Listening To: Rolling in the Deep - Adele
Word of the Day: Research
So we went pretty hard core on the British Home Children research today.
I discovered, with a bit of relief, that I am still human. LOL I've got this ability, when I'm researching, or if I witness horrible things, I can shut my emotions down. I guess more accurately, I can shut down the non analytical portions of my emotions. Makes me kind of cold and detached, but it helps me sectionalize what I'm assimilating and deal with it "rationally" It's kind of scary actually. It's a habit I got into a long time ago.
Anyways, I'm digressing. So we're working through H's this week...feels like we've been on H's for ever. And we get to this one particular boy, that we're having trouble cracking. I almost wish he had stayed giving us trouble. It's always a horrible thing when you think of them being picked up off the streets in England, or ripped away from their families, and shipped on a 10 day voyage across the Atlantic...or worse, Australia. But I can deal. It was 100 years ago. What we're doing is working on preserving the memories, so that they aren't forgotten, but I'm not physically involved with them.
I get working through his life's journey. He was born in 1891, his parents died, he was sent to Canada to work on a farm in 1899. In 1912 he married, his first son was born in 1813, a child died in infancy in 1814, and his second son to survive was born in 1915, and named after him.
He went to war in 1916 and died a year later. His wife remarries in 1918 which I don't blame her for, she's got 2 small children to care for, and I'm sure her first husband shared some horror stories about what happens when you can't take care of your kids.
It was actually through her remarriage that I discovered the kids. So that was the first can of worms opened up.
In for a penny in for a pound, I start tracking the kids. Child #1, I can't find beyond 1921, but that's the latest Census for Canada to have been released, so I won't find him for another 10 years due to the reg's that bind the Censuses. Child #2 however, I get a hit on in 1943...uh oh...it's a Death Cert.
1943, Death Cert...shit...he died in WW2. Oh, and look, HE's married.
This is when humanity kicked back in. The 2ms it took to realize that this child I had found, of this orphaned, exiled boy, and was named for his father, had also died in a World War...that brought down the icy wall around my emotions.
He enlisted in or about 1943, or was Drafted...I haven't figured out which yet. He was sent first to England, where he obviously met a young lady in Surrey, and they Married. Now, with records being what they are, I don't know if he married her because she was with child, or if they had a whirl wind romance where they fell madly in love. Less than 2 months after marrying this girl, he's in Sicily, and dies.
Ok, time to regroup. Meanwhile, my wonderful taskmistress...uh research leader, sends me a link, and shows me that not only did one child come over in 1899, another followed after in 1903. He had a brother. Of course he had a brother! *forehead smacking commenced* So, I traced the trail of the brother until we got all the details for him. I know Layne does this every day, 8-12 hours a day, and sees things much more horrible than I do on the 2 days a week I'm helping her. But this one family, it just crushed me mentally for a brief moment in time.
And thus, my humanity has been reaffirmed.
*falls over*
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