My great-grandmother Edith Sarah Marshall was born in 1887 in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Her English parents were living in India, where her father Frederick worked as a mathematical instrument maker for the Survey of India agency of the British Raj.

In 1893, when Edith was just 5 years old, her father died of fever, and the family returned to England. By 1901, Edith was a “resident scholar” at The Crossley and Porter Orphan Home and School in Halifax, York. At the same time her five siblings were living with their mother, an hour away by train in Leeds.

After completing her schooling, she was working as a photographer’s assistant and living again with her mother and siblings in Coventry. There she met Albert Joseph Anderton, who she married in 1912. He worked as an insurance agent for Prudential, but after serving in World War I (where he was shot three different times within a fortnight that resulted in him being discharged as “no longer physically fit for war service”) they started a grocer’s wholesale business in Coventry.

Edith and Albert had four children, three sons and a daughter. Their eldest son died in World War 2 serving in Egypt as a driver. Their other sons returned from World War 2 and joined their father in the wholesale business founding A. J. Anderton & Sons in 1947 (which lasted until the mid 90s). Their daughter (my paternal grandmother) married a Scotsman and moved to Glasgow.

Albert had health problems and died in 1949 aged 60. Edith lived into her 80s dying in 1971. Together they had four kids, nine grandkids, 15 great-grandkids that I know about so far, and a large number of great-great-grandkids that I couldn’t even begin to count.