This has been something that has been on our minds for a while and we have finally decided to find Bernard.
As a family, we have always known there was another Uncle. We knew that back in the 1950s, my Great Grandparents had a son called Bernard who passed away at around the age of 4. But that was pretty much all we knew. We didn’t know his date of birth or even the month that he passed away.
So after almost 70 odd years, we decided to find him.
We knew the church yard that he was in. It was an unmarked grave and since great nan and grandad passed away years ago, we couldn’t ask them where Bernard was laid to rest. His death is tragic and it his life needed to be marked in some way and we needed to know where he is. Even if it was too only lay flowers. At 4 years old, his life was cut short and for 70 plus years, no one really knew where he was laid to rest.
So we got to work. We headed to the churchyard and there was a grave with the family name on. It was my Grandad’s Grandparents. Both died in the 40s and 50s so it worked out to be a similar time to when Bernard died. There was no record on the grave map in the church for where Bernard Taylor was buried.
The next step was Ancestry. It took me hours to find him on there but I did it. It then meant that we had a date of birth, a place of birth and a month and year that he passed away. There seems to be no record of the date that he passed away but the month of April of 1951. He was born in October of 1946 meaning he was 4 years old when he sadly passed away.
I then emailed the churchwarden who checked the records for me and 2 days later. We found him.
We now know the date that he was buried, 26th May 1951 and we know that he was most probably buried with his nan who died in the 40’s and then his grandad who died years after him. There is no record of this and they don’t know why. They know the date he was buried so they know that it happened in that churchyard and it only makes sense for him to be with his grandparents.
There is no mention of him on the grave or the stone and again, we dont know why.
Now that we know all of this though, 72 years after he passed away, he can be remembered with something on his grave. The plan is to get a little something to remember him and place it on the grave so everyone knows that he is there too.
It is tragic and heartbreaking.
But…
We found Bernard.
The Coastal Mummy 