By now those who read this blog will be aware medals come from many sources, some with stories come with stories which only become fully known when we find the family.
Edward’s medals came from a storage company,
where they had been carefully filed away since the storage unit was
opened for non-payment of his account. Unfortunately, when Edward died in
2006, he had never bothered to nominate a seconder should anything
happen to him. While the contents were sold to cover Edward’s
outstanding account, his medals were put aside, in the hope that
someday, somehow they could be returned to his family. This didn't occur and I found myself being presented with the medals in February of this year.
As you can see, the medals were originally set up
for being placed in a display case. Unfortunately the case was, I
believed, dropped, the glass broken and the medals then transferred to an
envelope.
Edward had two sisters and five brothers and it was
only through a slow and painstaking search that we were able to locate
Margaret the daughter of his eldest brother Thomas. It was the team at the Australian Surname Group that gave me Margaret’s address from 2000. However by 2008 she no
longer appeared under her maiden name on the Electoral Rolls.
Which if she had married in this time would be the case.
In desperation, four weeks ago I went walking, starting with
Margaret’s last address where the current occupants had no knowledge of
her. Finally I got lucky, one of the occupants had move into the street
just before Margaret moved on. While she knew little of Margaret,
she did remember that ‘the lady in question (Margaret) often used to
visit the lady in the house on the corner’.
Unfortunately, the owner of the ‘house on the
corner’ was not home, and while I did leave a message it would take
several visits till I was able to speak to her and ask her to contact
Margaret to call me. It would be a week before I was able to speak to
Margaret and another week before I could deliver Edward’s medals to
her. It was only then that I found out that while Edward had been
married, both his son and wife died early.
The returned medal tally is now 1975.
It's be interesting to find out just how many of these medals are out there hiding, whether in storage or otherwise! I daresay that some people might even have a couple as keepsakes or something at the end of the day too right? We'll never know!
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