Continued:

In 1971 by the time Florence and I were able to make a trip to England to meet Mother’s side of the family there were only 6 of them left. But how they and their families fussed over us as we met for the first time. A trip to Churton on a double-decker bus was arranged for us, so we could meet the three family members who had moved into the former Post Office building from the Old Farm. This quaint old building where our Aunts had kept shop in bye-gone years looked to us to be very cozy. The broad beams across the low ceiling supported the upstairs floor in which a Square hole had been cut to accommodate the grandfather clock they had brought with them from Old Farm.

There in his own special chair sat our 84-year-old Uncle Arthur. I couldn’t help but say to him, “Our brother Ron looks just like you, the same build and a lovely smile which showed the teeth he was born with.” Our Aunt Emily, an invalid and survivor from her years of driving a bus during W.W.I, was lying on a couch beneath a woolen blanket, and although she didn’t rise to greet us she said, “how! nice” it was to finally meet her sister’s daughters after all these years. The other occupant, cheerful Aunt Hannah whose sight was so bad at the time, she later had the cataract operation which restored her sight made us feel at home. She soon had us seated at the table for a 4 o’clock tea which had been got ready by Auntie Ethel, who came up from Chester daily to cook and clean for these three elderly family members. Later that day Aunt Ethel and her brother John knowing how much we looked forward to seeing our Mother’s former home took us on a tour of Old Farm, which was just up the lane from where we had our tea.

The first thing that caught our eye as we stepped into the kitchen of that house was the picture that Mother had often talked about. It was called The First Easter Morn, and showed an angel with out spread wings, watching over two small children who were playing too near the edge of a cliff. It was just as Mother had so often described it to us, and we had a feeling that she knew we were here. As Auntie Ethel showed us through the several bedrooms in the upstairs part of their former home, now being looked after by the gardener, we saw that each one held a white enamel bedstead, complete with a straw filled mattress. Over in a corner stood a washstand, which had a large, decorated washbasin, jug and soap dish on it. Uncle John mentioned to us, that antiques such as these were being bought up and shipped out of the country, much to the concern of the English people.

After our sight seeing tour of Old Farm we went back to the post office to say goodbye to Mother’s people. Here Uncle Arthur gave us each what could have been a pound note, and our Aunties gave us some lovely hand embroidered tray covers of their own making. My cousin John Roberts of Victoria, B.C.paid a visit to Old Farm in 1985 and he says the outside of the house was just as he remembers it when he stayed there in 1925 “Grand-dad would lift me over the stile on the garden wall, so I could play in the cow pasture. The stile is gone but the three stone steps that led up to it are still there.” John mentions too, as my mother often did while remembering her old home, how one only had to lean out of an upstairs bedroom window to pick a pear from a tree.

While on this holiday to England John talked with one of the neighbors who had known the Clubbe family for many years. She gave him a 1913 picture of his Uncle John, dressed in the butler uniform he wore while at work in Eaton Hall. He later served in W.W.I with the Ambulance Division; he was shot and left for dead in a field. Mr. King a Historian let John see a copy of a John Clubbe’s will, which had been written in the year 1545. He also showed him a book of records showing that a John Clubbe was the first baby to be baptized in the new font at the church in the year 1662. Another lady he met said, She used to help out at the Post Office and that she had known all his aunts and uncles. In his letter to me, my cousin John said, a couple and their five children now live at Old Farm. They have a Free Hold lease on it, for which they paid the sum of 200,000 pounds, and they may not change the outside appearance of this dwelling, as it has been declared to be a Heritage House.

John goes on to say, ‘The Post Office still has its thatched roof, and the Vicar’s family were living there when I was on a holiday in 1985.

It was Florence’s idea that we take this trip to England, an idea, which I thought at the time, to be too far fetched to act upon: How-ever, my sister being the sort of person who did the impossible immediately, went ahead and made plans for us to be on a plane going out of Calgary on July 14, 1971, to begin this month long holiday in England. Little did I know at the time that in years to come I would recall to mind, for the benefit of our children, the things we saw and heard when searching for the roots of our ancestors. Thanks are due also to my Granddaughter Norene Cawthorn Reaume for the excellent reproduction work she did on the Clubbe pictures.