What might YOU find?

Running the Family History Centre within the Heritage Hub is a very important part of our ‘work’ (although we are all volunteers) and we always do our very best to help anyone who visits us whatever their interest and whether or not this relates specifically to Gloucestershire.  Some of the online sources in the Centre cover the whole world, so lots of scope!.

 These resources can lead us to some fascinating stories and into some quite unexpected places.  It is especially exciting when we’re researching a very ordinary person - the sort of individual who has almost vanished through the cracks of history.  And even better when we have a photograph of that person going about their normal business.

 You can imagine how pleased I was to come across this picture in the Cheltenham Chronicle & Gloucestershire Graphic for March 1910 and just how much I wanted to put a ‘name to the face’ - quite literally in this case since the poor man isn’t actually identified by name.  He appears in an article about Hartley Farm in Coberley and is described as the farm’s shepherd. 

 

So where to start?  I began with the 1911 census returns and struck lucky straightaway.  There was only one shepherd associated with Hartley Farm - he was living in a tied cottage so his (and his family’s) accommodation depended on his continued employment.  His name was Edwin Edwards, born in Chedworth in the early 1870s and living with his wife and three children. I also checked the Lloyd George Survey of Land Values made in 1909, available online glos1909survey.org.uk/ to find a bit more about Hartley Farm itself.  What I found really surprised me.  The Mills brothers: Edwin and Raymond were just tenants (not unusual) but the property itself was owned by Birmingham City Council - not quite what I’d expected.  With little prospect of owning Hartley Farm and with farming itself becoming less profitable, the Mills brothers cut their losses and emigrated to New Zealand in 1912.

 So did their shepherd go with them given the opportunities in New Zealand?  By June 1914, Edwin Edwards and his family were living in the Forest of Dean - his wife is buried in Bream churchyard - and in 1915 Edwin enlisted in the Gloucestershire Regiment in Cinderford.  His service records survive so we know that he didn’t have a ‘good’ war: he suffered from shellshock, was transferred to the Labour Corp then hospitalised in Scotland before being discharged as ‘unfit for service’ in early 1918.  He’d remarried in 1916. but it seems likely that this relationship wasn’t successful and the couple lived separately.

 In 1921, Edwin was a farm labourer living in Wales with his unemployed son and a housekeeper.  By 1934 he’d moved back to Northleach, married for a third time (not to his housekeeper) and died in 1941.  Not perhaps the life he’d expected back in 1910!

 Everyone and anyone is welcome to drop into the FH Centre to see what we can help them find or to join our regular online talks and live social events including a FH Fair on 7 November - just check our website here for more details.