It’s taken a century, but family can finally honour Samuel John Trimble

Simon Parker returns to the East Cornwall village of Morval, where a family is remembering the life and sacrifice of a fallen ancestor, and celebrating victory in a long and frustrating battle to have his name properly displayed on the parish war memorial

Marion Hambly stoops to lay flowers at the war memorial recording the sacrifice of her Uncle Sam. Nothing unusual in that, except that this year is the first time the nonagenarian has been able to honour her forebear properly – because until this centenary year Uncle Sam’s name was spelled incorrectly.

Regular readers of the Western Morning News will have followed the saga of 97-year-old Marion, and her sons Philip and David, as they waged their own small war on intransigent parish councillors unable to empathise with the hurt of a family forced to read the words Samuel J Tremble rather than Samuel J Trimble.

After years of wrangling, permission for a change of the “e” to an “i” was granted back in the summer, and a stonemason completed the alteration in time for a rededication ceremony to coincide with the centenary of the Armistice.

No one in the Trimble family expected the saga to go on for quite so long, and they were clearly pleased to finally be able to pay tribute to Uncle Sam at a dedication service at Morval war memorial in South East Cornwall, conducted by the Reverend Philip Sharp.

“It was well attended by the families, friends, representatives of the Church, our district councillor with his wife, and members of the public,” said Philip. “I then gave a vote of thanks to all who had assisted us with our difficulties in getting the name changed, and in particular the efforts of the parochial church council who did so much to assist us. My mum presented the PCC members present with a cheque for the benefit of Morval Church, to recognise their unstinting support for our cause.”

To understand the background to this tale of a man with two names, we need to go back more than a century. Picture the scene. It is September 1916. A mother and father receive the news that their beloved eldest son, Samuel, has been killed in action while fighting for freedom in France.

His body, like those of all combatants who fell during the Great War, has been interred with full military honours in a Commonwealth graveyard at Vimy. His name, rank and date of death – along with the inscription “Remembered with Honour” – is carved in stone. It is a solid symbol of respect for his sacrifice.

Back in Samuel’s home village of Morval, his grieving family, including three surviving servicemen brothers, join fellow parishioners after the war ends in erecting a permanent memorial to fathers, husbands, sons, friends. Like communities up and down the land, the parish of Morval commissioned a tall granite obelisk, theirs topped with a Cornish cross, its tablet bearing the names of the area’s seven fallen heroes.

Fast forward a hundred years. The First World War centenary prompted communities across the land to look afresh at their memorials, to make repairs, and to check that all was in order.

In Morval, one Marion Morval Hambly, nee Trimble (yes, she shares a name with the parish of her birth) visits the memorial that stands by the roadside close to the parish church where she was baptised. She wishes to pay her respects to her Uncle Samuel. On first glance, Mrs Hambly hopes she might be mistaken – her eyesight isn’t what it was. But no, there in clear lettering reads: Samuel John... Tremble. A particularly unfortunate spelling error for a brave man.

Mrs Hambly, who is the daughter of Samuel’s brother, Archibald, naturally assumed the mistake had come about in the immediate post-war period, a time of great upheaval and misery, when families and communities struggled to normalise life in the

wake of overwhelming pain. You can imagine Samuel’s bereft parents, John and Ellen, looking at the memorial to their lost son, lamenting the apparent mistake of a War Office official or stonemason, discussing it quietly at home, and deciding to accept it rather than make a fuss when there were so many more pressing problems to deal with.

This is how Mrs Hambly made sense of things when she was reminded of the mistake all those years later. And she confidently assumed that today’s parish councillors – with little more than litter, dog mess and public toilets to excite their meetings – would be delighted to help set the record straight.

For the record, the unfortunate young man in question, who lost his life on the battlefields of France, was born Samuel John Trimble. That is how, albeit poorly handwritten, it appears on his birth certificate. And that is how it appears on the memorial stone in France. His parents were Trimble. His three brothers were Trimble. He married as Trimble, named his son Trimble and enlisted in the Canadian Army, having emigrated there, as Trimble. The Toronto Star recorded his name as Trimble in its obituary columns of 10 October 1916. In addition, while the

Census returns from 1891 and 1901 record a number of Trimbles in the Morval area, nobody in the whole of Cornwall is registered as having the name Tremble. In fact the only place where “Trimble” became “Tremble” was on Morval War Memorial.

Confident there would be no objection, Mrs Hambly and her sons, Philip and David, approached the parish council, which administers the memorial, with a simple request to change the “e” to an “i”. They were happy to pay all costs.

Simple? You’d think so. But the Hamblys had not bargained for the deliberations of Morval Parish Council. Rather than quietly acquiesce to the wishes of the Trimble/Hambly family, parish councillors set about debating the matter on numerous occasions, paying for the parish clerk to undertake research, and even going into closed session. What they unanimously decided was to offer the family two options: to leave the memorial as it was or to engage a stonemason to add the words “ALSO KNOWN AS SAMUEL J TRIMBLE” below the existing names. The motion was proposed, seconded and agreed by all present at the meeting.

Marion, who was born in the village and served with the ATS during the Second World War, was baffled by the parish council’s “take it or leave it” stance.

Fortunately, however, the make-up of parish councils changes and, after a few years, commonsense prevailed.

And that’s how Marion, her sons, and a group of well-wishers came to be at Morval War Memorial this week to honour a man called Samuel John Trimble.

Speaking after the event,

Marion said: “On the day, we were very lucky with the weather and there were more people there than I expected. It all went off very nicely, with a nice vicar and a nice dedication, and the stonemason has done a lovely job. So everything has turned out okey-dokey and it’s nice to be able to finish off the story.

“But I must say that if it hadn’t been for the Western Morning News it would never have happened. I am so grateful to everyone involved.”

Samuel Trimble, who died in 1916 and whose name was incorrectly spelled on Morval war memorial until now. Top: Marion Hambly (nee Trimble) looks at a newly discovered photograph of her family – including Uncle Sam