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.

Malinda , her stepmother and her sisters

This is actually a cheat as I created these and blogged them on my other blog, much earlier in the year but I suddenly realized that I hadn't put them on here. This is for posterity ... and for all the ladies who visit this blog and leave me such nice comments here and on UKS... thought you would like to read the story behind them. These are of DH's mother and siblings and were taken at St Leonards, Hastings where they lived at the time.


The younger girl is Winifred ... known for most of her life as 'Billie' and is half sister to the other two. She looks at least 12, making it about 1933. The older girls are Dorothy and Malinda,who would be by then about 20 and 22
Around the time of this photo, their father Tom started his relationship with Jane,'wife' No3. Linda (MIL) told me that Dorothy was commanded to run messages to Jane. She would not refuse him even though she hated it.

The second LO is of Linda, as she preferred to be called, walking along the pier with her step mother ...'wife' No 2.
I think this may be a few years later than the other and I see that I have dated it late 30's, on the LO ...so hard to work out these dates. Has anyone any thoughts on the possible dates of these photos? Do you think I'm about right?

Again, I am not sure when Tom left them but his first child, with Jane, was born in 1934 and so he could have been running two households for a while!!!. Jane was only just over a year older than his oldest child, Linda and went on to have five more children, four of whom were boys. (His only other son was the baby who died ... in the earlier LO)
I have a poor photo of Tom around this time and I cannot imagine what this young girl saw in him ... I think it was his charm. He stayed with her for over 30 years.

Thanks for dropping by.

Take Care xx

Horace and Euphemia Bullock

My Nana, Euphemia, met Horace Yelland Bullock when she was employed to nurse him, in 1912. He had Rheumatic Fever and then developed Pericarditis, which nearly cost him his life. I actually found a doctors letter that talks about it and the fact that he had RF again during 1916 too. When he was well and ‘Ritchie’, as he called her, was about to leave, he had a relapse but his sister Edith discovered that it was a rouse to keep the woman he had fallen in love with, close by.
At this time Euphemia had a huge decision to make … Her young niece wrote to her, begging her to come and nurse her mother who was dying from Cancer. This was Euphemia’s oldest sister, Jessie, who lived in Canada. She knew that if she went, the separation could have a terrible effect on Horace’s health and as he had proposed and she had accepted, she used the wedding plans as an excuse not to go. Her sister died soon after and her niece did not communicate with her for about 40 years.
Once she was betrothed to Horace (Bully as she affectionately called him), she was able to continue to work as a private nurse for other families until their marriage at the end of 1913. Her last post was with Lord and Lady Howard de Walden, who gave her a Crown Derby coffee set as a Wedding gift. She treasured this all her life and proudly kept it on show, in a glass china cabinet.

If you look closely at the Wedding Party above, you can see two servants in the back row but in prime position, in the front row, sits Horace’s mother. There was none of Euphemia’s family there, possibly due to her not going to nurse her sister but it could have been the distance as Fife to London was a long journey. The ladies to the right of her are nursing colleagues. The one in the middle, with all the feathers round her hat, was a matron and it was she who gave her away.

Thank you for reading this.
Take care xx

Reg, Marjory and Leslie

I am so thankful that I persuaded my Mum to jot down some of her memories when she was alive. This meant that I knew the background to this photograph when I came across it.

This is the day my Mum met Granny Crombie for the first time …well the first time she remembered. She was her mothers’ mother, it was 1920 and Marjory was barely three. Her granny was Mrs Ritchie, but the family used her maiden name …Crombie … not sure why.
On the day of the photograph the family had gone to visit her at Cupar, before going to the photographers. I think it was the visit that had caused her little sad face.

Mum remembered...

“I felt afraid as I entered Granny Crombies’ house. It was dark and gloomy, unlike ours, and a large grandfather clock was loudly striking in the corner. Large dark furniture filled the room and the couch we three children were firmly instructed to sit on, seemed so uncomfortable. I wanted to wriggle about because the horsehair stuffing was sticking through the black shiny covering and pricking my legs but I was too scared to move too much. We didn’t stay long and I was glad.”

Thanks for dropping by xx