpectedly collapsed in front of her mother while dancing around the kitchen, both the doctor and Euphemia were called for. Immediately Euphemia answered the call for help .... even though she had year old twins at home.

Sadly Helen died less than a week later, of the flu that spread through out the world and claimed so many lives. She was only ten years old.
It was said that Bella never got over her death … I can see the sadness in her eyes.

The other significance to the top photo is that it is the last picture I can find of Horace, my grandfather, who died less than two years later.

Take Care xx

Great Uncle Bill and family

William Crombie Ritchie … the middle name I believe was added in later life

b1873 ….m1902 ….d1951

At the outbreak of WW1 he was a Lieutenant in the 18^th (Reserve) Battalion Royal Scots. At the age of 40+ and the fact that he was in a reserve battalion, it was thought that he was unlikely to have seen action, possibly behind a desk, but in a piece I found, that he had written about his mother at the time of her death in 1922 … he mentions the war

“….. We were forced to make long night marches, and in our attacks we had to leap wire entanglements and trenches, but never once did any of my young comrades say, or even give it a thought, that I was double their age ….” …obviously he was not behind a desk.

At the time of writing this he was engaged in …. “... squaring accounts and details of the Great War ….” and was now the rank of Captain.

Family was important to him but sadly this line ended with his children.

William and Doris never married but Betty and Sybil did … as can be seen in the LO below.

Sybil apparently had no children and I know there was a story told to me about the reason but I have forgotten …maybe I will remember when I’m not trying.

Betty’s tragic story I do remember .....

She miscarried a child and soon after they found she had a problem with her heart. She however fell pregnant again and everything was going well. She and her husband lived in Glenluce where he was a teacher. It was a very remote area and one doctor covered a large area. This doctor also has his own problems to cope with … the tragic death of his only son … and his patients felt that that his mind was not on them … and it proved to be the case with Betty.

She became very tired and sick but it was put down to her heart …then strange marks appeared on her body, which were ignored. Finally, when she was actually bed ridden, it was taken seriously and it was discovered that the twins she was carrying had been dead for sometime. She was taken to hospital but died of blood poisoning a week later, aged 33

.Take Care xx

I have been busy with all these LO's and posts and I have had so much fun researching the backgrounds to the photos below ...cannot believe I managed to do six.

I hope you enjoy reading the little memories and nuggets of history ...thanks for dropping by.

Take Care xx

A Veteran of the Civil War

John F Blum is my late husbands’ Great Grandfather. He lost his arm in the Civil war while a teenager, met and married his wife Hulda, in his thirties, and fathered 10 children, of which 7 lived to adulthood. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, brought up his family in Big Stone, Akron, Minnesota, where he farmed for a living and then around 1895/6 he moved to Fitzgerald, Georgia.

Fitzgerald was the dream of P H Fitzgerald, who created it in 1895, in the main part, as a community for Civil War Veterans who had suffered the devastation of the Midwest during the early 1890’s. This destruction of the area was due to drought, rendering a once fertile farming area into dusty wasteland. The situation was made even worse by the depression that spreading over the country as a whole. The desire for a new start was so great, that people moved themselves and their families, by any means available to them, into the area, even before surveys of the land had been carried out. The first year was very hard and it is believed that John and his family were in at the start of it all.

Chalk and Cheese

‘Chalk and Cheese’ … that was how Mum described her parents.
Horace was tall and slim, quiet and reserved and had only one sibling. His early life was centred on his fathers shop in London and then as his father’s means grew and he went into property, so things changed for Horace. By 1903, when his father died, his inheritance meant that he now had a private income … enough to provide for a family.
His word was final yet he let his beloved wife have most of her own way in matters that he felt need not concern him. Although he was the musician, he always asked Ritchie (or Jean as most people now called her), if a piece of music was going well or what he should play at a recital.

Jean was short, and the arrival of the children added inches to her waistline. She was the youngest of seven, brought up in a small village out side Cupar and her father was a mason.. She spoke her mind but knew her place. She liked to be in charge and for others to think well of her and her family. She always made sure the any one of any importance, within the family, had to be invited to all social gatherings
Her beloved Horace was sent to church every Sunday, in case any one noticed an absence of the family or that she might miss any goings on! He was always bombarded with questions as he came through the door and Mum remembers him eventually learning to raise his hand as he crossed the threshold, and utter loudly “Jean …..I have been seen”.

I am not sure about the date but looking at their faces and clothes, I believe it to be around 1919.

The Mobsby Family

This was my great Aunt, and her family. My Nana disliked her husband for some reason and mistrusted her son …I can remember mumbled conversations, when I was a small child, filled with warning for my mother about not getting in touch with them and ignoring Eric if he contacted her, Wish I knew the story as I never met any of the family, yet Irene and Eric were alive in my life time.

On the back of the LO I have recorded their little tree for posterity

My Mum ...1934

This is my Mum when she was about 17.

Would you guess that she had an arm that was thin and frail compared to the other and didn’t work properly … or that one leg was 1”shorter, and much weaker, than the other?

No one really knew why. It was thought that it was due to a difficult birth but others said it was a congenital defect. At the age of twelve her mother was offered an operation that might help the mobility of her daughters arm but on hearing that there was a high risk of the arm becoming totally paralyzed, if the operation failed, she refused it.

Mum told me that she was in two shows for her local music society … Rosemarie and Maid of the Mountain … not sure if this is from either but looking at the scenery in the back ground, it just could be, which, after some research, would actually make her 18/19 not 17 as she had always told me.( I have left the LO with the date she said.).

She had a beautiful operatic voice, accompanied herself on piano and also played violin in an orchestra, despite her arm …such a talented lady but so unassuming. Her youth was filled with music …maybe this was how she felt close to her father whom she had adored.