A Perfect CV

This is my dad, Charlie. He looks a serious fellow here, doesn't he? This was a works shot taken during his time at Burroughs in the 1950s and 60s. My father came from humble beginnings but was always proud of the way he had kept on studying as an adult and subsequently developed his career from manual worker to a senior managerial role.

I recently came across his old curriculum vitae, taking his career up to the 1960s. It had all kind of details on it and filled in several gaps I had in his movements during the second world war and the 1950s. I never really thought of a cv as a worthwhile document in my family history research but I was wrong. Here's what I discovered:

1936 - 1939: worked as a Message Boy and Apprentice Turner at Babcock and Wilcox (Valve Manufacturers), Dumbarton. 

My dad had mentioned various jobs he'd done as a teenager - paper boy, giving out leaflets on the steamer on Loch Lomond - but I didn't know the details of this one until now. I've even tracked down photographs of the Babcock and Wilcox plant so I can see the kind of environment he worked in. This is also where he must have sustained the injury that led to his hospitalisation for a number of years.

1939 - 1943: period of illness due to hip injury.


I knew that he'd been hospitalised on an island off the west coast of Scotland for the majority of this period but his CV lists the hospital as 'St Andrew's Home, Millport, Isle of Cumbrae'. It appears to have been closed down now but I'm still trying to find any history of the hospital.

1943 - 1952: Capstan & Milling Machine Operator/Setter - various firms in Worcester, London and Manchester


I knew that he'd lived in these three areas but I had no idea what his work was. I wish I knew which companies he'd worked for though.

The rest of the cv covers his career in Scotland and shows him moving up from the manual work to clerical work and thereon to supervisory and managerial roles which I already knew about.

Did your twentieth century ancestors leave cv's behind? If so, have a delve. You may be surprised what you discover.

A little gem of history

My husband recently came across an unpacked box in our garage. I assume that it's moved with us the last couple of times because it contained my parents' things - personal items, documents but no photographs this time (well, almost). I'll tell you about the contents over the next few days but today I'll start with an item that brought back memories of my father sitting by the window attempting to darn his socks.

This is a darning loom, a small device to repair holes in clothes. It is addressed to my father's mother, Lydia at the house she lived in until my grandfather died. The stamp on it reads,

"Daily Mail
Ideal Home
Exhibition
Olympia".

The date is missing but what is remaining reads "H 4 - 29". I assume the 'h' is the end of the month of March. The date stamped on the postage stamps cannot be read. Having done some research though, it would seem that this device dates from the 1940s. The  Ideal Home Exhibition didn't take place in the early 40s due to the second world war, starting up again in 1947 so I wonder if this was purchased in that era. My father lived in London between about 1947 and 1950. I imagine that he purchased it from an Ideal Home exhibition for her.

If you'd like to read another blog post about the Speedweve Darner, have a look at 'Darn It All' by Cargo Cult Craft. For historical information on the Ideal Home Exhibition, you can find a great post on the Ideal Home Show website here

The Cottage

This is the second piece of writing by my father.

"Further up the hill, the road took a turning to the left and round the corner the hill flatted out 'til after about a quarter of a mile it came to a staggered junction. On the left, the wood continued as far as the junction, while on the right there was a high hedge, behind which was a field. The field ended to be replaced by a small wood, the sight of which gave me a feeling of anticipation.

I expected to see two old cottages surrounded on three sides by the wood and with neat little gardens between the cottages and the road, and behind the houses the sight of gardens with neat rows of vegetables, clumps of soft fruit bushes and piles of branches of trees ready to be sawn into logs for the fires.

The furthest of these cottages had been my home from the age of four, where I spent a happy childhood. The building that did come into view was not what I had expected. Where there once had been two cottages, there was now a very modern looking residence. The front of the cottages had been given a face lift with modern windows and doors, a new roof and pebble dashed walls. But it was at the back where there had been the biggest change. An extension had been built at right angles to create a T-shaped construction. The separate gardens had been replaced by one area of lawns and flower beds. The enveloping hedges had been removed and now the flower beds and lawns seemed to gradually blend into the surrounding wood. To complete the picture, an Afghan hound reclined arrogantly on the lawn.

I stopped the car on the opposite side of the road and in a somewhat dazed condition crossed over to have a closer look. Although there was very little of the old building I could recognise, at least from the outside, I gradually began to notice a tree here and a bush here in the wood that jogged memories of long past childhood games and tree climbing escapades. Apart from the dog, there did not appear to be any sign of life so I was not able to investigate further, although I would dearly loved to have done so. It was a strange feeling; one part of me felt that I had the right to jump over the wall and go into the wood as I had done so many times in my past; another part of me told me it would be trespassing to do so. Even the Afghan hound did not seem very interested or impressed by my presence so I rejoined my family and continued with our holiday.

Although we covered quite a large part of Scotland that holiday, the view and the cottage kept returning to my thoughts. They triggered off many memories of incidents long forgotten. Names of people I had not thought about for years kept coming back to me. At dinner each night, I must have bored my wife and daughter with my tales."          

The View

I recently found two pieces of writing by my late father. These were to be the first two sections of the book he was going to write about his family history.

"I had stopped the car halfway up the hill beside a gate into one of the fields and was now surveying the scene below. It appeared new and at the same time familiar to me. The contours of the fields, the hedges surrounding them, together with the wood to the right were as I remembered but where was the farm that used to nestle at the foot of the hill? Now all that could be seen were the central farm buildings. The fields immediately surrounding were now occupied by a modern housing estate. Even the stack yard, where they used to bring the newly cut wheat to be placed in neat stacks until the travelling threshing machine came to do its work, was now the site of someone's proud residence. In the distance I could see some of the familiar landmarks of the town I used to know, although here also there seemed to be differences but for the moment I could not take in what they were. Even on the lower slopes of the hills on the other side of the vale, housing estates were now beginning to spread their way up the hills where once only the occasional farm or lonely cottage would have been seen.

The scene triggered off recollections of days long past and forgotten stories of over sixty years ago. Did I really remember them or were they just my memories of family tales told by the fireside in the days before conversation and story telling were replaced by the 'telly'?

When I was about four years old, my family moved from the town to a cottage further up the hill from where I was standing. In those days, a 'flitting' was a major event, no removal firms expertly to do the work for you. Instead a horse and cart was hired and all the friends and relations 'mucked in' to do their bit. In the pandemonium that ensued there was no place for a four year old boy. It would have been too much of a temptation for his capacity for mischief. So I was put in the care of my Uncle John, a rather strange man to a four year old. He seemed to be continually sucking a pipe which gave off thick clouds of foul smelling smoke and his conversation was in the main limited to grunts interspersed with the odd 'aye' or 'naw'. I remember standing at the same gate with my uncle when there was a loud bang further down the hill from where the horse and cart were bringing the family goods.

"What's that," I asked.

"I suppose it's the piano falling off the cart," replied my uncle.

And I could almost hear a little voice saying, "But we haven't got a piano, Uncle John."

The privacy of my journey into the past was broken by a voice from the car. It was my daughter asking if I was going to stay here all day. A reasonable enough question, I suppose, since I had brought my wife and daughter on a touring holiday and the view held no special significance for them. We continued up the hill."

What about you?

I've mentioned before about the living evidence that you can gather from your relatives and the usefulness of hoarding family documentation. I've also suggested a number of useful resources, both online and in the real world, that can assist you in your family history research. There is one other source, however, that I haven't written about yet - you. We often take it for granted that our family know all about us but this assumption can be wrong.

Monday was the birthday of my late father, Charlie. He would have been 88 years old. One of his great regrets, and frustrations, in researching his family tree was that he hadn't listened to the stories told by his father and the gossip and news that had been tossed around at family gatherings. I now find myself with the same frustration. I wish I had listened to my parents more. I wish I had asked them questions about the mountain of photographs, many of people unknown to me. All I have now are patchy, threadbare memories.

Will my children bear the same frustration when I am gone? They are happy to listen to my stories now but a lifetime is such an immense thing to track and more importantly remember. How can anyone retain it all, every second, every breath, every thought or heartbreak? Even the most romantic biographer must decide what should be included and what should not. But maybe that is the magic of memory, to filter out the unnecessary debris, retaining the gems of our past.

So I have a new project, to keep a record of my life, including the stories that I tell my children, as a keepsake for my family. At the least, it will be an interesting writing exercise. At the best, it may provide us all with some clarity.

Why not keep a record of your own life? It doesn't have to be a full-grown biography. It can simply be a record of where you lived, some brief stories that happened to you, details of the jobs you held or people you knew. Even writing down details to accompany photographs can help. Don't make the assumption that your family know it all. Fill in the gaps for them.

Filling in the gaps - success!

This is my father, Charles Whittaker Roberton. I can date this photograph to 1947 which lies in the period of time (1939 to 1948) when I could find no trace of my father's whereabouts. He left his home town, Balloch to travel to England but I only had vague recollections of where he said he went during this time, before he settled in London.

I've spent the last few days going through my parents' belongings again and I found two items from that period.

The first is a number of merit cards from The Bennett College, Sheffield who ran correspondence courses. Here are the details,


28 October 1940 - first stage in general arithmetic
6 February 1941 - first stage in workshop practice
17 March 1941 - second stage in general arithmetic
16 July 1942 - third stage in general arithmetic
12 November 1942 - first stage in algebra.

I knew that when my father left Balloch, it was not only because he couldn't cope with the pity from the community following his disability, but also because he wanted to improve himself. The fact that he took it upon himself to re-enter education, albeit through correspondence courses, substantiates this.

The second document I found was a telegram from his parents which reads "Letter received. Best wishes for new venture. Love Mother". It is addressed to the Worcester Industrial Hostel. I looked this hostel up on the internet and found the address to be Blackpole road, Worcester. The date of the telegram is 1 November 1946.

I now know that he spent at least some of those years in between Balloch and London in Worcester.

Family photographs

My parents at their wedding with Kath Jackson (my godmother) and Alec Small who married Mum's sister, Betty

My maternal grandparents, Alfred and Maud

My paternal grandparents, Lydia and Charles

Maud with her brother, Bertie

Keeping a record of your own life

One thing I noticed when making notes on my father's life is that beside the stories he told and some documentation he left, there are gaps in his life where I have no idea where he was living or what he was doing. For instance, he left his home in Balloch when he was twenty years old to live in England. That would have been 1942. I have a record of him living in Blackheath in 1948 but the years in between are a mystery. I have a vague recollection of his saying that he lived in Chester or Worcester before moving to London but that's the only information I can find.

If you're like me and want to hand your family history down to your children, remember to keep a record of your own life too.

Photos of Charlie

With his parents

With Rosie, one of the working horses from the farm where his father worked

In hospital during the second world war

May 1947 - 24 years old

Childhood

Another piece written by my father.

The cottage and the surrounding countryside was to be the scene of my formative years and it was here that I spent a very happy childhood. When I was five years old I started at Jamestown Primary School, the same school as my father had attended as a boy. The school was about a mile from my home and the only method of transport was by 'Shanks pony'. This was in 1927 and there were a few motor cars about at that time. In fact, they were greatly outnumbered by the horsedrawn carts. The road down to Balloch was not tarmaced, in fact it was only a track marked by two wheel grooves with grass growing in between. In the winter you could walk along these wheel grooves with a foot of snow on either side of you. There seemed to be some doubt as to the name of the road, to some people it was known as Boturich Road after the estate it eventually led to. To others it was Mollanbowie Road after the farm it passed through.

I have many happy memories of time spent in the woods and farmland surrounding my home. In particular, I spent a lot of time on Mollanbowie Farm which was situated between our house and Balloch. The farm was owned by two cousins, Jock and Aggie McNeil. She was a bossy woman while he was the quiet type except when he got drunk on Market Day or on the day of the local agriculture show. There were three other workers on the farm: the ploughman, the byreman and the maid. The latter two were engaged by the old practice of 'feeing'. This meant that the farmer went along to the Michaelmas or Martinmas fairs and engaged workers who were then tied to the farm for the next six months. The maid had a room somewhere in the main house while the byreman lived in the 'bothy'. This was a stonefloored room with merely a table and a couple of chairs and an iron bed with a straw mattress and rough blankets made of sacks. There was also a fireplace which burnt logs. The byreman looked after the cattle: fed them, mucked them out and took them to pasture in the summer. The cattle were milked by hand and I can still remember the sound of milk hitting pail as the milker squeezed the teats. Everyone helped with the milking except for the ploughman.

 Most of the cottages around got their milk directly from the farmand around milking time, late afternoon, you could see the ladies arrive with their tin jugs to collect their milk for the day. This daily journey gave them a good opportunity for a 'blether', the Scottish term for a good, old gossip.

The ploughman looked after the horses and the crops and was, in fact, the farm foreman. The ploughman at Mollanbowie was Jimmy Hobson whoh was a close family friend of ours. He did not live at the farm but instead lived with his mother who was a lovely, gentle old lady withg a soft Highland accent. His father had worked in the public park with my own father but had died when I was only about six or seven years old.