Notes of Life

I haven’t felt well over the past few days, so in an effort to feel better in this lovely weather we’re having, I decided to head over to Bettws-y-Crwyn* to tidy up the family graves and take some photos of the countryside, yesterday.

The view over Shropshire from Bettws-y-Crwyn

The last time we (Mum, Dad & I) had been up to the chapel the graves (and, in fact, all of the graves in front of the chapel) were over grown and my Great Great Grandmother’s grave (Mary Jane Wilding) even had a tree starting to grow from it! So yesterday we took some gardening tools in a bid to tidy up our 2 graves.

When we reached to the chapel (it’s practically in the middle of nowhere as Bettws-y-Crwyn is more of an area than a village), we realised the graves had recently been tidied and the grass cut. Somebody (a cousin to my Granddad, we believe) had also left artificial flowers on the family graves. So we were saved some work.

As nothing was now growing in front or over the gravestones, I was able to take photos of the inscriptions. It was then that I noticed the grave next to my Great Great Grandmother’s. The gravestone had previously been unreadable due to nature growing, but now I could read it and it certainly answered a few questions!

We had wondered where my Great Great Grandfather was buried as Mary Jane’s gravestone said she was the wife of Richard Wilding, but did not say he was buried with her. It turned out, Richard (my Great Great Grandfather) was buried in the plot next to her and with his mother and child.

So now we knew not only where he was buried, but where my Great Great Great Grandmother Jane was buried, that she had re-married after the death of my Great Great Great Grandfather (as the gravestone gave her a different surname to that of her maiden name and 1st married name) and that Richard & Mary Jane had a child, who had died aged 6 months, that we had previously not known about.

As soon as I got home, I got onto FreeBMD and searched for references for various certificates relating to these ancestors before heading to the GRO to order the appropriate certificates. Now I just have to sit back and wait for them to arrive.

* While Bettws-y-Crwyn may be a Welsh placename, it’s actually over the border in Shropshire, England.

We have a couple of boxes of old family photos. We don’t know who some of the people are in the photos, but others provide small windows in to the lives of ancestors.

The photo on the right is one I scanned in on Sunday afternoon. It shows my Great Grandparents stood outside their home on the Shropshire/Cheshire border. It helps show how my Grandparents lived. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that the house has long gone so I can’t see what it looks like today. However, the cottage they moved into in their later years still stands and looks a lot like it did back in their day.

The photo needed a bit of a tidy-up. It was under-exposed and torn around the edges. So I cropped it down and use a couple of different adjustments (in Photoshop CS3) including Brightness/Contrast and Exposure.

Other items I scanned on Sunday included a couple of family wedding photos, my Great Great Grandmother Mary Jane’s obituary and a wedding notice for a Great Great Aunt.

I really need to set aside more time to sit and scan more photos. Something which might help with this is the Spring Break Scan-a-Thon (29th March – 6th April) and the next Scanfest on 30th March (as mentioned by Miriam at Ancestories). I think I should mark those dates in my diary and maybe I’ll get through some of those photos.