31st May 1986.

Dear All,

Our copy of Bill Buchanan's book on 'The Ing Family History 1985' arrived from Canada in March of this year and Wilf and I were absolutely thrilled with it. When it first arrived I couldn't put it down and kept browsing in it and reading passages out loud to Wilf - the Canadian way of life years ago in the farming communities being so different from anything we have experienced over here that we found it absolutely fascinating! Then too it has enabled us to slot everyone into place. Whereas before we got very muddled trying to work out who belonged to which ever-growing branch of the family; now we have only to refer to the 'History' to check that we have got it right.

Over twenty years ago I thought about starting a similar project for the Evans family over here - and in fact talked about it with Bill when he stayed with us in March 1967; but due to ever-increasing church commitments had to shelve it - although always having in mind that I would do it one day. The arrival of Bill's 'History' made me get down to it and now at long last here is a write-up of the family this side of the Pond and Bill has kindly agreed to make and distribute copies to the family in Canada. I only hope you all find it as interesting as we have the Canadian one. Some members of the family agreed to write their own 'histories' and I have indicated where this has been done. Otherwise I have had to write them and, of course, most have had to be compiled from memories of long ago. I have endeavored to be factual and accurate; but if any errors have crept in, please forgive me. Where possible I have checked dates, etc. Wilf says that as well as being a family history it has developed into a social history of my times - and I have to agree with him. I am afraid I got carried away by the project!

I have had copies of Bill's book made and distributed to various members of the family over here; so now we all have the accounts of the extended family and Bill has to be greatly thanked for being the prime mover in the whole project. I agree with him that it is a good thing for people to know about their 'roots' and to appreciate the struggles and triumphs of their ancestors. It also helps to give the family a feeling of belonging and a desire to keep in touch with each other. In my own small way over the years I have tried to do this by means of a circular letter at Christmastime, with copies to various members of the family here, and in the case of relatives in Canada to those who have been over here and met some of us (Auntie Ciss and Dorothy, Marian, Myrtle & Evans, Mum Carson and Fern, and Bill.  Ted Chapin and Walter also came over during World War II but for some unexplained reason we never corresponded); but if any others would now like to be 'put on the list' I will gladly include them for any future letters.

Please keep me informed of any births, deaths and marriages, and I will send out an update sheet at intervals.

With warmest greetings from Wilf and myself,

Jessie Anderson

114 Harrow View,
Harrow,
Middlesex HAl 4TF,
ENGLAND.

(Jessie Louise Evans Anderson passed away in 1990 of cancer. Through all her suffering she was always positive, and bore a powerful witness of the goodness of God. She said on many occasions, "Christianity is the faith for living and for dying.")

Covering letter
Contents
Robert Ing family
James Eley family
Samuel Wright family:
    Samuel & Charlotte (Eley) Wright:
        Louisa Wright
        Charlotte Wright
        Samuel
Samuel & Eliza (Woodward) Evans:
    Clara (Evans) & Jim Barrett
    George & Charlotte (Wright) Evans:
        George & Vera (Mitchell) Evans:
            Pauline (Evans) & Jim Perry:
                Katie
                Merle
                Beth Anna
            Eileen (Evans) & Rod Brown:
                Sarah
                Christopher
        William (Billy)
        Jessie (Evans) & Wilf Anderson
        Violet (Evans) & Fred Rolfe:
            Maureen (Rolfe) & John Dowling:
                Karen (Dowling) & Ian Ward
            Maureen (Rolfe/Dowling) & John Mclver:
                Justine
            Tony & Marj Rolfe:
                Dean    |
                Paul    | children of Tony & his second wife June
                Lisa    |
    Ada (Evans) & Walter Ball:
        Rose (Ball) & Bill Davies
        Phyllis (Ball) & George Bamattre:
            John
            Peter
            Jean
            Roger
            Anthony (Tony)
        Jessie (Ball) & Len Adams:
            Valerie (Adams) & Michael Garros:
                Michelle
                Brian & Christine Adams
    Ernest & Alice Evans:
        Alice (Evans) & Fred Challenor
        Michael & Rita (Dudley) Evans:
            Sarah
            Claire
        Derek & Joan (Ryder) Evans
        Christina (Evans) & Danny Newburn:
            Denise
        Fredia(Evans) & Taffy Jones:
            Julie
        Charles & Mandy (Heritage) Evans:
            Nicola
            Spencer
        Margaret (Evans) & Jack Redfern:
            Ian
            Kevin
    Jessie Evans
    Charles & Ella (Bodimeide-Burbage) Evans
    Kate (Evans) & Mr. Greeves:
        Marjorie
        Douglas
        Reg
        Eileen
    Phyllis (Evans) & Robbie Smith:
        Hilda May:
            Keith
    Lily Evans
    Hilda (Evans) & Harry Cross

Conclusion

ROBERT ING FAMILY

According to Bill's 'The 'Ing Family History 1985' he died before the 19th December 1865. It appears that he had 3 children:

Thomas George who was born in England in April 1835 and died in London, England, on March 20th 1907. He married Martha Jane Forsbury (born 10.8.1847 in Paddington) at Bethnal Green on 19.12.1865 and they had 10 children:

1. Thomas born 12.9.1866, died 24.12.1938. He was unmarried.

2. William born 8.1.1868, died aged 7 years.

3. Emily born 13.8.1869, died aged 1 year.

4. James born 27.10.1872, died 3.12.1959. He married Elizabeth Jane Hatherley (d.l.12.1950) on 11.6.1902 and they had 3 children: George, Millicent, Hetty.

5. Jane born 20.1.1876, died aged 4 years.

6. Frederick born 9.4.1878, died aged 2 years.

7. Henry born 10.8.1879, died aged 11 years.

8. Richard born 18.9.1881, died 25.10.1967. On 6.7.1913 he married Louisa Ellen Wright born 12.12.1884, died 26.1.l986 aged 101. They had 6 children: Marian, Walter, Charles, Dorothy, Violet, Myrtle.

9. Marian born 25.2.1884, died 3.12.1908. She married William Smith on 12.12.1905.

10. Ada born 29.2.1888, died 10.4.1957. She was married on 9.4.1910 to Walter Suter (born 1.12.1878, died 19.3.1952) and they had 11 children: Walter, Ada, Violet, Bob, Edward, Herbert, Charlie, May, Ethel, Gordon and Donald.

Emily Ing married William Aikens. They had 2 children:
William
Sally who married Jim Moore (no family)
Priscilla who was half-sister to Thomas and Emily.

See Bill's book on 'The Ing Family History 1985' for fuller details.

JAMES ELEY FAMILY

The Eley family were from the village of Stanmore in Middlesex, England and lived for a while in one of the three large red brick terraced houses by the village pond. By 1880 they were living in Edgware Road, London, where James was working as a railway porter.

There were 4 children born in the 1850s:

SAMUEL WRIGHT FAMILY

My mother told me that her father, Samuel Wright, was probably born in the vicinity of Attelborough, Norfolk, in the 1850s. His father was Charles Wright, a labourer. Samuel had the following brothers and sisters:

James Wright the eldest - his children were:

Ann Wright - she married a police officer. They had 1 child.

Charles Wright

Harry Wright

Ben Wright - he was in the Hussars. He had 1 child.

Samuel Wright married Harriet Eley in London's Marylebone district on February 22nd, 1880. Harriet's Aunt & Uncle George owned the Abercorn Arms Tavern in Stanmore, Middlesex, and later the Rose and Crown in Windermere.
Samuel and Harriet had 7 children:
1. Anne Wright - she died young
2. Thomas Wright - he died young. See Bill Buchanan's book on 'The Ing Family History 1985'
3. Louisa Ellen Wright - she was born in Paddington on 12.12.1884 and married Richard Samuel Ing in Canada on 6.7.1913. She died there on 26.1.1986 at the age of 101. He was born in London, England, on 18.9.1881 and died in Canada on 25.10.1967. They had 6 children:
        Marian
        Walter
        Charles
        Dorothy
        Violet
        Myrtle
4. Charlotte Harriet Wright - she was born in Paddington on 3.6.1887 and married George Henry St.Valentine Evans in 1911. She died on 16.2.1979. He was born on 14.2.1886 and died in 1950. They had 4 children:
        George
        William (Billy) - he died young
        Jessie
        Violet
5. George Wright - he died young
6. Samuel Wright
7. Alice Wright

SAMUEL & HARRIET (ELEY) WRIGHT

I recall as a small child after the First World War visiting my grandparents home in the Paddington area of London. My mother used to make the journey by train from Harrow about once a month to see how things were with her parents and she always took my twin sister Violet and me. I don't remember George coming with us.

Grandma Wright was short and plump and always wore a high-necked grey blouse and black ankle-length skirt - as was the fashion of the day! Her hair was brown and long, and swept up at the back and fastened in a 'bunch' above her forehead.

Grandpa Wright also seemed short to me, with a spiky greying moustache, and he walked with a limp. My mother said he had a 'withered leg' - but I have since wondered if perhaps it was an arthritic hip such as she developed in her later years. On our arrival he always produced a jam jar in which were lots of farthings which he had collected since our previous visit (there were four of these to an old penny and one old penny is less than half of a present-day one pence piece!). With wages being so low in those days this must have represented quite a sacrifice, and although I can't say that as small children we appreciated all that was involved, we certainly eagerly looked forward to the ritual when he divided them equally between Violet and me and we would hurry off to the dingy little sweetshop 'round the corner' and would take ages making our purchases with the precious farthings. Should it be a pink-and-white iced mouse for a half-penny and a length of licorice for another halfpenny? This latter was always a great favourite because it could be made to last such a long time by peeling off thin strips down its long length! Or should it be a multi-coloured gob-stopper for a farthing, one large humbug for another farthing and ten aniseed balls for a half-penny? Or perhaps a whole pennyworth of raspberry drops! And so the elderly lady behind the counter would wait with infinite patience and understanding of her small customers, whilst we unhurriedly came to our decisions, and afterwards she would receive our farthings with as much respect, if not more, as sweet-shop assistants today accept the many times higher value coins from the present generation of young customers.

Grandpa and Grandma Wright lived in Bristol Mews which was (and still is) an enclosed cobbled street with homes above stables (now garages) on two sides, with a high brick wall at the far end against which Violet and I used to bounce our rubber balls. Huge shire horses often moved restively outside the stables and there was a strong smell of manure and coal everywhere. Grandpa Wright and some of his neighbours were coal delivery men and kept their carts and horses below their homes. To gain access to our grandparents home we had to ascend a dark narrow inside staircase at the side of the stable and I often felt frightened-happy when passing the horses!

According to Bill Buchanan's history of the Wright family given in his book 'The Ing Family History 1985' my grandparents had 7 children, but I only knew of Louisa (or Ciss as my mother always referred to her - which I take to be a shortened and misspelt version of 'Sister'), my mother Charlotte (or Jube as she was nicknamed having been born in Queen Victoria's Jubilee year), and my Uncle Sam - so it was such a surprise to me to read of the existence also of Anne, Thomas and George who died young, and Alice.

In my twenties my mother and I were sharing a home with Violet and her husband Fred; Grandpa Wright had died in the 1930s in St.Mary's Hospital, Paddington and was buried in Mill Hill Cemetery, Edgware; and Grandma Wright came to live with us. Her hair was white by this time, she was quite blind and more or less bedridden, and I remember I used to spend hours up in her bedroom reading to her, which she so enjoyed.When World War II started it was a nightmare getting her downstairs during air raids. She had to bump herself on her bottom from one stair to the next until she reached the comparative safety of the ground floor. Not long after the start of the war she was taken ill and entered Edgware General Hospital, where she died about 1941 and was buried with Grandpa. I don't remember her exact age but think she was well into her eighties at that time. I am thankful that she had gone before a land mine exploded at the end of our road killing a number of people, shattering all the windows of our house, bringing down some ceilings and blowing out the front door. That very night we had gone for the first time to sleep in an air raid shelter in the road and this possibly saved us all from injury from flying glass, etc.

LOUISA (Auntie Ciss) went to Canada some years before I was born so I only knew of her; until she and Dorothy came over on a visit in 1970 and stayed with us, and we then got to know her and became really fond of her and aware of her sterling qualities. Outstanding amongst our memories of her, and which Wilf and I still talk about at times, are the outings to various places of interest, with Auntie Ciss sitting in the front passenger seat of our Anglia with Wilf driving, and Dorothy and myself in the back. On these journeys Auntie Ciss and Wilf would sing hymns by the hour, all from memory. As soon as one was finished she or Wilf would start up another and it was simply amazing bow many she remembered. Dorothy and I mostly let them do the singing and we enjoyed listening, chipping in with a suggested hymn every now and again.

They came for the month of May and I recall spring was late that year and only really got going when they arrived; but throughout the whole month the weather was perfect and everywhere was an absolute riot of colour with the blossom fully out on the trees and the flower beds a mass of daffodils, tulips, wallflowers and other spring flowers which by the end of the month had been overtaken by the roses. It was as if nature put on a spectacle especially for Auntie Ciss's one and only return to 'the old country'!

For  Louisa & Charlotte (Auntie Ciss and my mother) it was their first meeting for 57 years!

A favourite near seaside resort which we took them to was Eastbourne and I can still picture Auntie Ciss, then well in her eighties, striding over the cliff tops on Beachy Head. She was amazingly active for her age, with a keen interest in everything.

Over recent years I have had quite a lot to do with older folk and it seems to me that Auntie Ciss1 my mother, and their generation had something special about them. Their lives were much harder than ours, they encountered far greater health hazards, were financially and educationally deprived by today's standards, etc., but those who survived were strengthened in character by the very process and lived lives which contributed to, rather than took from, the general scheme of things. They were also more content with their lot; and above all they retained a simple but enduring faith in God which the next generation (mine) has sadly lost and the generation following (Bill's) unhappily never had - I am speaking generally, of course, and thankfully there are many exceptions.

SAMUEL (my Uncle Sam) was born in 1889 or 1890. On these visits to our grandparents he was always there. In summer he would be sitting on a chair in their living room gazing into space and in winter staring into the dancing flames of the coal fire in the hearth. He never spoke or took any notice of Violet and me; and my mother said he had been a gunner with the Royal Artillery in Flanders during World War I, had bravely remained by his gun during a particularly horrifying bombardment by the enemy when he had been injured and suffered shell shock. His commanding officer had promised to recommend him for a gallantry medal but before he could submit a citation had himself been killed in action. Uncle Sam returned home, his physical injuries healed but still shell-shocked and apparently embittered by the fact that he did not receive the promised medal, and he spent most of his time just brooding or writing poetry. I never saw any of his compositions, but my mother always said they were very good and it seems to me that perhaps there is a slight literary strain in the family genes because I have always had a bit of a flair for writing; Bill has obviously demonstrated his ability in this direction with his magnus opus on 'The Ing Family History; and I see in the latter that his small daughter Evelyn also 'enjoys writing stories'; and, of course, there may be other members of the family with 'the pen of a ready writer'.

By the time I became a teenager Uncle Sam had disappeared and tragically nobody knew what happened to him.

SAMUEL & ELIZA (WOODWARD) EVANS and FAMILY

Samuel was born on August 4th 1860 and died in 1950. He was married in 1883 or 4 to Eliza Woodward who was born in 1861 and died in 1945. Samuel was born in Huntingdon of Welsh parents. He was 90 when he died and grandma 84. They had 10 children:

Clara
George
Ada
Ernest
Jessie
Charles
Kate
Phyllis
Lily
Hilda

Notes about them and their families follow in order.

Grandpa Evans was a carpenter and did all the carpentry on the row of five cottages sandwiched between the Cherry Orchard and the Good Shepherd pub at Chorley Wood, behind which ran the road to the village shops. He and my grandma occupied No.3 Ellwood Terrace and the cottages are still there, looking almost the same as they ever did, with grandpa's handiwork still going strong a hundred years later! There they brought up their large family; and it was there, after their own children had grown up and left home, that Violet and I spent our school summer holidays. How we used to look forward to this long annual visit; and what excitement when the day came as my mother took us to Harrow Metropolitan & Great Central Railway Station (to give it its full name) and placed us in the care of the guard on the steam train, to be put off at Chorley Wood. He would put us in his guard's van at the rear of the train, amongst the mail bags, bicycles and other articles being delivered along the line! With a farewell wave to our mother as the guard blew his whistle and jumped in, slamming the heavy door behind him, we would stand with our noses pressed to the small side window and watch as the train slowly moved off, getting up steam and chugging its way along the line, trailing clouds of black smoke and smuts behind it. How we loved the throaty toot-toot of its hooter and the changing notes of its engine as the urban scenery gave place to more open countryside and the train passed between railway cuttings; and how our excitement mounted as we left Rickmansworth station and drew near to the little road bridge over the line just before Chorley Wood station. We knew that if we looked to the left in a vertical line from the bridge, at the critical moment in passing, we would be able to catch a first glimpse of our grandparents cottage nestling on the edge of the common! As soon as the train juddered to a halt we would shout a quick 'thank you' and 'goodbye' to the guard, jump out on to the platform clutching our belongings, rush down the sloping tunnel which passed under the tracks and up the other side, hand in our tickets, turn right at the exit, hurry the couple of hundred yards or so along the road to the little bridge, and there in front of us across the common was the little row of cottages! And it was not just the thought of being with our grandparents, or of sleeping upstairs in the cottage as distinct from downstairs in the flat at 24 Rosslyn Crescent in Harrow, which made us hasten our steps: it was the thought of the freedom which would be ours over the next few weeks to explore the whole expanse of the common. How I loved that common - and still do: the sweet heavy scent of the golden flowers growing in such profusion on the gorse bushes abuzz with bees industriously gathering the nectar; the cushiony humps of purple heather; the soft springy grass; the small wild white marguerites and blue harebells tossing their heads in the slight breeze; and myriads of other wild flowers and the ever-encroaching ferns. We would spend hours each day roaming over the common with never a fear of being molested or of coming to any harm. We knew exactly where the wild raspberry canes grew and the small wild strawberries; where the biggest juiciest blackberries could be picked; and where the small dew ponds were where we could paddle in the shallow sunwarmed water; and where the rabbit warrens honeycombed the ground. I remember my father telling me and Violet on our first holiday there before we became knowledgeable about country matters, that if we took a bag of salt and sat perfectly still outside the entrance to a burrow, and sprinkled some grains of salt on the tails of the rabbits as they emerged, we would be able to catch them. I recall that following his instructions we sat for ages one day, salt at the ready, but never a glimpse of a rabbit!

My parents separated when Violet and I were about three or four, the only time we ever saw my father was when we were staying with his parents and he would come to visit them. I remember he was very keen on golf and often played on the course on the common, and Violet and I would caddy for him!

Grandma Evans was the daughter of Eliza Woodward who was born in 1829. She was widowed and married again, becoming Mrs. Biggs, and there were 2 children: Polly and William. She died in 1907. Grandma had a good dress sense and used to look very much the lady in her clothes, which almost always had touches of lace about the high necks and wrists. She often wore a band of black velvet ribbon round her neck with a cameo brooch in the centre. I always considered that Violet and my cousin Jessie (Auntie Ada's youngest daughter) inherited this good dress sense.

Grandma was something of a disciplinarian (as was her daughter Clara - interesting how these traits run in families!) - I suppose she had to be with a large family to control in such a small cottage; although with the common starting immediately beyond the front garden fence, they could always spill over there. I remember being told that my father found the larger deeper dew ponds on the common irresistible and often lost his balance and fell in, which brought my grandma's wrath down upon his head. After repeated warnings to stay away from them, she crept up behind him one day when he had removed his shoes and socks and was rolling up his trouser legs preparatory to wading in. She apparently grabbed him by the seat of his pants and threw him in, and the shock was such that he developed a nervous mannerism (which stayed with him) of occasionally jerking his head to one side as if to avoid something which was coming his way.

Once the family had departed and set up their own homes, my grandparents' cottage became the focal point for weekend family gatherings, when the place would be crowded and resound non-stop with laughter and chatter, to the accompaniment of favourite 1920s records hand cranked by someone on the box-shaped trumpeted phonograph. Sometimes this would be placed on the bench in the front garden and then its strains could be heard across the common and up as far as the little bridge, so that latecomers would hear and hasten their steps! Happily the neighbours on either side of the cottage had lived for many years alongside the family and were on the best of terms, so there was never any objection from them and in fact they often joined in.

Always at the centre of the fun and laughter was their son Charles, or 'Wag' as he was known for obvious reasons. I remember the mealtimes in particular, with so many of us seated round the big table, which was laden with goodies such as seldom appeared on our table in Harrow, my mother's circumstances not permitting such luxuries. I recall the big platter piled high with crispy rashers of bacon; another of fried eggs which had been splashed with hot fat just sufficient to set the whites; another of lightly browned tomato halves; and yet another piled high with slices of fried bread. In the cholesterol-conscious 1980s I could not approve of such fare, but in those far-off days before the word was even known, to me it was an enjoyable feast! Yes, breakfast was my favourite meal; but tea was another meal that I particularly liked because there were always home-made scones with jam and thick cream, and dishes of fruit salad and pouring cream - a special favourite of Uncle Wag who came in for a great deal of teasing and was made to wait until last, with many doubts expressed as to any being left for him - much to his pretended chagrin!

Looking back I think my grandma must have been very capable and organised as well as dressy:

In connection with the family group, perhaps I should add that Billy on my mother's lap died at the age of 2 from double pneumonia - and he looks such a bonny baby! Violet and I are not in evidence as we came along about a year after his death. My cousin Rose on her mother's lap is the 'seriously ill' relative mentioned in my 1985 Christmas letter. Uncle Charles who is now 91, Hilda who is 80, and my brother George are the only ones still living: Auntie Jessie, who is missing from this photograph, appears on Auntie Clara's wedding group - she is standing behind my grandfather.

CLARA was the 1st child of Samuel & Eliza Evans. She was born in l885 died in 1976 at the age of 91. As the family multiplied, I understand Clara went to live for a while with her maternal grandmother - she was a Mrs.Woodward and there was 1 child, Eliza my grandmother, born 1861. Mrs.Woodward's husband died and she married a Mr.Biggs and there were 2 children - Polly and William. She died in 1907.

Clara married Jim Barrett, a gardener, in August 1910. He was born in 1883 and died in December 1976 aged 93. There were no children - which always struck me as being sad as I felt they would have made lovely parents.

Clara was plump and motherly, with brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was regarded by the family as being something of a disciplinarian, but she was very kind with it. She was a typical countrywoman, the shelves of her large walk-in pantry always gleaming with orderly rows of labelled jars of homemade jams and bottled

preserves from fruit grown by Uncle Jim. Below the shelves and standing on the floor in the cool darkness of one corner was a very large earthenware crock filled with fresh eggs in isinglass, which Auntie Clara always thriftily 'put down' when there was a glut. In the other corner stood bottles of a variety of her very potent homemade wines such as cowslip, elderberry, parsnip, etc. Uncle always had a small glass of one of these with a plain biscuit for his 11 o'clock break and when I stayed with them I was allowed to participate in this ritual, although Auntie Clara never partook: I don't think she ever bought any fruit or vegetables in all her long married life as Uncle Jim kept her well supplied from his kitchen gardens; and it was always a special treat to pay them a visit when the tender green peas, luscious tomatoes and giant shiny strawberries looking for all the world as if they had been dipped in red lacquer, were in season, when at mealtimes Auntie Clara would encourage us to eat our fill -and needless to say we needed no urging: I can remember still the difficult-to-describe special smell of Uncle's English tomatoes and to this day I still tend to pick up a tomato labelled 'English' and smell it before purchasing to test its genuineness: Auntie Clara was a respected member of the local W.I. (Women's Institute) where her preserves and cakes were in great demand.

I remember that once she had completed the day's duties she would change and her slippers would be banished - she always regarded the wearing of them about the house once she was 'dressed' as being slovenly, and I too was expected to conform: I recall on one occasion when Vera, George and I were staying for a few days, George was being given a tour of the garden by Uncle, and Vera and I were seated in the armchairs chatting. When George and Uncle came in, preceded by Auntie, she quickly said to Vera and me: 'Get up and let your Uncle and George have the armchairs' - which we obediently did, hiding an amused smile at her continuing regard for old-fashioned proprieties!

Uncle Jim was tall and thin, with a moustache and short cropped thick slightly wavy red hair and blue eyes. In his younger days he had been a runner and he loved to recount how that when he was courting Auntie Clara he would run all the way from Denham where he lived to Chorley Wood where she lived and then back again after-wards, a distance of about ten miles each way. He began work as an under-gardener and over the years gradually rose to become head gardener on a huge estate in the Kent countryside owned by a shipping line magnate. When the latter moved to another estate, which he did once or twice, auntie and uncle went too and always they lived in a bungalow or house on the estate in peaceful and beautiful surroundings. His wages were low but accommodation was provided free, with all fruit and vegetables, together with a plentiful supply of logs and coal for firing. They had virtually no worries and a very benevolent master who more or less allowed uncle freedom to cultivate the grounds as he thought best. In many ways it was an ideal set-up for them and their years passed comfortably and happily.

In his retirement Uncle kept quite a few brown-feathered hens which he called his 'boys' despite their sex! He knew them all by name and they would come to him when he called them, and consequently when it came to providing auntie with 'one for the pot', he couldn't bring himself to wring their necks and came to an arrangement with a neighbour who also kept chickens, whereby they each killed the other's!

Uncle Jim was a real 'Old Herbaceous' character and even when he was in his eighties, though long since retired, he still dug and planted the three-quarter acre surrounding their bungalow in Alton, Hampshire: the colour and size of his primulas and chrysanthemums, and the colour, size and scent of his sweetpeas in particular, being always better than his neighbours! I can still picture him during this period, tall and thin, and somewhat stiff and stooped from many years of bending over his plants, with a cap over his thick short-cropped now white hair, moving amongst his precious flowers, every now and again putting his leathery right hand into the capacious pocket of his sturdy gardening apron, and withdrawing it with some powder pinched between his thumb and forefinger which he sprinkled around their base, the composition of this powder being a closely guarded secret! He had a phenomenal memory still for the Latin horticultural names of flowers and trees, and delighted to astound all and sundry by the ease with which they tripped off his tongue!

All their married life Uncle Jim handed over to Auntie Clara his wage packet at the end of each week, when she would apportion as necessary for housekeeping etc., and hand back to him just sufficient to buy some sweets and tobacco for cigarettes which he rolled himself (which he was never allowed to smoke in the house but only in the adjacent potting shed - but he never minded as this was his own particular domain!). I always found this potting shed an absolutely fascinating place with an indescribable aroma combining the smell of bundles of Spanish onions and everlasting flowers drying as they hung from the rafters, wet wellies, creosote and a multitude of gardening accessories, and the lingering whiff from Uncle's daily quota of two or three cigarettes!

From a young boy my brother George always spent his school summer holidays with Auntie Clara and Uncle Jim. Violet and I used to spend ours with our paternal grandparents (Auntie Clara's parents) at Chorley Wood and were happy to do so and never agitated to go with him to Auntie Clara and Uncle Jim because of the tales he told us on his return home about her being strict and making him 'eat up his greens' etc. However, in my late teens I ventured on a visit of a few days and found them to be such dears, and this became the first of many visits and the start of a close relationship which continued after Wilf and I married and right up to their deaths.

They celebrated their Diamond Jubilee (60 years) in August 1970 and I remember writing to Buckingham Palace to see if a congratulatory telegram from the Queen could be sent (as I did for Auntie Ciss in Canada for her 100th birthday). This was duly received and absolutely made the day for Uncle. He and Auntie Clara were royalists, especially Uncle, and ever afterwards he treasured what he then regarded as a personal contact with Her Majesty! Once or twice Wilf, my mother and I, and Vera & George, spent Christmas Day with Auntie Clara and Uncle Jim and after Christmas dinner we had to stand round the table and drink a loyal toast to 'The Queen'.

Towards the end of their lives they could no longer carry on in the bungalow and went into a Home for the elderly a few miles away, where they were comfortable and well looked after. Auntie Clara died at the age of 91 on the 9th November 1976, after which dear Uncle lost the desire to live, took to his bed, turned his face to the wall and died a month or so later on 12th December aged 93.

Below is a photograph of them on their wedding day in August 1910 - and aren't the hats just wonderful concoctions? I understand Uncle got up at dawn that morning to pick the flowers from his gardens and to make Auntie's bridal bouquet. I just love this photograph because it conveys such an impression of the elegance and peace of the Edwardian era which, although it was not realised at the time, was rapidly coming to an end, never to be recaptured. A couple of years or so after their marriage this peace was shattered by the rumblings of World War I, soon to engulf and nearly destroy that generation. Within four years of their marriage Uncle Jim was called up and served in the Royal Artillery, in charge of horses on a gun carriage. Thankfully he was spared to return home at the end of the war.

GEORGE HENRY ST.VALENTINE EVANS was the 2nd child of Samuel & Eliza Evans. He was born at Chorley Wood on 14.2.1886 and died there in 1950 - in the same little cottage! He married Charlotte Harriet (Jube, or Nell as my father called her) Wright in 1911. She was born on 3.6.1887 and died on 16.2.1979. They had 4 children:

George b. 11.10.1911

William (Billy) b. 1913 - he died from double pneumonia aged 2 years.

Jessie) twins b. 28.3.1916

Violet) Violet d. 12.10.1981

My father was born and brought up in Chorley Wood and lived with his parents and 8 brothers and sisters in a cottage on the common there (see my notes on his parents, SAMUEL & ELIZA EVANS). They all attended the little Church of England School on the far side of the common, next to Christ Church, at the side of which runs the road leading back to Rickmansworth. The church and school are still there: the tall spire (which was struck by lightning last summer) and dark cedars skirting the church, the little school buildings nestling at the side, and the local cricket pitch in front, with a backdrop of trees leading to the common beyond, presenting a perfect setting in which to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon during the summer months watching the cricket! In that most English of country churchyards, in the very old part at the rear of the church, is the family grave (which Wilf and I tend) where my grandparents, their daughter Jessie, my parents and Violet are buried.

My father worked as a chauffeur to Lord Grade Senior, the film and T.V. tycoon, who lived in Regents Park, and he and my mother had a flat above his garage at No.17 Polygon Mews (now demolished); and it was here that, two years after World War I had started, Violet and I were born on March 28th 1916 (myself at 5.50 pm. and Violet ten minutes later!) - I understand during a two-day blizzard. Lord Grade's son Lew (the present Lord Grade) and my brother George were about the same age and often played together. When Violet and I were nine months old we moved to a flat in Harrow - No.24 Rosslyn Crescent ; by which time my father had been called up and had gone to France as a chauffeur with the Royal Flying Corps (now the R.A.F.). Billy had died a year or so previously and so my mother had five-year old George and nine months old twins to cope with on her own which, with very little money, must have been hard for her.

As a very small child I have few memories of my father. The first is of him striding along Rosslyn Crescent coming home after the War was over. I imagine my mother had positioned us at the front gate to watch for a man in a blue uniform. He was, of course, a complete stranger to us; and I remember he gave us a bar of chocolate, which was a very special treat! I believe he remained for a while with the R.A.F., working as a civilian on the base at nearby Uxbridge. Then he left and took up taxi driving, and eventually bus and coach driving.

My next memory is of seeing him sitting up in bed eating a boiled egg, with Violet on one side and myself on the other. An egg was a luxury during and immediately after the War and I think we watched his every mouthful! Suddenly pointing to a bird flying past the window, he asked if we too would like an egg, and on returning our gaze to the eggcup we saw to our surprise and delight that another egg was sitting there. Imagine our disappointment when, cracking the shell with the spoon, we found it to be empty - he had deftly changed ends as he distracted our attention. Funny how such a little incident should have stayed in my memory; but this and the rabbit incident (recounted in my notes on SAMUEL & ELIZA EVANS) show that he had a sense of fun!

My only other memory of my father during my very early years concerns an evening when my mother went out for an hour or so, having put Violet and myself to bed, leaving my father to look after us. He came into the bedroom, packed a case, picked us up and kissed us and said he was going away. We didn't understand the significance of this and when my mother returned shortly afterwards we told her what had happened, and I recall how terribly upset she was. After this, I understand, a legal separation was drawn up on the grounds of incompatibility, my mother to have the care of us children.

Violet and I saw our father during school holidays spent with his parents at Chorley Wood, but seldom otherwise, so I cannot tell you any more about him until my early thirties when he was taken ill with cancer; but if I can tell you little about his life, I can tell you something about his death. At the start of his illness his unmarried sister Jessie nursed him in the family home at Chorley Wood, and then he went into hospital. Along with other relatives I visited him there a number of times and this sister, my aunt, forbade us all to tell him how seriously ill he was. Week after week relatives and friends kept up the pretence that he was going to get better and talked of football results and anything and everything but that he was dying. I watched my father as the weeks went by and felt sure by the expression in his eyes that he knew he was dying and was weary of the pretence being kept up on both sides. The day came when he was sent home to Chorley Wood to die, and from then on I visited him every Sunday afternoon after my Bible Class. By the time I got there the relatives had all been up to his bedroom earlier and were downstairs chatting, and so I always went up on my own. Several times my aunt reminded me not to let my father know how ill he was, and for some weeks I observed this, although as a Christian I felt most unhappy about it. However, the day came when I knew I must speak to him about spiritual matters, or else I would have a conscience about it for the rest of my life.

The following Sunday, after greeting my father and chatting a little, I said to him 'Do you know that you are not going to get better?'. He looked at me and immediately said 'Yes, I know'. I then said 'Do you believe in a life after death?' and wearily he replied 'How I wish I did. How I wish someone could tell me about it'. This gave me the very opportunity I had been seeking and so I said that I believed and told him something of what the Bible has to say on the subject. He listened intently. Eventually I was called downstairs for tea, but I did not tell anyone that I had told my father he was dying.

I never saw my father alive again as he died the following Thursday; but how thankful I am that I had that talk with him because after the funeral my aunt told me that on the Tuesday night following my last visit1 she was wakeful and could hear my father moving restlessly in the next bedroom. Thinking he perhaps needed a drink she was just about to go to him when suddenly she heard him cry out '0 God, be merciful to me a sinner; be merciful to me a sinner'. As a result of this I believe the Lord graciously granted my father a deathbed repentance and conversion and I have the assurance that I shall see him again in heaven where there will be no more sickness and sorrow and unfaithfulness and parting, and all the other things which because of sin mar our lives down here. What a glorious prospect in view for all who have been forgiven through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My father left two very colourful and ornate hand-crafted medals - one indicating that he had been Past Chairman 1925 of the Marlborough Lodge of the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes; and the other dated 2nd November 1924, although there is no indication what that was for. I imagine he continued with them because at his funeral the Lodge sent two outriders on massive motorbikes to accompany his cortege. Violet's son Tony now has these medals and really treasures them.

My father is on the family group photograph in the notes on his parents, Samuel & Eliza Evans.

CHARLOTTE HARRIET (WRIGHT) EVANS was born in Paddington on 3.6.1887 and died in hospital in Harrow on 16.2.1979 just a few months short of her 92nd birthday. She married George Henry St.Valentine Evans in 1911. He was born on 14.2.1886 and died in 1950 at the age of 64. They had 4 children:

I understand that as a young woman my mother worked as a waitress for the London Banks Clearing House. I don't know how or where she met my father, but she was a Londoner and he a country lad. Their marriage only lasted a few years and ended about 1920 in a legal separation 'due to incompatibility', my mother to have the care of us three children. The separation order required my father to pay my mother maintenance of 25/- weekly (£l.25p in present currency), and this would arrive regularly each week with a brief impersonal covering note from him. There were no social security handouts in those days and from this sum of 25/- my mother had to pay 6/- (30p) a week rent for our flat; feed and clothe herself and us three children; find the money for occasional little treats (such as a once yearly day's outing to Southend-on-Sea by excursion train - which I dreaded because being a cheap excursion train it often got shunted to another line and delayed in a dark tunnel to allow an express to thunder past); birthday and Christmas gifts; and our weekly pocket money: 3d to George and a halfpenny each to Violet and me!

It was therefore a very hard struggle for my mother to make ends meet and to augment her slender resources she did various jobs which could be fitted in alongside the care of us children - such as housework in the homes of some of the better-off local residents; late-night washing-up at dances held for employees in the Kodak factory a mile or so away (she was terribly nervous and I recall what an ordeal it was for her to walk home alone around midnight); and cleaning for a local firm of builders which entailed scrubbing the floors and woodwork throughout in new houses as they were completed. For this latter she was paid the miserable sum of 2/6d. (12-1/2p in present money) and would return home after several hours hard work, worn out and with her hands red and sore. If my mother was out working when we returned home from school, we would put a hand through the front door letterbox and feel for the string, on the end of which was tied the key so that we could let ourselves in. I suppose we were the forerunners of what are known today as 'latch key kids!

On one side of Rosslyn Crescent where we lived at No.24 were terraced houses; but on our side the terraced houses were divided into upstairs and downstairs flats with jointly shared front door and hall: at the end of the little hall was a flight of stairs leading to the upper flat and our lower flat branched off to the right of the stairs, with no dividing wall or partition to ensure privacy or completely separate living.

I mention this because one of my most vivid memories is of my fear of the man who lived upstairs with his old mother and an aunt. He used to go out drinking of an evening, particularly Saturday evening when my mother would be washing up at the Kodak dance, and would return home drunk. We children would be on our own at home in bed and I remember waiting with bated breath for the return of this man. We would hear him fumbling with the key trying to open the door. When he finally managed it, he would stumble from one side to the other as he swayed unsteadily along the joint hall. The critical point came when he tried to negotiate the first stair tread. Sometimes he would miss and crash sideways against our bedroom door, which did not have a lock, and my great terror was that in his drunken state he would come in. He never did, but as a result all my life I have had a terror of drunks. I have only to see a drunken man reeling towards me along the pavement and my heart leaps to my mouth and I have a feeling of panic.

Our flat (apartment) was lit by gas mantles and I remember how fragile they were and how carefully they had to be handled when they burnt smokily and had to be removed so that the sooty precipitation which had formed in the fine mesh of the head could be pricked out. Because of the expense of replacement it was always cause for concern if a rough movement of the hand caused the head of the mantle to disintegrate into powder, or the brittle neck of the mantle to break into pieces.

We had an open fire grate for wood or coal in our 'best front room' - and this room was only used on Sundays or when visitors came (apart from George sleeping on a bed in one corner of it). There was a similar but smaller grate in the adjoining bedroom (where my mother and Violet and I slept), and in both were firebricks to eke out the amount of coal necessary to provide a reasonable fire. The fire would be built by crushing sheets of newspaper and placing them on the cast iron 'basket' which formed the base, then sticks of dry wood which we had previously chopped, and finally lumps of coal shining like black diamonds - so good was the quality in those days! Then a wax taper would be lit, or if we had run out of them or couldn't afford them, we would light the paper and sticks with a 'squirrel' or twist of paper and in no time a fire would be crackling away in the hearth - the dancing flames being infinitely more companionable than the present-day electric fires or variety of dim-burning processed uniform nuggets of what passes for coal these days. The fire in the bedroom was only lit in the winter months in times of illness, when it was almost a compensation for being ill to lie in bed relaxing in the unaccustomed warmth of the room, dreamily watching the dancing flames and listening to the soft popping and hissing of the coal as it was consumed. Normally in the winter months bricks would be placed in the range oven during the evening and just before bedtime they would be wrapped in pieces of old blanket and placed in our beds. I recall that my mother always slept with a poker under her pillow!

In the kitchen-cum-dining room beyond the bedroom we had a big range fire with side oven - and how cosy it was to sit round its glowing warmth, and how pleasurable every now and then to wield the poker to remove the fine ash from the grid in front. Usually there was a kettle singing away on the hob (there was no running hot water in the flat), or a couple of flat irons would be heating.

My nose wrinkles slightly even now at the memory of my mother doing the ironing. She would place a piece of blanket across the end of the white wood scrubbed table, cover this with a clean piece of old sheeting, and then using a thick cloth holder remove one of the flat irons from the hob and spit on it with some expertise to test if it was sufficiently hot. If the spittle ran off in scalding little balls, it was deemed hot enough and my mother would smooth away, a slight smell of scorching pervading the room, singing 'O dear what can the matter be' and other songs of the day in quite a pleasant voice.

It was a laborious job black-leading this old stove once every week because it meant hard application with a stiff brush which had been dipped in the polish poured into a saucer, followed by a lot of 'elbow grease' using another brush - but I enjoyed doing it and standing back afterwards to admire its shiny black appearance. It was my pride and joy.' In front of the grid was a ledge on which, at Christmas-time, we would roast pricked chestnuts until they burst, and then rubbing away the blackened brittle skins we would pop the hot and delicious mealy nuts into our mouths. High above the range was the mantelpiece draped in bobble-edged chenille, with a white china dog at each end, a clock in the centre, and a conglomeration of nicknacks along its length.

Beyond the kitchen-cum-dining room was the small scullery which housed the copper (wash boiler) set in a thick cement housing which was used every Monday morning for the weekly wash! Pails of cold water from the sink nearby would be carried across and tipped into the copper (no such thing as piped water direct into the copper), the articles to be washed would be dropped in and the circular wooden lid placed over. The firing laid beneath would be lit and then it would be a matter of waiting until steam escaping round the edges of the lid indicated that the water was hot enough and washing could begin. My mother would stand her scrubbing board inside the copper, fish out one article at a time and placing it against the board would rub a hard bar of Sunlight soap over the article, which was then rubbed up and down the corrugated centre portion of the board. And so the washing would laboriously proceed throughout the morning, the scullery awash with clouds of steam and condensation everywhere, until everything had been rubbed and rinsed in clean water in the sink and then dipped in a tub of 'dolly blue'. Everything then had to be wrung by hand and pegged out on the line to dry - weather permitting! Later on my mother was able to purchase a secondhand mangle with large wooden rollers which had to be cranked by hand, through which the wet clothes passed and sometimes one's fingers if they were not removed quickly enough!

Every Friday evening the copper was filled again and the fire lit to heat water for our baths, which were taken in a long tin bath placed in front of the glowing range fire. After which we were given a dose of syrup of figs - it was a weekly ritual!

We had an old piano with yellowed keys and a candlestick fixed at each end, which my mother had managed to obtain at next to nothing, and I loved trying to play this. We also had a cats whisker wireless (radio) set and I remember how we used to sit huddled over it watching as the one with the earphones on tried to manipulate the cats whisker onto the best spot on the crystal for reception, involving much trial and error, and the rest of us would wait impatiently for our turn to listen in!

We had a small garden at the rear which I enjoyed planting, and always one or two cats and a dog which Violet had 'rescued'. I remember on our way home from school one day we saw two boys cornering a cat and one of them swinging it round by its tail. Violet charged into its tormentors, grabbed the terrified cat and ran off home with it - and from then on it was ours.' We also kept a couple of rabbits and some chickens. All our pets were fed on 'scraps' - no such thing in those days as tinned pet food:

Our flat came about the centre of the crescent-shaped road, and round the curve leading in the direction of Harrow (the end of the other curve led to Wealdstone). Just out of sight from our home, lived Auntie Ada and Uncle Walter Ball and their three daughters at No.60, and of course we saw a great deal of them. In fact we were in and out of most of the homes in the Crescent and had lots of playmates - Violet and I our girlfriends and George his pals. We didn't see much of our brother because being that much older he and his companions had other interests and ventured further afield. We knew everyone in the Crescent and almost everything about them: All of us children attended the Elementary School at the end of the Crescent, the other side of the High Street. It was demolished a few years ago to make way for the Civic Centre.

The Kodak hooter sounded each working day for its employees with a long blast at 7 a.m. and 1 p.m., with a warning short blast 5 minutes before, and could be heard 5 or 6 miles away - it was a local institution and people set their clocks by it; and when after many years it was discontinued, everyone felt its loss. It was also used to sound the alarm to call out the local Fire Brigade when there was a fire in the area - the local Police Station would phone the factory and the hooter would be sounded: not the long steady blast as for the time signal, but three urgent short blasts. A member of the Fire Brigade lived in our Crescent and as soon as the alarm sounded all the children would run to his house and stand excitedly outside waiting for him to emerge. His wife would open the front door to facilitate his departure and stand at the kerbside (curbside) with his pedal bike at the ready; and in the little hall inside we would see him struggling into his uniform which was always kept at the foot of the stairs: long rubber boots, thick jacket, tall brass hat, and hatchet. Out he would clomp in the heavy boots, brass hat askew and chin strap trailing, hatchet in his right hand, and his left hand endeavouring to finish buttoning up his jacket as he jumped on his bike and pedalled off furiously to the Fire Station in Palmerston Road, Wealdstone, outside which the fire engine would be standing, with Bob and Nancy (the fire horses) hitched, ears pricked and straining to go: One by one as the panting firemen arrived they would clamber up onto the outside ledge, hauled up by their fellow firemen, all of them clinging on for dear life as it moved off apace. If we children got to know where the fire was we would gather round the burning building and watch the firemen with their long jets of water trying to dowse the flames, and the air would be thick with palls of black smoke.

I can remember that in times of grave illness straw would be spread over the surface of the road outside the house where the seriously ill person lay, so as to deaden the noise made by the clipclopping of the horses metal-shod hooves and the trundling of the steel-rimmed wooden wheels on the carts; and we children would be told to play quietly.

Much of our playing was done in the Crescent: we would run for hours alongside our tall wooden hoops, urging them along with the palm of our hands; or would spend hours patterning with brightly coloured chalks the flat head of our tops and then moving them vigorously along the pavements with string whips until the colours merged into an altogether different design; or we would play hopscotch using broken pieces of china; or throw marbles in contest along the kerbs; or flick cigarette cards. We used to collect these in sets - and how I wish I still had them as I understand they are now collectors items! Some of the cards would be placed upright against a wall and we would with a deft flick of the wrist try to dislodge them by aiming at them the rest of the cards in the pack. We girls also had our dolls and prams (baby carriages) to play with and we would spend hours dressing them up in cast-off baby clothes - no specially made wardrobes as are available in shops nowadays!

Sometimes we would venture beyond the Crescent to a railway embankment nearby and would sit, notebook and pencil in hand, train spotting. I have to confess that there were times when, getting bored with this, we would dare each other to run across the lines with a coin to be placed on the line for flattening by an oncoming train. There were six lines: on the far side the up and down slow lines for the trundling goods trains, two centre lines for the steam express trains, and two electrified up and down lines for passenger trains. It involved waiting until a train came into view on the express lines and then, judging its speed, and jumping across the electrified lines, we had to run to whichever line it was on, place the coin in position and get back just in time as the train passed by. Surely we children had guardian angels; and how our mothers would have had 'forty fits' if they had known what was going on'.

Another memory I have is of the great excitement we children felt when the ill-fated Rl0l airship passed over the Crescent low enough for its number to be read clearly.

One Christmas my mother managed to buy a secondhand bicycle which Violet and I shared as our present. We quickly learned to ride this up and down the Crescent (in turn!) and then went further afield to test our expertise on a hill. I remember we chose Harrow View and spent hours riding down it, mostly 'no hands', passing 114 where Wilf and I now live. In those days I regarded that house as a very posh residence and never dreamt that one day I would be mistress of it!

My Christmas 1984 letter dealt somewhat with Harrow as it used to be, and I think I will include here a relevant extract from it so as to give some details of the place as it was in my childhood:

George married and left home in July 1935 and Violet in December of the same year. My mother and I continued for a year or two living in Rosslyn Crescent and then we joined forces with Violet and her husband Fred in buying a house in the area: No.47 Brook Drive. It was here that Walter Ing, Ted Chapin and Evans Carson visited us during their service overseas in World War II. When the war was over I rented a flat in Harrow Weald, a couple of miles away, and mother came with me, as Violet and Fred and their two children really needed the whole house. We were still there when Wilf and I married in 1953; but it was too small for the three of us and within a couple of years or so we moved into 114 Harrow View - buying the house from my chief at Kodak; and it is here that we entertained Auntie Ciss and Dorothy, Marian, Bill Buchanan, Myrtle & Evans, and Mum Carson and Fern.

Mother died just a few months short of her 92nd birthday. She was long-sighted and wore glasses only for reading. Her hearing was quite good to the end, and she still had many of her own teeth. Her hair was only slightly greying. She was always a good walker (I take after her in this respect) and walked miles until she developed an arthritic hip, after which she could only walk slowly and painfully with the aid of a stick. She also had arthritis in her hands and although it was obvious at times that she was in a great deal of pain, she never complained. During the 15 months that Wilf and I cared for her at home after a major stroke, when she was so physically dependent on our help, she was so appreciative and almost every night before going to sleep would thank Wilf especially for being so good to her. She loved her family and was so interested in all the activities of the various members of it. She was always so self-effacing and undemanding, and I cannot recall ever hearing her speak ill of anyone!

My mother had a simple faith in God and taught us children good moral standards. In this connection I recall that one day when she was scolding us for something we had done wrong, she told us that there were angels in heaven keeping a record of our lives, and one day we would be sorry if we told lies or did wrong things. Imagine my surprise when, at the age of 21 after becoming a Christian and starting to read the Bible for myself, I came across that very sentiment in Revelation 20, v.12! Her ashes are buried in the family grave at Chorley Wood with Violet and my father, his parents and his sister Jessie, awaiting the resurrection shout when "the dead in Christ shall rise first...".

GEORGE & VERA EVANS - notes by George.

Vera Eileen Mitchell was born on 28.4.1908 at Blackdown, near Aldershot, England. She was the 3rd child of Charles & Kate Lovelock-Mitchell. Her mother came from Fermoy, Cork, and her father from Caltra in Galway. He was a Master Tailor in the Royal Inniskillins.

George Samuel Evans was born on 11.10.1911 in our grandparents cottage at 3 Ellwood Terrace, Chorley Wood, Hertfordshire, the eldest child of George & Charlotte Evans.

Vera and I met when we were working together at Kodak. After a courtship of six years we were married on July 27th 1935 at St. Josephs Roman Catholic Church at Harrow Weald, Middlesex.

I joined the Volunteer Reserve in March 1939 and was called up for service two weeks before war was declared the following September 3rd. I served in the anti-aircraft Balloon Squadron over London and at Stanmore on balloon making and repairs; then in the Orkney Isles in defense of Scapa Flow our Home Naval Base. In March 1941 I joined the Photographic Section of the R.A.F. and was posted to Malta. This entailed fitting of cameras on aircraft for reconnaisance and bombing raids, and developing and making prints for High Command to study. From Malta I went to Greece; and then into Italy on the progress of our re-taking of the country from the Germans; finally being demobbed (demobilized) in December 1945.

Our elder daughter Pauline was born early in the war on April 24th 1940. Our second daughter Eileen was born on October 22nd 1946. Both daughters live in North Carolina, U.S.A. Pauline has three children and Eileen two. We visit them every few years and they return our visit in between. I won't add any further details about them and their families as they have written about themselves in the following pages.

I was always keen on games, playing football, cricket, table tennis, snooker, and in later years turning to golf.

We bought our first house in the Harrow area when we married, living there until 1957 when my Department at Kodak moved to Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, where Vera also continued her job of Supervisor in the Process Film Finishing Department, retiring in 1966. My job was Processing Foreman until I retired in 1973. We eventually moved to Tring in Hertfordshire in 1977, where Myrtle & Evans Carson, Mum Carson and Fern (from Canada) visited us. We moved again in February of this year to Fulwood in Preston, Lancashire.

We had our Golden Wedding last year and were so pleased that Myrtle & Evans could once again be with us. Life has been kind to us both and we have enjoyed good health.

Additional notes by Jessie:
George wouldn't tell you this himself but in his younger years he really excelled at sports, particularly table tennis and snooker, for which he won lots of trophies. He is also very good at golf and again has won a number of trophies. At his best his handicap was 10 and he plays at Moor Park and on other well known courses. He is also a keen gardener. He is quiet and dependable and a thoroughly nice person'. It has been remarked that from the back he looks and walks like our cousin Walter Ing in Canada!

Neither has George mentioned Vera's accomplishments so I will tell you that she is an excellent cook and her meals are 'tops'. They entertain quite a lot and she is a very good hostess, being also a good conversationalist. She does the most beautiful flower arrangements, using dried flowers, fresh flowers, and silk flowers which she makes herself. She knits, sews, and has 'green fingers' for both house plants and in their garden. She has a very good dress sense, and always a fund of new ideas for home improvements (theirs).

PAULINE (EVANS) PERRY - by herself

I was the first child of my parents, George & Vera Evans, and was born during the second World War on April 24th 1940. We lived in Belmont, Stanmore, Middlesex, until I was 17 and then my father's job at Kodak moved to Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire and I finished my schooling there. I then started work at Kodak as a secretary (following in my Aunt Jessie's footsteps). During this time I met Jim Perry, an American over here with the American Air Force stationed nearby. He returned home in May 1962 and shortly afterwards I went out and we married on July 20th 1962. We have three children:

Katie b.25.l0.1968

Merle b.13.2. 1971

Beth Anna b.25. 8.1972

We started our married life in Raleigh, N.Carolina:, where Jim worked for an Insurance Company; and I got a job elsewhere as a secretary. He then decided to start up in a similar business on his own and so we moved to New Bern, N.Carolina (some 100 miles away) and opened an office there, and I did the secretarial work for him. The business prospered and Jim was able to open a second office, which is also doing well. Right now we are in the process of computerizing the business, which is quite an upheaval!

Katie was born with a heart malfunction and underwent major surgery when she was six. Thankfully this was a success and today she is a very healthy and active teenager. Her main interests are reading and horse riding; but she also plays the piano, flute and cornet. She has grown up with the idea of being a doctor and hopes to get a place at Duke university to study medicine.

Merle. Merle is quite bald as for some unknown reason he lost his hair at a young age. To begin with this was quite a problem to him; but he met Duncan Goodhew, the Gold Medallist swimmer, who took a keen interest in him and encouraged him by welcoming him into his exclusive 'club'.' Merle is a superb horseman and is also keen on fishing, water skiing and golf. He is also keen on inventing things, having a decided bent that way.

Beth Anna rides too and one of the photos shows all three of them taking part in a simulated fox hunt over the surrounding countryside! Her other main interest is water skiing, and she loves animals as pets. She is most affectionate by nature and the chatterbox of the family.

As a family we attend the local Methodist Church and the activities connected with this take up a good part of our time. We have a motor-home and a boat, and Jim is very keen on fishing. like cooking and entertaining, and do quite a bit of needlework. There is never a dull moment in our household!
 

EILEEN (EVANS) BROWN - by herself

I was born on October 22nd 1946 in Harrow Weald, Middlesex, England. I was regis:tered and christened Barbara Eileen, but always called Eileen. I lived in Belmont, Middlesex till I was eleven years old when my father's company, Kodak, moved to Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. I don't remember much of the Belmont days; but I adjusted quickly to the move and thoroughly enjoyed my new school and friends. I left school at 17 and went to work for Kodak in the family tradition, while continuing my studies at day-release and night school. My interests in those days were sewing and cooking - they still are, but I don't have so much time nowadays and prefer activities that interact with people.

In 1968 I married Rodney Kenneth Brown, who had been my classmate since I was 11. He had done a 5-year engineering apprenticeship and we had very little money between us so we decided to try our luck in another country, and about 2 months after we were married we emigrated to South Africa. This was where I blossomed:

no longer tied down by the British class system and accepted codes of behavior, I was free to grow and find myself. I worked in the personnel department of a manufacturing company, learned a lot and enjoyed the work. I was there till our first child, Sarah Jane, was born in 1972. Rod was working for himself by then, contracting himself out to different companies, and he enjoyed being independent. Christopher Bruce was born in 1974. I enjoyed being home with the children - it was the best 'job' I have had! I also sold Tupperware in my spare time, for pocket money and the socializing.

Shortly after Christopher was born we got the urge to move and try something new. We decided to emigrate to America where my sister Pauline and her family lived. We sold up and moved back to England where we lived with my parents while we waited for the emigration to be approved. It was a good feeling to be back in the 'nest' but have a separate identity and I enjoyed this time. We emigrated to America after Christmas 1977 and lived with Pauline till our house was built that summer, and where the children and I still live. Rod's contracting business failed in the first year of the Reagan administration when companies cut back spending, and he went to work for a corporation. He was not happy in himself and our marriage broke up the following year. He still lives near and takes an active part in the children's lives.

I went back to work as a secretary receptionist in a property development company. It is a small close knit company and I have made a lot of good friends.

I belong to various organizations: Daughters of the British Empire - they are British women, or women of British descent, and the organization supports four old-age homes in the United States for British people. We have a lot of fun raising money and celebrating various 'British' occasions. I also belong to the International Visitors Center and act as a volunteer host to visitors from other countries who are here to see how we do things, and want to meet the average American family! This program is sponsored by the American government. I also enjoy snow skiing in the winter and camping in the summer.

Sarah is 13 and has a promising life ahead of her. She is like a flower that has started to open: you can see the color and strength of the petals, but not quite what the flower is, but you can see it is good. Her life is horses and church. She is well respected by her peers, and is in 4-H and the church choir. She is a baptised member of a local Baptist church, which all the family attends at least once a week. She was given her first horse at Christmas, a yearling called Fairytale. It was given to her by somebody she shows horses for, and this is her new challenge.

Chris keeps us guessing: he is a typical 'youngest in the family', easygoing, fun-loving and irresponsible (although he is trying hard on this one). He has a good mind, but has a hard time applying himself.' (working on this too). It is exciting seeing him develop and he has a sense of humor that catches you unawares. Chris is a sportsman and whatever he tries he does well at. His main sports are soccer and swimming, and he competes in competitive leagues in both these sports.

I feel like I am ending this at the beginning; come back in a few years for the ending!
 

JESSIE LOUISE (EVANS) & WILFRED COLIN ANDERSON

Inevitably much about me has already been incorporated in the notes on my two sets of grandparents, my parents and my twin; although I don't think I have said much about my working life. I started work two weeks after leaving school at fourteen and got myself a job in a local firm (Glass Printers Limited) where about 30 women sat at benches in front of fierce blow lamps, working furiously on piece-work, handling long lengths of narrow gauge glass tubing from which they made grosses of test tubes daily, which were afterwards printed and fired in a furnace. My job was to work out rates of pay and wages, answer the telephone, and attend to all the correspondence - looking back it sounds horrific that a 14-year old straight from elementary school should have been given such responsibility, for which I was paid the sum of 7/6d. per week (37p in present coinage) working Monday to Friday 8.30 -5.30 and Saturday 8.30 to noon! Out of this I paid my mother 5/- a week for my board and lodging (2/3rds of my salary) and from the 2/6d. left I had to buy my own clothes and anything and everything else that I might need. I had done shorthand and typing at school, but I then attended evening classes to improve my speeds.

I stayed at Glass Printers until one week short of my eighteenth birthday when George, who was by that time working at Kodak, spoke for me and I was offered a secretarial job in the Cine Film Processing Department where he and Vera worked. By the time I left Glass Printers my wage had risen to 24/- per week; but Kodak were offering 22/6d. a week, which meant a drop. However, it was considered a better position in the long-term and so I was happy to accept. I continued there for a couple of years and then was promoted to work for the manager of the European & Overseas Cine Film Processing Departments. Eventually he became Deputy Manager of the whole factory at Wealdstone, and finally he went to Head Office at Kingsway, London. I continued with him until I left 2-1/2 years after I married in 1953, when I left to become a full time housewife, since when my life has become busier and busier.

We have always done a lot of entertaining and enjoyed it; until a few years ago I took a Girls Bible Class every Sunday afternoon; every Sunday evening we have had a Young People's Group back home after the evening service (numbers are much smaller now, but for years there were around thirty to get supper for!); I did a good deal of speaking at Women's Meetings until the deterioration in my mother's health meant that I could not be away from home; I spend a number of hours each week visiting and doing jobs for the sick and elderly; I think I write more letters than anyone I know; attend a number of meetings each week; make all my own cakes and preserves; do much of the gardening; and of course the never-ending housework and shopping etc. Actually it suits my temperament to be busy and I have always felt it better to wear out than rust out - although I have to admit that there have been times when I would have liked a little of the happy medium! However, the reward of service is always more service. All this busyness has made the years pass by happily and swiftly so that I find it absolutely incredible that I have now reached the Biblical 'three score years and ten' - after which all is a bonus! I certainly don't feel seventy.

But more than enough of me. Let me tell you a bit about Wilf. He was born on 1.1.1927, the seventh and youngest child of William & Lilian (Jones) Anderson, both now deceased. His father was of Scottish descent and his mother English/Welsh descent. He is a civil servant working at Elizabeth House, Waterloo, for the Department of Education and Science. He has worked in several sections of the department and at present is dealing with Teachers Training, in connection with which he has to arrange for teachers abroad to come over here and vice versa. He retires at the end of this year and is very much looking forward to being able to take his time on house maintenance, gardening and other jobs. He is also looking forward, in the will of God, to having time for more church activities and study of the Bible. Over the years he has done a great deal of speaking and preaching in and around the London area; he has taken a Young Mens Bible Class every Sunday afternoon at our own church; and has been an elder there for many years. In any free time he has tackled every conceivable job on our home, inside and out (although when it comes to decorating I have to plan the colour schemes as he is just slightly colour-blind!). He also does jobs for the elderly.

Wilf is a 'natural' if ever there was one, friendly and uninhibited, and is best summed up in the words of the chauffeur who came to collect me as a bride on our wedding day. He said he had just delivered my bridegroom at the church and that he was 'the coolest calmest bridegroom he had ever seen'. I think it must have been the attraction of opposites which drew us together because he is a good talker, whereas I am happiest as a listener, taking everything in! He is quite phlegmatic but also somewhat of an extrovert, I an introvert; in his dealings with people he can be empathetic, whereas I tend to become personally involved and perhaps too sympathetic; when he was younger he excelled at sport, football and tennis in particular being his games, and I anything but due to short sightedness; although before I wore glasses I was tops at school in high and long jumping! Wilf is a very practical person and sums up a situation before committing himself to a line of action and almost never acts on impulse; whereas I am analytical, tend to be over-sensitive, 'arty' and somewhat impulsive. However, we both love walking and can walk for hours and cover miles without tiring.

Our holiday venues are usually chosen for accessibility to cliff top walking as we love walking along coastal paths which are a riot of wild flowers, with the sea on one side and countryside on the other. Because we normally lead very busy lives and are in close contact with lots of people all the year round, on holiday we are happy to be on our own, amidst beautiful scenery, just walking - and usually we have the coastal paths all to ourselves as so few people seem to walk these days. We find it so peaceful and restful and it enables us to unwind and recharge our batteries! We also both enjoy listening to classical music and particularly Mozart. Above all we are one in spiritual things, which brought us together in the first place. We would have loved a family but instead the Lord gave us the spiritual care of other people's youngsters and our home has been 'open house' for many over the years, extending in some cases to those whose parents were in our Bible Classes and Young People's Groups before them - so that sometimes we have felt like the husband-and-wife equivalent of 'Mr.Chips''.

In his 'History;of the Ing Family' Bill Buchanan refers to the 'words of good cheer' in my letters over the years to various of our Canadian relatives, and most members of the family probably know that I am 'religious'! So perhaps I should take this opportunity to explain how I became interested in Christian things. I should begin by telling you that my mother did not attend a church except for a wedding, christening or funeral. However, she did her duty by sending us children to Sunday School from an early age, and we attended a Presbyterian Church nearby. As soon as they could George and Violet stopped going; but I liked going, and so much so that I went three times every Sunday! I suppose because I was a shy timid creature I reacted to the cool quiet beauty inside the church. I just loved to sit there and sense the deep peace of it. However, being a thinking child I questioned within myself one day just why I bothered to continue. I felt there ought to be more to Christianity than my teachers there imparted to me; but after considering it all very carefully, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that I must be mistaken and that the peace I sensed in the church building was all there was to it. And so I left and for weeks afterwards I felt miserable and unhappy of a Sunday afternoon, standing at our front room window watching the children going off to Sunday School. I missed going terribly but having considered the matter fully, as I thought, and not having anyone to show me otherwise, I would not change my mind and go back again. I started going out on Sundays with one or two girl friends, or else sat at home and devoured books because I was very fond of reading.

And so the months and years passed by until just one week short of my eighteenth birthday, I met and fell in love at first sight with a man some years my senior. He was very charming and seemed all that I had grown up to believe men were not, because of my father's defection. In addition he was attractive looking, well educated, had a good position, plenty of money and a car, and what appealed to me most, he was intellectual.

I didn't know it at the time, but he just couldn't help being charming to every girl who came his way, and so it wasn't long before he began his conquest of me - although I can't imagine why because I always regarded myself as a 'plain Jane.' However, perhaps it was because I was different - and I certainly was that. I definitely had a phobia about the opposite sex at that time. I had grown up fearing and disliking men and particularly nervous and frightened of anything connected with loving, because of what had happened to my mother. So I strongly resisted all his overtures and, of course, couldn't have fanned his interest more if I had known how!

He persisted diligently, but finding that I would not go out with him, he began lending me books, such as I delighted in, and that was the thin end of the wedge! I gradually lost my fear of him and inevitably the day came when he asked me again if I would go for a drive, and I went. And that was the beginning of a great happiness. There is no need for me to dwell upon the intensity of first love. I set him on a pedestal and he could do no wrong. We spent our evenings at the cinema or theatre, or dining and dancing at expensive London hotels, or else driving out to the countryside, discussing books, reading poetry, painting and sketching; and Sunday became for me the one day in the whole week when we were free to enjoy ourselves all day long (in those days we worked Saturday mornings). When the weather was fine we raced off to the coast with a picnic basket and spent the day lazily sunbathing on the beach or walking on the soft springy grass along the cliff top. I also began smoking and drinking a little. Never a regret now for my Sunday School days, or indeed ever a thought of them or of God.

I don't know how many months it was before the first faint ripples of disappointment in him came to disturb the smooth surface of my happiness, but they certainly came and so began for me the bitter hurt of disillusionment. At first I pushed them away, but they persisted and I could not but admit to myself that there were some aspects of his character which I did not like. So I began to question my feeling for him and to query within myself whether I really could love and live with a man I did not fully trust, and I had to admit that my feeling for him was chiefly one of physical and mental attraction. I reviewed my mother's sad experience and I knew I could not face the possibility of a repetition; that if I married this man (and he had asked me to) with all his money, position and charm, I could never be truly happy. I had to face the fact that this decision meant ending our friendship which had brought me so much happiness and unaccustomed luxury, and I knew too that it would be a big disappointment to my mother because from her point of view it would have been a good match and she was pleased to think that I would be marrying well and would be free from the financial worries which had been her lot. However, I ended our friendship.

It upset me terribly to do this because I was still very attracted to him and seeing him every day made it unbearably hard. Once or twice I was sorely tempted to give in and go back to him, yet I just could not bring myself to compromise with my ideals. And so I left things as they were, hoping that in time the longing and the pain would lessen; but it did not. On the contrary I felt the loss more and more as the days went by and my heart ached all the time with a pain which was physical. It was just a nightmare at home because although my mother knew our friendship was over, I tried to make her believe I did not care one way or the other. Meals were a terrible ordeal, trying to swallow food which seemed like dust and ashes in my mouth. But even more I dreaded the nights because then all I longed to do was to be able to throw myself on my bed and cry and cry. Instead of which, sharing a room with my mother (we were still at Rosslyn Crescent, although George and Violet had married and left home), I had to stuff the sheet into my mouth so that she should not hear me sobbing until the early hours of the morning.

This went on for a few weeks, until I remember quite distinctly the thought coming into my mind to end it all by taking my life. Writing it down like this it sounds a dreadful thing, but as I felt then it was not at all terrifying because I longed more than anything for an end of thinking and feeling. I considered quite calmly whether I would gas myself or whether I would take poison; but then I thought of all the police enquiries which would follow and the grief and shame this would bring to my mother who already had had enough sorrow in her life, and I could not do it. I thought of other means, but they seemed equally impossible because of my mother. I was frantic. Unwilling to go on living and unable to die.

That lunchtime I was walking along the road with George. It was a very silent walk, and occupied with my own miserable thoughts, not looking to right or left, I stepped off the kerb to cross the road. Suddenly I became aware of shouting, the screeching of brakes and myself being pulled back by George to the safety of the pavement. 'You silly little fool. You might have been killed' he said roughly, because he was badly shaken; and after a lecture from the driver of the heavy lorry (truck), we crossed the road in safety, and as we got to the other side those words stood out in my mind in letters of fire: 'You might have been killed. You might have been killed'. And suddenly it came to me in a flash - why, of course, here is the answer. An accident! If I can only get myself run over, everyone will think it an accident and there will be no shame attached to it for my mother. So for a nightmare week after that I tried several times to get run over. Whenever I was walking along the road and heard a heavy vehicle coming, I would wait until it sounded almost on top of me and then step forward quickly; but always the driver would manage to pull up his vehicle with much shouting and screeching of brakes and I would emerge quite unhurt the other side.

It was impossible, of course, that I should be able to stand the strain of this for long and I well remember going back to the office after lunch one Tuesday. My chief had gone to a meeting and I was left automatically typing letters. Suddenly all my misery welled up within me and I dropped my hands from the keyboard and leant wearily back in my chair and stared unseeingly out of the window, and I heard myself cry out 'O God, I can't go on. I can't go on'. I wasn't conscious of praying to God, because in any case even if I had thought about it I should not have considered I was eligible to pray to God. I thought only ministers and priests could do that; I didn't know ordinary people could do so. No, it was just an involuntary cry from the heart and God heard it. "Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out". Now that I look back I can see how wonderfully God moved in my life and how He allowed me to come right to an end of self and so eventually face to face with the Saviour.

As I sat there I experienced a curious sensation of numbness steal over me and I remember thinking this lack of feeling could only mean one thing: that my heart had broken under the strain and now I would die. I felt this must be so because I knew that I had reached rock bottom of my capacity for enduring any more. Somehow I got through the remainder of that afternoon, still with that curious sensation of numbness, and at 5.30 I made my way listlessly home. And now see how wonderfully God began to move! I got to the top of Rosslyn Crescent and met Clara Tring who lived opposite me and whom I had known all my life. We had been very friendly right up till leaving school and always in and out of each other's homes.

At the time I thought it a very strange thing that I should meet Clara, because I had hardly set eyes on her since leaving school. All I knew about her now was that she and her whole family had got what I considered to be 'religious mania' because they went to some sort of a place of worship all day Sunday and often in the week; and that she sent me a card each year on my birthday which quoted texts of Scripture, much to my annoyance because I felt embarrassed in front of the family. I used to tear up the card and throw it away. Never before had I met Clara on my way home from work, and she said she had come that way that evening for a change!

How wonderfully God uses one and another of His people to form links in the chain to bring a soul to Christ. And when I think back, how like Him to have used Clara as the first link in bringing me to the Lord. She had been so faithful each year sending me the Scriptural birthday card which, although I didn't appreciate it at the time, was the only time I ever came across any part of the Word of God.

I stayed and chatted with her for a while and in the course of conversation she told me that her younger sister Iris had been ill for a long time with Tuberculosis of the spine and that the trouble was incurable. The doctor had wanted her to go into hospital, but as it was considered incurable anyway the family preferred to keep her at home. She said 'Why don't you come over one evening and see Iris. It would cheer her to have a new visitor.' So, not having anything else to do and not caring anyway how I got through the evening, I said I would come over.

I went across to their house later that evening and was horrified at the sight of Iris. I remembered her as a tall slender beautiful looking child with lovely large dark brown eyes and dark naturally wavy hair which fell in long ringlets about her pale face; but now, at the age of seventeen, after nearly three years in bed, she looked dreadful. Only her eyes seemed living in her waxen sunken face.

She was so pleased to see me and made an effort to talk, but every now and again her face twisted with pain and her mother explained that it was a bad evening for her. And then she said to Iris, 'Shall I show Jessie your poor legs?', and Iris just nodded her head, and so her mother gently lifted up the bedclothes and showed me a sight which I shall never forget to my dying day.

From lying in bed so long Iris's hip joints had become permanently locked in the position which apparently she had found most comfortable at the start of her illness: on her left side with the left knee bent and the right knee in the hollow of the left knee. With the passing of the months and the growth of the wasting disease she had literally become just skin and bone and consequently all the ends of joints had pushed their way right through the skin in places. Her haunch bones were protruding red and sore through the broken skin and she was raw all down the inside of the left leg and particularly the back of her bent knee where the right knee was chafing against it. Her mother and other members of the family had made pathetic attempts to ease the terrible continual chafing by trying to insert little wisps of cotton wool between all the bad places, but with little or no relief.

As I gazed horrified at the sight, Iris said 'If I could only keep my legs apart even just a fraction it would help, but my hip joints are locked and I cannot move them, and I am afraid to let anyone try to do it for me'. And then she suddenly said 'but I think I could let you try Jessie, if you would'. And so with a great lump in my throat and in an agony of feeling for her, knowing that every slightest movement caused her excruciating pain, I endeavoured to insert two large silken soft handkerchiefs between her knees, passing one round the left knee and fastening it to the left side of the bed, and one round the right knee to the right side of the bed, so that the knees were forcibly held just a fraction apart. It took me from just after eight o'clock in the evening until eleven o'clock. But it was well worth the effort because Iris said the relief was wonderful. And so I went home happy in the thought that perhaps she would be able to sleep for a while free from the terrible pain she had endured over past weeks. I said I would come again the next evening.

That night I too, for the first time in weeks, went to bed without a single thought of myself and my own misery. All my thoughts were taken up with Iris. And when I look back I can see that from the very moment I called upon God in my extremity, He completely took away all my former feeling, never to return. That curious numbness I experienced after calling upon God, seems to me now as if He administered an anaesthetic as a prelude to the operation of removing altogether my previous feeling. In the morning too my first thought was of Iris. Her ghastly plight filled my whole mind. As early as possible after the evening meal I went over again and upon seeing me Iris broke down and cried and asked if I could forgive her, because an hour or so after I had left the previous evening she had had to call her mother to cut down the silk handkerchiefs and to let her knees sink back to their former position owing to the intolerable pain it was causing in her hips, even worse than before. Having been fixed in one position for so long, the handkerchiefs were causing a great strain, holding the knees even just that fraction apart. She was so upset at the thought of all the time and trouble I had taken and because it was now of no avail. It touched me deeply to think that even in the midst of all her pain, Iris could be so thoughtful of me. What wonderful courage and fortitude in a girl only seventeen years old!

So I sat with her for the evening and although her face twitched with pain every now and again, I could not but be struck by the expression in her eyes. In the midst of all her pain she was peaceful and tranquil and, on the brink of death, not a bit fearful, but rather happy at the prospect of going. I went home wondering how this could possibly be. To me death was the end of things. It was a going out into oblivion and blackness for ever.

Iris seemed so much to like me sitting with her that I went across every evening and although I wasn't aware of it then, God's Holy Spirit was teaching my receptive heart many things. During those evenings Iris talked about the Saviour Whom she loved and Whom she was longing to see. It all sounded very strange to me. But what impressed me was that I could see that her love for this One of Whom she spoke was such that the thought of death held no terror for her; that she really was longing to go and regarded death as the threshold of a wonderful new life.

One evening when I arrived she was very bad and her mother said she thought it was the end. Her immediate family and one or two relatives were there and I sat with them just silently watching Iris. She was past speaking and the death dew stood out on her forehead. She seemed entirely unconscious of our presence and her eyes, wonderfully bright and absolutely lighting up her face with a strange radiance, were fixed on something or Someone beyond our horizon. Every now and again one of those sitting round spoke softly of Iris's departure to be with the Lord'. I looked at them wonderingly and questioned within myself how they could possibly talk so calmly about her death. If I loved her, I knew they obviously loved her more, and I just could not understand it.

As we sat on, one of them began quietly to sing:

And so after a while when I was able to regain my composure I went back, and as I sat down by the bed, Iris just turned her head and looked at me and gave me such a wonderful smile. Unable to speak any more she feebly placed her hand over mine and then her eyes returned to that scene which was not for us. And so we sat on past midnight and into the early hours of the morning, and at two o'clock her eyes closed and the hurried breathing stopped and we thought she had gone. Her mother got a small hand mirror and placed it close to her nostrils and then by the slight misting of the surface we knew she had not gone but had fallen into a sweet sleep. And so I went home.

Actually she lingered three weeks after this and then passed away one morning with only her mother and brother present (her elder sister was in a sanatorium with the same disease, and her father had died from it only a few weeks previously). Apparently her mother went into the room to say something to Iris and one look was enough to tell her this really was the end. As she watched, Iris sat right up in bed with a radiant face and wonderful smile, and raising both arms high (she who had not been able to move for months:) as if going forward in glad welcome, she spoke the one word 'Jesus' in a clear voice and then dropped back onto the pillow, gone to be with the Lord Whom she loved so dearly.

When I got home that lunch-time I heard the news and went across immediately. There she lay so beautiful and peaceful. Her mother said 'She liked you to do her hair, Jessie, would you like to do it for the last time?'. And so she left me alone and I brushed and combed out her lovely long wavy hair and tied it with white satin ribbon. She looked so beautiful and I kissed her for the last time. Fond as I was of her I could not wish her back or grieve just then. Neither did I feel the slightest bit fearful of being alone with her. It never occurred to me to be, and yet only once before had I seen a person after death. When I was about seven or eight, a slightly older girl in the Crescent died and her mother told me how she looked like a little angel and asked me if I would like to see her in her coffin. Being a very imaginative child I said I would love to, quite expecting her to look literally like an artist's impression of a lovely angel, and I was horrified at the sight of the still rigid form and fainted away on the spot. However, it never entered my head to feel afraid of Iris - her face looked as beautiful in death as it had done previously, and if anything more so because the lines of pain were all smoothed out.

She was buried a few days later and I went to the funeral and so entered their place of worship for the first time (Belmont Gospel Hall where I am in fellowship). What an impression that service made upon me! The place was full because Iris was well known and loved; but although I saw tears falling down many cheeks, yet one and all had the same expression as the Tring family - a sort of sadness and yet a tranquil submission because of this sure hope they spoke of, of a coming reunion. I couldn't understand how they could take it like this. I felt frantic at her loss and terrified for her at the finality of it and the blackness into which I thought she had gone, and I remember I sobbed out loud and was the only one to cry audibly.

After the funeral I continued going over to the Trings most evenings and I began to question them about things: how they could possibly know there was a life after death; how they could be so certain that Iris had gone to be with the Lord; and so on. Out came their Bibles and they turned the pages with great familiarity and pointed out many passages in support of the things they believed. It seemed incredible to me that these things were really in the Bible.

Evening after evening that went on, and so interested did I become that one evening when I got home I searched out the tattered Bible I had used years ago at Sunday School (complete with a pressed flower in almost every page) and decided to start reading it for myself. I didn1t know where to begin, so I started at the commencement of the New Testament, and every evening after leaving the Tring family I would continue reading a little bit more. My mother was always in bed when I got home and so I was able to read unobserved and in perfect quiet. However, I doubt whether even my mother's presence would have deterred me because by this time I was intent upon finding out the truth for myself.

One Monday evening I got back from the Trings and got out my Bible to read a little more. By this time I had got up to Matthew chapter 27, and so I began to read the story of the crucifixion. I was generally familiar with the story, of course, as almost everyone must be in a civilised country; but as I read on, it was as if I were reading about it for the very first time. The words absolutely burnt themselves into my mind and by the time I got to the actual crucifixion they were all blurred and running into each other and I could no longer see them for my tears.

I remember placing the Bible on the table and just staring unseeingly at the wall in front of me, and as I stared I saw the Lord, clearly and unmistakably, hanging on the cross. I suppose really so greatly had the words impressed me that a mental picture of what I had read became superimposed upon the wall. He looked at me and said 'It was for you. It was for you'; and something inside me sprang forward and fell at the foot of that cross and I heard myself saying out loud 'Lord I believe. I do believe'; and at that moment it was as if a great burden fell from my shoulders and was filled with an indescribable peace and great joy.

A few days later I told the Trings that I had accepted the Saviour, although I didn't tell them all that had happened because I was too shy to talk about it. They were overjoyed at the news and so I began going with them to Belmont Hall. I went then every week, and indeed to every possible meeting, and never tired of asking questions of anyone who would bear with me. I continued my own private reading of the New Testament and eventually, as a result of what I read, I asked for believer's baptism. I was baptised by total immersion and shortly after this was received into fellowship; and so commenced for me a wonderful new life, which has grown happier and more full with the passing of the years, with the Lord becoming more real to me and His Word more precious, and not for anything or anyone would I now wish to be other than a Christian.

Such then is the story of my becoming interested in Christian things and accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour; and if a fellow believer is reading this I know your heart will have thrilled at the account of God's gracious and loving dealings in my life and to every recollection which it has brought to you of His moving in your own life. Your conversion to Christianity may not have been quite as spectacular as mine, or it may have been more so; but however it happened I am sure you can say with me that it is the faith both for living and dying.

Of course, at the time of my conversion there were those who said that I was suffering from religious mania following an unhappy love affair and that it would pass. All I can say is that I have been a Christian now for 49 years this coming August and far from passing I can testify to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ saves and keeps and satisfies.

VIOLET HILDA (EVANS) & FREDERICK NOEL ROLFE

Violet and I were twins (I was the elder by ten minutes!) and we were born on 28.3.1916 - for details of our childhood see notes on SAMUEL & ELIZA (WOODWARD) EVANS and CHARLOTTE HARRIET (WRIGHT) EVANS. Violet died on 12.10.1981 at the age of 65. She married Frederick Noel Rolfe on 7.12.1935. He was born at Aldershot, Southampton on Christmas Day 1910 and died on 8.2.1972. He was the eldest son of Frederick William & Ivy Ellen (McDermott) Rolfe. They had two children:

She couldn't wait to grow up and have boy friends and get married; whereas I shunned male company and was afraid of anything connected with loving because of what had happened to my parents. Obviously their separation had affected me more than Violet!

I remember the day we started school at the age of five. We were given a reading test, which I passed but Violet didn't. I was moved up a class that very morning and thereafter we were never in the same class again. We left school at the age of fourteen: I went to work in a local office, and Violet got herself a job in a local sweet factory wrapping toffees. She soon tired of that and went to work as a packer in the local laundry, until she was married at the age of 18, and promptly left work to look after their home, which was a little flat in Albert Road, Harrow, not far from where Wilf and I now live, and where Maureen was born. They then moved to No. 47 Brook Drive nearby, with my mother and me. Their second child, Tony, was born there in 1938 and we all continued there (with Grandma Wright for a while) until after the War ended in 1945. During the war Fred served in the Fire Service, which meant he was away from home at times at Plymouth and Portsmouth which were both badly bombed. He also often was called to help fight fires in bomb-blitzed London and when we knew he was there we would worry as it was very dangerous work. A year or two after the war my mother and I moved to a flat in Harrow Weald, a couple of miles away, and Violet and family continued in the house for some years. They then bought a bungalow in Wickford, Essex, not far from Maureen who by this time was married to John Dowling. Fred began to be in difficulties financially and they sold the bungalow and rented a flat in Colchester, Essex, where Fred died in 1972.

We used to tease Fred about his dark good looks and he maintained that he had inherited them from an ancestor, a Captain John Rolfe, the first Englishman to grow tobacco in Virginia, who in April 1614 married the Red Indian Princess, Pocahontas, daughter of Wakunsenecaw - called Powhatan, after the name of the kingdom by the falls on James River where he was born. He was a great chief, a great king; the emperor of the Virginian Indians. They had a son, Tom, and set sail for England in February 1616, arriving at Plymouth at the beginning of June. They proceeded to London, where Pocahontas was received at the court of James I and made much of by Queen Anne. But the damp weather and thick fogs of London in the late autumn did not suit her and she developed galloping consumption, the Englishman's disease, and was most unwell throughout the following winter months. It was decided they should return to her country on the GEORGE which was anchored alongside Raleigh's ships at Tower steps, due to leave in March. She was carried on board, but died as the ship slipped away, and was buried in Gravesend. Her dying wish was that her son Tom should be brought up in England. I have culled these details from a book entitled 'Pocahontas' by David Garnett, published by Chatto & Windus in 1972. Fred came on the scene nearly three hundred years later and he said that it had been handed down from generation to generation in his family that they were descended from Tom, the son of this Captain Rolfe who married Pocahontas. And certainly Fred had an Indian look about him; and when one looks at his son Tony's two children, Paul and Lisa, their appearance would seem to lend credence to this.

Fred's granddaughter (Tony's daughter) Lisa photographed when she was a young girl. Had she been wearing a beaded Indian headband with a feather stuck in it, when the photograph was taken, with her dark eyes and hair, and high cheek bones, she could well have been the young Pocahontas!

After the War Fred returned to his trade as a Journeyman & Decorator, working for employers to begin with; and then he branched out into his own business. This prospered and at one time he employed about 35 men and was making a good deal of money. He and Violet should really have been very comfortably off; but she had Grandma Evans taste for fine clothes, she liked going out and about, and above all changing the furniture and decor in their homes about every two years - when she would generously give away the furniture to be changed and buy new. Their homes were always tastefully furnished and I could never see the need for such speedy change; and beautifully decorated by Fred so that it always seemed to me such a shame to change so soon the decor which he had done with such expertise. However, that was what Violet wanted and Fred was always ready to gratify her wishes. He was a very likeable, easy-going, friendly, most generous and helpful person. In addition to being a skilled painter and decorator, with a good eye for colour and design, he had a definite gift for painting pictures in water colours and oil; many of which he gave to relatives and friends and one of which I have; and in fact he was good at most things in the arts and crafts line. This gift for painting has been inherited by his son Tony -interesting how such abilities reappear in the following generation and beyond.

But Fred's artistic abilities did not run in tandem with a hard business head and the men who worked for him took advantage of him by stealing his tins of paint and brushes, and fiddling their time sheets; and the firms who put out the big contracts he tendered for and obtained, were slow to settle their accounts when the work was completed, leaving poor Fred heavily in debt to his suppliers. He became ill with the worry of things, and the cancer which unknown at the time was developing. He died penniless and Violet was left in debt. She had to leave the flat and move in with Maureen who, as well as holding down a full time job, commendably took upon herself to pick up the pieces of her father's business and keep it going on a reduced scale until every farthing of the debt was paid off. They then moved to Cornwall, where they lived in adjoining caravans on a beautiful but isolated site looking towards Bodmin Moor - Violet in one, and Maureen and her second husband John Mclver, Karen and Justine in the other. The death of Fred meant a tremendous change and reduced life-style for Violet, but she accepted it and adapted to it without resentment, and Wilf and I greatly admired her for this.

For the last ten years or so of Violet's life, we used to spend a week with her every summer, and she would come to stay with us at 114 Harrow View, and we very much enjoyed these times together. Violet and I drew closer than we had ever been in our earlier years, and to the amazement of us both discovered that we had more in common than we had thought, and above all in spiritual things. A couple of years or so before the cancer reared its ugly head, Violet had come to a simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ - although she didn't tell us about this until she was seriously ill; but we had sensed a difference in her. When she became ill, although her natural courage came to her aid, it was her new-found faith which really sustained and supported her, and which "strengthened her with might in the inner man". As the disease ravaged her body, her spirit blossomed. I stayed with her for the whole of the month of August before she died in the October, and it was a privilege to pray with her and read the Bible to her. Together we talked about the ways of God with His people, the outworking of His loving purposes in all the events and circumstances of our lives; and it was lovely to see the growth of her faith as this spiritual reality was believed and accepted by her. Wilf and I have been Christians for many years and our faith and trust in God had been able to mature slowly in the various experiences of our lives; but Violet had only recently become a Christian, and I believe the Lord permitted and used this serious illness to give her the opportunity to learn more deeply and quickly the lessons of faith and thus not go empty-handed into His Presence. She certainly responded in the right way to God's training, and Wilf and I were full of admiration for her. It will be five years this coming October since she "fell asleep in the Lord" - the lovely language of heaven for the death of a believer - and I still miss her. However, I see Maureen and Tony and their families occasionally; and while Maureen is alive, Violet can never be forgotten as the older she grows the more she looks and walks like her mother and has certain of her characteristics!

MAUREEN (ROLFE) & JOHN McIVER - by Maureen.

Maureen Patricia Ellen Rolfe was born on October 23rd 1936 at Harrow, Middlesex, the elder child of Violet Hilda (Evans) & Frederick Noel Rolfe; and from a small child I was told of my paternal ancestor, the Indian Princess Pocahontas from Virginia, U.S.A. (see the notes on my father).

John Thomas McIver was born on September 7th 1928 at Norwich, Norfolk, the youngest son of John James & Annie Eliza (Riddell, formerly Thrower, nee White) McIver. (She was widowed and her first child died on the same day as her husband was killed in World War I. She remarried later and her second husband was washed overboard from a fishing vessel; and at a later date she married John James Mclver).

During the early part of my life we shared our home with my Grandmother Evans and my Aunt Jessie. I remember many happy hours spent with them; and I can also just remember my great Grandmother Wright being with us for a while. By the time I started school England was at war with Germany, my father was in the Fire Service and was away from home at times. Everybody had ration books and I know that I had to carry my gas mask with me to school each day; but worse than that was having to sleep in the street shelters to protect us from the bombs. I have happy memories of the day the whole road, ourselves and all our neighbours, had a party in the street to celebrate the end of the war.

It was while I was travelling to school in London that I narrowly missed being killed or injured in a terrible train crash which occurred at Wealdstone Railway Station on October 8th 1952, when two collisions involving three trains occurred at the station causing a death toll only once before exceeded on British Railways (122 dead and 157 injured). I should have been on one of the trains involved, but that.morning I caught the previous one. It was a time of great anxiety for my parents as it was some time before they were able to establish that I was safe and at school.

For a number of years I worked for a London publishing house, Constable & Co. Ltd., and I was able to meet many famous authors. It was a job I enjoyed very much. During this time I met and married my previous husband, John Dowling, and our daughter Karen Noelle was born on February 12th 1962. Sadly this marriage failed. I am now married to John Thomas Mclver and we have a daughter, Justine Elizabeth, who was born on March 24th 1970.

John was an Inspector for British Rail and has a lifelong love and interest in steam engines and the railways, having worked as fireman, guard and later as Inspector. He was responsible for the safe and smooth running of the trains from Liverpool Street Station, London, to Southend-on-Sea, Essex.

We lived at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, for a while. This is a very popular yachting centre and we were very happy there.

Whilst we were there my father was taken ill and after a short illness died on February 8th, 1972; and then my mother came to live with us.

In 1973 we all moved to Launceston in Cornwall. It is a very ancient town, at one time the capital of Cornwall called Dunheved, and it is part of the Duchy of Cornwall which belongs to our Prince Charles, Duke of Cornwall. We have a very old castle which is in the centre of the town, high on a hill. Legend has it that while it stands we shall never be snowed in - and so far so good. We are near to Dartmoor and close to the beaches, and it is a lovely part of the country to live