Thomas Moreton West

My Grandmother's handwriting can sometimes prove puzzling . I've gone through as many photographs as I can to determine she is beginning this chap's first name with a T. 

Finally through a process of elimination I've arrived at the conclusion that this is a guy officially titles Thomas Moreton West . He's actually some distant cousin to my paternal Grandmother on her maternal Grandmother's side. The name 'Moreton West' has haunted me for over a decade and finally I was able to find that both a father and son carried that name. I knew from the Moreton part of the name that they were somehow distantly related on my paternal side with one of my GreatgreatGrandmothers being an Ann Moreton but it has took me a rather long time to find the exact links but thankfully after suffering many a headache and scratched head I have finally found the links.

James Frederick Gillies

This postcard is all I began with

I'm wasn't familiar with the handwriting on this one at first but after a lot of comparisons it would seem my Grandmother wrote different with a pencil than when she was writing with a pen.. Corporal J. Gillies proved a tough one at first as the army records listed him as the rank of private to start with.  It turned out that he joined the Lancashire fusiliers in August 1914 and left the army after being disabled by a gun shot wound to the leg . His army number was 3406. Overall I managed to obtain about ten pages of his army records and not really much else. Luckily for me there were not too many J. Gillies living in Stockton Heath back in 1914 .James Frederick had a brother John Reginald Gillies and a father James Gillies. It would seem that my Grandmother and her family would have known James senior as he was the local tea dealer based on Walton Road , Stockton Heath in the community where my Grandmother was growing up on the farm.

The beginning and Elsie Margaret Yarwood

 As I begin to document my research in to the photographs from my ancestors it is hard to state when my interest in these photographs began . In my youth they were just photographs of people most of whom I would never have known because their lives had already occurred . There didn't seem to be a big extended family as I was growing up and so the idea of asking an older relative to identify some of subjects of these photographs was just not possible at that time.

 In the mid 1990's my wife and I were expecting our first child . Prior to our relationship my wife had assisted her maternal Grandmother in tracing some lines of her family tree and although I'd asked a few questions after my own father's death in 1983 I must confess I was too young back then and knew of only odd names and places but not quite how it all connected . So armed with a collection of photographs that had once belonged to my paternal Grandmother Elsie and a wife who had some experience in genealogy we began to piece my family tree together.

 Fortunately for me my Grandmother Elsie had took the time to write names and sometimes addresses on the reverse of some of these photographs . Unfortunately for me though was that those pictures that had been used as postcards generally had had their stamps removed so the exact year ,which could've helped , was missing.

 So here's my first picture taken somewhere between 1910 and 1914 of my Grandmother Elsie Margaret Yarwood most probably at Mill Farm , Stanthorne , Cheshire. 

  

Elsie Margaret Yarwood 1895-1968