By Linda Brand
This article was published in the December 2017 edition of Soul Search, the Journal of The Sole Society
Just to show it is sometimes still possible to find photos many years after thinking them lost…
The first photo is of my Great Grandfather Charles Sole and his first wife, Sarah Rayner, on their wedding day in 1869.
Charles Sole and Sarah Rayner on their wedding day, 1869
It was thought that no photo of her existed as she died in 1873 when they had only been married four years. However she had a daughter and a son and the daughter, Ella Rosetta, emigrated to the USA with her husband and their son taking this photo with her. The second photo was taken on the day they all set sail on the SS Baltic, a white Star line ship (this was less than a year after the Titanic sank).
Ella Rosetta Sole and husband Charles Driver with son Ernest on the day they set sail for America.
A copy of the original photo was given to me one hundred years later by Sarah’s great grand daughter, Beverley – see below beside her grand parents’ grave.
Ella Rosetta Driver (nee Sole) and husband Charles Driver’s grave stone with grand daughter Beverley Driver Eddy beside it.
If you are in touch with relatives overseas, it is worth asking about photos and other artefacts, you never know what they might have !!!!