Rogues Gallery
I thought I’d do a post about the images I’ve used in the site header and the people in them.
This is a photo of my paternal grandfather, Eric Howgate. He was born in 1917 in Sheffield. As a child his parents emigrated to Canada, apparently in the hope that his mother’s health would improve. Sadly it didn’t and the family were back in Sheffield when she died in 1935. He was very badly shell-shocked in Norway in 1940 and never really recovered from that.
I love this picture of Ewan, he looks so angelic! This was taken by a friend I got to know via blogging. I had long admired his photos and when he mentioned that he wanted to practice taking portrait photos I jumped at the chance! G and his wife came up to visit for the day and we all had a great time. This was taken shortly before Ewan’s 4th birthday in April 2004.
This is my husband’s grandfather, Harold Royce Garside. We don’t actually know a lot about him; he died before any of David’s older brothers and sisters were born so they have no memories of him at all. The photo is printed on a postcard which dates to around 1904 (maybe a couple of years later) so he would have been in his early twenties when it was taken.
This is a photo of my mother taken when she was about 4 or 5 years old. When I look at this picture I can see how much Ewan looks like his Nain, although his colouring is different and his eyes are a different shape. My mother swears that she was skinny as a rake as a child, although it isn’t obvious from this picture. That’s another way Ewan is like her; he has chubby face and when you see him undressed he looks like a refugee!
This is May Garside, daughter of Harold (pictured above), my husband’s aunt. I’m afraid I don’t know very much about her either I just loved the photo! I’m not sure when it was taken, it looks to be around the WWII era and just seems to typify that age.
This is my great-great-grandfather, James Henderson. He was born in Scotland and came to Sheffield in the late 1870s with his young family. When I first came across him in old census records I had a hard time working out what he did for a living. It looked like it said he was a “coach viceman”. I wondered if I was reading it wrong and it should be viewman, thinking it might have been some sort of lookout sitting on the top. An earlier census went into a little more detail and described him as a “Coach Builder’s Viceman”; I then found out that a viceman was a smith that worked with a vice rather than an anvil.
This is James Henderson’s wife, my great-great-grandmother, Margaret Howieson. She was also from Scotland and, unlike her husband, her family seemed to have been in the same area for generations. Incidentally, the Scottish side of the family is the only branch which seems to have remained respectable. To date I have found no bigamists or bastards among my Scottish ancestors!
This lady is Mary Ann Jones, another great-great-grandmother but this time a Welsh one. She herself led a blameless life (as far as I know) however her daughter (my great-grandmother) was a different matter altogether. She brought up my grandmother, who apparently though the world of her. This photo was sent to my by a distant cousin I found via the internet and shows 5 generations, Mary, her son, her grand-daughter, her great-granddaughter and great-great-grandchild.
My maternal grandmother, raised by her grandmother, pictured above. This was taken shortly after my grandparents moved to North Wales so will be around 1946. The children in the photo are my mother and her older brother, Michael. To say she was almost 40, she looks well on it!
Last but not least David’s father. As David gets older many people in his family remark that he looks more and more like his Dad and it’s quite obvious in this picture. This picture was apparently in the local paper in an article about a large department store being refurbished in Manchester. When David was little one of his brothers told him it was a photo of their Dad in prison!
