Nature abhors (Hates) a Vacuum. An empty space in our knowledge will also be filled in with truth or a best guess. When you asking questions of those who have gone ahead you yearn for the missing parts of the puzzle.
Oddly maps help, at least in relationship to the scale of your ancestors adventures. My pre-birth history, in this window of time, covered and area of about 100 miles – the distance from Birmingham to Pontypool and today using the M5 you can cover it comfortably in 2 hours. But boy, a lot happened in that little plot on a map. Grandpa George Raymond Grundy was born in Worcester, England(find it on the Map – Look for Worcester) on January 26, 1881. Grandma Grundy would be born in Droitwich, Worcestershire (look just a little bit above Worcester), on April 2nd 1883. Grandpa Grundy would live for 82 years and Grandma Grundy would live for (best guess) 80 years. They were born eight miles apart and how they found one another is a foggy story.
Grandpa Thomas was born in Sellack, a small community in Hereford, Herefordshire, England (Can you find Hereford? Now can you find the Wye River – it is light blue and start in Hereford and ends in the M5)) right in an elbow of the Wye River on February 20, 1887, thirteen years out of the nineteenth century. Grandma Thomas was born in South Wales in April 19, 1887. Can you find Wales?
Now let’s find a common link for both families, 1910 works – stick a pin in that year to note it, in many ways that when WE began.
The 6th of May 1910 was an important day for the King George V on the right. His grandmother Queen Victoria had ruled for 53 years (Victorian Period), his father had ruled for almost ten years (Edwardian Era) and now it was George Frederick Ernest Albert(I’d go with George, too) turn. He was in for a ride.
King Edward VII (Father) and King George V (Son of Edward and Queen Elizabeth’s Grandfather)
When you look at a block of time closely, say from 1910 t0 1920 a rush of events come into focus. You would see: The sinking of the Titanic, the establishment of both Standard time and Daylight Savings which rapidly became the international standards, both the Boy and Girl Scouts were founded, the last Emperor of China is replaced by Sun Yat-sen’s Republicans, Henry Ford establishes the concept of of the Assembly Line and determines that $5 dollars is a good days wages, World War 1 starts in 1914 and would last for four years, the Russian Revolution would establish a first try at Communism, Women would get the vote and America establishes the Income Tax system, the Telephone becomes available and Jerusalem is captured from the Turks. Winston Churchill in July of 1910 was assigned to investigate the Mormons. 1. All these things in just ten years, but if you magnify history to a personal level it seems to go out of focus, particularly when you try to see it through the fog of two generations and all the representatives of both generations are gone and you have a handful of pages, written by some of them, to that try to capture what happened, you end up with vapors – a lot more questions than answers, but you do find your heart turning to the fathers and mothers of your past.
For my Grandpas Grundy and Thomas 1910, just like for King George the 5th was a big year. The Grundy’s had joined the Church in 1909 and were green members. The Thomas’s join the Church in 1910 and hit the ground running. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will link the Thomas’s and Grundy’s from here on, although they were still be 100 miles apart. Next to the Church three things would impact them – Coal, the first World War and their kids.
Coal was king in South Wales and may have began its assent to the throne when Romans began to mine coal in 78 AD. But, unknown to the miners, as early as 1904 there began a quiet movement from coal to oil for the ships of the Royal Navy. One of the arguments for Naval Assault on Gallipoli was they would only be risking coal burning ships. At the height of coal production, there were over 160 drift mines (mines that follow the drift or seam of the coal) and over 30 shafts working the nine seams in the Blaenavon locality. Big Pit alone employed some 1,300 men digging a quarter of a million tons of coal a year (Today it is a National Mining Museum). Large amounts of coal were needed to supply the local
ironworks, as it took 3 tons of coal to produce a ton of iron. Blaenavon ‘steam’ coal was of high quality and it was exported globally. Burning hotly while leaving minimum ash, it was ideal to power the steam engines that drove steamships, Dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy and steam locomotive railways across the world.
Now coal is buried under the ground in layers or seams. You can use coal to heat your home or cook your food. It burns slower than wood and hotter, too. Coal is still a major source for energy electricity in the United States. We still mine coal in Utah.
Man has been mining coal for 5,000 years. So all the easy to get coal is long since gone. To get coal today and in Grandpa’s day you had to “go down the pit.” As you can see the “seam” might be visible on the side of a hill or just below the surface and you would pick your way down the vein wherever it went.
A Coal Seam, the grey black Vein or layer above
Early Methods for getting the Coal
I guess it was feeding and raising kids from 1910 to 1914, then our genetics was joined by war. But During this First World War The Royal Warwickshire Regiment raised 30 battalions. Three of these, 14th, 15th and 16th (Service) Battalions, were raised in September 1914 from men volunteering in Birmingham. These units were additionally entitled 1st, 2nd and 3rd City of Birmingham Battalions, and were known as The Birmingham Pals. Grandpa joined up and became corporal.
World War I (WWI) was a global war centered in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It was the fifth-deadliest conflict in world history – 9 million combatants were killed. And my Mom’s Dad, Grandpa Grundy was in it. It was an ugly war. Grandpa Thomas dug coal, they needed the fuel for the war effort. Note too both Grandpa Thomas and Grandma Thomas were born during this war – 1916 and 1917.
This is the Symbol of the Battalion and a young Birmingham pal, not Grandpa in uniform.
Grandpa Grundy was here. A Pals Battalion is defined as a unit raised by a local authority or private body which undertook to organize, clothe, billet and feed about a 1000 recruits. Another thing that is interesting, is some military leave allowed you to go home. Quick skip over the “pond” – the English Channel and you were home. Can you imagine how hard it would be to go back?
Birmingham Pals on the Somme 1916
They fought in trenches and mud.
My mother said that the Holy Ghost saved Grandpa’s life many times. He had been a member of the Church for four + years when the war started. She said that once grandpa and his men were hunkered down in a bomb crater like the ones above filled with water. The Spirit whispered to him – “Moved to another crater” and Grandpa told his men that they better move, but they were afraid to move so Grandpa said he was moving and he did and his men followed him. Just as they were all safe in another crater a bomb exploded in the very crater they had been hiding in. Another one of Birmingham’s sons that went to this war was JRR Tolkien. Although he managed to forestall his enlistment until 1916 so he could finish his schooling, he did experience the nightmare world of the Somme and Trench warfare. He described it this way – “. . .. in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.” 2.
This is J R R Tolkien as a soldier and this is the school he went to as a child King Edward’s School in Birmingham. Grandma Violet Thomas went to the same school, but on the girl’s side.
Tolkien was irreversibly changed by the war. All his school friends were killed by the war and he only escaped because he got “Trench Fever” along with A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh) and C. S. Lewis (Narnia). But living in the underground would have a significant impact on him. Years later when he was correcting a student’s paper on an empty page he felt prompted to write – “in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” and was left wondering what’s a Hobbit? 3.
It’s odd to think that Middle Earth, Bilbo and Gandalf might have been germinated in the mud of the Somme of France in World War I.
When you study Welsh coal mining, the first world war and the LDS Church in Britain the empty spots fill in a bit, but never enough.
I remember both sets of grandparents. We’d visit Grandpa and Grandma Thomas in Provo and Grandma Forward lived upstairs (I have no memory of her for she was secreted away upstairs), we were told she had died, but as small kids we had no comprehension of what that meant.
But after Grandpa Thomas died, we noticed he was gone and we’d visit grandma Thomas in Springville, even my older kids remember her and her Bakestones. Grandma Thomas would be a widow for a long time.
When we moved to America my family lived with Grandpa and Grandma Grundy for a while.
That’s my cousin Bill and me sitting on the front porch. The house was right on Holladay Blvd. right below Mount Olympus.
How they looked when they came to America.
How they looked in 1963.
I have vivid memories of them and their home and when I went to England on my mission I visited them once in 1963 and I visited Grandma Grundy in the hospital about the same time and was there for grandma’s and grandpa’s Grundy’s funerals. But my knowledge is limited, I knew them as a small child and later for a moment, as an untested young adult, who was so self preoccupied I didn’t even know the questions to ask. And so the lack of knowledge, that only they could fill in, is a vacuum that my heart and mind would love to fill in. I have whiffs, even flashes of memories that almost link together and almost focus, but not quite. The empty space yearns to be filled.
But this may seem strange, but as I try to remember a meaningful mirage appears, spaces vaguely fill in and my heart turns to the fathers (and mothers). It is truly strange to look at these pictures of my grandparents and realize they are my age. The unanswered questions are there now.
I have this memory of laying in my bed in my early teens, just awakened to hear my dad preparing to walk into the darkness of a new day. My 73 year old mental eyes and ears perceive this rush of flickering impressions differently now. I know the fears, the anxieties of a provider and protector. I have faced the lions, and tigers and bears of fatherhood. I know the fear of not knowing if or how I will provide and keep them all safe. If I could I’d I like to reach back embrace and comfort my dad and tell him – “It will be alright, the Father of us all – knows and will kindly give you a route through.” I like to thank him for setting an example of courage for me of how get up and get out and get it done. I’d like my dad to know that my eyes, the eyes of a peer look back and know not only how well he did, but how well he wanted to do it and that as I write his story the autocorrect of common experience is painting a story that he would touch by and proud of.
Now back to 1910. The poem below is the reflections of a man who wanted to comfort a nation who had just lost their king. This seems to fit here.
Death Is Nothing At All
A Response to the death of Edward the 7th – 1910 By Henry Scott-Holland
Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.
All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again! 4.
1. This is a most interesting investigation. See what he found out – http:// www.sltrib.com/blogs/4028652-155/churchill-yes-that-churchill-
2. Tolkein’s Letter 66 is referenced here http://www.tolkiensociety.org/ author/biography/
3. Same reference look under the Sub Title Story Teller – http:// www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/
4. Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/death-is-nothing-at- all-by-henry-scott-holland
This seems to fit here too. This is product of a script writer, the event never happened. But it should have….. Uncle Walt Disney told us the way the story should gone over and over again and filled our hearts with healed fathers even healed animal fathers over and over again.
This is how Walt Disney retold his father’s story. All Elias Disney wanted was to be a successful businessman, so Walt made a world where he is. Elias’s business office is right at the front of Main Street USA.
