Family histories are wonderful

On a recent visit to my Mum's she unearthed a cassette recorded in 1972 of my elderly grandfather talking about his long life and days gone by. Known as Grandpa to us, he was a stately English gentleman born in 1880 who led a long life raising two families, serving in two wars and indulging in his passion for gardening. Frederick William Gee left school at 13 years of age and joined the railways at 14. He worked his way up through small stations to become a station master at Market Harborough in middle England earning 17 shillings a week. He retired at 65 with the only breaks in service to British Rail being officer duties in the Boer War (1899 to 1902) and World War 1.

My Mum and her brother grew up on the railways and spent World War 2 under the threat of German bomber planes as they sought to destroy the extensive network of railways that criss crossed the United Kingdom. It's the stuff fantastic historical novels are made of.

It was fascinating on all sorts of levels - listening to my Grandpa describe the changes to the railways and the English villages he lived in over his career of 51 years, looking through the photographs that were pulled out to match the stories and checking the visuals against our modern day Google Maps (those houses in the background of the photo of my Mum 82 years ago still look the same), as well as the fact Mum's cassette player still works and the tape hasn't deteriorated in 47 years!

Family histories are a treasure trove, and I hope to keep digging through mine to see what other gold, silver and precious titbits I can unearth.

Llandudno, Wales