Who would you like to meet

I would love to sit down with my paternal Ggrandmother and talk to her about her life and how she managed.
My GGM was widowed with 9 children after my GGF was lost at sea.
There are tales of her having her own garden plot and growing veg to sell to neighbours and taking in washing from big houses.
How did she do the wash and get them dried and pressed for returning them it must have been so hard for her.
She rented a 7 bedroomed house from a distent relative and opened a guest house for workmen and lived week to week when she first started but she made a go of it and ended up buying the house.
I would love to sit and talk to her about the struggle she had and how she overcame it.

I am moved by these posts, not knowing your father, the strength of the women widowed in WW1.

Gilly, your g grandmother, I spent a long time in the regimental museum learning about widows in WW1, for some who had no family support there was the workhouse.

To be widowed when pregnant, giving birth only months after your husband had died.

We all have family to be proud of, they got through the best way they could .

Good question Anniebach , I didn't have to think hard or long to know who.

It would be my paternal grandmother to ask her to tell me who my grandfather is. She took his name to her grave .

Dad was brought up by his grandmother, Aunt and uncle and had a happy life which given the time was good to know but not knowing who/what/where he was has been a family ' thing' and sadly I will never know .

I knew all of my grandparents . But would like to meet my grandads mother . She gave my grandad away to an elderly childless couple after his father ( her husband was killed in the Great War) then went on to marry ( her apparently already lover) who didn’t want to raise someone ehses child and went on to have another 12 children ! How easy was it for her to cast my grandad out ( he was only a small child). Did she feel shame ? Regret? Or was she simply doing what she had to do to survive?

I would have liked to have met my maternal grandfather. He died aged 46 when my mum was 18. He was a Flight Sergeant in the RAF before and during WW2. I know my mum was a daddy's girl and adored him. My cousin, who has been researching our family tree, put a picture of his gravestone on our family social media site and a lot of his grandchildren, and there are a fair few, all said how they would have loved to have known him.

I`d love to meet my father, he was in the RAF and was killed during WW2, 6 months before I was born. He was only 22. We could talk about how different my life would have been if he`d lived.

I’d love to meet my paternal Grandfather, he was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. My Grandmother was pregnant with my Dad at the time so Dad never met his own Father. I’d love to hear his story.

I'd like to meet my father's cousin I didn't know existed who left my brothers and me a nice sum of money a few years ago.

I'd love to be able to thank him but then that wouldn't make sense.

My paternal grandmother, who was brought up in a relatively wealthy Irish Catholic family, but left Ireland to marry my impoverished Scottish Presbyterian grandfather (he too grew up on a wealthy family, but lost everything in the great depression.) She died when my dad was in his mid-teens, and all photos and other momentos of her disappeared after my grandfather remarried six months later.

My great great grandfather who lived in the south east but joined the army and was in India at the time of the Indian Mutiny. We have a photograph of him in uniform. He somehow ended up in the north west, joined the police, married and had a number of children. In fact, maybe I should meet his wife - he abandoned her and their 6 children. She moved 30 miles to a cotton town, worked in the mills and successfully brought up her children. what a woman.

I think so MissAdventure, I know when she was widowed she returned to the little country village and having three small children and very little money, I checked with a regimental museum what help WW2 widows had, very little, she took work on a farm, not in the farmhouse but in the fields . I think what I want her to tell me is she found love and caring in her short second marriage, her first husband signed up when he was drunk! Oh and I found on the 1911 census she and her first husband were living in a mining village and directly opposite her was the chapel Manse, my paternal grandmother , single, lived there with her father the minister. That was 1911. In 1918 the Baptist ministers daughter was married and gave birth to my father, the married woman moved from there and in 1921 had her daughter,when she died, and that was my mother . They must have chatted never to know they would have children who would meet and marry and have the most beautiful daughter , me ?

My 7 x great grandfather who came over from Ireland around 1815. He met a local girl and they had about 11 children. He was unable to read or write and worked as an agricultural labourer. I would love to know what their life was like at that time, it must have been so hard. I'd also like to find out what part of Ireland he came from as that has been impossible to find.

They waved goodbye to the eldest two sons who emigrated to Australia in 1840 so probably never saw them again but they both did well over there and I hope they knew.

Oh yes, she does have a story to tell, Annie.
It would be so interesting to find out her thoughts and feelings during all that turmoil.