Can Rootschat members help? - Lost Teddy Bear 'Seeks' Owner

[sami]

Hi AngelFish:

I've been following along with interest but am now quite confused. Is it possible to put together a synopsis of the most likely time frame, ages, names etc. ?

sami

[Treetotal]

It says "Your Little Daughter & Sonnie" I took this to mean that the younger child was the girl....we are all just guessing though!
Carol

[Sprutorch9]

I agree. I think we are all giving our best guesses or as my father would say: "Throw it all out there and see what sticks to the wall!"

I also think Sami is right - we need one (or more) synopsis to check what people agree (or disagree) on.

[loobylooayr]

Hi,
Reading everyone's comments with great interest. What a lovely picture. Let's hope the bear and photo are reunited with their owner.
Anyway my tuppence worth regarding the phrase "Your Little Daughter and Sonnie " is that I think the word "Little" is being used to describe both children. And the word "Sonnie" does, to me, imply a small boy. So I think the younger Child is Glyn  . He looks about 2 and the little girl perhaps about 3 and a half to 4?
Looby

[Sprutorch9]

I sent off the photo and card to my cousin and she just sent this info back to me:

I recently went to an art exhibit at the american folk art museum in NYC. they had paintings of children - ALL wearing what we call dresses. For the record, the way to tell if a child was a boy or girl in the old paintings was that girls had their hair parted in the center & had necklaces on. The boys had their hair parted on the side and had either whips or what might be considered fishing poles. and so the child on the left in your picture is probably the boy - with lots of curls.

Now, I know she is talking about paintings but looking at it that way, then the youngest looks to have a slight side-part and is holding a mug which might be more 'boyish' than a stuffed toy.
And the oldest does have a necklace on and a center part.

Whatcha think? 

[Paul Caswell]

Glad to finally get to the end of the thread. Awesome work as always from RootsChatters.

Mostly bookmarking but a couple of thoughts :-

• Trystan (or someone) - could you get back to the Bristol people and get a hi-res scan of the mug (is there an engraving on it?) and the locket (is it really a baby or just a cameo).
• Someone please summarise where we are.
• Does someone know someone at FreeBMD? Given (vetted) access to their database I am sure some of our technical people could come up with a (probably slow) query that could find Dora/Doreen/Theodora/... and Glyn/Glenn/Glynnis/Glennis born of simialr parentage with a predicted age difference/range.

[Paul Caswell]

I read it as

"With dearest love & X's to our
darling Daddie from your loving
little daughter & sonnie

Dora & Glyn

Taken on Baby's birthday, March 4th 1918.
one year & 5 months old."

Do we all agree with this wording?

It has been suggested from this that Dora is older than Glyn because Dora is listed first. We speculate therefore that the older child (nearest the bear) is Dora and the other child is Glyn.

If so then it is fair to assume (from the word Taken) that the photo was taken on March 4th 1918 on "baby"s birthday.

Outstanding questions:

Who is "Baby"?
Who is "one year & 5 months old", baby or the photo or the teddy?
Some good suggestions on the children's ages have been made. How close can we get our estimate?
When, therefore, do we believe Dora and Glyn were born?

Remember this was probably written by Mummy Mummie.

[trystan]

This is great  Teddy is starting to get a little twinkle in his eye.

One thing to clarify, do we agree that it's all written by the same person?

If it is, are both parts written at the same time? (is it significant?)

Trystan

[Paul Caswell]

I'd say the main section (right side up) was written by Mummie with the kids present. The upside-down part was probably added by Mummie afterwards (perhaps the kids are in bed) before posting.

Probably not significant but an interesting thought.