The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.4 | March 2022

Local Group Programmes

Contact: Tony Sinclair Tel: 07518 183211 winchester@hgs-online.org.uk

Winchester

Meetings are normally at 7:15pm on 3rd Thursdays in the Littleton Millennium Hall.

We are a small Group which only re-formed in June 2019 but numbers of attendees, especially on Zoom, have grown to a regular nucleus of about 25 each month. (December) This was arranged as a Social Evening for members only - for those "hard-core" members who, despite the wonders of Zoom, still want to meet up in person to have a talk Family History over a cup of tea and a biscuit, or, in the case of December, over a mince pie and glass of mulled wine. So, those who attended ate their mince pie and drank their mulled wine (or tea) while Lawrence described some ongoing research he is carrying out on behalf of an out-of-county member. The member is looking for two sisters who could turn out to be one person using two names! The story included names of "sisters" entered in the Baptism Register but who appeared to have been born only months apart. Or, maybe, the year of birth for one of them could have been different. Lawrence's research continues to unravel the intriguing mystery! Jill described how she has recently uncovered a female family line which, going back in time, appears to link up with a member of the aristocracy. Once she has the time to follow the names forward in time to the 21st century, she could discover herself to be the Honourable Lady So-and-So! Tony described how, since he was about 8 years old, he has known his father was a soldier rescued off of the beach at Dunkirk in May 1940. He was already a serving Infantryman when War was declared and, from May 10th, he began fighting the Germans coming through Belgium but then, suddenly, the Germans were also coming from behind and his unit had to retreat towards Dunkirk. Rather poignantly, his description of what happened to him and his fellow soldiers at Dunkirk is exactly as you see in the films of 1958 (with John Mills) and 2017 (with Harry Styles!) even down to the feeling of failure when they arrived back in the UK despite being treated almost like heroes by the populace. He arrived home in Southampton on June 2nd in such a bedraggled and shocked state that his mother and sisters didn't recognise him at first! What is more amazing is that when Tony tracked down his father's father, William Henry, who divorced Tony's grandmother in the 1920s and returned to Scotland, it appears that he, too, was at Dunkirk! Tony's grandfather was ex-Royal Navy and worked for Tough's Boatyard on the Thames at Teddington. By then he was 61 years old but he was involved in taking one of the "Small Ships" down the Thames and around to the South Coast. It seems he also took one of the small ships to Dunkirk because there is a letter from the BBC - together with a cheque for 4 guineas! - thanking him for taking part in an interview for the 20th Anniversary of the "Dunkirk Small Ships" in May 1960.

177