23/08/2021
Format for ancestor histories
Will - The Child Soldier
Will kicked up the road as he walked along, his family depended upon him getting the job and help mother while the favver was sick. Will was your usual 15 year old lad in 1795, he liked the w***hes, he liked a drink and he wasn’t ready to take life too seriously … just yet! He knew, though in this matter, at least, he would need to be in his right sense and work his hardest for the family till the favver was back on his feet.
It was about 7 miles walk from Bedworth to Atherstone, Will’s uncle had heard they needed farm labourers through the mission. Will’s family were Quakers but that was all carp to him. The work would be hard but Will was strong and up to it. He had been told to find Elder Innocent when he arrived in the town and he would advise him from there.
It was under the hot midday heat that Will entered Atherstone for the first time. He liked it immediately as he walked up the slight incline of the main road known as Long Street, for it was indeed a long street with many an ale house and yards off each to the left and to the right, crowded no overcrowded with the bustle of people attending to their lives and the noise was defeaning.
Will looked down at the map in his hand, well hand drawn scrap of paper with no letters just pictures, which was fine by Will as he had no need for letters on a paper, not that he could read them if he did, Towards the top of Long Street he turned right into the King’s Arms, in front of him stood a busy yard with men with faces as black as coal, the air so full of smog you had to hold your breathe initially to focus and to each side houses so tiny and run down you could barely home a family of rats let alone human beings. But this was the sort yard Will was used to so straightaway he felt at home.
From the Ale house came a short stocky man with a country air about him, he held a clay pipe tightly in his teeth to one side and a jar of ale in his hand. He had seen Will approaching and had come out to meet him. “Yo, mon ist thou ‘ere for t’ field werk? Dist Tummy send thee?” Will greeted Elder Innocent with his lopsided smile which could charm any a w***h then thought about it and straightened up. Holding a hand out to the elder he spoke, “Ar am ‘im, Tummy sed yo needed a mon up Man-cetter.” The Elder regarded him then spoke up, “we leave in arf ‘our after we am sup. The carter will tek we but furst come n see wheer thou will kip”.
