Treasure uncovered

I’m getting very sentimental today with my posts!  My Magic Moments post for this week, actually goes back to a discovery 9 years ago.  A bit of treasure uncovered!  When my parents decided to emigrate 9 years ago, my Dad agreed to tell me about his family.  He actually didn’t know a great deal, which then sent me on a voyage of discovery – the world of genealogy.  But that’s a whole different post for the future!

I knew nothing about my Dad’s family.  I didn’t even know my grandparents names.  My Granddad died when I was young and my Granny died just before my Dad’s 21st birthday.  He’d never discussed them and I, for some totally unknown reason, had never asked.  Anyway, we sat down, and Dad presented me with a photograph album.  It was my Granny’s, it was my first bit of treasure uncovered.  There were photos of her and her family as children, all the way through to my Dad at school.  We sat for hours while I made a note of names, dates, places, addresses – anything Dad could remember.

There was one major thing missing – there were no wedding photos from my grandparents wedding day – nothing. I was intrigued as Granny’s photo album had pictures of one of her sister’s weddings, but nothing of her own.

Dad believed that at one point there had been another photograph album, but it had got lost in a previous house move – perhaps it contained my grandparents wedding photographs?  We’ll never know.

Anyway, as my parents started the long process of packing their house up, clearing out the clutter, down sizing for the move to Spain, Dad would pass on family memorabilia from his parents for me to keep. Once such item was a framed award belonging to my Granddad who was a keen gardener and loved growing flowers.

The Certificate of Merit was in a really old frame that was falling apart.  I put it to one side and wondered what I would do with it! At some point later when I was sorting some of the family history records ou,t I came across the framed certificate again.  I decided that Dad wouldn’t be too offended if I got rid of the frame and put the certificate in the album I’d created for all the memorabilia I was collecting for the family archive.

Well imagine my surprise when I took the back of the frame off and found some treasure uncovered under the certificate of merit.  Something rather priceless to me, irreplaceable and far more appealing than the certificate (sorry Granddad!).  My treasure uncovered …..

This is the one and only surviving photograph of my grandparents wedding day in 1937 – I cried when I discovered it.  As soon as I showed Dad, he remembered it from his Living Room as a child.  My treasure uncovered was and is, a Magic Moment and something not to be hidden behind anything again.

I visited the church where they got married in Hertfordshire with my Dad, he was also christened there and my great grandparents are buried in the churchyard.  When we were on our way home from our stay at The Grove Hotel the other week, we popped over to the church.  I think the roof must be in a bad way as the entire church was encased in scaffolding.