Sunday, August 8, 2010

Family Portrait

I have done lots of scrapping over the last few weeks but apart from this layout I can't share anything with you yet!
I have spent hours and hours researching our family tree and along the way I have been given lots of old family photos which I have copied so that I can use them. This photo is of my Grandpa, Harold, his parents and siblings. I am not very good at journaling on my pages but wanted to record the story of the some of the people in the photo so I have created a large pull out tag. The papers that I have used aren't really vintage papers, October Afternoon fly a kite but the prints work really well with old photos and I have teamed them up with some bazzill basics for the background which I just love.

I added some velvet scalloped ribbon around the edge of my circle and stuck a piece of thin chipboard on the back in the middle to raise the circle off the page allowing the ribbon to lie properly on the page.
I have combined prima flowers with punched flowers and added a few buttons for the flower centres.
The tag reads....
"I love this photo of my Grandpa Davis and his family but when I look at it I also feel sad, Alice looks so content with her little family she would of had no idea that their lives were to change so tragically in just a few years time. William and Alice married in Dorchester in 1901 and had their first child Cyril in 1904. Their second child, Winifred Alice was born in 1906 but at just 2 years old she died of diptheria and laryngitis. Alice was pregnant at the time with Harold, my Grandpa. After Grandpa they had two more children Alice Freda and Ronald. I think little Freda looks so much like her Father in this photo, she doens't look very happy at having her photo taken! Only 3 years later Freda died, she was only 7, she had fallen ill in late May 1920 and died a week later of encephalitis lethargica which had swept the world between 1917 and 1928, the newspaper cutting said she "suffered severely". I don't know how Alice coped with the death of her second daughter it must have been horrendous. Three years later in July 1923 William died, he was a cellarman for Eldridge Pope in Dorchester, the family story goes that he fell off a dray and died a few weeks later of his injuries. They say every picture tells a story but it isn't always a happy one."
TFL
xx

6 comments:

Jill said...

What fantastic family history you know Rachael and I love that photo - isn't it so nice to see what your ancestors looked like! Jill x

Sarah C said...

What a sad story. Love how you've documented it all though. LO looks amazing x

Lisa said...

What a beautiful layout but such a sad story!!!

gwyneth said...

This is just beautiful Rachael. what a sad story but wonderful to document it for the future.

furrypig said...

That is so great that you know all that family historyI wonder what William would think of all the developments on the old Eldridge Pope site in Dorchester.

Lou said...

Beautiful layout Rachael, and like you say every photo tells a story...you are so lucky to know some of yours xx