I have fallen way behind schedule today and what I have to say about the chosen people will have to be added piecemeal over the next week or so.

Update 5 July

After his wife Ellis Ann died, John HOLMES placed a cross on her grave that also remembered his parents George and Mary née SIMPSON. That monument survives intact but a companion cross for daughters Maude and Hilda, “two of God’s chosen flowers”, has disappeared. The inscription on the base isn’t easy to read or photograph.

Hilda lived for ten days (EYFHS) or sixteen (Crimlisk Survey). A flower container remembering the girls’ brother Thomas (aka Dasher), 1906-1970 has disappeared.

Filey Genealogy & Connections has a more complete Holmes pedigree than FamilySearch, though Hilda is missing. The Shared Tree offers three versions of their father but none have married Ellis Ann yet.

Update 8 July

At birth, Kate HOLDSWORTH was given the middle name Elizabeth, but she seems not to have used it, judging by later available sources. She was the second Kate to marry Robert Samuel MASSIE, a draper from Barnsley. Robert had lived a settled life in West Yorkshire, possibly bringing Kate the First to live in his inherited childhood home in Victoria Road, Barnsley, where most censuses find him. And perhaps he moved to Filey after retiring from his drapery business.

Robert’s probate record gives his last address as Bemptonville, Muston Road. Fifteen years later his widow follows him to the churchyard from Meadowsweet, 98 Muston Road –

The cross that remembers them has broken and fallen.