When our grandmother Ada Rosetta Sadler died on her birthday at the age of 82, the only items among her effects that related to her first husband were these.:
No photo,no letters from the front, no marriage certificate, just the scroll and a "Dead Man's Penny"
Ada Rosetta Feston was 25 years old, with two daughters, one four years old and the other under three months when she was widowed. At first she did not know she was a widow. Fred Feston disapeared into the mud of Flanders on 25th October 1917 during the third battle of Ypres, and was posted as missing.
Ada grieved for her lost husband but had to get on with life to provide for her children. Eventually she remarried and perhaps it is not surprising that her former life had to be put to the back of her mind and that eventually all that remained in any physical sense were these two artifacts.
Ada grieved for her lost husband but had to get on with life to provide for her children. Eventually she remarried and perhaps it is not surprising that her former life had to be put to the back of her mind and that eventually all that remained in any physical sense were these two artifacts.
We have tried to honour the instruction on the scroll :
"Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten"
