#52ancestors – Family photo

So Week 8 of #52ancestors was ‘Family photo’. Well, I have decided to share one of my favourite family photos of my great grandmother Jean and some of her siblings.

Left to Right: Adeline, Jean, Eddie, Neville, Trevor (seated front)

I was lucky enough to have my great grandmother around when I was growing up, and she lived to the grand old age of 93. I was always interested to hear about her stories of growing up as her life was so different than the one I knew. She was born Jean Thompson on 20 March 1917 in Lismore, NSW to parents Thomas William Thompson and Hannah Maria Darch Mallett. Jean was the fourth child in the family and another five children were to join the family in the years to come.

I remember hearing when I was a child that Jean had grown up in a poor family where there wasn’t much of anything, which was something I could relate to as my own family wasn’t at all well off when I was growing up. But as a twelve year old, I felt sad at the fact that when Jean was twelve years old, she had the unimaginable loss of her mother and as the eldest girl at home was forced to grow up quickly and take care of the family.

Knowing that Jean and her siblings had grown up poor, I never thought anything of the fact that I didn’t see any photos of her as a child. When I started doing family history, however, I began to be more interested in her growing up and I began to search out photos. I plucked up my courage and got in contact with my great uncle, Jean’s son. Well, lo and behold he volunteered to scan and email me whatever he had as he had all of Jean’s collection of photos at his house.

At first it was candid photos of her as a young woman before she was married and as young mother. And don’t get me wrong, these photos were great and as a family historian I appreciate any and all photos of my ancestors. But then the most exciting photograph appeared in my inbox. Not only was it a photo of Jean as a young girl along with some of her siblings but it was a professional photo in which they all had their best clothes on and were posed so cutely. I was completely amazed. To this day it is one of my favourite photos, perhaps because I was fairly close to Jean and maybe also because I felt sorry for the children in the photo knowing that it was only a few years after the photo was taken that they would lose their mother.

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