The Missing Ones… lost from family history

As I research my family tree, I come across glimpses of other lives: children and adults who lived and laughed, or simply suffered and died.

They are the Missing Ones: lost in time, born and buried, but now forgotten, except for some old newspaper article or ancient document. Some have names which are so common, they cannot be identified. Some are babies, unbaptised, without even the dignity of a name.

Hundreds, thousands of people who were nothing special: shop-assistants and farm labourers, laundresses and clerks. A girl who drowned in a well, a family who died in a house-fire, or a man who was buried in a landslide. A boy who was caught stealing a watch, a lady who spent most of her days playing whist, or a man whose crowning achievement was growing the best marrows in the village show.

Where I can, I find people’s relatives, and send the information to be collected and stored. But the Missing Ones have no descendants left. Their homes are long gone, built over with sports centres and supermarkets. Their photographs were never taken, and the crafts they made have not survived. If they once had gravestones, their epitaphs are weathered away by time and half-sunk in the earth, at the back of some overcrowded churchyard.

A man who was robbed of everything but his shirt and socks, a girl who was strangled with a silk handkerchief, and a child who was found in a dustbin. Now, they all lie unremembered, not shown on any family tree, dispossessed and excluded. Their lives will always be missing from our history. Whether these snippets are small triumphs or horrific tragedies, the saddest thing for me is that now, no one cares. I try, but I cannot remember them all.