Touching Louis’s hand…

My great-grandfather Louis Walford died at a tragically early age, just before his fiftieth birthday in 1895. He left a grieving widow, Lois, and young  children… or maybe they never married… After his death Lois was supported  by the charity of Louis’s very wealthy Jewish family; however, because she was a Gentile their support did not extend beyond the financial.

We know very little of Louis, but I have been fortunate enough to inherit two of his personal possessions:

Louis’s calling card
Louis’s match case
The little case on the left would have contained the matches, the black strip on its end was for striking them.

My grandmother was a small child when her father, Louis, died. If she told her children about him, which I doubt, they never mentioned it. How sad, that I’ll never know anything about him, except he must have loved his ‘wife’ and children.

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