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Ward boatmen

kmt123

master brummie
hi all still working with hubby on his family all canal men and women

https://www.wix.com/boatmen/miners

the lady on front page standing is his grandmother and the little girl is his aunt if anyone knows who the lady on the left sitting down let me know thanks :):biggrin:
 
KMT

Your family website is great, i like the layout and you have so ,much information with wonderful photos. I too am researching my boat family history so I especially love the photos related to the canal folk - I am envious it's a great collection.

I have only been doing family research for a year. You seem to have so much information and I like the layout and graphics. How long have you been researching? Have you managed to obtain birth certs for any of the boatpeople born in the 1800's ?as I was just on another thread and a few people were having trouble finding birth records for these travelling folk. I have a birth cert for my nan from 1910 and she was born on a boat but have not yet tried to locate the birth records for any further back.

I had a quick look at the Ward Boatman as I have Ward boatmen in my tree but I didn't see a match. My gg grandfather was an Edward Ward born in Nuneaton (accord' to census).

Anyway, just wanted to say what a great job you've done. I hope I can produce something like that one day.

Regards Dympna
 
Hello kmt,
Abit off subject, but can you tell me which template you used for your website-I am in the process of building a photo one and have been on to wix, but cannot find one like your design which is ideal for photographs.
A lovely site by the way and very informative, Ihave painted many a narrowboat in my 56 years as a signwriter.
Regards John.
 
hi all,

dympna, because a lot of the canal people never stayed in one place for long, it is sometimes hard, also what sometimes makes it harder is the fact that they fibbed:biggrin: about where they were actually born, i have a lot of the birth certificates for the families, once you know most details it isn't really difficult, if you do get stuck though i would be happy to help if you need it. thanks kerry:)

Hi John, i started off with a blank template because hubby put the photo of his grandmother on there, i have looked at the paintings of the boats john and they are great, i think you need a steady hand and some patience though:biggrin: if you need help with your website just ask i would be happy to help:) thanks kerry

thanks graham :biggrin:
 
sorry forgot to say dympna if you give me your gg grandfathers date of birth i will look for you

kerry
 
My G G Father Mothers side was a Bargeman I recently found out Kerry:)
 
hi all my website is being updated as i speak, hopefully with more photos:)
alf who is your ancester?:))

kerry
 
A true Hero.Posted by Len. Olga Kevelos, who has died aged 85, was one of the last of the wartime "Idle Women", the waterborne equivalent of the Land Girls; after the war she became the country's leading lady motorcyclist and the only woman to win two gold medals for international six-day events.


6:23PM GMT 26 Nov 2009 7 Comments


In 1943, when she was 19, she saw an advertisement in The Times, placed by the Department for War Transport, inviting women to train for work on the canals. Quitting her job at the Royal Observatory, Olga Kevelos spent the next two years with all-female volunteer crews which manned barges carrying vital war materials along the Grand Union Canal between London and the Midlands.

olga_kevelos2_1531671f.jpg
Olga Kevelos (right) reunited on a barge with some of her fellow 'Idle Women'





She and her fellow crew members were nicknamed the "Idle Women" after the initials IW on their badges. Officially, IW stood for Inland Waterways, but the traditional boat people alongside whom they worked were jealous of the newcomers and gave them the name, which stuck.

But Olga Kevelos made it clear that life had been far from idle for this exceptional group of women: "[It was] hard work with no respite at all... We worked an 18- to 20-hour day, and nobody ever stopped." Nor did the Idle Women receive the extra rations enjoyed by the more celebrated Land Girls. "We subsisted on cocoa with condensed milk, national loaf and peanut butter," she remembered. "I was always hungry – all the time."

In all, some 45 women took charge of the canal boats, which were worked in pairs, each pair crewed by three women. After initial training, the volunteers would take the helm of massive barges transporting Spitfire or machine parts from the London docks to Birmingham; on the return trip they would haul coal from Warwickshire to London. After a three-week round trip, they would have the option of a week's unpaid leave.

As Olga Kevelos discovered, the work was arduous and could be dangerous and unpleasant. She encountered the drowned bodies of unwanted babies and more unexpected hazards, including a transsexual colleague who constantly proposed marriage to other crew members. Meanwhile their cargo was often disguised, with weapons and even gold bars concealed as more innocent freight.

Living conditions were rough, and the girls were often cold and wet as well as hungry. The weather could be appalling, and their craft were sometimes icebound. For the daughter of a middle-class family who would normally never have been allowed to go out to work, the war was a unique experience of manual labour and heavy physical toil.
Olga Valerie Kevelos was born at Edgbaston, Birmingham, on November 6 1923, the daughter of a wealthy Greek financier and his English wife, whose first husband, an Indian Army doctor, had died of wounds sustained in the First World War. From the King Edward VI High School for Girls, Olga went on to study Metallurgy, and with the country at war, worked for a time in the laboratories of William Mills, manufacturer of the Mills bomb.
Always passionate about astronomy, she was lured to London by the offer of a job at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. But enemy bombing forced the observatory's closure soon afterwards, and she was evacuated along with other members of staff to the Admiralty at Bath.
Her arrival dismayed at least one of the Admiralty's senior managers, Donald Sadler, who later recalled that "Olga Kevelos... could not do arithmetic and terrified people by stalking around with a large knife in her belt."
He did concede, however, that "she seemed an interesting woman". Neither was she especially pleased to be working with Sadler: there was no stargazing to be done, only endless piles of paperwork.
When National Service for women began in 1943, Olga Kevelos became one of the few who joined the waterways as a volunteer; no boating experience was called for, but applicants had to be "of robust constitution".
After the war, she was awarded a government grant to study French Medieval History for a year at the Cité University in Paris. Fit and strong after her wartime exertions, she recalled bicycling all over Paris and travelling extensively in other parts of Europe. "I was one of the first backpackers," she later noted.
Returning to Birmingham, Olga Kevelos started her own travel agency, harnessing her new-found knowledge of Europe. She also helped her father and other members of the family run the Cherry Orchard restaurant in the city centre.
A boyfriend keen on motorcycle racing encouraged her to try the sport herself. Despite having received only a few basic lessons, Olga Kevelos soon impressed with her natural aptitude and was immediately offered a bike and sponsorship by the James Motorcycle Company. The following year, she rode to San Remo in Italy to take part in the International Six-Day Trial. Once there, an accident left her with a broken wrist and ankle. Undaunted, she rode back home still in plaster.
In 1949 Olga Kevelos went on to win the first of her two gold medals, riding a 500cc Norton in the International Six-Day Trials in Wales. She was to ride with varying degrees of success in every Scottish six-day trial until she finally retired from the sport in 1970, and in every International Six-Day Trial until 1966. During that time, she won the backing of almost every major British motorcycle manufacturer, and the Italian and Czech manufacturers Parilla and Jawa/CZ respectively.
In 1964 Olga Kevelos risked the wrath of the East German authorities by handing out to local children some fruit that had been expensively imported for her fellow competitors. She was unaware that such luxuries were forbidden to the local population – and, in any case, the children had no idea how to peel a banana. She raced in several other countries behind the old Iron Curtain – including Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia – and retained sympathy for the collective sufferings of their people for the rest of her life.
Her close links with Czechoslovakia led Olga Kevelos some 40 years later to be invited to a Foreign Office reception held to celebrate the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union. The then prime minister, Tony Blair, apparently spent some time discussing with Olga Kevelos her views on Genghis Khan, a subject about which she had once answered questions on Mastermind. "He [Blair] probably wanted a few tips on how to invade other people's countries successfully," she commented afterwards.
Olga Kevelos eventually gave up racing and for 26 years helped her younger brother Ray to run his pub, the Three Tuns, at King's Sutton, south Northamptonshire.
She could light up a room with the gleam in her eye, and leave people in convulsions of laughter with her mischievous sense of humour. She was a woman of firm convictions but never allowed seriousness to interfere with her sense of fun.
Olga Kevelos, who died on October 28, is survived by her brother, Ray. An elder brother died earlier this year.
 
What a wonderful woman and a wonderful life...after reading about Olgas life and achievements make one feel very humble ....she really put a lot of living into her long life.....Brenda
 
Hi
Remember me ? Jean of the Smiths/Payton?Daniels ?Faulkner/ Statham boating family ? I tried to access your site to look at the updates and It wont open :( Is it still up ?
Kind regards Jean
 
Morning Len :)
Ok I will it might have something to do with my Flash player as I do get the sight but the page is blank :)
Hope you are well down there
Jean x
 
I still remember the working boats from the late 50's early 60's, watching from the bridges as they unloaded at smethwick and dudley., and gas street basin.
paul
 
Gudday Alf, my granddad owned a part of the canal along the Litchfield Road opposite 'The Resa' near Spaghetti Junction. He had about fourteen coal barges and my dad started emptying them when he was ten years old. He had to walk to to a field near Whitton Cemetary to get his horse and reckoned he was terrified in the dark. Hard lives they lived in those days but they seemed to love it. Regards, David.
 
When I was young, the canals were just about operating some commercial activities, I can remember the coal barges queued up outside the GEC, a scoop would come down and grab the coal, and take it inside the factory. I was told that the GEC used to generate its own electricity.

my granddad owned a part of the canal along the Litchfield Road opposite 'The Resa' near Spaghetti Junction

Would this be associated with your grandfather David?

This section of canal that ran parallel to Electric Avenue between the factories was always very busy; rows and rows of coal boats. I can remember that there was a lock keepers cottage, and a small tug boat.

My elder brother went to Moor End Lane School, and was friends with a family called Ward (one was called Dennis Ward) who lived in a hostel in Jaffery Crescent during school term; they would return to their parents to work in the school holidays. Their dad worked for Willow Wren (?) and was based in Rugby.

My dad was a carpenter who worked at Allen’s yard, Valencia wharf Oldbury, I used to love going to work with him, and I remember him renewing the bottom of a composite barge in elm, he would say that elm never rots in water.

There was a barge called ‘Adder’ some guy had bought as a coal barge and was converting it to a pleasure craft. It had a problem with a leak, so was going to be sent to the dry dock at Tarde Bigg: they let me come on the trip with them.

The ‘Adder’ had a ‘Bolinder engine’, a huge single cylinder, you had to get a blowlamp on the cylinder head, then kick start a pin in the flywheel; quite lethal if it back fired.

We took the ‘Adder’ down the Smethwick three locks, down the main line to Gas Street. In 1966 it was quite unusual to see a barge on the canal: I remember a man taking a photo of me, sitting on the stern at Gas Street.

We then continued on along the Birmingham Worcester canal to Tarde Bigg, think it took about eight hours to cover twenty six odd miles.
 
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