I have no siblings. With our family the boys seem to have girls,
whilst the girls seem to have boys.
There is now only one paternal male cousin bearing the Nickels
surname so our branch will die out within the next generation.
Amongst my cousins most of us
were only children, or with one other sibling, a far cry from earlier
generations where it was usual to have huge families of 8 – 12 children, some
of whom did not survive infancy.
One paternal uncle had four
children, three girls, one boy. The
girls were very close in age and were very close. The two remaining sisters are now in their
eighties. However, another paternal uncle
had two girls, but there was a significant age difference and by all accounts
they were like chalk and cheese.
My Mum had 4 sisters, three older
and one younger. With only one boy in
the Morgan family, all the girls slept in the same big room on the top
floor of their early Victorian terraced house in Hitchin. Mum could remember ‘topping and tailing’ with
her elder sister Babs and younger sister Jean.
Babs, Jean and Eva about 1930
The two eldest sisters. Vi and
Cis, were very close in age, only 11 months between them, with Babs being 6
years older than Mum and Jean being 3 years younger.
Although we regularly visited
‘the Aunties’ Vi, Cis and Babs, who all lived in Hitchin, my earliest memories
involve my Auntie Jean. Mum visited her younger sister weekly, with me in tow,
so we were very close and got on well.
Mum was godmother to Jean’s daughter; Jean’s daughter is my godmother
and I am godmother to Jean’s daughter’s daughter- a lovely family connection
over the generations.
My Dad had two full sisters and
one half-sister, and 4 brothers.
Nellie, Bella & Vi in the mid 1930s
His elder sister, Vi, really brought up the family when their mother and stepmother died young. Vi was the only mother figure my dad could really remember. The sisters, Vi, Nellie and Bella, were close even though they lived apart from each other after they married. Vi moved to Newhaven in Sussex when she married, Nellie stayed in Hertfordshire whilst Bella lived in London, Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire with her family.
Further back in time in my grandparent’s
generation, my maternal grandmother had one brother, as did my maternal grandfather. Unusual for the late Victorian era.
On my paternal side, my
grandfather had two full sisters, and one half-sister. He was close to his sister Bessie, as they
kept in touch when she married and moved to Suffolk, but of his sister Kate we
don’t know so much. Kate died when she
was a teenager, so we have no knowledge of how close he was with her.
My dad could remember visiting
Auntie Bessie and her family in Leiston right up to the 1950s and I remember
visiting Bessie’s daughter Marge and her husband in Leiston in the 1980s.
Bessie and her husband Jim had
three daughters.
Marge, the eldest stayed in Suffolk,
and did the middle sister Dorrie. My Dad
and his siblings could remember visiting them often, whilst the younger sister
Kath supposedly ‘died young’. However, I
have recently discovered that she moved to London as she is there in the 1939
Register living with a married man – maybe a case of smoke and mirrors. Intriguing – I shall have to find out more!
Granddad Nickels’ other
half-sister, Polly, was considerably older than him, so much so that her
illegitimate daughter, Gert, was brought up with granddad and his two elder
sisters as another younger sister.
My paternal grandmother, Alice,
was one of ten children, and she had five sisters, Jenny, Nellie, Ada, Rose,
and Daisy. These sisters all lived in
London and kept in touch with Alice’s family over the years. My Dad could remember Auntie Jenny visiting
them and them visiting the family in South London. In the 1980s Auntie’s Rose, Daisy and Ada
were still alive and I was lucky enough to meet Auntie Ada.
Further back in my research,
where we have no photographs, it is clear from looking at census records that
the sisterly support network was important.
I have instances in the Dominey and Cotton families where
a sister took in the offspring of another sister to board with their family so
that the single or widowed sister could work, usually in service. They would have been unable to lodge their
child with their employer. Families
often visited each other using public transport networks. Many sisters lived near to each other, but it
was not always the case. Those further
afield visited occasionally, but in Victorian and Edwardian times usually
exchanged letters on a regular basis. I
can still remember my dad’s sister who lived further afield writing to my
Mum. Nowadays we occasionally venture to
the South Coast, but I keep in touch via Facebook with one of my cousin’s sons
in law who keeps us abreast of news from that branch of the family.
Sisters and their continuing contact
over their lives have often been the glue within a wider family network and
once they are no longer with us, it is sometimes a time where the younger
members drift apart. Nowadays I keep in
touch with my cousins and their children (and sometimes grandchildren) via
Facebook, with the occasional face to face meet up at christenings, weddings
and of course, funerals.
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