It is always a little difficult to know where to start when designing a family history project.
Do I start at the beginning - as far back as I can go, which in this case is around the mid 1700's?
Or do I start at the end, as I know it today, with the latest grandchild?
I decided that I would start with myself, as that is where the idea for this project was born. I will then develop both my family and my wifes family, back as far as I have been able, and then bring both families forward with people and family trees, to present day.
My father was Roland Frank EADES, and my mother was Edith Fanny BULLOCK.
I was their second child, born in Stourbridge in the county of Worcestershire as it was then. My father was a labourer working in the motor industry at Longbridge near Bromsgrove when he was married, and my mother was in service at Sandhampton Cottage, Astley.
One puzzle I have not been able to solve is how my father came to know my mother. The village of Fairfield, near Bromsgrove, where my father lived, is some 14 miles from Astley where my mother worked and lived. By todays standards that is not far - one can travel that distance in around 20 to 25 minutes. But in 1937 the two villages were small country villages, and people in the professions of my mother and father did not own any motorised transport. They walked, used bicycles, or public transport - if there was any.
But meet they did, and were married in August 1937.