1966 I pass my 11 plus, but this is the year that the comprehensive education system is introduced and I begin schooling at Netherstowe Comprehensive.
30th of July England Win the football World Cup.
1969 Eva GEBHARD (nee Thomas) my Great Grandmother dies on her 84th birthday the 10th of June.
On the 21st of July Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon.
1971 The rebuilt Birmingham New Street Railway Station opens.
1977 On Friday the 7th of January Clifford John GEBHARD ("Jim") my Grandfather dies aged 69. (Always known as Jim or "Crowie" because he was born with a shock of black hair and somebody called him "Jim Crow" and the name Jim stuck for 69 years).
1984 On the 14th of January Edward Valentine GEBHARD dies aged 77 (brother of Martin James GEBHARD my great grandfather).
1989 On the 20th of September Alice Maud MARKLAND (nee GEBHARD) dies aged 78 (sister of my granddad "Jim").
1992 Arthur Claude GEBHARD dies aged 78 (younger brother of Clifford John GEBHARD my grandfather).
1997 On the 20th of February Polly GEBHARD (nee PEARSON) my Grandmother dies at the age of 84 (always known as Mary).
2004 After nearly 16 years of on and off trying I finally obtained a copy of the Parish Record for the birth of Johann Jakob GEBHARD. Then within minutes find the ancestry of his mother Catharina DUCHMANN (born 25th of July 1801) back to 1403 in Florsheim! (Typically though, I couldn’t find anything about his father Martin GEBHARD!).
On the DUCHMANN line I am back to what is to me my 17th Great Grandfather a Peter I. DUCHMANN born 1403.
We can trace our Duchmann ancestors to late medieval times; Chaucer had just died, the days of Henry IV and Agincourt, pre William Caxton, pre Leonardo da Vinci, pre Michaelangelo, pre the Tudors etc!
I want to find out where my Great, Great, Grandmother Alice Maude GEBHARD (nee Gretton) is buried; she died in 1924 but earlier in the year she had married a Mr. John G. BROOKS so presumably I am looking for the burial of an Alice M. BROOKS.
What happened to Elizabeth GEBHARD? (sister to Johann Martin, Marie Katherina and Agnes Johanna); she was still unmarried aged 43 and living with her mother in 1901 (she is not mentioned in her sister’s will made in 1941).
I would like to find out more about the movements of my great, grandfather Martin James GEBHARD (Driver 53218 Royal Corps of Engineers) in the First World War and of my granddad Clifford John GEBHARD ("Jim") who in the Second World War was in the 51st Highland Regiment, which became attached to the 8th Army – where did these men go? What did they have to endure?
I would also like to know where they went to school as children etc.
I would like to know if the three different Gebhard families in Birmingham in the 1880’s knew of each other: "Our Lot" (from Frankfurt first arrived circa 1849 to Birmingham); then there were the Gebhards that were Pork Butchers (from Bretzfeld in Wurttemberg), and finally the family of Wilhelm Conrad GEBHARD the Importer/Exporter from Nuremberg (wife Florence MANT; sons Norman Leslie GEBHARD, Eric Walter GEBHARD and Gerald Mant GEBHARD)
I do realise that I will never see a photograph of Johann Jacob GEBHARD or his wife Eliza but I do wonder if someone somewhere has a photograph of Johann Martin GEBHARD ("Martin") my Great Great Grandfather who died in 1921.
Others missing from my photo collection are Clifford GEBHARD (died in Leicester in 1923 aged 39 he married an Emily ROGERS).
I still find it amazing that there were 3 probably separate German families with the same surname in Birmingham at that time – that took some unravelling at the beginning (if anyone is researching the GEBHARD(T) brothers, that came to England from Bretzfeld and settled in Wakefield, Morpeth, Sheffield and Birmingham, I have gathered lots of information on them by "accident" which I will happily pass on to you).