Genealogy Chat

Please can someone advise me about this? My grandfather died before I was born and we do not have his medals. I have his military records on ancestry. Is it possible to obtain replicas of some kind?
Any advice appreciated - thank you.
jan

Hi Jan,

You can get full size or miniature copies and a number of places do them.
A UK google search will give you quite a choice.

Ruth

Thanks Ruth and Joan.
What a pity I can't get "proper" replacements, though I can see why not really.
Thank you for the info.
Regards
jan

You cant replace any medals before WW2 under any circumstances

If you Google Poppy Medal Framing you will find a good company who do replica and replacement medals and also supply authentic frames and glass from the right era for the medals ordered.

They are not cheap but do a great job.

Kath. x

but they are only generic replicas, right?

ie, not copies of grandfather's medals that he actually received, which might have had his name on the rim of them?



My aunt by marriage burnt "everything to do with them" after her husband died in 1991

That included all photographs, papers ........ and the medals my grandfather was awarded in WW1


Her rationale was "there was no-one interested".

My brother and I were the only grandchildren, and my brother had died in 1990, so I was the only grandchild alive ....... but she never wrote to ask me if I wanted any of the family documents etc.


I'd left contacting her about things until about 6 months after Uncle Jack died because I didn't want to upset her by seeming ghoulish .......................................


she's still alive, she was only in her early 70s when Jack died ....... but one can't say too much can one?? Especially when you live in another country.



sylvia

Thanks everyone. Not sure what to do really - might see if anyone does inscriptions, but you are right Sylvia, it's not the same. It's terrible what happened to your family heirlooms, I can't believe what people will do. My Dad and his sister were orphaned when they were 10 and 14. You would think their Aunts who took them in would have let them have their father's stuff wouldn't you? But it seems not.
Jan

Hi Sylvia,

I suppose the effect of grief can hit people long after the original pain has gone leaving a raw wound which is easily re-opened.
Whether destroying, rather than passing memories on to family members is preferable, remains something we will probably never know unless we ourselves encounter a similar situation.
It 's certainly soul destroying when we look back at the amount of information that may have been considered "uninteresting" and destroyed.

At least we have the knowledge and the opportunity to ensure that similar actions are not repeated, preserving what we have for future generations....... if they want it.

My wife's great uncle died in Flanders, totally disappearing from all family history inferring that his relatives merely closed that chapter in their lives and moved on.
Really sad but probably quite a common occurrence given all that was going on at the time.
Obviously he resurfaced when I became involved in her family tree, but we have been unable to find anything materially relating to him in boxes etc.
Our search was hindered by by the death of an uncle who after re-marrying, died leaving his wife to do exactly what Sylvia described.................
I have purchased photgraphs of great uncle's war grave from the following site.....

http://www.twgpp.org/

and I intend to order a replacement from Kathleen's site which will make up a nice keepsake for my mother-in-law..........she was quite devastated when I showed her my findings.

Frank

grandfather was not killed in WW1, he was injured and was in hospital in Bahrein, but he lived until 1963 and I remember him well.

But he never talked about his war experiences ........ or in fact about anything before the current day.

I only found out he had several siblings when I started this genealogy lark, and I only found the details of his war service last November when the last records were posted on ancestry.


But you may be right in some aspect

.................... Uncle Jack and his wife bore the brunt of caring for my grandfather and his mentally handicapped son after my mother died in 1961. They lived in their own house, but Edie and Jack only lived 2 streets away, she cooked a hot meal for them evey day and took it up there, and Jack made sure the house was clean.

Even so ......... one of the contributory factors to grandfather's death was malnutrition, or so his death certificate says.

Harry died in 1963, as I just said, the son Norman died in May 1990 just 4 months before my own brother died.


My mother had carried the brunt of the care from 1954 when grandmother died until her death .............. taking 2 buses from the other side of town every week, taking Norman to Christie's cancer clinic in Manchester, etc etc, even though she was working and had a family to care for.

After her death ................. well, I was at uni in Liverpool and then emigrated, and my brother lived the other side of Manchester. Dad had his own family problems.


So Edie may well have felt some resentment at having been forced into this situation ......... and felt that no-one else was interested. She never expressed it though.

I went back for my brother's funeral, and saw Jack and Edie ....... neither of them mentioned anything about any family documents etc or asked if I would like them. They just said they had sold the "family" house ... which they had bought from my brother and I after grandfather's death




anyway, it's all water under the bridge now isn't it?



sylvia

Hi Sylvia, I suppose that life is full of what ifs?

I can remember feeling quite sad when mum, dad and my brothers and sisters emigrated to the South of France selling up everything in Glasgow.
I was working in Perth on a seasonal job planning to join them in November, but it never worked out for them and they all came back.
Unfortunately, all of my personal stuff from my youth vanished between the two upheavals leaving me at 20 years old with no "past"

Really strange to lose all my things, but my parents felt that as I was working away from home, I wasn't interested..............

I would love to get copies of my great uncle's WW1 medals. Who is buried at Le Treport France. My great grandfather came to Australia with nothing - no past, no history, only his son and 2nd wife. So it was only when I started this family history stuff that I found a whole new family that we never knew existed. Strange as to why he cut everyone off. But there you go.