#52Ancestors “Close to Home”

One of my Genealogy goals this year, is to try and complete the wonderful Amy Johnson Crow’s wonderful challenge of writing about 52 Ancestors over 52 weeks.

This week’s topic is “close to home”. My first thought was to my own Grandfather Horace Frank Chiddicks.

There is so much to my Dear old Grandads story of hardship, loss, pain and suffering, something I find difficult to convey into a story. His full story is probably best told another day, but in keeping with the theme of “close to home”.

My grandfather was Horace Frank Chiddicks, born 21^stAugust 1907, in the family home, in Grays, Essex. Horace was the seventh child of nine, born to William Chiddicks and Caroline Rosina Keyes. As with many families, Horace lived all his life in one town, Grays and he married his bride, my Nan, Eileen Marguerite Day in 1934. Having moved into the new modern Council House (I think today’s politically correct term is “social housing”), when it was first built in 1937, he was too spend his entire life living in the one house until he died in 1986, a total of 47 years in the one house.

What would be totally amazing today, was that he spent his entire working life working within a bike ride distance of this house, as he never learned to drive a car. Truly remarkable in this day and age! A true testimony of being “close to home”.