Family history

As a child I used to love walking round graveyards looking at the names, wondering about the large number of children who died so young, and looking for names I might know.

S, our daughter, has been studying our family history for some time. She has found out a huge amount, mostly  via the web.

Today we visited a large Swedish retailer near Leeds.

S suggested we did a recce in the area as she knew we had distant relatives in the parish where said retailer lies.

So after purchasing a few bits and bobs, but no tea lights, we went to look for the parish church. There is a huge cemetery, rather overgrown but with many Victorian graves. Armed with a list of surnames we began a somewhat random walk through the area. I called out surnames, she generally said 'no', but occasionally said 'thats on the list' and took photos.

Just as we were tiring I looked at one stone with the names of  many people in the same family, and said 'did you say Middlebrook was a key name?'  Yes it was, and over she came to look at this.

A quick look at the family tree verified that all the people named on this stone are related to us through my paternal grandfather! And there were a number of children who died when under one year old.

Quite emotional.