hidden-metaphor

Manx Genealogy

Re: Message for Eric Gelling re: USA Gellings

Just a note to let you know that my grandfather John (Jack) Raisbeck Gelling was the eldest son of Robert Raisbeck Gelling. My father visited 'The Wood' at Streetly, which apparently became a monastery and a school but no longer exists. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham. In the First World War he joined the Warwickshire Yeomanry and then the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and Lancashire Fusiliers. He entered as a Private and emerged after amazing and horrific adventures as a captain. He fought at the Somme, Arras and other battles on the Western Front, apparently with a horse and a sword at one point. He was a keen sportsman and had a wide variety of jobs after the War. He married Winnifred French, my grandmother. He had three children: Una, Dilys and my father Neville. During the Second World War he was in the Home Guard. He was an honest man who lost his money to unscrupulous business partners and con-men. He died in 1976. He had four younger brothers: Philip, Douglas, Graham and Ewan. My father is a retired primary school teacher and headmaster, now living in Yelverton, Devon, age 78. His sister Una is in her late 90s and Dilys sadly died at a younger age of MS; both sisters had two children. My father and his wife had me and my brother, and we each have two children. Raisbeck has been lost from the surname. I live in Cornwall, UK but felt very at home when visiting Laxey, Isle of Man.