Remembrance Day Lest We Forget: Jabez Fletcher and Rosetta Farrow (of the Farrows Peas family and we always keep a tin in the cupboard) were married at Whaplode, Lincolnshire in 1878. On the 1881 census they were living at Broadgate House, Whaplode Drove and had 2 young daughters. For no apparent reason Rosetta then left home and no one could find her, (I do wonder if she had post natal depression). Jabez needed help, so hired 17 year old Sally Thorpe from across the road as a housekeeper. The years went by and Sally’s job description increased as she bore Jabez four more children. In January 1901 Jabez opened the door to a friend who told him that his wife Rosetta had been found, (this must have been a panic moment for Jabez)! The friend said he had seen the undertaker at Boston Workhouse who was burying Rosetta. Jabez and Sally were married on the 13th June 1901 and their last child Marjorie was born on Christmas Eve that year. They were my Great Grandparents and I was named after my Great Grandmother. When war was declared, their eldest son Ben was needed for the farm, so the youngest son Oliver had to fight for his country. Sadly he died on the 28th January 1918 in Simla, India. He had made a friend of a young man in the hospital bed next to him, Charles from the East End of London and it was Charles who took Oliver’s belongings back to Whaplode Drove, met Oliver’s sister, my Grandmother and married her in 1926. I do think of my Great Uncle Oliver because had he not died in the War, would I have been born?
Thanks to Sally McDonald George
