My New Profile Photo

I've decided that it's time for a new profile photo. The last one, of the Passingham ancestors, was a wee bit small and difficult to see. This one is of my Grandad holding me when I am about 15 months old. Grandad was an interesting man.....rather quiet, so different from my father even though the two of them were so physically alike. Grandad kept chickens and I remember this very early memory so well. I loved to help him feed the chickens but I didn't like it when he chopped their heads off in preparation for them becoming the day's meal. He and I spent hours with the chickens but once back indoors, I worried him constantly to go outside to see them again.

Grandad rolled his own cigarettes, as many in England did back then. I would watch him carefully lie a small amount of tobacco on the paper, then roll it up and he would lick the edge of the paper to make it stick. Although I didn't like the smell of the lit cigarettes, I did love the smell of the tobacco in its tin. He gave me an empty tin at one time and I saved all my English coins in it. Everytime I opened it to see the coins, I remembered him because of the smell of the tin. I still have that tin.

Grandad had a younger brother who also had the same name as he did. They were both named George James Carter, but Grandad was called George and his brother was called James. I've often wondered why my great-grandparents used the same name twice, but perhaps with twelve children, it was hard to be creative. They also later had two more boys, one of whom they named Albert and the other Bertie. I should think it lent itself to confusion as to who was who, because it certainly did for me when I researched my grandfather's siblings.

Grandad loved apples and he would take a large knife and cut them in sections while holding the apple in his hand. He would carve me off a section and we would share the apple together, making the kind of conversation that only a grandfather and granddaughter can have. My times with him were rare because from the time I was four until his death, he lived in England and I in the U.S., but I think of him fondly and remember him for the patience he showed to a little girl who loved him.