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Originally Posted by steve2qec
Great bit of family history, Sue. Didn't people have impeccable handwriting in those days?
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Thanks Steve, yes when you think of the conditions in which that postcard must have been written... I have of course let Retlaw have the pictures and my grandad's details for his archive.
I have recently acquired quite a few bits of family history, my dad passed things to me before he died, and my 81 year old cousin gave me quite a lot of old photos. I posted the following on the museum thread a few weeks ago.
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I have a collection of letters written by my great grandfather to his family in 1930. He owned trotting horses (the ones where the jockey sits in a little cart behind - we did have some cups he won but I think my dad must have sold them). Anyway times were hard and he took some of the horses out to New Zealand to try and sell them. They went on a liner and
I think a couple of other men went too. The letters describe going through the Panama Canal and his unsuccessful travels around NZ trying to sell the horses. They are often written in pencil on whatever paper was to hand. He was not a very literate man (he was a fish merchant) but his love for his family and his longing to go home shine through. Sadly he died suddenly on Christmas Eve 1930 aged only in hie early fifties and was buried in NZ but he was later exhumed and taken home.
My father gave me the letters a few years ago before he died and I was very moved when I read them. I had always understood that he went to NZ to buy horses, not sell them but I think that story must have been put about so it did not seem that the family needed money. I think the story would make a good radio programme or short book but I can't do it. Anyway I think the letters might be of interest to a museum.
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Great story and one I have only fully undestood after seeing the letters.