We had a good time in the Cotswolds at the weekend. On Saturday we had a party with about 35 relatives from the WALKER and ELLIOTT families – the biggest gathering that I can think of, on that side of my family, in quite some time – both in size and breadth.
I spent a lot of time looking through family documents, after my aunt handed me an old wooden box stuffed full of old papers, including the ones I mentioned in an earlier post, that I previously had transcriptions of. I’ve brought that box home to have the time to really go through it, and I hope to be posting images and transcriptions of many interesting family documents from that box onto this site in due course.
Discussing family history with others in the WALKER family, it was clear that there is a great deal of interest in a couple of particular individuals in the WALKER family tree.
- James Hope WALKER (my great-uncle) was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), no. 38 (Reserve) Squadron, who died in a flying accident at Rendcomb airfield, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, aboard a Bristol Fighter – F2A A3311, on 16th March 1917.
- John Johnston WALKER (one generation further back) went out to New Zealand in 1869 where he was manager of a large sheep station at Edendale, near the southern tip of South Island. In 1877 he decided to start on his own and took up a virgin block on the Otamakapua Block, North Island. In 1891 he went to Feilding for treatment of a severe attack of fever, and died at Feilding, on 19th November 1891.
So these might be the subjects of some future blog posts here, either by me, or by other family members. We certainly have quite a few photos of James Hope WALKER, and of what appears to be his crashed plane, which I plan to scan and add to this site.
A Family History Blog 