Rob's Nan died back in May and Rob helped his parents to finish clearing out the flat this week as it has been sold. He came back on Tuesday with a case of old photos and documents and things. I love this sort of stuff as I love tracing the family tree and this sort of things is gold-dust to a genealogist. Rob really appreciates this and so as no one else really wanted this stuff, he brought it home.
There is a small A5-size leather album amongst the things and when you open it, it belonged to Lillie who was Rob's great-grandmother who died before he was born. The first page begins with a poem about peeping into the book and how you must also make an entry in there if you do. It's dated 1901 and is in beautiful handwriting. As you go through the book each page is done by a different person and contains either a poem, a saying, a drawing or painting and they are all done by hand and signed by the person who did it.
It turns out that Lillie trained to be a teacher at a college in Hertfordshire and it looks like when she left in 1901 she got all her fellow students to have a page in her book where they expressed themselves and wrote a little good luck and farewell message to her. It's the most beautiful book I've ever seen and I was almost in tears reading through it. I can't imagine people today taking such time and thought to create such touching and beautiful pages.
We are lucky as there are some later pages and one from her brother (who we didn't even know existed) and from an uncle. I wonder what they would all have thought if they'd known that over 100 years after they wrote in the book it would be read by Rob and I?
It's certainly something to treasure.
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