Abaculus

A few months ago a cousin sent me this picture:

I've been putting off repairing this photo for months, as it needed some work, much to my family's annoyance. Last night I eventually got around to hitting the picture with the clone stamp, which resulted in my ALT drama:

Restoration is not a fab attempt, but I got bored of it. I don't have the patience to do things like start fiddling about building people's feet, thus just hope no-one notices. Kudos to all Photoshop experts out there, I'd rather you than me.

This picture shows my great grandfather with my dad's older siblings. He's a person I know very little about, even though he's not that far removed from me. Since I got bitten by a genealogy bug, he's the most elusive of my ancestors on my dad's side and its really annoying. Puzzles aren't meant to be unsolved. I cannot locate his birth certificate (his name is too common and I lost count of the number of false starts - it started to get too stab in the dark like). For the 1901 census - the person who I think is him - he's living with some other people, so I can't tie him to a possible mother to narrow down a birth certificate search. I only know his father's name from his marriage certificate, and John Davies in Wales is about as common a name as they come, thus I'm doomed.

What I do know about my g grandfather: he fought in WW1 and had a full military funeral, which I only know from oral history. (I need to try and locate a newspaper report for this, but I'm not hopeful as it was during WW2 - this would have been around the time as my grandfather was certified as dead). Where he fought or which regiment he was in, I've no idea.

DJD set up and owned a garage, which included taxis, lorries, repairs and petrol. From this he seemed to acquire a a good few houses plus land. What's really curious though, on his death (or his wife) he left his entire estate to two children, the other five ended up with nothing (including my grandparents). No-one alive knows why this happened, a really curious thing to do and you have to wonder why. I've even done a Probate search on this man (and his wife), but no luck.

So that's my elusive great grandfather, and he bugs me silly.