Woodstock, Ontario, December 1956

We often visited my mother's cousins who lived in Woodstock, Ontario. They had emigrated here from England in the late teens or early 1920s. This is a photograph of their family home. When most of the daughters, and one son, had married and moved away, and the elderly parents (Alice and Bill Holden) had died, there was only the one daughter left at home, that was Annie Holden, and she never married, so it became her home. Annie died the year she retired, I believe in her lawyer's office, of a stroke. My mother was with her at the time. Annie was always very nice to us, a truly kind person who attended a Baptist church, sang in the choir, and worked much of her life at Harvey Woods in Woodstock.



This is December 1956, just after our father died. Two boys, age ten and six, who have lost their father.

Here is my brother, my mother, and I, at Annie's.

Woodstock, December 1956.

The two photos above and the photo below, probably taken at Bud Karn's farm. Bud's wife was Bertha Karn, one of Annie's sisters, their daughters Katherine and Patty. That's my brother, Bertha's daughter Kathryn Karn (KK), myself in the hood, and Michael or Billy Davis (the sons of Jennie and Arnold Davis, another sister of Annie's).

Here is Annie's house, in Woodstock, perhaps spring 1957.

A few years pass and we're still visiting Woodstock, now it's 1962-1963.