Happy Twosomes

Thus week's Sepia Saturday propmpt photograph shows  two women together, perhaops mother and daughter and is that a birthday cake by their side?    I had a trawl thriough my family collection to show lives in twosomes.  

 

My huisband's grandparents, Alice Armitage and Matthews Iley White of South Shields, County Durham, England   - this is believed to be their engagement photograph.   They married in 1906.  

 

 

An elegant wedding photograph of my cousin's Oldham relations  - Sarah Alice Oldham on her wedding to George Butler in Blackpool, Lancashire     and what a showy outfit - magnificently decorated large hat, stylish dress with frills and a large posy set off by  long broad ribbons!   Sarah came from a local family of carters and coal merchants  down three generations and George also worked in the business. Date 1907.  

 

My grest aunt Jennie Danson of Poultonb le Fylde, Lancahsire  married Bill Stemp in 1928  - there is no mistaking that period with her cloche hat and style of dress.

Family LIfe 

  

From my cousin's collection  -  charming picture of  Ellen Florence Coombs nee Hooker with her baby daughter  Hilda Florence. 

  

One of the oldest photograph in my collection shows, on the left, my aunt Edith and on the right my mother Kathleen - taken late 1908. The sisters were born one year and one week apart,  daughters of William Danson and Alice English of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire.   Aunt Edith played an active role  as my godmother   and the sisters remained close all their lives, often photographed together.  

 

 One of my favourite photographs of my mother. This photograph means a lot of me, as my mother looks so happy and stylish, and I can  only remember Mum with grey hair worn  in a French pleat.  But the picture came as a surprise, as I had  never seen it before,   with no copy in the family album of my childhood.  Just before my marriage in 1971,  my  future husband and I were visiting an old family friend of my parents, when she brought out this picture and gave it to us.  I was delighted to have 

 

Following the deaths of both  my parents, I found a number of letters they exchanged in 1944, whilst my father was serving in the RAF as a Code and Cipher Clerk in France. In one letter, Dad asked for a "Photograph of Baby" - and this studio portrait was the result!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onto 1973 and here with my own daughter.  

 

Growing Older 

 

 My cousins in Blackpool - Stuart and Gloria Smith in the 1940s.  Their fair hair mirrored that of their father and grandfather.  

 

 

Another  happy picture from my cousin's collection.  The two girls in their knitted dresses  are Dorothy Lilla Oldham (1915-1989) and Edith Nancy Oldham  (1920-2012),  daughters of James William Oldham. and Edith Keymer.  James' parents had  emigrated to New Zealand in 1906 where they ran a wholesale tobacconists and stationery business on Karangahape Road,  Auckland.  

 

 

 

 

William Dower and his wife , ancestors of my cousin.  The emigrated to South Africa where William made a name for himself as a missionary.

Daughter and fond pet.

A lovely picture of my husband  and our pet cocker spaniel, Casmir - on the banks of Loch Etive , near Obam  in the Scottish Highlands

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A post written to the prompt Sepia Saturday to tell family history through photographs.