Violet

Violet was born in Burton-on-Trent in 1887; her husband Gerard was born in 1871, also in Burton-on-Trent, where he worked, and where they lived until he retired in 1925, when they moved to Surrey. 

They had married in 1906, and had two sons, Gervas, born in 1907, and Ralph, born in 1908.

In 1930, Gervas came down from Oxford, and went out to Northern Rhodesia (NR) in the Provincial Administration of the NR Government.

Ralph qualified as an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer, and while training at Faraday House he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve.  When War broke out in 1939, Ralph was called up, and ended up in the Middle East, running an establishment assemblng Spitfires shipped in crates round the Cape from Britain.

In late 1945, Gervas and his family - wife Betty and four children, Gill (8), Robin (6), Nigel (3) and Crispn (1), returned to England on three month's leave.  Ralph was de-mobbed, and looking for a job.  At the suggestion of his elder brother Gervas, Ralph applid for, and accepted, a post with a copper mining company in NR,  designing and supervising the construction of underground pumping chambers.

With both their sons based in the town of Kitwe in NR, and life in post-War Britain being somewhat difficult, Violet & Gerard emigrated to NR, where they had a house built, also in Kitwe.

Gerard died in 1955 and is buried in Kitwe.  Violt received many letters of condolence; the ones she kept are listed here.

Gervas was posted to Livingstone, and Ralph - now married to Diana, with children Mary (b. 1961), Peter (b. 1952) and Robert (b. 1956) - was posted to Johannesburg, and then to Salisbury (now Harare), so Violet then moved to a new house she had built in Salisbury.  A decade later, with UDI and retirement, the entire family returned piecemeal to Somerset, where Violet died in 1987, aged 96, in the arms of her daughter-in-law Betty, with whom she had been living for the last few years.