A couple of days ago, on Remembrance Sunday, I was reminded of an idea I have encountered on a few occasions about remembering being something deeper than just thinking about someone or something.  It is to make past events happen again in your mind.  This involves bringing back together the fragments of memories to make a coherent narrative.  In this way, remembering is the opposite of taking apart, or dismembering.

Later on, during the Act of Remembrance, my thoughts turned to Wilfred Kibble, as they often do at this time of year.  I’m a keen amateur genealogist and Wilfred is someone that I have encountered on the journey into my family history whose life was touched by the First World War.  He is not the only one, but what I know of his story seems to have struck a chord with me.  I have therefore decided to try and remember him in a more coherent way than I have managed so far.  Some things I know already.  Some things I know how to find out.  There will be other things that I might be able to find out by digging deeper or casting the net wider.  I won’t manage all of this in a single act of remembering.  So here it is:  Remembering Wilfred Kibble (in several acts).

Wilfred Kibble was born on Monday the 14^th of May 1894 in Brackley, Northamptonshire.  Wilfred’s parents were Thomas Kibble (1854-1938) and Miriam Ellen Wainwright (1869-1953).  Thomas’ mother died in 1867 (having given birth to seven children) and his father remarried shortly afterwards (with three more children following).  At the time of the 1871 census, Thomas could be found living in his birthplace of Stewkley, in Buckinghamshire (not far from Bletchley Park).  He was living with his father – who was described as a draper – as well as with his stepmother and a selection of his siblings.  The sixteen year old Thomas was described as a draper’s assistant.

The story, as it has been passed on to me, is that Thomas was left almost penniless because his step-mother persuaded his father to leave all his assets to her children, thereby disowning the children of his first marriage.  I have been unable to locate Thomas in the 1881 census, but at some point he left Stewkley and set up his own small drapery business in Brackley, which prospered.  As Thomas had always wanted to farm, he ploughed his profits into buying farms, eventually owning three or four farms and a small quarry.

At some point Thomas met a Brackley girl named Miriam.  They were married on Sunday the 16^th of March 1890, in the Independent Chapel in Brackley.  Children soon followed, with Kate Mildred being born on Monday the 30^th of June 1890, followed by Thomas in 1891, Olive May in 1893, Wilfred in 1894 and Herbert in 1897.  Kate was my great-grandmother (the mother of my maternal grandmother).  Herbert became a farmer and a very “hands on” manager of all of Thomas’ farms.  Upon Thomas’ death, Kate inherited one of the farms, Thomas the drapery business, Olive the quarry and Herbert the rest of the farms.

Wilfred was educated at Magdalen College School in Brackley (named after its connection with Magdalen College Oxford).  He inherited his father’s interest in farming, to the extent that he travelled to Canada in order to study agricultural methods at the Ontario Agricultural College.  Whether his intention was just to study or to study and then settle I do not know.  What I do know is that on Thursday the 2^nd of October 1913, aged nineteen, Wilfred departed Southampton aboard the Cunard liner R.M.S. Ascania bound for Quebec and Montreal.