Dear Donald,
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For techies, use your camera phone or tablet to visit our Quick Response Christmas greeting.
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Ray and I received Big Bill’s inside scoop from Up There.
Enjoy.
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The Year in Review |
Don and Ray Jerrems
Looking Way Back
January: This edition was one of a series of articles about the Jerrems family’s Civil War veterans and their families. It follows on from the article in the November 2010 Jerrems Journal about Robert Colbrook, the Civil War veteran, railway employee and stepson of James Jerrems
February: After reading medical advertisements, Ray had mixed emotions of amusement tinged with sadness that they demonstrate why many of our ancestors suffered from fatal or chronic ailments which are now curable
March: Included a link to listen to YouTube song with subscriber Doug Jerrems. Doug is Ray’s cousin and a great grandson of Alfred and Susannah Sassall. This edition also described the life and family of Ray’s great grandparents Alfred and Susannah Sassall, the parents of Esther Muriel Jerrems (the wife of Ray’s grandfather Ernest Alfred Jerrems).
April: This edition continues Ray’s story of the life and family of Ray’s great grandparents Alfred (Fred) and Susannah Sassall, the parents of Esther Muriel Jerrems.
May: We revisited the heroic story of General Herkimer in the American Revolutionary War (known in Australia as the American War of Independence) for a good helping of patriotic fervor
June: This article follows on from the article in the Jerrems Journal of February 2009 about Jerrems men and relatives who served in the First World War.
July: This edition took us on another journey to Willingham by Stow. Ray explained the correct name of the town, its location and early history, and outlined the Jerrems families who lived there.
August: We took a look back at the 19th to 20th centuries evolution of photography and major photographers, including one of our own, the late Carol Jerrems.
September: A visit to the Olde Country where Jerrems Street was located in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where part of the Jerrems family grew up in the 1800s.
October: In a further article about Willingham Ray gave a general picture of life in Willingham in the 1700s and 1800s, and described the town as it stood in 1851 (when some of the Jerrems family still lived there).
November: In this part Ray described: (a) Willingham, the town in 1801, which is about the time that “Big Bill” Jerrems (Ray’s great great great grandfather) moved to the nearby town (as it then was) of Gainsborough, (b) the village in 1720, when the first known Jerrems ancestors lived there. He told us about the Bingham family (descendants of the Jerrems family) who Ray established still live in Willingham, gave you some statistics about the town, and told you about St Helen’ Church’s claim to sporting fame.
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Email from our Most Notable Ancestor |
Big Bill
Wireless Delivery from Up There
Dear Donald and Ray
Well, Xmas is here again. How time flies when you are having a good time! It is a year since I last wrote to you, and there are some things I would like to tell your readers.
The first thing is that we do not take much interest in genealogy in Heaven, but we like to hear stories like those that Ray compiles. Imagine the memory you would need as a genealogist if you were someone like Moses, you would be bumping into distant relatives continually. You would be continually apologising to people for not recognising them. Perhaps you would be tempted to carry a sign “If I do not recognise you it does not mean that I do not care about you” or take a pitbull terrier everywhere with you so that the people kept at a distance.
Even if you weren’t ancient like Moses, that theory about “six degrees of separation” would scare any genealogist in Heaven.
I suspect that we often strike the situation in Heaven, without of course realising it, that people we meet are distantly related to us. Ray has referred to the case of Anita Veale and Helen Mitchell in Melbourne as a case in point of what happens on Earth. I thought that it was very enterprising of Ray to go through the Willingham census records to see if families who lived in Willingham in my day may still be represented in that area.
Finding the Binghams was a real inspiration, capped off by the fact that they married into our family. My wife and I remember the wedding of George Bingham and Mary Jerrems at St Helens Church as though it was yesterday. Like us, George owned a large farm. I am watching out for George and Mary, now that Ray’s article has reminded me about them.
Speaking of the church reminds me of Ray’s reference to its rector, Edward Hawke, whose son was the famous cricketer Lord Hawke. Occasionally I sat with Edward watching Willingham Cricket Club matches, but I never actually played cricket myself. The local wags suggested that with my 18 stone frame I would make a good wicketkeeper, but I would say that my running between wickets would have let me down.
I was very touched to see the beautiful photo in the last Journal (taken by Sue Jerrems) of the graves of my mother Mary and my sister-in-law Jane (the mother of Mary Bingham) at St Helens Church. The graves are in a beautiful setting, my only regret being that so many of our graves are missing.
As I mentioned previously, we do not have any large entertainment areas in Heaven because St Peter says that they encourage decadence (no doubt he still remembers when the Coliseum in Rome was used to kill Christians). He believes in family entertainment. Please reassure your readers that I will eventually get around to locating and meeting their deceased relatives at our home. Ray has sent me a huge list of names, with regular updates, which I should be able to cover within no more than 50 years. There is of course no particular hurry at our end because the deceased relatives will not be going anywhere.
Better go, my wife wants me to test her latest plum pudding while it is still warm. Duty calls!
I trust that your readers had a merry Christmas and will have a prosperous New Year.
I remain etc…
Big Bill
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The Year would not be Complete without Another Ghostly Intrustion |
Angie, our family Guardian Angel, will have her annual report on the outrageous appearances of Old Ray in January.