Roy Hewitt is a regular contributor to these pages
but this month, he is joined by his wife Pat for a joint project - a
piece of real detective work which has given Roy's own family history a
new twist. You do have to ask why people are drawn to follow one
particular trail over another as Pat and Roy try to piece together the past
and
we hope you enjoy their story of Arthur Richard Stentiford - or should it
be Arthur Reginald Stentiford?
Our local radio station has been trying to track
down elderly people who are still active in their communities and, to
mention just a few, they've come up with paper boys in their 80s and a
Girl Guide leader aged 94 who still goes camping regularly with her
troop! It was very different a century ago when few people lived to be
65. For our second article this month, we return to Ashburton
which we first visited in Issue 5. How did people cope with death
intervening in their lives with such regularity? In a few brief years, Mary Ann
Stentiford lost two husbands and two children before dying an early
death herself. Her will is far too long to reproduce in these pages for
the simple reason that she tried to cover every conceivable circumstance
in a desperate attempt to provide some kind of security for her two
remaining young children. Yet, in spite of all her efforts, the guardian
she chose for them was himself dead within a few years, aged only 42 and
her young son and daughter were left to fend for themselves.
Geoff Ledden wanted everyone to know that the
collection of epitaphs he has sent to us is the work of an e-mail group
- he can't identify every contributor but we'd like to thank
each and every one of them for a good laugh. Epitaphs of this sort are a unique form of revenge
by the living on the dead - money has to be spent on the stone and on
having the message inscribed so someone really meant it! We leave you
with this one from Sutton Parish Churchyard:
"Here lies
my poor wife,
Without bed
or blanket,
But dead as
a doornail,
God be
thankit."
