Mark Lewis Notes, May 2011
I am still married to Tracey (I cannot remember if you ever met her). We have lived in Colorado for the last 14 years. Katie is now 14 years old. She does 3-day eventing to a decent standard and wants to be a vet. She is also a proper teenager. Caroline is now 11. She plays soccer for the best team in Colorado (probably one of the top 10 teams in the USA) and plays 4 or 5 times a week. Her team is touring England in August. They will play 7 of the top teams including Manchester United and Chelsea girls. She also plays piano well. Both girls are doing pretty well in school and we have kept them busy enough to stay away from boys, fashion and make-up so we cannot complain. I play soccer twice a week and I help to coach Caroline's team. Organizing the England tour (for 37 people) is almost a full-time job. I have a horse but I don't get to ride him much at the moment. I get paid to work for Oracle who are a big software company.
Emma is living in Welling Garden City with her husband Toby and their 18 month old son William.
Rich and Ju have two kids, Ellie (9) and Oliver (7). Rich is working as a contract building services engineer.
Mum and Dad separated 4 or 5 years ago and divorced 3 years ago.
A Personal History by AJ Westoby
A Jon Westoby has undertaken to write a personal history. It has lots of interesting detail but not so much in the way of family links. A sample is reproduced here and in you want to read more this link is to the full history.
When I was a boy, I worked on a farm that had tractors but, in World War II, didn't have fuel for them. I therefore learned to walk behind a plough drawn by two shire horses that stood 18 hands high at the shoulder. I also lived in a cottage that had no running water, no electricity, no gas and where breakfast was cooked on a range fed by wood and small coal.
Family notes by Joan Lilian Dawe (Westoby) (neé Haydon)
FAMILY DETAILS – as at 23.02.2010
NELLIE ELLEN MAUD LOUISA married WILLIAM THOMAS ROACH and they lived in Clapton Park, Leyton, Hornsey, Wood Green (all in north London) and finally Broadstairs in Kent where they had spent many happy holidays. One, or both, were of Irish extraction. I remember Grandad’s Dad. He had a moustache and it tickled when I had to kiss him!
WILLIAM THOMAS served in the first world war, had various experiences in the trenches in France and was invalided home with shrapnel wounds near the end of the war. I remember their house in Wood Green which I visited often. Sylvia christened it HQ (Headquarters) because we all gathered there at Christmas and any other important date. They moved to Broadstairs when Bill (I called him that when I was a very small child and someone commented that it wasn’t ‘quite the thing’! ) retired – I remember that house too. William died first when he and Nellie were living with their youngest daughter, Sylvia. I think they both died in their 80s. They had first gone to live with Ron and Joan but that didn’t work out and Sylvia (in her own inimitable way!) scooped them up and took them to her house!
They had four children –
NELLIE SUSAN MAUD (second name for Nellie’s younger sister Sue who was the absolute opposite of Nellie, living in London, doing no housework and playing cards with her cronie next door and letting the kids run wild!), who married Alan Morton. They lived in the Lake District but then they moved to Ramsgate where Alan had a Chemist Shop. Alan wasn’t called up in the war, for some reason. They had two daughters PAMELA born in 1934 who married Arthur Rodgerson and they had Keith and Diane who both married and had children, all of whom you [Coralie] know about, more than I do!
HILARY was born about 11 years after Pamela and she married your [Coralie's] father, who’s name I don’t remember, but I was at their wedding in Ramsgate. Then Aunt Pat (she insisted everyone call her Pat in those days) and Uncle Alan moved back to the Lake District. Hilary had a beautiful daughter [Coralie], who married Alun Evans and they have two lovely children, LEONIE and JORDAN – whom you [Coralie] know about!
As you know, Pamela died in her 60s and Hilary in her 40s – both before their mother who lived to over 90 (I think).
IVY LILIAN (1910 – 1996) who married Walter Haydon. They had one daughter, JOAN [the author of these notes], born in 1932.
Walter had been interested in Pat (as she re-christened herself – who could blame her with a name like Nellie!) but she married Alan so he turned to her sister – but she wasn’t a bit like Pat! It was not exactly a happy marriage – they fought a lot! Walter was a builder and decorator but when the war started he volunteered to join the Royal Engineers. He was working for Welwyn Builders by then and he got a rented house for Ivy and Joan who were living in Hornsey, London before he went, to get them away from the bombing. He died in India from heat stroke in 1945 between the end of the war in Europe and the end of the Japanese war.
IVY married George Overhill many years later and moved to Cambridge. George died before her and she died in a Care Home run by her friendly Home Help (whom she used to mistake for Joan and the Home Help was at least 16 stone – but she was younger!) IVY was 86 when she died.
JOAN [this author] married Jon Westoby and they had a daughter, JILL, born in 1953 who was killed in a road accident when she was 1 year and 8 months. The accident involved the motorbike and sidecar in which they were coming home from holiday .
They later had two sons after that, TERRY, born in 1956, who has a degree in Electronics and who married June, a divorcee with two sons by her first marriage, who have five children between them, so Terry is a step-grandfather! TERRY and JUNE have two children, JONATHAN, 24 and CLARE, 22, both of whom live with their partners in London. TERRY and JUNE are now permanently living in France.
Second son, ROGER was born in 1958, has a degree in Zoology. He is not married. He lives in the east end of London in his house with a converted art studio in the loft. He exhibits and sometimes sells his paintings. He went to art college for a while before he went to Sheffield for his zoology degree. Not liking the ‘rat race’ he quit his lucrative job in the pharmaceutical industry and now does various shelf erecting and all household and office based fitments (don’t ask me what!!) and is always extremely busy. He plays the guitar and has several of these around the house. He has a lot of friends all over the world.
JOAN and Jon separated amicably when the boys were in their late teens. JOAN married RON DAWE, a local Headmaster and they moved to Suffolk. Ron died 5 years ago. Jon is still alive and lives in Welwyn Garden City with his second wife Jane and all are on friendly terms.
SYLVIA MARJORIE was born about five years after Ivy. She joined the VADs when the war broke out. She was then married to PHILIP King who was in the Merchant Navy. He suffered frostbite when on a raft waiting to be rescued from being torpedoed but recovered and came home after the war.
They had two children, GILLIAN, whom you [Coralie] know and who is 15 years younger than I am and was one of my bridesmaids. GILLIAN is married with two daughters, both grown up and neither married.
ROGER King is about two years younger and is married with two daughters but I don’t know much about them.
SYLVIA married for the second time after PHILIP died and moved to Broadstairs in Kent. SYLVIA was the first of the three ‘girls’ to die.
RONALD WILLIAM, NELLIE and WILLIAM’s long awaited son, is still alive at over 90. When he was too young to join the Navy, he volunteered, hoping to have a six months’ cruise around the world but because he was too daft to realize what was inevitable, he was in the Navy when the war broke out so he didn’t come out for six years!! While he was in the Navy and quite early on, he married Alma Speyer (a Jewess I think) in a big white wedding but not very long afterwards they separated – I think because of an affair Alma had that my Grandmother found out about and spilled the beans to her son!
He had various hair-raising experiences in the Navy and was finally discharged after the war. He married Joan some time before or after the war – I was at their wedding too – a registry office do – not quite so posh! They had three children, SHEILA who has had various partners and has now reverted to her maiden name and lives in Australia. She’s about 16 years younger than I am and was another of my bridesmaids. Then there’s DEREK, a couple of years younger than Sheila, who married and I think she died a few years ago. They had some children who had some children – I think. He lives in France now. Then there is KENNETH who was born several years after Derek and he’s married with children and lives near his Mum and Dad in Oxford, so he has all the caring for them as he’s the only one in this country
RON and Joan went to live in America at some point. Joan’s brothers live there I think. Things didn’t work out as they had expected, so they came home to live with NELLIE and WILLIAM until they found a place of their own. RON had various jobs – prison officer, fireman – you name it! Ended up care worker I think, with Joan who was also some kind of nurse. It was while RON was a prison officer at Wandsworth that his Mum and Dad, who went into a Nursing Home in Broadstairs first but didn’t like it, went to live with them but that all went pear shaped and that’s when SYLVIA turned up and carted them off to her place. They stayed there until they died – William first and then his wife not long after.
That’s it – until I read this over and remember anything else!!
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Now my Dad's side - much briefer!
I knew my Gran Haydon and she was very old then when I was a small child. I never knew when she died.
My father WALTER HAYDON was the youngest of several brothers - one was GILBERT who was the father of PIC who lives in Herne Bay and is over 80 [5 Nov 2010] - we have spoken on the phone 'cos she was executor of our cousin Raymond's will - but we have never met. Another was SIDNEY who never married but devoted his time speculating on the stock exchange - going down to the telephone kiosk near where he lived 'cos he wouldn't spend money on a phone of his own! He didn't make a will and when he died some of us got part of his estate and I was able to buy another car as I had just pranged mine! and also a new TV for all of us.
The youngest was a daughter IVY who had an illegitimate son, RAYMOND. I met him once or twice when I was very young and he gave me half a crown which was the only thing I ever had from Dad's family - never even a Christmas card let alone remembering my birthday! Anyway, he was tutored by Uncle Sid and behaved exactly the same, amassing a great deal of money by the time he died and four of his remaining cousins benefitted from that.
My mother didn't keep in touch with any of Dad's family after he died - I remembering going to tell my old Gran about it so he died before her. She'd lost a son or two in the first world war I think. I don't know a thing about my grandfather. I think he was a builder and taught my Dad to be the same.
That's it. Hope it's of some use.
