RootsChat.Com

Ray,
I'm very glad you came to our rescue there!  About Ken's exact place in the village, and also with a wonderfully  clear remembered picture of both Nora and her small holding and how things looked through a ten year old's eye all those years ago.  You have also, indirectly, opened a treasure chest of new information about my Kershaw family, for which I am very grateful.  And many thanks to all those generous Rootschatters for that.  So, the Nora that you knew in 1959 must in fact have been 67 years old or so, when you thought quite innocently that she might be in her late forties.  I'm pretty sure from beyond the grave she would be tickled pink to think that was your impression of her.
One of the most evocative books I have ever read was Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie, a young boy's remembrance of family members, growing up in rural Gloucestershire.  Not quite in the same vein here, but almost!
And I've just now discovered on another thread I started, thanks to a Rootschatter who keeps coming to my aid that Samuel Baildon in fact died from cholera in March 1914 in Calcutta...
Keith

Well, SoftlySoftly,
Perhaps when Rayangel was there as a 10 year old boy living next to Nora and being taught by someone called Ken to drive a tractor, with Nora referring to him as her son, maybe she was using a bit of poetic licence there, that he was her "adopted" son in the same way that she became Rayangel's "adopted" nanny...
Or that Ken was a son born out of wedlock.  Would love to know the truth!
Keith

SoftlySoftly,
Very interesting that Nora was evacuated as a teacher to Downham (Market?) in Norfolk in 1939.  Presumably with her schoolchildren from London.  I haven't yet been able to find a marriage for her, and by then she would have been in her late forties.  And haven't I seen "widow" with reference to her somewhere on this thread?  So I wonder when this Ken came into the world....
Keith

Now, here's a potted Kershaw/Gurner connection, so that RayAngel can see how I am connected to that lady he knew in 1959, Nora Kershaw.
So, in July 1870, a John Thomas Kershaw was killed under the wheels of a London horse drawn omnibus at Highbury Corner, outside the Cock Tavern.  He had been returning from work in The Strand on that bus.
This tragic event widowed his wife Mary (née Kershaw) with 8 very young children, the youngest a baby in arms.  One solution to help her cope was that Mary, b.1861 and her little brother Raleigh aged 2 or 3 were sent to an Asylum For Fatherless Children in Surrey.  There eventually Mary became a student teacher.  Raleigh was apparently blind or became blind and ended up in America.
One of Mary's other siblings was John b.1866.  His daughter was Ada Nora Kershaw when he married an Ada Mason.
Thus Mary Baildon (nee Kershaw) was aunt to Nora Kershaw, her niece..
That Asylum, btw, was not as dreadful as the word Asylum might suggest.  And the other thing is that when he was widowed in 1872 my gt-gt-gt-grandpa Henry Pakeman Gurner, who was the father of the Mary Gurner widowed by the London omnibus, moved from Ickleton in Cambs to live with her and her brood of children in St Paul's Rd Canonbury.  Probably a mutually supportive move for both.
I hope this doesn't sound too complicated, Ray Angel, and all you other helpful Rootschatters on here...
Keith