This month’s fabulous photo is of a wedding on Christmas Day 1917.
It is the wedding of my paternal Grandfather and Grandmother and was taken in the back garden of the groom’s father’s house in Paddington, West London. This was the house they were to spend much of their married life, and where their children were born, and indeed where their son Alan (my father) was also to start his married life.
It brings home my recommendation that you should always write on the back of photographs (lightly in pencil if possible) to explain who is in the picture.
We can see that some of the men are in military uniform (presumably on leave) but who are they…and are they related to the bride or the groom?
There are also six children present, but we have no clear idea of who they are.
We have asked the eldest members of our family, with some success, but a simple list would have been so informative and interesting.
The surviving sons of the groom was my own father Alan and my uncle Ron who lives in Australia. There was also a surviving son of one of the bride’s brothers. None of these three were alive at the time of the wedding (1917).
A copy of the photo was sent to all three men, and after some ‘old man’ head scratching we managed to identify some of the guests.
You can see a second photo with names now attached.
And that was the end of it…or so we thought!
For our Family Research Business we use Ancestry.co.uk, and there is a very good addition to the research package that lets you know if somebody else is researching the same names as yourselves.
We have now traced the grandson of one of the guests in the picture, and in 1917 that man had a three-year-old daughter. Is that her sitting on the lap of the groom’s father on the right of the picture? We eagerly await more information.
So…a great photo from 1917 is coming to life. How wonderful.
