Hi Tracy

Just got your message, have been on holiday. Your great grandmother Sarah Anne Foden married to John Levi Barker emigrated to South Africa in 1904. Sarah was my grandfather's sister (he had eleven siblings) and when I was a child in the 1950s I remember my parents looking at letters that had been sent from Pietermaritzburg, although being young I probably never read them. I was told that they had done very well in South Africa and when I started my family history a few years back I realised I knew very little about them. A researcher in South Africa found out some basic information for me and I know that Ira John Barker (your grandfather) had married Olive Margaret Johnstone Walker and that they had two daughters, Lesley and Wendy Jane who died in 1970.

Also Ira had a sister Doreen Lillian (1909-2002) a brother Kenneth Sudworth Barker born 1910 and Hilda born 1913. I would like to know a little about their life in South Africa and if you have any photographs that would be great. And any more you can add to the above basic information. I haven't found when Sarah died, her brother George, my grandfather died in 1970. His home was in Goosnargh where Sarah was born, their father, my great grandfather Thomas Foden worked as a farmer at Whittingham Asylum in Lancashire, which is in the area I was born and brought up in.

My e-mail address is rigbyjanet5@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Janet