All posts by Anne (U.K.)

Mormon history

Guest Post: “Uniting the Sisters”: British Mission Relief Society Conference, 1943

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By November 1943, Great Britain had been at war for over four years. Approaching a fifth Christmas of conflict, restrictions and shortages were taking their toll.

Families were split: eligible family members were involved in the war effort, many in the Services, others at home working in reserved occupations. Too many civilian lives had been lost due to enemy bombing, and the end of the war seemed a good way off. Rationing- of food, clothing, fuel, petrol- was a fact of life. The blackout, designed to prevent enemy aircraft identifying areas on the ground, was still observed, and made many routine tasks such as walking home at night hazardous. Transport was disrupted and use thereof by civilians restricted; priority was given to ferrying members of the armed forces around the country.

Hugh B Brown, President of the British Mission, had returned to the USA at the beginning of the war, the last of the missionaries to leave. In January 1940, President Andre K. Anastasiou was appointed Acting President of the British Mission, newly headquartered in a large Victorian house in South London, called “Ravenslea”. President Anastasiou, a Russian émigré, served as the de facto head of the Church in the British Isles throughout most of the war.

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Guest Posts, Mormon history

Guest Post: The Lost

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As those who have read any of my earlier Keepa posts will by now have realised, my paternal grandparents faced many difficulties as they struggled to raise a family in the area of Bermondsey stretching between London and Tower Bridges during the harsh post-war 1920s. However, by the time I was born they were in their seventh decade, retired, and lived (what seems today) the quietly content life we all long for. At the start of the 1930s, as part of a slum clearance scheme, they had been moved from the room in which they all lived, into a house with a garden in a London suburb. My small flat today is filled with more ‘stuff’ than they accumulated in that house during 60 years of occupation; when my grandfather died in 1989, he had never owned a fridge, phone, washing machine, car, carpet in the bedrooms (just linoleum), nor enjoyed central heating (open fires downstairs and small electric bar heaters upstairs), yet they were content in the way that probably only a generation which has faced – and survived – two world wars, a pandemic and the Great Depression could be.

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family history, Guest Posts

Guest Post: Cousin Maggie (part 2)

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Part 1 here.

A year passed. Occasional letters and cards to Cousin Maggie indicated she was alive, well, and living at the same address. Time arrived for the annual trip to London, this time armed with a specially purchased macro lens, which my amateur photographer spouse assured me would do the business.

After a couple of days staying at my mother’s home, I announced at some point we would be visiting Cousin Maggie again, but wasn’t sure when. Really I should write to let her know, but I had no idea which day we would go, what time … my mother was appalled at the idea we would descend on the poor old lady without any warning. I agreed, and promised to write the next day.

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family history, Guest Posts

Guest Post: Cousin Maggie (part 1)

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You’ll remember Anne’s earlier post, “As Arranged”, about her discovery of the receipts given for her previously unknown infant aunt and uncle, among her genealogically themed posts. This story concerns the same branch of the family; those children were born and died in the same rooms Anne mentions passing in streets familiar to her father.

After the death of my grandmother, her cousin, known universally in the family as Cousin Maggie, became the ‘go to’ person for matters of Palmer family history. By the time my father died in 1991, Cousin Maggie was unmarried, in her 80’s, still living in the flat in the shadow of London’s Tower Bridge she had occupied as long as I could remember, shunning most modern conveniences, including a telephone. In order to inform her of my father’s death, I sent a letter saying I would like to pay her a visit on a particular Sunday; and setting off on the Underground to London Bridge with the kidlets in tow, had no idea of the adventure about to unfold.

Walking along the stretch of Thames between London and Tower Bridges, passing the building in which my father and all his siblings were born, investigating the redeveloped Wharf area with the evocative names — and smells — once warehouses, now astonishingly expensive riverside residential conversions — I wondered about Maggie, not having seen her for eight years. I hoped she was well and happy, and would remember who I was. My father’s funeral was planned for the following day; it felt like a fitting way to commemorate his life, wandering the streets where he lived until he was 10.

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family history

Guest Post: ‘As Arranged’

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My grandmother died unexpectedly, at the age of 78, when I was 18. My father, then in his late 50s, came home on the night of her death in what struck us as a very emotional state, even considering the circumstances. This was a man who refused to discuss his wartime experiences, had only once taken time off work for illness during my lifetime, a man whose working life had been spent taking responsibility, a man to whom everyone else in his extended family turned when there was unpleasant business to address. He was utterly devastated. As he sat at the table to make a show of attempting to eat the meal my mother had saved for him, he simply said:

‘I had a little brother and sister and I only found out about them today.’

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holiday

Guest Post: Mothering Sunday

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[Last Sunday (March 14) was Mothering Sunday in Britain. Anne offered me this post, but between one thing and another I didn’t get back to her in time to publish this last Sunday. So I meant to post it first thing this morning … but between one thing and another I missed it. My apologies to Anne, and to readers who missed the chance perhaps to celebrate along with millions of others who celebrate Mothering Sunday. Please enjoy it now as a report of last Sunday’s activities, and I’ll link to it again next year in time for us to honor the day ourselves. — AEP]

Mothering Sunday (not to be confused with “Mother’s Day”, which dates back to the 1870s America) is celebrated in many countries around the world on the fourth Sunday in Lent, so counts as a moveable feast. Its origins lie way back in Ancient Greece, when a festival day was given to honouring Rhea, the Mother of the Gods and Goddesses. Ancient Rome adapted the festival in honour of Cybele, and as with most things in Rome, enlarged and expanded the festival to last for several days. Conversion to Christianity resulted in Mary, the Mother of Christ, replacing Cybele as the object of (aka excuse for) celebration, and the day was placed on the Catholic Church calendar as Laetare Sunday.

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family history

Guest Post: Pine Cone 2 — The Sequel

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The numinous adventure of The Pine Cone Story continues …

After a paddle in the sea, and a picnic on a gloriously sunny Sunday afternoon, the weather suddenly turned. The sun was hidden by clouds, the heat became oppressive, the air humid. All seasoned campers will know the tell tale signs that a thunderstorm is on the way, and for us it led to a dilemma. We were planning to drive back to my mother’s house in London that night, after a visit to a second graveyard, but the thought of doing so with a damp tent was not appealing. After much pleading on my part, it was agreed to stop off at the second graveyard, in a place called Sturry, very close to Canterbury. By this point the offspring were tired, grumpy, and not nearly as co-operative as they had been earlier in the day. Not co-operative at all, in fact.

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family history

Guest Post: The Pine Cone Story

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Anne (U.K.) offers this wonderful story to supplement yesterday’s list of ways to slip almost painlessly into family history progress: “Having read the post and pondering how it is possible to make family history less scary and more appealing, I thought of ideas we had tried as a family. The article is missing one trick – family history days out during holidays, visiting areas where your ancestors once lived. We gained so much appreciation for our ancestors by seeing the areas in which they lived and learning more about the lives of the people who lived contemporaneously.”

When our children were small, my (now) ex husband and I used to plan our summer holidays and short camping trips, very carefully, so as to be sited near places of genealogical interest. Our poor children got used to spending part of each holiday in local history libraries, or in cemeteries, and, in smallish doses, were fairly compliant, providing a treat was promised for ‘afterwards.’

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