A footballer in the family

I suspect many of us make similar mistakes when we start genealogy. We all seem to like to collect names. Sites like genes reunited seem to make play of having a big family tree and I know, from asking questions of people, that many have people on trees that are relatives of in laws – so not really related to them at all.

Well Joseph Frost is related to me but maybe he’s more distant than I’d bother too much about these days. He is a fourth cousin once removed. This means that we share less than 2% of our ancestry and we are therefore 98% not related. But here we’ll just hang on to that not quite 2% for I have a photo which I think is Joseph. It came from a book about Heathfield.

Young Frost is sitting on the right hand end of the middle row of three players. He was a member of the Heathfield United Football Club for the 1909-10 season. Heathfield is in East Sussex.

Joseph was born in about 1885 in Burwash. In 1911 he was living in Heathfield with his parents and a brother. Joseph was a house painter by trade.

However distant, it is lovely to find an image of a relative in a local history book.

The Firle Calendar – 2001

I didn’t visit Firle, in the 21^st century, until 2003. I think (memory does fail at times) that I bought the 2001 calendar very cheaply at the village shop. It contains twelve pictures of old Firle and one, in particular meant something to me.

But let’s start with the front cover.

Firle Beacon is the high point in this part of the world. It’s a nice image, but it was one of people that particularly interested me.

This is the Firle School football team of about 1952. I am related to one person in the photo and I knew another. Here’s the caption with the photo.

A Firle school football team c 1952.

Standing, 1 to r: Roy Quick, Ron Jordan, John Backshell, Mr Sheather, Roger Clayton, Cyril Toms, Dave Jones.

Front Row: Brian Ness, Ron Crouch, Ray Gravett, Mick Botting, Maurice Boxall, Emie Kemp, Julian Freeman.

I am related to Cyril Toms. He was the grandson of my Great Aunt Nellie

Cyril lived with his mum, dad and a couple of brothers at Crossways in Firle  but his mum died in the early 50s and his gran moved from her Wick Street house to help raise the family. I can’t say I knew Cyril well. He was ten years older than me and a 6 year old me had little in common with a 16 year old youth. His interests were normal for a person of his age but they meant little or nothing to much younger me.

The other person I knew was Julian Freeman. In fact he has featured before on this blog (click here).

Julian was the son of George Freeman, farmer of Glynde. He was part of the dynasty that had both Station Farm and The Furlongs – as tenant farmers.

Julian was always a rather quiet and shy youngster and although he must have been a similar age to Cyril, I felt more at home with this sensitive person who seemed to live for farming. Like his dad and his uncles, Dick and Harry, Julian has now died. He was very much part of the scene when we had our annual family camp at Furlongs.

As an aside, we can notice how much printing has improved in the 21^st century!