Wish You Were Here

A scruffy card kept with reverence for 130 years. It is one of only two remaining items of correspondence between my great great grandfather and his cousin John, who emigrated to the USA in 1834. The cousin arrived in the USA a poor man, and died very wealthy, having become a well known building contractor in Chicago. John Sollitt, the sender of the card, was a carpenter trained by his maternal grandfather in Yorkshire. John's father, was a descendent of refugee Huguenots. He worked as stone mason on restorations of York Minster and Westminster Abbey. The town of Sollitt is now just a small blip to the south of metropolitan Chicago, but John Sollitt paid for the railway line to go through this small settlement, so they named it after him. John lost his first two wives to cholera and married his third wife in his 60s and lived until he was 81. He raised 11 children.  Charles, my great great grandfather died relatively young, aged 58, only 6 months after he received this card. T...

In 1914, just before the outbreak of the Great War, a 20 year old woman set sail from Liverpool to Canada.  She had grown up on the estate of a large stately home. She was already an experienced parlour maid and she was now venturing to join the staff of a wealthy industrialist in Ontario. Her eldest brother was already working for him, and he paid for her passage. Her mother thought she would never see her again. In fact, for the next 70 years she travelled that sea route many times to visit her home village, bringing her new husband to meet her siblings. This young woman was my great aunt, and she emigrated alone on the RMS Alaunia. The Alaunia had only been launched a few months earlier, and was one of three ships built for Cunard in 1913 on the Clyde. Her maiden voyage was in December of 1913. Two months later my great aunt sailed with her to start her new life. She must have been very mindful of the iceberg terror when sailing into Canadian waters; icebergs that had sunk the T...