Annie Bowerman
I’ve been off work today (first of three long weekends to use up my holiday before term ends) and I had told Mum I’d take her out for the day. We were going to go to Malham Tarn for a walk but it’s been pissing it down. All day. Again.So, I asked her where she wanted to go instead and after some deliberating over a cup of tea she went “Pudsey cemetary!”. Yup, time to get back on the family history trail!
This is the lady that we were going to try and find:
She’s my great grandma, Annie Bowerman (it’s been commented by a collegue who helped me print some of these photos that I look like her, which I can see!). We knew that she was buried at Pudsey as my Grandad had told us—we’d been meaning to go for a long time.
When we got there the cemetary was was a lot bigger than we thought but we knew that the grave was somewhere at the top of the hill, so we had a vague idea of where to look. It was pouring rain but the graveyard was really lovely, it was well tended and has some grand Victorian chapels built at the centre. I found it very peaceful to walk around it in the rain under a big brolley!After about half an hour of searching my eyes finally chanced across the only ‘Bowerman’ in the graveyard, which was of course Annie:
As you can see it turns out that my Grandad’s sister Syliva is buried in the same grave, which we did not know beforehand. Sylvia died as a baby and Annie died young of breast cancer, so both of these ladies were taken well before their time.It was nice to have found the grave as it’s the only one we’ve ever found on the whole family history trail, even though we’ve been all over Yorkshire and Northhumberland!