Hi Walter
This is the information that I have on Martha
Mary Bradford - Stories/Nostalgia
Finding John Henry
When my Dad was 13 years old his father, my Grandad, lost his life fighting in the ‘Great War’. He had joined the Coldstream Guards and then volunteered for the Machine Gunners which were a body of men taken from all the guards’ regiments. Grandma was told he had been killed at Cambrai in France, on the 30th March 1918.
He was 35 years old and had four children, three sons and one daughter, (his youngest daughter, Mary, had died when she was just two years old, while he was fighting in France).
Dad talked a lot about Grandad and evidently he had been quite a character, rather a hit with the ladies but that’s another story. His father (Great Grandad Johan Heinrich Stier) was born in Germany and came to England in the 1860’s, married an English girl and had two sons and three daughters that we knew about; then his wife died and he married a spiritualist called Martha Poole who and my dad, as a little lad, was terrified of her. Grandad wasn’t very nice to her, calling her ‘Martha the Mad Magician’ among other things.
About 1911 Great Grandad suddenly upped sticks, sold just about everything he owned, which was quite a lot, and sailed off to America taking all his family with him, apart from Grandad and his family, they had refused to go, not understanding what all the rush was for. When the war against Germany was declared in 1914, Grandad got it into his head that his father had been an undercover German spy and knew that a war was imminent which must have been the reason for rushing abroad. He had never got on very well with his father and hated his stepmother so decided that the only thing he could do was to join the British army, help win the war then he would go to America and give them both a ‘bloody good kicking’.
Dad always said Martha Poole-Stier had detested Grandad and, with her crystal ball, must have guided the shell that killed him on 30th March 1918. We did hear later that Great Grandad moved to Canada and when he died there just after the war, Martha returned to England and tricked Grandma into signing away any rights that they had on a property in Barbican Road, York. By the time dad was old enough to do anything about it, everything was sold and she’d gone back to Canada leaving them destitute. Dad was bitter about that all his life.
This is the story of how John Henry was eventually found:
In 1998 on the 80th anniversary of the war ending, there was a story in the Evening Press about a book in the Minster called ‘The King’s Book of Fallen Heroes’ which said that there was a paragraph, and photograph, of every York man who had died in the first world war.
We had never heard of this book and as it happened our niece, Ruth, was visiting from New Zealand for Christmas so we decided to go and have a look. When we arrived at the Minster a very nice lady in the information desk rang through to the security office and they sent a guard to find out what exactly we required. Having heard our story, he went away and returned with a large bunch of keys. We followed him into a beautiful little chapel where he opened a big glass show case. Enclosed in it was a massive book with carved wooden outer covers, it measured about four feet by three feet. Each page was in alphabetical order and held sixteen photographs of the fallen heroes. We were very emotional on reaching the S’s and there, on the top right hand corner was a photograph of Grandad and underneath was written:
John Henry Stier: Private.
Guard’s Machine Gun Regiment.
Aged 35 Years. Born in York.
Last resided at 7, James Street, York
Killed in action 30th March 1918. On the Western Front.
