Fearless Females - Day 9

March 9 — Take a family document (baptismal certificate, passenger list, naturalization petition, etc.) and write a brief narrative using the information.

The document I have chosen has formed part of an earlier posting for my Ancestor of the Week theme.

I eventually found the marriage of Edith Matthews, my Grandmother's Aunt at Holy Trinity Guildford in 1902 where Edith married a Charles Jelley. I was delighted, what a fun surname! It was not going to be too difficult to research Edith’s new family….or was it?

Marriage Certificate for Edith Matthews to Charles Jelly 8th April 1902

From the day I obtained the marriage certificate I was able to trace further the family from the 1911 Census which showed the family living in Redhill Surrey, I also located the birth of two children, which I had already knew existed by the photographic evidence I had. When the First World War military records were made available via Ancestry I did a search, not really believing that I would find anything about Charles, but I did!. It showed that he had been called for service and as part of this service record was the birth certificate for a third child, again I have a photograph which revealed two older children and a baby, which had sadly died in 1916.

I may never know anymore about Edith, although there are lots more questions about their time in London, what happened to their children, How did Charles become a restaurant manager, just to name a few. I suspect that Edith was a VAD and helped to nurse Charles back to health. They lived next door to one another, a fact gleaned from their wedding certificate and were friendly faces to each other and I would like to think that potentially a romance blossomed as they married in April 1902 and Charles was discharged in June of the same year.