Picture of Ida, daughter Merrill,  grand-daughter Chrisite, great grand-daughter Madeline and Caroline"

        The wonderful World Wide Web has opened up many doors of communication, allowing us to research our family history so much more easily than even ten years ago. A keen genealogist, I’ve been looking at my Pickering family.

        The 1881 census for Pickering < http://www.familysearch.org > shows young Matthew Ford living with his family in Champley’s Yard off the Market Place, Matt was aged 5 and he had three sisters and baby brother Charles aged 3 months. Sixty six years on Matt was to become my grandfather.

        By the 1901 census < http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/default.htm > the family had moved to Malton with even more children, a total of thirteen. By now Matt had completed his saddler’s apprenticeship and had a family of his own.

        Charles was a domestic groom at the home of The Hon Geoffrey Dawnay, brother of Viscount Downe. Younger brother Robert Stephenson Ford, named after his grandfather Robert Stephenson the clock and watchmaker of Pickering, was a druggist’s apprentice. It was not long before teenage Robert died from pleurisy and emphysema of the lung.

        The First World War intervened in the family’s life. Charles went off to war with the West Yorkshire Regiment and died in 1917 in France. According to the Commonwealth War Graves web site < http://www.cwgc.org > Charles had been married to Rose and they had lived in Bradford. So who was Rose? Were there any children? Did I have any cousins out there? Was there anyone to remember his sacrifice? When I found out the name of his regiment I managed to purchase one of their hat badges on eBay and I’ve worn it every ANZAC Day, our Remembrance Day, ever since.

        I have been looking for Charles’ family for many years. The Rootwseb mailing lists are a wonderful resource for people researching different surnames and different places. I kept asking “Does anyone have any knowledge of a Charles Henry Ford, born Pickering and a Rose D Unknown?” After a few years I received my first breakthrough. Rose’s maiden name had been Stubbs. I was able to find a marriage date and place. More research revealed that Charles and Rose had a daughter Ida born in 1913. What had happened to Rose and Ida after his death?

        I kept lobbing the question onto the Yorksgen and Bradford genealogical mailing lists < http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/index.html >. In November 2007 someone found my query via a Google search and I finally received the information I’d been looking for … an email saying “I think we are researching the same family, Ida Ford is my grandmother, she is 94 years old and living in Sydney.” So after all these years I have finally found a cousin who moved to Australia way back in 1927. Ida had sailed with her mother Rose who came to join her brother, an emigrant under one of the post-war schemes to encourage settlement ‘Down Under’.

        Last month I went to Sydney to meet Ida, her daughter, grand-daughter and great-grand-daughter. Ida is a delightful lady, bright as a button and still with a strong Yorkshire accent. I gave them a copy of Gordon Clitheroe’s book Images of England-Pickering and I was able to pass on the hat badge as now I have found the family who will keep on remembering my Great-Uncle Charles. 

Caroline Gaden.