Thursday 2 January 2014

Putting Christmas away and discovering some family history

I have an impatience, as soon as we hit the new year, to de-Christmasify everything, so the tree is down and the cards are off the shelves. Decorations have been returned to the loft, where I spent a pleasant hour playing 'What's in that box?' I found out that The Husband has been hoarding every lead from every defunct electrical device we've ever owned, and that I really need to say no when my mother offers me another pair of curtains. I did find useful things, too. Although, when I say 'useful', I mean things that will clutter up the house until I put them back in the loft next month. I found two cat beds, which I have brought down in the hope that the cats will prefer them to our sofas. Slim chance, I know. Both cats are, at the moment, spread across the top of Son Number One's radiator, toasting themselves.

More interesting than cat beds, I found an album of postcards that was packed up with a load of children's picture books for some reason. They are written in German and, fittingly, send Christmas and New Year wishes. The first is dated 1st January 1919, and had been sent to Birmingham from Zurich. Others were sent to Lille. From the names on the back, they were sent to my paternal Grandmother from her family in Switzerland. I need to find out more about my family history, but this is what my father's cousin has to say about my Grandmother's parents:


'Joseph was captured in Oct 1914 at the first battle of Ypres, 3 weeks after landing in France. He was Royal Welsh Fusilier 1st Battalion, attached to 22nd Brigade 7th division. He escaped, swam Lake Constance, met Marthe Buser whilst interned in Meiringan and married in the Anglican Church in Lausanne and possibly Bern, on release in Aug 1918, they stayed at Croix d'Ouchy Hotel in Lausanne. 

Marthe was born in Sainte Croix a small village north of Lausanne. Marthe was actually working at St John Moore Barracks, Shorncliffe in Folkestone in 1911 before the war.

Marie (seated, and Marthe’s mother) was born in 1862 in St Gallen.'



This is my Grandmother, also called Marthe, (bottom left) 
with her sister, father and step-mother. 

I really must learn more about my Grandmother's history - I think it was a pretty interesting one. I know my father said she'd caught one of the last trains out of France at the beginning of the war. Apparently a stranger asked her to carry some papers out of the country and deliver them to someone in London. Goodness knows what she was responsible for...


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