22 October 2012

Berndt Christensen Skade – My Paternal Great-Grandfather

berndt-schade 

Berndt's grandfather was baptised in St Catharine in Ribe and was the first to move from this place. In 1986 living in Denmark were 90 persons with the name Skade, and of them about 25 are family. Descendants of Berndt's Uncle Christen use the Schade spelling. Sch-spelling was introduced before and after 1800 when many clergymen were educated with a German university. In the church registration of birth and baptism for Berndt & his siblings their name is spelled Skade. In Sydney Australia lives a branch spelled Shade. Jacob cancelled the 'c' because they were pursued during WWI when they were taken for Germans.
The area south of Ribe is named Slesvig, and since about 1400 it has been a border-area between Germany & Denmark. After a war in 1864 it was incorporated in Germany until 1920 when the northern part was given back to Denmark. As Berndt was born in Brøns he became a German in 1864. I am told that he hated being German. In Australia some have letters from Hans (1883) and Gine (1885-1889) sent to Hans, and she always asks for letter from Berndt, who apparently never wrote to them, and did not know his address. So it looks like after Berndt went to the war in 1864 he never had contact with Denmark. Hans & Gine had two other sons who also emigrated to Australia plus three more in Denmark. (Extract from a letter sent to me from Denmark).

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Brøns is a small town in the coutryside with lovely wide streets and very neat well kept houses. The above photo was taken about 1900 with the arrow pointing to where Berndt grew up and the Brøns Kirke which they attended weekly. Below is what it looks like today, not much has changed except for the line of trees having grown and a few more houses added. I’m not sure if Berndt’s home is still there, I think not.

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<<< This is the home In Brøns that Berndt lived in when he was growing up. I’m not sure if it is the same one in the b&w photo above where his father lived out his last years.

>>> This might be the same house today but it’s hard to say, it doesn’t look quite the same to me although it’s more or less in about the same place.

 

 

The Second Schleswig War was the second military conflict as a result of the Schleswig-Holstein Question. It began on 1 February 1864, when Prussian forces crossed the border into Schleswig. Denmark fought Prussia and Austria. Like the First Schleswig War (1848–51), it was fought for control of the duchies because of succession disputes concerning the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg when the Danish king died without an heir acceptable to the German Confederation. Decisive controversy arose due to the passing of the November Constitution, which integrated the Duchy of Schleswig into the Danish kingdom in violation of the London Protocol.
Reasons for the war were the ethnic controversy in Schleswig and the co-existence of conflicting political systems within the Danish unitary state. The war ended on 30 October 1864, when the Treaty of Vienna caused Denmark's cession of the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Saxe-Lauenburg to Prussia and Austria. It was the last victorious conflict of the Austrian Empire/Austria-Hungary in its history.

Berndt was called up to the 21st Infantry Battalion and he took the oath to King & Land on the16 May 1863 in Flensburg. He took part in the war and was captured by the Germans, but he managed to escape and fled to Australia via England.

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true-briton-1910 

Berndt arrived in Australia from Liverpool aboard the clipper ship ‘True Briton’ in Dec 1865.

Photo taken in 1910 >>>

 

 

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Thirty two years later he applied for and received his Naturalization Papers.

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In the meantime he had settled in the Forest Creek area of Victoria in 1867 working as a miner where gold had been discovered in 1851. By 1861 the alluvial gold deposits had almost been exhausted and according to a census taken at the time the population had shrunk to 3353 residents. Shaft mining of the gold-quartz reefs was conducted with some success by a select few companies throughout the 1860s.

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Berndt Christensen Skade married Jane Boots on the 16 Apr 1870 in the Christ Church in Castlemaine with the consent of Jane’s step-father Charles Boots as she was only 20. Josiah Hollis, the curate, obviously didn’t know how to spell Berndt’s name or place of birth, probably to his ears quite foreign so he just anglicized them. Translation:– Ben part of Lleswick = Brøns part of Schleswig.

Over the next twenty-two years they had a total of twelve children, their second son being my grandfather Charles Berndt. 

otto-schade

 

Christian Hansen 1871-1872   
Charles Berndt 1872-1948 
Christina Evelyn 1874-1948
Hans Mathieson 1876-1907
Lavinia Jane 1878-1974
Jane (or Ann) Elizabeth 1882-?
Louisa Grace 1885-?
Otto Hansen 1885-1885
Adelaide May 1886-1963
Ethel Rose 1887-1978
Amelia Frances 1890-1974
Henry Christensen 1893-1965

Opposite is an article about the old Golden Hope Hotel in Chewton formerly known as Forest Creek or was it? There seems to be some controversy about the renaming of Forest Hill to Chewton. You will find an excellent article about it in the monthly newsletter issued by the Chewton Domain Society online. There are back issues on the ‘Chewton Chat’ website dating back to Sep 2002.

Two of Berndt’s six brothers also migrated to Australia, Hans Andersen in 1863 on board the vessel ‘Lord Raglan’ & Otto Hansen about the same time. >>>>>

 

Berndt & Jane lived out the rest of their lives in Chewton, on 7 Jul 1916 Berndt passed away and was buried in the Chewton Cemetery. Jane followed him on the 28 May 1934 & was interred in the same grave.

berndts-obituary-1916

SCHADE Berndt C, Jane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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03 October 2012

Charles Berndt Schade – My Paternal Grandfather

charles-berndt-schade 

Charles Schade was the grandfather I never knew, it took some doing but I finally pinned him down! After I had found that he was the father of my grandmother’s three eldest children I wrote to all the people in the Auckland telephone book with the surname of Schade, explaining who I was, who I was looking for and if they were related please could they get in touch with me. I received three replies, one was from a Doctor whose family turned out to be a different one, one from a grandson of Charles and another from the wife of another grandson who was deceased. I arranged to meet up with them both, the grandson was my generation and he came to visit me one afternoon. He gave me a lot of information about the Schade family, told me about what he remembered about his grandfather and that Charles had married again in later life. Then I went to visit the wife of his brother who was able to tell me what she knew and also gave me copies of some lovely photos of Charles & his family. No one could tell me much about the family Charles had with my grandmother so it seems that grandma & her children had not kept in touch with Charles over the years. I never did find out why they never married although I do know that Charles didn’t divorce his first wife until long after he & grandma split up. So follows the story of Charles’ life as I know it, scant as it is.

charles-schade-birth

 

Charles Berndt Schade was born in Chewton, Victoria, Australia in 1872, his parents were Berndt Christensen Schade and Jane Boots.

Then there’s a twenty-two year blank until he married Elizabeth Annie Peeler on Christmas Day 1894. They were married at her father’s residence in nearby Barkers Creek.

 

peeler-schade-marriage-1894

chewton-goldfields

 

Gold was discovered in Barkers Creek in 1851 and over 30,000 diggers & prospectors from around the world arrived at Chewton over the next three months.

The Forest Creek diggings became the world’s richest shallow alluvial goldfield. The attraction of gold at Forest Creek led to the world's largest migration in the 19th Century.

By the 1860s the alluvial gold had been exhausted and efforts turned to underground shafts in search of gold bearing quartz reefs. Underground mining saw the immigration of Welsh and Cornish miners and some mines were very successful. The Wattle Gully mine founded in 1876 is still operating today.

By the time Charles & Elizabeth married the gold mining had wound down, the population declining to 1212 and by 1933 only 454 people were left.

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Their three sons were born in quick succession over the next three years, first was Roy Wilhelm Charles Theodore in 1895, then Alfred Berndt in 1896 and finally Albert Edward Thomas in 1897. Second son Alfred Berndt died in 1898 aged 1. Sometime after 1898 Charles & Elizabeth & their two sons moved to Dunedin in New Zealand, then by 1905 they were in Christchurch where Charles was working as a Boilermaker.

On the 4 Nov 1908 Elizabeth walked out of their home, leaving Charles with their two children, never to return. As Charles says in his divorce petition ‘she wilfuly deserted me without just cause’, but I could have a good guess as to why she left! My grandmother, Olive Wilson Linklater, gave birth to a baby girl on 26 Dec 1907 in the Female Refuge for unmarried mothers in Linwood, Christchurch. That same baby girl, Marion Enid, would later say on her marriage certificate that Charles was her father.

It must have been soon after Elizabeth leaving that Olive went to live with Charles as his ‘housekeeper’, supposedly to look after his two sons. I don’t know how long they stayed in Christchurch but before 23 Oct 1910 they moved to Auckland where my father, Ronald Charles, was born in the suburb of Arch Hill (just before you reach Surrey Crescent coming from the city along Great North Rd). His brother, Raymond Stanley, was born at the same address 17 months later. At this stage Charles was still married to Elizabeth and as far as I know hadn’t tried to get a divorce.

I don’t know how long after that they were together, Charles is listed in 1914 as living at 1 Stanmore Rd, Grey Lynn but there is no sign of Olive living anywhere in that same electoral roll, at least under any surname I can think of. In 1917 Olive married George Edward Whitney in the Auckland Registry Office and before the end of the year they had a son, Gordon Robert Whitney, who was born in Hanson St, Wellington. By 1919 Olive & George were living in Christchurch although before too long they were all back living in Auckland once more.

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On the 6 Sep 1930 Charles petitioned for a divorce from Elizabeth, a typical man, he gives his marriage date as 1893 instead of 1894!

divorce-newspaper-1-10-1930

Absolutely no mention of his three children or my grandmother, the first one being born while he was still with Elizabeth! I believe we all know why she walked out on him…..

<<<<< On the 1 Oct 1930 this appeared in the Auckland Weekly News. I don’t know if Elizabeth was ever found, I believe she later married Archibald Campbell. The divorce absolute was granted on the 14 Nov 1930 in the Supreme Court in Auckland (see date stamp on marriage certificate). In 1932 Charles married Ada Harling and on the 26 Feb 1932 they both departed on board the vessel “Maunganui” bound for Sydney.

 charles-schade-older-web

On the 3rd Sep 1948 Charles passed away while living
at 16 Pompallier Tce, Ponsonby, Auckland, aged 76.

He was cremated at Waikumete Crematorium and his ashes were scattered.

I would have been nearly 8, it would have been nice to have known him I think, he looks like he’d mellowed somewhat in his old age.

 

 

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The details given on his death certificate aren’t quite correct, probably given by his wife Ada who it seems didn’t know! His father was Berndt Christensen Schade not Hans Berndt and his mother was Jane Boots, no middle name. In fact Jane wasn’t a Boots at all, but that’s another story!

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21 September 2012

Ronald Charles Whitney – My Father

myfirstphoto-1940-sbing

My father – Ronald Charles Whitney – the first six years of his life he grew up with the surname of Linklater, his mother’s maiden name, as his parents weren’t married. Thereby hangs a tale that took me a few years to unravel!

I didn’t know who Dad’s father was as he had never wanted to talk about him when I was growing up, he said he’d tell me about him one day but Dad died suddenly at the early age of 55 without ever revealing (to me) who he was.

Mum had told me a few little bits & pieces but as I was never really interested in my roots in those days I never did take notes or remember much about what she’d told me, except for two little snippets – Dad’s mother, Olive Wilson Linklater, had been a housekeeper for his father & his two children and during that time had bore him three more children, Dad being the second one, and that they had never been married. I also remember that although Dad’s hair was quite fair whenever he grew a beard it was red, he told me that it was because of his Danish heritage.

I didn’t have a clue as to how I was going to find out who his father was, I had asked his younger half-brother, Gordon, if he knew, as by this time Uncle Gordon was the only family member left, but he said he didn’t know (he had a different father), although his wife, Williamina Mercia nee Lakey, told me she thought she knew but would only confirm it if I found out first. Dad had listed his step-father’s name as his father when he married Mum so that didn’t help me at all.

So I set out by purchasing the birth certificates for Olive’s three children:-

threecerts

1907 26 Dec, 46 Essex St Linwood, Marion Enid not present, female, illegitimate, Olive Linklater 19 born Kaiapoi, E Hewes Authorised Agent Linwood.
1910 23 Oct, Arch Hill, Ronald Charles not present, male, illegitimate, Olive Linklater 22 born Kaiapoi, Charles Schade Authorised Agent Auckland.
1912 17 May, Stanley St Arch Hill, Raymond Stanley not present, male, illeg, Olive Linklater 24 born Kaiapoi, C Schade Authorised Agent Auckland.

So far that’s all I had to go on, little did I know that the answer was staring me in the face!

I knew that Marion Enid (known as Enid) had died at age 28 before I was born and that the youngest, Uncle Ray, had never married so I decided to see what I could find out about Enid. In those early days of my research I didn’t take proper notes or get photocopies, much to my chagrin years later! First I visited the Auckland Research Centre in the Central Library to see if I could find the address given on Enid’s birth certificate – 46 Essex St, Linwood – in the Street Directories for 1907. I can’t find any notes I might have taken about what it actually said was at that address although I can remember thinking it sounded like a home for unmarried mothers. More recently I was able to find out for sure when I searched in Papers Past and found the proof that the E Hewes who was the agent giving the information for her birth registration was in fact the Matron of the Female Refuge in Linwood:-

femalerefuge-matron

Then I looked for Enid’s marriage which I had found out from Uncle Gordon was to Walter Duncan. However, the first marriage I found for Enid was to Christopher John Lennox, a 21 yr old boilermaker from Dundee Scotland, Enid was aged just 15. They were married on 20 Jan 1923 at the residence of the Rev A S Wilson in Mt Eden, Auckland. Unfortunately there is no father’s name listed on the certificate and she signed her name as E M Linklater, but stamped right across the page was the information that the marriage had been dissolved by Decree Absolute granted on the 22 Feb 1928.

One would probably presume that Enid had been pregnant seeing she was so young and being married at the minister’s home with her mother present but I have not been able to ascertain with any certainty that she gave birth to any children during that five year marriage, at least none of them were registered if she did. Dad had only ever spoken of an adopted son she had with Walter Duncan. Uncle Gordon was 10 yrs younger than Enid & when I told him about her first marriage he was as surprised as I was, he had never known about it!

I then searched and searched from 1928 for her marriage to Walter but I just could not find one, at first I presumed that they hadn’t legally married then one day I decided to search backwards from 1928 and surprise surprise I found it! I’d found Walter Banks Duncan married to an Enid Schade but who the heck was Enid Schade? After purchasing the certificate I found out! Marriage dated 24 Mar 1927, so now I have a bigamist in my family and my own father was one of the witnesses!

enid1stmarriage

However, I will forever be indebted to Enid because if she hadn’t told (what I thought was) a pack of lies when she married Walter I would never have found out who my real paternal grandfather was.

dads-siblings dad-siblings

Dad with all of his siblings, from back left - Wally Duncan, Ray, Ron, Enid, Gordon. On the right is Dad with his two brothers and his cousin Desiree Linklater, and yes Dad was still wearing the one piece bathing suit that men wore back in the early part of the century, I vaguely remember it!

enid2ndmarriage

She said she was a spinster & that her mother was Olive Wilson Schade nee Smart – which wasn’t true because it was Olive’s mother who had married Amon Smart after her first husband died and it was never Olive’s name, her maiden name was Linklater, Olive didn’t marry until she married Uncle Gordon’s father, George Edward Whitney.  Enid listed her father as Charles Schade and wonder of wonders it turned out to be correct although I didn’t realise it at the time! It wasn’t until much later I noticed that was the name of the agent on my father’s and his younger brother’s birth certificates. (Aunty Ina confirmed that was the name she had for Dad’s father, but more about Charles Schade later).

Dad was the cutest baby imaginable, a boy with such gorgeous curls, it’s just not right!dad-baby-half-brother

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I was surprised recently when I found the following article in the local newspaper of 1930, I had no idea that Dad was into cycling as a sport when he was a teenager, he was mentioned in a lot of other articles as being a member of the Manukau Cycling Club. I should have realised though because I’ve had this bicycle registration for many years and this photo of Dad on his bike:-

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Journalling reads:- The first driver licence in NZ was issued in 1912 but it wasn't until 1930 that the maximum speed limit of 30 mph was introduced. 1936 saw the first appointment of 12 new traffic inspectors and the first edition of the Road Code was published in 1937. In 1948 the speed limit was increased to 50 mph, compulsory stop signs were introduced and the publication of the first Bike Code. So imagine my surprise to find this Bicycle Registration (for his younger brother Gordon) dated 1936 amongst my father's possessions after he died. I had no idea that bicycles had to be registered at any time in NZ. The idea seems strange to me now but I love having this little piece of the past.  -------->>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

 weddingdaymumdad                                                           

Dad married Mum, Gwendoline Eleanor Parks, on 12 Apr 1940 in the front garden of her parents home in Browns Bay.  About Aug 1941 they moved to 42 Wellpark Ave in Westmere where Dad lived for the rest of his life.

             On their honeymoon in Rotorua.

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passionfruit wine

Dad was a hard-working man all his life but he & Mum still loved to socialise with the neighbours with parties, card games & darts, as you did in those days. Above is a photo of Dad playing at barman at my 21st Birthday party along with some of his wine & beer recipes I found inside Mum’s old Edmonds Cook Book! I will never forget the year he made that passionfruit wine, ‘open like champagne’ he said – it sure did, all by itself!

He was a cabinetmaker & worked for many years for the Buoyant Chair Co, 79 Vermont St, Ponsonby, as I was growing up. I remember sometimes I went with Dad to work for the day, I was made a fuss of by all the men who worked there, I was spoilt rotten, that was when I learned how to drink tea without sugar in it, it was probably near the end of the war, or very soon after, & we were still on rations & sugar was a luxury they couldn’t afford, to this day I don’t take sugar in my tea, good one Dad! This is a photograph of Dad at work, another photo we found after he died, no names written on the back of course, Dad was the foreman & is the one in the middle, nearly bald, with his hands in his apron pocket. The man in the jacket two away from Dad is I believe Samuel Darbyshire, his boss. Mr Darbyshire would drive to our place every morning and Dad would drive them both to work & home again everyday. Later on when I was a teenager Dad went to work for the Farmers Furniture Factory in Mt Eden.

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buoyant-fireIt seems the factory was completely gutted in a fire when I was just over two years old so it must have been rebuilt because they were again advertising for apprentices by Jul 1943. I don’t think I would have had memories of going to work with Dad when I was less than 2 yrs old. However, it is no longer there so it must have been pulled down, or maybe even had another fire since 1945 which is when the newspapers in Papers Past stop.

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This is a lovely jewellery box that Dad made for Mum and a small table, both of which I still have. He was a fine craftsman and also a very good needleworker! He was quite sick once (I think from Scarlet Fever) & had to stay in bed for six weeks, so he worked a whole lot of needlework tapestry scenes and later when he was well again he made them all into firescreens, one of which can be seen in the photo (taken 1956) of him in our lounge. I remember the lounge being full of paint pots and all sorts of carpenter tools and nothing much 40-42-wellpark-aveelse for the first 10 or so years of my life, he also rebuilt the whole outside of our house. He did it on weekends and week nights, changing the outside into the style of the day, absolutely spoilt it as it was a lovely Victorian Bay Villa built about 1850 originally – this photo was taken about 1958, the house next door is built in the same style and that’s our place on the right, as I said, totally spoilt! The photo underneath is as it is today.42wellparkave

Dad also made all of the furniture in our house, built in all our beds & wardrobes and after the above photo was taken built cabinets either side of the fireplace one of which held the new stereo gramophone, the loudspeaker was a large stand alone cabinet that sat at the other end of the room & which could be heard at the other end of our street when turned up to full volume! This of course was the start of the Rock & Roll era, parties would start after an afternoon of darts & continue well into the weekend! No complaints from the neighbours either, they were all there!

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In Dec 1940 Dad was listed in the first ballot for service in the War, in the newspaper report his address was  8 Margaret St, Ponsonby. That was a month after I was born and I always thought they were living in Grafton Rd then. His Army papers show that he didn’t enlist until 23 May 1945 & was discharged on 10 Sep 1945, being a married man with children he was one of the lucky ones that weren’t called until near the end of the war. He told me they were getting ready to be shipped out overseas when the war ended. Even for that short time he received the NZ War Service Medal. Mum, my sister & I went to visit him one day when he was in the Army & we had to have a sleep in the barracks in the afternoon, my sister used Dad’s bed so I had to sleep in someone else’s, I remember not liking that very much!  

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me-with-dadDad’s left arm inside the elbow area was badly scarred from boiling water when he was a child, it was quite a large scar that puckered up the skin, just discernable in this photo of him & me, I wonder if that was the reason his left arm is quite a bit shorter in the above photo of him in his army uniform or if it was just the way he was standing?

Dad & Mum weren’t rich but we lived fairly comfortably, with a lot of scrimping & saving no doubt, I was oblivious to all of that as I was growing up, I never wanted for anything. I remember every payday Dad would put a threepenny piece (3d) into my piggy bank for when I grew up! I wonder what happened to all the millions! We had an old car called the ‘Continental Beacon’ when I was very young, I remember falling asleep on the large back seat many a time on the way home from visiting our grandparents who lived in Browns Bay. In those days it was a day’s outing to visit so far away, we had to catch the car ferry, no bridge then, these days you could drive there in 20 mins. We didn’t have that car for very long as the son of one of our neighbours became interested in it and Dad sold it to him. We weren’t to get another car until I was well into my teens, this time it was a Vauxhall Cresta, second-hand hardly used, it was like new and Dad was very proud of it, every weekend he’d be out there washing and polishing it, making it gleam! It was almost impossible during that time in NZ to purchase a new car as you had to have overseas funds, so second-hand it was, he waited a long time before it arrived too.

vauxhall-cresta mum-cresta-car mum-car

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The 1933 four-cylinder L-head Continental Beacon, which sold for as little as $355 on the right. The car above, with Mum in the driver’s seat, is the only photo I have of another car, it’s quite different to this one so obviously not the one I remember we had for a short while.

From what I can gather from Dad’s old photographs he was a bit of a tear-away when he was younger but when I knew him he was a real family man, proud of his three daughters & was always pottering around at home, we always had a large vegetable garden, the lawn always mowed, the fruit trees, especially the passionfruit, were ever prolific, except the plum tree, much to we kid’s dismay it never did fruit as long as I can remember! He was always building something with his hands, making home brew or just plain fixing something! I don’t remember ever seeing him read a book & he didn’t seem to be that interested in playing sports although I did go to a rugby game with him once, he never took me again, was probably too frustrated at all the questions I asked him! Every Christmas we found our stockings stuffed with all sorts of lovely handmade toys, dolls with complete knitted outfits, rocking horses & all sorts of wooden toys, one year there were dolls beds complete with bedding, a little dolls wardrobe with a door one one side & drawers on the other & a dolls chest of drawers, another year a small child’s table with little chairs. My own children still had the table & chairs when they were growing up, I finally had to get rid of them when we shifted to a smaller house 13 years ago, the chairs had disappeared one by one but the table was still as strong as the day it was made, albeit lots of marks all over it! The two toys I remember were the little wooden men who toppled over & over down a wooden ladder (seen here is this photo, you can just make out one of the little men in Karin’s left hand)  and the Jig Doll with loose limbs that 'jig' on the end of a vibrating board, sit on the board and the doll would dance, just fascinating. Then there was the swing he built for us in the backyard, we were the envy of all the kids in the neighbourhood, no one else had one of those at home (barren plum tree in the background).

our-toys-1944 jig-dolls swing

Well, that’s Dad’s life in a nutshell, there was obviously a whole lot more to him than I ever knew but there’s no one left to tell me about it now! Here’s a few photos from what he left behind, mostly with nothing written on them. Please don’t let this happen to your photos, go and name them all now before it’s too late!

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1) Groomsman at Ray Blundell's wedding
2) Queen St with brother Ray & friend Jack Dunn
3) My wedding
4) Don, Dad & Robin
5) At the Zoo with Sandra
6) Dad & Ray with unknown women

 

                  Our Little Family                                                                                         

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Dad passed away suddenly from a myocardial infarction on 5 Mar 1966 aged just 55, three months after his first grandchild was born and 5 years short of retiring. RIP Dad.

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