Welcome to the Jenkinson family:
Photo: Gail and Father
I started researching my family and realized how woefully little I knew about them. I hope Jenkinsons around the world will help flesh out this family tree. I have given some personal details, for the story I uncovered is a tragic one which impacted on many lives.
I have very little to go on so we will paste some photos and what we have and start a lift off.
Henry Herbert Jenkinson(1898?) of Prestwich m Margaret Tasker born/09/1903
They had one child Henry Jenkinson (born 14/03/1929 died 27/3/1998). His father was killed in 1933, by a woman in an automobile who mistook the brake for the accelerator. Young Henry was three and a half years old.
He grew up not knowing his Father's family, although they were involved in his life. His mother brought him up Protestant, although she was Jewish and he was lived in the predominately Jewish area of Manchester, Chetham Hill. At 14 the Jenkinsons tried to make him a ward of court. His mother Margaret Tasker, was a matron at a hospital and her sister, Eddie took the majority of care of the boy. Eddie was married to Billy Mac.
Margaret and her son had a difficult relationship, worsened by her spendthrift ways and remarriage to Welshman William Davies Williams. Harry's stepfather was a Catholic. Can you imagine all these religous beliefs in one house? Eddie spent some time hiding from reality, so the young Harry was not a happy child. There were other Taskers, Jimmy, Florence and Mary. Florence had a daughter Pauline.
Henry had a fierce interest in motorbike riding and fell in love with a fellow bike rider's sister Jeanette Healer. Unfortunately his mother detested Jeanette and she ended up marrying another. This was one of the greatest regrets of his life. He adored Jeanette's father, Jack, possibly because he lacked one. He considered Jack and took to copying him with dancing and playing with children.
Photo:
Henry and Beatrice getting married.
Henry (Harry) married Beatrice Healer, Jeanette's younger sister in Manchester Lancashire at St Peters. They had a still born son, Howard and a daughter, Gail Williams. It was not a love match for either of them, both were in love with other people.
The marriage was troubled, but they both were friends. In 1964 they relocated to Brakpan in South Africa. Harry was following a woman he had emotional ties with unknown to Beatrice. Within the year this resulted in a messy divorce, in which Beatrice, terrified of the future, ran off with another man. Gail next saw her father in 1973, when she was returned as a emotionally and physically abused teenager.
Gail had experienced a terrible civil war in Rhodesia, seeing many of her friends brutally killed and maimed. The transition to suburbia in an Apartheid ruled South Africa was traumatic for her.
Henry had a son
Marc, by Johanna Roberts, an Afrikaner he married before the ink on his divorce
papers was dry.
His hate towards
Beatrice was so intense that he would not allow her to attend Gail's wedding on
pain of him refusing his consent for her to marry.
Photo Harry, Marc and Johanna
The teenage Gail was quickly shown that she had no place in her Father's new life by Johanna, even on his death she was not acknowledged as his daughter by his family.
Gail married David Gibson and had three girls, to find out about them follow the Gibson link. They live in Germiston with five dogs and Gail's mother in a happy, erratic family. Gail's unhappy childhood has been used in a positive way .to improve the future. The family are very involved with the post Apartheid community. Her motto: "Reality sucks, deal with it!" She certainly has!
Marc married and had a son. His family moved to Dubai after his father's death. Johanna is living alone in Brakpan.