Photos Looking For A New Home
In the November issue, I was very interested to read the article on dating family wedding photographs. I have a collection of photographs that include 11 wedding photos. They belonged to my mother’s friend Mrs Abbiss, who passed away in 1978.
In 2011 my mother was unwell, so we decided to bring
her back to Birmingham. Among her belongings was a box with more than 100 photographs plus passports, travel tickets, a death certificate, letters, postcards, Second World War identity cards and an address book with death dates and some notes dating from the war, all from Mrs Abbiss.
I have been researching my own family history for years so I decided that I would put an Abbiss tree on ancestry.co.uk, hoping to find her relations. From my research, I found out
that Ethel Ida Holland was born on 1 January 1891 in Belper, Derbyshire, to Thomas William Holland and Ada Martha Smith; the couple also had two sons: James and Aubrey Holland. A postcard in the box confirmed that by 1907 the family had left Derby and moved to Saltley, Birmingham, perhaps for work because Thomas worked on the railway. Ethel married twice, first to an Ernest Nathaniel Thurston in 1927 – it was his second marriage. Ernest sadly died on Christmas Day 1936, and they didn’t have any children. Then in 1939 Ethel married Aubrey Vernon George Abbiss. There were no children from this marriage, so I decided to look at Ethel’s two brothers. Both brothers married, but they don’t appear to have had any children.
I scanned all the photographs and added them to the tree including the unnamed photos, hoping someone might contact me. Over the years, I have had some people contact me for information. I contacted a lady
from Australia about a photo of James Albert Holmes with his wife Mary Holmes née Holland and children, and it turned out we both had a copy of the same photo! The photographs are a real pleasure to view; I wish that they were of my family members.
I absolutely love the wedding photographs that were in the box, which show the style of dresses and hats though the decades. The article helped me to date the photos, but sadly only about 20 of them are labelled.
Audrey Ryan, by email
EDITOR REPLIES: Well done for all your effort in trying to find a family to return the photographs to. If anyone has a connection to the Abbiss family and wants to get in touch with Audrey, do write in to us.