Descendants of WWI widows tracked down

Letters hidden away in attic help trace families of women who lost husbands

Dedicated researchers have tracked down descendants of First World War widows whose tragic letters of grief lay hidden away in an attic for decades.

Six years ago, the remarkable collection of letters to Mary Pennyman, the secretary of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Widows and Orphan Fund were discovered in Ormesby Hall, Middlesbrough, where her husband’s family had lived for 400 years and which is now a National Trust property.

Thanks to Heritage Lottery funding, the collection of around 100 letters was digitised and put online – and amateur genealogists have tracked down living relatives of some of the writers, who turned to Mrs Pennyman in their time of greatest need.

Dr Roisin Higgins, a reader in Modern History at Teesside University, said of the 92 letter writers, relatives have been traced for eight of them, with help from the public.

Amateur genealogists helped out using the details the letters contained, sometimes by looking for more information about the soldier who was missing or killed, and tracking down living relatives using online family trees.

Dr Higgins said: “These are women who don’t leave a strong historical trace, women who don’t normally write letters, they are not affluent.

“It has been a really difficult process to find out what happened to them after the war. The letters are really heartbreaking, they are full of courage and fear, there’s economic hardship and many have health issues.”

The academic praised volunteer Pat Brownbill, a 68-year-old retired medical researcher, for her help with the project.

Mrs Brownbill, from Stratford-uponAvon, threw herself into the challenge of trying to find relatives.

She said: “If you find the key and make the link to identify somebody, it is a bit of a rush, it’s a real feeling of satisfaction.

Alan Paterson, 72, a retired sales manager from Colchester, Essex, found out his grandmother Maud Wilson was one of the letter writers in the collection.

His grandfather Charles was killed in 1914 in the Battle of Mons – the first major military action in the First World War – and Mrs Wilson’s letter in 1918 expressed gratitude for financial support she received, and added: “I sometimes feel thankful to God my poor husband was not spared to go through the agony our poor lads have had to endure this past three yrs”.

Mr Paterson said: “It is amazing, it’s our history.”