“Find a place forgotten and make it feel that it is remembered! Find someone forgotten and make him feel that he is remembered!”
~ Mehmet Murat ildan
Many years ago as my Grandmother would regale me with a myriad of tales about the Dalby family from York and the Tibbett clan all living, loving and squabbling within their adoptive land of Scarborough in North Yorkshire – I recall that it was at the first mention of “Poor Clarice” that my interest was REALLY piqued.
For as every family history sleuth knows – there is usually always a least one ancestor who ignites a strange curiosity leading to that irresistible urge to discover more about their life and I’ve been desperately seeking Clarice Tibbett through the mists of time ever since…
I began this journey armed only with enthusiasm and a little rudimentary knowledge about genealogy and as I would ‘dip in and out’ of my search for Clarice over the intervening years – I readily admit that the former was certainly THE most useful tool after colliding head first into yet another of those proverbial ‘brick walls’ familiar to every family history sleuth.
However, upon hearing some new nugget of information or stumbling across an exciting genealogical discovery or a magazine article which would remind me of Clarice – I’d be off on my investigative journey again.
So just who was ‘Poor Clarice’?
I would love to be able to share her complete back story that I have uncovered over the preceding years, alas, as there are still HUGE tracts of her life unexplained and undiscovered – it’s all just a question of finding the correct piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
As a genealogical researcher my time is spent grappling with the mystery of death.
And if I’m not in search of a missing ancestor or researching another life long lost to history – I will be poring over the details on a newly discovered and often indecipherable certificate of death or trawling through the parish records in search of a burial entry.
Being able to locate the final resting place of those from my research endeavours has always been an important task and an unsuccessful search is disappointing as the final piece of the jigsaw remains missing.
AND having NO idea what happened to the cremated remains of the elusive Clarice remains a sore point!
For having discovered the burial entries for her parents in the Hull Northern Cemetery – I was convinced that her ashes had been interred with them but after a day spent ploughing through the records in the Hull History Centre – my theory was dashed along with a sense of vision and remaining hope.
However, what I can tell you about Clarice is that she was very much a woman of her times.
Born a ‘war baby’ in the September of 1913 and a ‘war bride’ in the August of 1944 – Clarice died by her own hand in June 1962 from an intentional overdose after several years of a consistent diet of prescribed sleeping tablets along with the effects of the controversial ECT treatment for the symptoms of clinical depression.
And for many years – she was also remembered with much affection from those she left behind.
