Family history

  What did Charlotte Guy do between the age of 22 and 61? It is a frustratingly long time for an ancestor to be absent. My great great grandmother Mary Amelia Guy was the subject of the blog Curious . Her   sister Charlotte is the subject of this blog, Sisters, even more curious. Sadly this blog is more about the people around Charlotte and not the woman herself who is only glimpsed amongst   other family members. Who was she? There is this charming photo which turned up in a Godlee collection, her name written on the back, taken in Adelaide.   Charlotte was born in Lewes in 1816 and baptised in St John the Baptist Church which is in Southover Street., the second daughter of Arthur Guy and Charlotte née Fuller.   Lewes lies in a valley of the South Downs on the River Ouse, between London and Brighton by train. The High Street cuts thought the town and turning off you head down towards the railway station,   walking south in the direction of Southover Street. The St John the Baptist Chu

  12/52 Joined together : Charlotte Louisa Hobbs Charlotte Hobbs is my favourite ancestor, if favourites are allowed. Her daughter Margery, my grandmother, saved her mother’s letters and I have transcribed them. It took me years, during which time I completely immersed myself in her life. I grew to love her. She became a real person to me and   I looked to her for strength and support. Her love for me flowed down the generations although she died in 1928 long before I was born. When facing a decision I have asked myself : What would Charlotte do?’ Charlotte had cousins living in Tungkillo, a mining and farming village in the hills behind Adelaide. Her grandfather had a relation who had migrated to South Australia in 1847, two years before grandfather. He settled in Tungkillo. This Job Hobbs had a large family providing generations of Hobbs cousins. Charlotte enjoyed holidays with them in the country. At the Tungkillo Hotel lived the Godlees. The youngest child, Theodore and Charlotte w

    The prompt for this week is Flowers. My great aunt,   Dorothy Lillian Godlee, (Dots) the oldest of Charlotte and Theodore Godlee’s children, wrote to her family in 1927: ‘Our garden is very lovely. I sent Mrs Batt 12 dozen Iceland poppies today. Just yesterday and today’s picking’. Any one who has tried to grow Iceland poppies in a suburban garden, would appreciate this! Twelve dozen, just today and yesterday! Dots, I salute you.   Dorothy, born in March 1889 in College Park, was to be the eldest of seven children.   They attended East Adelaide Primary School.The Public Schools Annual Floral and Industrial Exhibition opened in November, 1900. The Governor applauded the cultivation of flowers by the scholars in a public school.’ ‘It was impossible,’ he believed, 'to over estimate the good work [of] teaching the child to love flowers’. There were prizes for flowers but Dorothy won first prize for her plain sewing, a ‘specimen on calico, showing hemming, seaming, stitching, gather

  Mary Jane Godlee: Cousin Nina; one exasperated female.     When my great aunt Norkie and her mother, Charlotte Godlee, were in London in 1927 they visited their cousin Nina. I was very exercised about her identity for many years as there didn’t seem to be anyone in the family with that name. Eventually I worked it out and this is her story.   Cousin Nina was a Quaker and introduced Norkie and Charlotte to Quakerism. This was of particular interest to me because I became a ‘Quaker By Convincement’ - (that is to say, I wasn’t raised a Quaker but became convinced   in my 40s.)   When I started going to Meetings for Worship with the Quakers, my only surviving great aunt, Jay, told me that her grandfather had been a Quaker. I did have a vague memory of being informed of this when I was a child staying at their house when I was wrapped in a thick soft velvety green rug. It was the rug Grandpa had used when he went in the trap to Meeting for Worship, He was a Quaker, you see.   So Jay’s Gra