My grandfather is the gentleman on the left and my grandmother the woman in black
It was an interesting question. One used as a prompt for a short presentation at a meeting of my genealogy society. There were only two of us presenting and the person who went before me had a wonderful story full of information that her ancestor had left and that she had subsequently found. I love stories like that. They serve as inspiration for us who are searching.
My presentation had less of a story behind it and I'm more of a writer than a speaker but I think it went over well. The ancestor I focused on was my paternal grandfather, Charles Edwin Cavanagh. He died a few years before I was born, the same year my father married my mother.
My grandfather was single until 1915 when he married Ellen Myra Booth, a widow with 4 children then living (one had died), the oldest of which was 15, the youngest 4. Her husband, Henry Booth had died in March of 1913 of cirrhosis of the liver. Henry had been a beer house keeper and Ellen Myra kept the business going.
His circumstances changed drastically when he wed as he married into a ready-made family and a business. He and Ellen Myra had three children together, 3 boys of which my Dad was the eldest. It was at his father's insistence that he be given the name Booth as one of his middle names showing the importance of the family as a whole to his father. One of my cousins also told me that the older children liked their stepfather better that their own father. He certainly seems to have been a family oriented man.
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