F. E. Gores visits England in 1930

Today’s post is just a brief one to share an interesting discovery with you. I just learned that my third-great-grandfather Frank (“F. E.”) Gores traveled to England in 1930 with his second wife Gertrude.

Traveling with them on the six-day transatlantic return trip were Frank’s 64-year-old sister-in-law Mary Magdalena (Doffing) Gores, her youngest daughter Gertrude Josephine Gores (27), and her daughter Magdalena (“Lena”) Margaret Gores (38). The elder Magdalena’s husband and father of the two girls was F. E. Gores’ eldest brother Nicholas Paul Gores, who had passed away two and a half years prior on March 9, 1927.

While in England, they were all staying at the Royal Hotel in WC1 London. I haven’t been able to find a photo of the hotel, but I did find this fabulous photo of a London street taken in April 1930 that might help you visualize the London that Frank and his family saw.

Continue reading

A lost history, found

GeorgeWBailey1Lately I’ve been spending a couple of hours each weekend day reorganizing our family history archives. In the yet-to-be-organized portion of the archives, I’ve got a dozen large, plastic storage boxes, each of which holds hundreds of papers, photos, mementos, and other items judged at some point as worthy of being preserved.

One of these boxes is filled with memories and keepsakes from my great-great-aunt Dorothy Mary (“Dot”) Bailey and her husband Clarence Humphrey Bailey. You may know Dot as the young girl pictured at the center of my site’s header photo. Dot and Clarence were distant relations (third cousins; although they apparently didn’t know this when they met) and had the same last name before marriage, so I can’t be sure whether Dot adopted Clarence’s “Bailey” surname according to tradition, or whether she was an independent maverick who bucked tradition and kept her own “Bailey” surname.

I was lucky enough to have known them both as a child and to have known Dot until I was a young man in college. They were incredibly thoughtful, gentle, intelligent, and modest people, but for whatever reason, they never had children. My grandmother, Dorothy McMurry Black, their niece, was like a daughter to them and she was their sole heir. Their tangible memories have now passed to me, and I’m making my way through them.

Continue reading