So pleased you managed to find them Saundra, the certificates will be lovely to have
My Mom's cousin had done a family tree for my Nan's family so she has a copy of that. I found it so interesting as when we go into Birmingham on Sundays we always park on the road on Holloway Head, just along from a street called Ernest St. I now know that my Nan was living in Ernest St when she met my Grandad, she was in service there. It's hard to believe that there would be houses there in the past which would require servants - now it's made up of a hotel, industrial units and a
massage parlour (and there's a strip club just around the corner). Nan would be like "Ooooh! Well I never!" if she saw how seedy the area is today
My Grandad, her first husband, was the grandson of the blacksmith whose photo I posted on here. On the 1901 census he lived with his grandparents and his mother but by the 1911 one she'd married and moved away but he, by then 14, was still with his grandparents. There's no information whatsoever on who his father was. My Mom lost her Dad when she was a little girl and Nan remarried later. The man I knew as Grandad, and who my Mom called Dad, used to scare me. He had a really strong black country accent and was rarely clean shaven, I remember it hurt when he gave me a kiss. I came to realise, as I've grown up, what a generous and kind man he was though. He took on my Nan's four children as well as raising three of his own (he was a widower) and he and Nan had one child together (my favourite aunty) and when I look at my Mom and Dad's wedding photos he looks so proud to be standing there with his family, and I know that my Mom remembers him with pride.
Dad didn't know much about his family, particularly his Dad's family. He did know thought that his great uncle on his Dad's side was the winning jockey in the Grand National in 1907. I put him in touch with his cousin, on my Nan's side, after seeing his name on the local history page on Facebook and he not only gave Dad a copy of his Mom's family tree but knocked on the door a few weeks later with a family tree for his Dad's family which he'd worked on after chatting to Dad.
) as a 12 year old, to be a kitchen maid/tweenie (between maid) and was already in her late 70s when I was little. I did love her, she was a gentle soul, used to the Essex countryside - she came to stay with us once at our house near Heathrow but found the planes terrifying......She stayed in service until she was about 50, just after the war, when she married the gamekeeper, my Uncle Fred, and they retired together. A bit like Mr Carson and Mrs Hughes are planning in Downton Abbey, or going back a bit Mr Hudson and Mrs Bridge in Upstairs, Downstairs 
