In my last blog that I wrote about my great grandmother Rose Tozer, I mentioned that her father William Frederick Tozer died when she was only two years old.
When I first started researching my family history about 40 years ago Rose Tozer's birth certificate was one of the first documents that I ordered, at the time I was living with my parents in Bedford, England. All of my grandparents were from Hull in East Yorkshire so I was surprised to discover that Rose was born in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. Since Wellingborough is located quite close to Bedford we decided to visit the cemetery there on a Sunday afternoon on the off chance that maybe we might find a gravestone of one of Rose's family.
It was quite a large cemetery so when we arrived we spread out in different directions, to be honest I didn't even know whether the Tozer family had lived in Wellingborough for long and whether they were living there when William Frederick died, in fact I didn't know at the time when he had died. It was a lovely surprise then, when after only ten minutes of searching my Dad and younger sister Kim called over that they had found a grave stone of William Frederick Tozer!
William had died in 1872 so it was just over a hundred years after his burial that his great Grandaughter, my mum, and his great, great granddaughters were able to stand before his grave. It was a lovely grave, with the words " In affectionate remembrance of William Frederick Tozer who died 15 May 1872 aged 32 years."
Underneath were written the words " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord"
William Frederick was a painter and decorator so I always wondered whether he had fallen off his ladder or something but after ordering his death certificate I found out that he died of Otitis (an ear infection) of two weeks which had then spread to the brain. This was in the days long before antibiotics and must have been excruciatingly painful.
In my next blog I will share more about William Frederick Tozer, his family and his occupation.
