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Friday 28 October 2011

A Tragic Island Tale: Sympathy Saturday


Westing on Unst, Shetland
A  tragic island tale from Scotland.

On Unst, Shetland,  Peter Smith and his wife Mary had five children - three boys and two girls.  The elder two boys, William aged 14  and Francis 10 years old, both died on the same day - 14th March 1919.  

 On checking further,  it was found that they  had both drowned whilst they were trying to rescue their pet dog from a lochan, near their house.  

The third and youngest son is still alive at the grand age of 97, as is his wife.   Sadly their only child died at the age of 8 months.  


A story from my third cousin Stuart who recently visited Shetland
to research his Smith ancestors.

Sympathy Saturday is a blogging prompt from www.Geneabloggers.com
to encourage writers to record their family history

2 comments:

  1. What a terribly sad tale Susan. And then for him to lose his own child as well. There's something "perverse" about them then living to 97. Pauleen (aka cassmob)

    ReplyDelete
  2. How sad. How good that your cousin was able to find out what happened though. If you are anything like me, a common death date for two children would have bugged me to no end, if I didn't know what happened.

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