Only half the story

We all have those photos in our collection that have been lovingly labeled with names, places and even dates, albums which our ancestors have taken the time to document with all the information we need to record that particular event in their lives. We love those, it helps to put faces to the names that are forming the core of our ancestry, it helps us see the story of their lives with so much more empathy and understanding. You can look into their eyes and say "I won't let you be forgotten."

This becomes harder however with the photos you inherit that don't have those details on, some of them might have a date, a place perhaps but most don't have anything at all. Theses are the ones you stare frustratingly at, wishing you could fill in the names of the faces and why that picture was taken. In this post I thought I would share a few photos in my collection that fit that description, photos, you might say, with details that only give me half the story.

This first one is a group family photo with no details given, however I actually know who some of the people are. The two young girls in the front are my mum and aunt either side of my nana Marjorie Belt nee Chant(b- 22 June 1929 - d- 7 September 1997) and at the far back  behind them, the lady in the white hat and the gentleman with glasses are my Great Grandparents George Belt(b-20 June 1899 - d-1973) and Florence Ethel Belt nee Stuart (b-6 June 1893 - d-19 October 1988). Neither myself or my aunt have any idea who the rest are and apart from wanting to know who they are I would love to know what the occasion was that brought them altogether.

This next one had underneath it "May, Doris and Len, Broadstairs 1919. May, on the left, is Beatrice May Stuart(b-23 May 1896 - d-1977), my Great Grandmothers sister. Again I don't know who Len or Doris are. Doris must have been close to the family as she appears in other photos in the album. I do love this one though, they look so relaxed, it would be great to step back in time and find out what they were doing that day and prompted that picture.






Lastly,this photo is a complete mystery, with only a date to go on. It's dated 12 April 1901, and that is all that I know about the person in this photograph. I know that it came from my mums side of the family. It looks like he is possibly at work, you can just see another figure behind him, but as to whether he is related or is having his picture taken by one of my relatives, I will probably never know.

The night they met?

How often in our research do we find a newspaper report of how our ancestors met? 

Most of us have, at least, the tale of how our parents met. I can, for instance, recite, word for word, the night mine met I've heard it that many times. Then there are the lucky lot who even know how their grandparents met(I don't by the way). If you know how your Great Grandparents met, you have one envious family historian right now.

My Great Great Grandparents on my mums paternal line were George Belt(30 Jul 1865 - 24 Nov 1930) and Harriet Higo(1867 - 28 Mar 1908) from Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. Now, at this point I'd already began to flesh out the lives of these two, George especially, from various different sources(too much for one blog post, so we'll be revisiting him another time).  

The website I go to time and time again is www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, and with my Belt line it has been invaluable. One day, when scrolling through the many articles featuring my 2x Great Grandfather, I came across one from The Hull Daily Mail dated 13 January 1886 that featured both his and Harriet Higo's name.

As you can imagine, I was a little taken aback when I first read this, after all, these people are my direct ancestors, what could possibly have been the reason for such a savage attack?  
Pondering this information, I clicked on the next result.  Again from the The Hull Daily Mail, dated 15 January 1886, and this time there was a little more detail of the incident.

"He heard Watson use bad language to her, and he interfered." 
This is the line that leads me to believe that this was the night that George and Harriet first met.  A case of him being a gentleman, stepping in to rescue a damsel in distress.  I like to think that maybe he visited her to see how she was recovering after her ordeal, and a relationship sprang from there.
They were married later that year on the 13th December.
It wasn't to be a happy ever after story however, but that's for another time.

So, did, I make the right assumption? Do you get that feeling after reading it?  Was this the night they met?