Auntie Kate and Uncle Middle

#SticklepathOne #AllAboutThatPlace

This is the next instalment of the life of Kezia Ching, also known as Auntie Kate. Auntie Kate is my alter ego and she will be talking at the #AllAboutThatPlace event to celebrate our great genealogical and local history societies and the 10th anniversary of the Society for One-Place Studies.

You will have to imagine Auntie Kate’s Devonshire burr. “Now then me dearies I be going’ to tell ‘ee someat ’bout me firs’ ‘usband…”

Ooh, I loved them hats, I could alter the decorations and make it new for each occasion. Usually did it myself but for real special occasions I took it to Miss Finch who kept the milliners in Okehampton, on Fore Street there. I dare say that’s where I bought that one you see on the right.

This here soldier is my Crimean war veteran, Private William Middle.

We were married in 1898. There were murmurings of course – he were 40 years older than me. Older than my father indeed. Twas practicality and companionship really. I couldn’t have looked after him as a single woman, lived with him without being his wife.

Anyhow being married gave me a bit more respectability, and of course I had to give up my position and come home closer to Sticklepath. Eliza was my bridesmaid and William had Samuel Knight as his best man. So many gifts, twas very useful. William had lived in lodgings and I was in service, so we needed most things for the kitchen and so on. We went to live down Exbourne, rented a little place t’other side of Okehampton to start off, but that didn’t last long.

We soon came back to Sticklepath. We had a lovely little garden there next to the chapel – see me, a lady of leisure, sat there taking tea next to my husband, with a visitor!

Yer be our house, Farley Cottage, jus’ opposite chapel. That’s William, with our nieces – Phyllis and Muriel. Uncle Middle and Auntie Kate they called us. Well I suppose, being of senior years, using his surname showed the proper respect. He would have been ‘Uncle’ before we married cos his first wife were a Finch, a relation of the girl’s father. I, of course, sister to their mother Gina.

On high days, holidays and every Sunday, William would don his Crimea medals. People gathered each week before chapel or church and walked up and down the village greeting each other and chatting, sharing their latest news. William loved that, an audience for his stories of the war and how he helped with laying the first telegraph wire to America. In those days chapel was nearly always full and about 30 or 40 children would be there besides.

We all looked forward to the annual chapel outing and Sunday school anniversary. We had started having a few family picnics on Dartmoor by then too. And a bit later, 1920s we would all go in one of them Charabancs to Ilfracombe or Bude.