My great aunt Maisie married Cedric Alfred Beacon in 1914. He was dead before I was born, but their story turns out to be quite a tumultuous one that I didn’t know much about until a week or so ago.

Cedric worked for a local store in Portsmouth, Wallace Ash Ltd., as a Publicist and Staff manager.  On the marriage certificate, he’s a “Furniture Dealer” – not entirely false, but somewhat puffed up in my opinion.

Cedric’s dead father, listed on the marriage certificate as a Clergyman and in the newspaper announcement as “…the late Rev. A. A. Beacon, Ph.D., M.A., etc….” was variously a schoolmaster and Train Inspector (assuming this is the right Mr. Beacon; this is a tangled family tree).

Perhaps it is how someone behaves that matters, not a minor gloss over awkward details or a little bit of aggrandizement. By that yardstick, Cedric doesn’t fare well at all.

Continue reading Maisie and Cedric Alfred – or is that Charles Archibald, or… →