The prompt for this weeks #52ancestors challenge is Longevity, so I have decided to focus on my longest living direct ancestor. My great grandmother Jean ILES (nee THOMPSON) lived until the age of 93 years old. She by no means had an easy life, and overcame some obstacles to reach such a grand old age.
Jean was born on 20th March 1917 to parents Thomas William THOMPSON and Hannah Maria Darch MALLET in Lismore, NSW and was the fourth of nine children to be born to the couple. Jean remembers that there was never a lot of money around when she was growing up due to the large size of the family and the unskilled work that her father did. However, she remembers a happy childhood until at the age of 12 her mother died from pneumonia. Jean’s life changed overnight: she had grown up doing her share of chores and helping her mother around the house as the second eldest girl, with her chores increased after her eldest sister left home but upon her mothers death she was suddenly responsible for running the entire household. Jean had to drop out of school so there was someone to run the household and look after the younger siblings, three of which were aged under five at the time.
For some months after her mother’s death, Jean shouldered the responsibility of looking after the house and all it’s inhabitants until one day it became all too much. In a video interview recorded on Jean’s 90th birthday, she recalls collapsing into tears one afternoon and her father arriving home to find her in a state. Her father considered the tears, and announced that tomorrow he would find a housekeeper to help with the house. Looking back, Jean can’t think how the family afforded it but before long this became a moot point when her father married the housekeeper a few years later.
Jean continued to love at home until she was about 14 or 15 years old at which point she became pregnant out of wedlock following an attack. Jean was sent away to the town of Casino which is a scarce 30km away where she stayed with the local Salvation Army officers (ministers) and helped look after their children. There is the suggestion in the family that this arrangement was helped by their then housekeeper who attended the Salvation Army church in Lismore. After 9 months, Jean gave birth to a son who was namedEric THOMPSON. Interestingly, Eric was not adopted out following his birth. He was absorbed into the family and raised as a sibling to Jean’s younger siblings.
Jean became more and more involved in The Salvation Army and became a Soldier (member) of the church, moving around with the officer from Casino when they moved on to their next location. It was through the Salvos that she met her husband, who spotted her at an open air meeting and declared to his mates “I’m gonna marry that girl right there” and marry her he did. They went on to have two children and time passed. Then in the 1990s when Jean was in when she was in her 70s she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But she managed to beat it through chemo and a radical double mastectomy and went on to live until the ripe old age of 93.