Pursuing directory entries

 

                                                                       The Hudson's Bay Downtown Victoria

In-person research has been missing from my life for a while, so when a recent trip offered a chance to see if two places mentioned in a 1948 directory still existed, I dragged my friend off on a walk to find out. We were in Victoria, a place where my mother lived and worked in the late 1940s. I knew that she and her parents had left the UK in 1946. Passenger lists confirmed this part of the family story. They only stayed in Canada for a few years but had intended a permanent move. It was a sojourn that would have lasting consequences for the family. More on that later.

I was happy to track down the Victoria address where my mother was listed as living in the 1948 directory. It was worth the walk. It even looked like the house which currently holds the address would have been the same building as the one in 1948, at least to my eye. You can see it below. 

As we were staying downtown, there was very little walking involved to track down the address of my mother's former place of work. She was a saleswoman at Hudson's Bay. That building still stands on Douglas Street. I'm sure there have been a lot of changes since she worked there but it was a kick to see the building and translate the directory entry into reality.

Finding the places where my mother had been all those years ago, reminded me that her parents were in Canada at the same time. I just didn't know where. Perhaps it's time to check some directories to see if I can find their whereabouts for the same time period. The search this time could be done online, not trawling through the directories in the Vancouver Library's Special Collections where I had found the entry for my mother so many years ago. But were they in Winnipeg, where my grandmother's sisters lived or in Vancouver, closer to their daughter? 

An internet search brought up a few places to search like the Can Genealogy site at https://www.cangenealogy.com › manitoba-directories or, if looking for Vancouver addresses, I could look through https://bccd.vpl.ca › index.php › browse › title › 1948 Many sites give access to Canadian directories for free and many are searchable by surname which would be a plus except the name I'm searching is Chambers which brings up all sorts of government and other types of chambers. I'll see how I get on.

Organizing my search

 

                                                               Some of the World War 2 books from my shelves

Doing the research and writing about my mother's Land Army experience was relatively easy as most of the information I had was already compiled. I also have a few books about the Land Army but when I actually read them, they were short and gave a general picture about what life would have been like for Land Girls. My mother's war story lent itself to being a self-contained narrative. The rest of my WWII research looks more daunting.

As you can see by the picture of the books up above, I have a few tomes to read through and those are just a sample of the WWII books on my shelves. I've been collecting books like these for ages with a view to reading them someday. Well, that someday has come but it's going to take me quite a while to read all the relevant books on my shelves. It doesn't help that I can't resist buying new books on the subject either. A case in point, I just received the book on the top of the stack, Land Girl: A Manual for Volunteers in the Women's Land Army 1941, in the mail.

While I continue to read and research, I want to keep writing WWII stories for my blog so I'm going to have to be more systematic about this. That means writing lists and outlines of the family members I am following up on so that I don't miss any interesting stories along the way. Some people are natural outliners. I'm not one of those. I do like writing timelines, however. Maybe timelines of the families I'm following might throw up some useful hints of where to find those stories. 

Newspaper clues to a Land Army past

 

                                                                    A Land Army girl on a Fordson tractor

Finding out more about the Women's Land Army experience in Hertfordshire gave me a better idea of what my mother had gone through when she was part of the WLA in that county. Between that and the WLA Alphabetical Index Card that I found, I have sketched the parameters of her service which I interpret as starting May 1, 1942 and ending with her resignation August 12, 1945. But I wanted a clearer picture.

The sites I had visited gave me a general idea of what the Land Girls did and the book, The Women's Land Army 1939-1950, supplied photos of many of the activities. What I wanted was to know what my mother's actual duties had been. I turned to the newspapers to see if there was any mention of my mother which would throw light on her war experience.

Unfortunately, when I tried to apply filters down to the county level to get the news for Hertfordshire where she was stationed, the British Newspapers on Find My Past didn't have any newspapers for that area. But my mother and her parents had emigrated from Manitoba. My search through Newspapers.com was much more productive. It yielded a clipping which merited a photo of my mother on a tractor at the West Hertfordshire District Agricultural Competitions Association's ploughing match just after the war. The story was carried in the Winnipeg Tribune and gave the name and address of her grandmother who lived in Winnipeg.

With family in different places, it's surprising where news will turn up and I wonder who supplied the newspaper with the photo. Perhaps the grandmother named? Interestingly, the article appeared in the paper in January of 1946 although the competition had been held in October of 1945, just months after my mother had resigned from the WLA. The article contains many clues to follow up on but, after the research I've already done, I now know more about my mother's experience in the Land Army.

Through my research, I know that driving a tractor required specialized training and not every Land Girl did it. My mother would have gone through that training and must have been using her skills for a while to be proficient enough to enter a competition. My increased knowledge gives me a greater appreciation for her war experience. 

Sources:

Find My Past https://search.findmypast.com/search/british-newspapers

Newspapers.com https://www.newspapers.com/

Powell, Bob & Nigel Westacott. The Women’s Land Army 1939-1950. Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire, 2000

Image:

By Ministry of Information official photographer - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//36/media-36219/large.jpg This is photograph D 128 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30861464

Adding colour to the official Land Army record

 

                                                                            Land Army girls working in a barn

Trying to add colour to my mother's Land Army experience, I turned to the books on my shelves about women's experience in World War Two and books on the Land Army in particular. It will take me a while to get through them all and, in the end, while it will be a useful exercise and give me more background on the women who served on the farms in Britain, it won't be the story of the particular person I'm interested in. In fact the book I'm reading now, The Women's Land Army 1939-1950, seems particularly sparse in its coverage of Hertfordshire where my mother was stationed.

Then I turned to online sources. A search brought up the website Herts Memories which gave me access to stories and articles which would bring me closer to my mother's experience. On the site there was a write up by Margaret Hurst about her time in the Land Army in Hertfordshire. The stories highlighted the reality and grittiness of the experience, from the cockroaches in the kitchen to the scurrying rats as the workers got to the bottom of the threshing pile. Was my mother's experience similar? One of Margaret's memories did strike a chord. She wrote about going to pick Brussel sprouts on a freezing cold day. That brought forth a memory of one of the things that my mother had said, that Brussel sprouts were picked after the first frost. Maybe she too had worked harvesting sprouts for a market gardener like Margaret Hurst had. 

Sources:

Herts Memories - https://www.hertsmemories.org.uk/content/herts-history/topics/world-war-two/womens-land-army/the-womens-land-army-in-hertfordshire

Powell, Bob & Nigel Westacott The Women’s Land Army 1939-1950. Sutton Publishing Limited, Gloucestershire, 2000

Image:

By Nora Lavrin - http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/16311, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53995217

Land Army Records

 

                                          A mockup of the Land Army Alphabetical Index Card which I found

Unfortunately, when I started to look for information about my mother's time in the Land Army she was no longer around for me to ask for further information. I was left with some fragmentary memories of what she had told me and whatever I could learn from other sources. When I started this research, one of the first things that I did was to check the Discovery catalogue on The National Archives site for the UK. There were no online records, but there were copies of alphabetical index cards for the Land Army which covered the years between 1939 and 1948. The reference number for these records is MAF 421. I found this record on an in person visit to The National Archives at Kew.

As the name indicated, the information on the index card was sketchy at first glance but gave intriguing tidbits of information to follow up on. There was, of course, her name and her current address. The address given was in Welwyn Garden City, a different address from the Greenwich one that I found in the 1939 Register for her father. That's something else to follow up on but I'm not sure if the whole family had moved to Hertfordshire or if my mother was staying with someone there.

Also on the card was her age with her birthdate in brackets. The bottom right corner of the card also had a date with no explanation. When I did the math, it appeared that 5/1/42 (May 1, 1942) was likely to be her date of enlistment. There was a W.L.A number, no doubt this number was a key to any further records but no further records were available. Under the space left for the age of the woman, was a space for Present Occupation which, in this case, was given as clerk. There was a diagonal line through the whole card. Above this line was writing that I interpreted as saying: "Resigned Herts Reg't 8/12/45". 

It looks like this was the only official record for my mother's years in the Land Army. It's enough to give a brief sketch of her time there, giving the length of service and information such as the address to follow up on. I'll see what else I can find. 

Unsung heroes

 

                                                                       Information for knitters during WWII

In 2008, after more than 50 years of campaigning, the British government at last officially recognized the members of the Women's Land Army and the Women's Timber Corps for their contributions to the war effort. A badge was issued in recognition of their services. But there was a catch, the women had to still be alive to receive the award. Many had died between the time of their service and the government's official recognition.

I can remember my aunt being upset as that meant my mother wouldn't be recognized even though her time in the Land Army was one of the defining experiences of her life. Was it there that she received the injury that required her to have skin grafts on the back of her hands? Why didn't I ask when I had the chance?

Actually knowing that she was a Land Girl was a step in the right direction because that's the thing with non-military war service; it's hard to know what you should be looking for unless there is a whisper of what they got up to during the war period. I don't know if either of my grandmothers volunteered for any wartime duties. That's also the case for my uncle's wives. Perhaps they didn't take on an actual volunteer job but took on extra tasks such as knitting for the troops. But there is no way to know unless a family story was handed down.

There were a variety of tasks in which those left at home could take part. For example, the Home Guard performed many harrowing tasks to help keep those at home safe. A trawl of information about WWII records shows that it is possible to access limited records for the Home Guard, the service which provided local defense. Generally the personnel were men who were too old or young for the regular forces. But I have not found a database of the names of the people involved in that service. According to the blog post whose link is given below, it might be possible to find minimal information on your ancestor's time in the Home Guard if the record survives but there is a cost involved that doesn't guarantee that they will find anything for the person you are looking for. So finding out what your ancestor did during the war is not an easy task.

Sources:

https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/search-british-war-records-ww2/

International Express, Tuesday July 29, 2008, "At last, Land Girls honoured" 

Image:

By Storye book - Photo of object in my possession. Linda Spashett Own work, CC BY 3.0,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11832744

Blackouts and furniture

 

                                                                   A World War II era buffet still in use today

The history that interests me the most is social history. That's probably the case for many family historians. Rather than focusing on what was happening with the great and good (or bad), social history encompasses the rules, events and fabric of the lives of the man and woman on the street. They weren't the movers and shakers of society but the masses who dealt with life as it came and tried to find their way through it, in the good times and bad. My current focus on World War Two sheds light on a challengingly bad time.

Footage and pictures that show the damage in London during the Blitz are familiar. Those images show the dramatic reality but the smaller, more annoying privations were something I didn't think that much about before starting to research the war era.

People had to change their ways of doing things and obey new rules, like the blackout. Householders were fined for showing light. To get around this, people had to pay for and fit their own blackout curtains or find other means of hiding the illumination in their homes. Of course, I knew about rationing but only thought of the difficulties of obtaining food. But other things were rationed as well, like clothing.   

Fashions reflected wartime regulations as dresses and suits slimmed down and used less material, giving rise to the wartime silhouette familiar from old movies. But other materials were also in short supply such as metal for pots and pans or fabric for upholstery or rugs.

Because wood was scarce and metal was needed for the war effort rather than springs for upholstered furniture, simplified furniture designs were developed. This led to Utility Furniture. This furniture was rationed and only available to newly married couples or those who had lost their household goods because of bombing.

Even after the war Utility Furniture must have been all that was available as, when my parents got married in 1949, it was this type of furniture with which they started married life. My mother was frequently disparaging of the sideboard which followed her to Canada, calling it "cheap war stuff". It was very simple and plain but that's one of the reasons I value it. I still have it with me as a functioning memento of that time in history.  

 

Sources:

Evans, Paul and Peter Doyle. The 1940s Home Shire Publications Ltd., Oxford, 2009