Certificates that tell a story

My task today was to look through various papers and try to marry up dates and information with the photographs I was sorting yesterday. It seemed rather strange looking at familiar names on birth and death certificates. The very first one I came across was my great grandmother’s certificates, birth, marriage and death. I had no idea just what information could be gleaned from a certificate. The marriage to the gardener seems to have taken a bit of a twist. As I read the marriage paper it agreed with common knowledge that her husband was indeed fourteen years her junior, no problems there. I also know that my grandmother was a tailoress with her own business, so it rather threw me to discover that not only was my grandfather a poor gardener he was also illiterate. His signature on both the wedding certificate and my grandmother’s birth was merely a mark.
This called for more personal information and unfortunately my grandmother died in the 70s but my mother has a wealth of information in her memory. This marries up nicely with what I am trying to say on my website; we must talk to the older generation. I now find out that there are quite a few discrepancies in the information from the newspaper cutting on great grandfather’s ‘suicide’. My great grandmother was a bit flighty by all accounts and liked her men. Now there are two stories here, one says that she got pregnant by an important visitor and was married off to the young gardener to save face and the other says her brothers, concerned she might get pregnant, arranged the marriage for her to ensure the family name remained honoured. However a third factor has come into play here, my grandmother’s birth wasn’t registered until she was three years old. Hmm something more to be looked into, methinks.
As for my poor great grandfather and his suicide verdict while temporary insane, there is a lot more to the story. What were in the letters the coroner refused to publish I wonder, who were they from? My great grandmother was possibly resentful for having to marry the poor gardener. The brothers bought a farm for him to run to keep face. Still unhappy she often left him with the girls while she went off for months at a time to stay with her parents. While she was at home, she wore the trousers and held the purse strings. If he went into town with the other farmers he would have to ask his wife for tuppence in order to buy cigarettes, about five I believe, so that he could be like the other farmers. So you see there is a lot more to the story and I cannot help feeling a great deal of compassion for this man. It is quite easy to see why he suffered from depression.
I don’t think there are any tales that connect our time with this story yet, but who knows what I might uncover in the days to come, meanwhile do go and talk to your elder generation. You will gain so much knowledge and they will enjoy your company and the chance to reminisce. Who knows, you might uncover your own interesting tales.