Emily Whellams, my grandmother, was born this day in 1911. She was the fourth child of Charles John Whellams (born 1859) and Mary Marmoy (nee Coombes, born c1875). Both Charles and Mary had been married before. Charles' first wife, Ellen Vickerman, whom he had married in 1879, had died in 1899 having given birth to at least eight children. Mary's husband, Henry Marmoy, had died about 1900, leaving her as a young widow with two children. So when Emily arrived in 1911 she had a lot of half brothers and sisters ranging in age from 31 to two years old.
Although most of her siblings must have already left home by the time she was born, there were still plenty of mouths to feed and not much money to go around. Her determination to give her own children a better upbringing than she had, has of course had a knock-on effect with the way my parents brought me up. And so, each generation struggles to better the efforts of the previous one.
Emily Whellams died ten years ago on 30th April 1997 after years of ill health courageously born. She was a much loved grandmother and today, on the anniversary of her birth, I take a little more time out than usual to remember her.
This will be an occasional journal; a means of updating visitors with what's new on this site and new with my research. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that I have changed the home page. Unfortunately I'm stuck with the intrusive Google adsense adverts and the strange Freewebs graphic but this is after all, a free resource, so I'm not knocking it.
There's no new research on the site but behind the scenes I have been trying to make sense of some of the relationships between my ancestors and have added names to the trees I have for John James and William Whellams. There are though still a lot of gaps in my knowledge and I'm always delighted to hear from people who can help me shed more light on the family.
For now though, I'll use this opportunity to thank Fred, John, David and Dominic for their contributions to date. You know who you are.
