The Characters' Family Tree
This is a completely fictional family tree, which shows the relationships between the main human characters in Major Glad, Major Dizzy. It shows who has married who, where that marriage took place and the names of any children born subsequently. You can see that Amelia and William each have at least four direct descendants in the current generation: Florence, Gregory, Aaron and Geoffrey are the great, great grandchildren of Amelia. Billy, Milly, Erin and Layla are the great, great grandchildren of William. But the two branches of the family have moved apart over the years and may no longer know about each other, even though Richard and Susannah Edwards were their common ancestors. This fictional tree reflects many features common to genuine family trees covering the same period. For example, Richard and Susannah have met and married in a small English city in the midlands and moved to London in the second half of the nineteenth century, presumably to find work. Between 1841 and 1881 the population of London roughly doubled, to around four million people. But two generations later, Amelia’s descendants have chosen to move away from the capital and back to the countryside. Some of William’s descendents still live in Greater London, but they’ve moved south. Amelia and William both lived well into their sixties, which was a good age for the time, but their spouses were not so fortunate. Perhaps William’s wife, Edith, was a victim of the Spanish Flu epidemic, which swept through Europe in the wake of the First World War, claiming millions of lives. Of Amelia’s three children, only Winifred married and had children of her own. Her brother ‘Young Bill’ Blackler, who dreamt of inventing flying machines or horseless carriages, was instead a casualty of the Somme, in July 1916. Amelia’s grandson, Peter Sotheby married during the Second World War, but did not live to start a family with his wife Joyce. Meanwhile William’s granddaughter Amy Edwards was just a toddler when she went to stay in his old house over Christmas in 1940, and she had to be carried to the shelter when there was an air raid, leaving her special teddy behind. Fortunately, Amy, her teddy and the house survived – thanks to the prompt action of Majors Glad and Dizzy, hidden beneath the floorboards. |