#52 Ancestors 2020 - Week 40 - Oldest

 #52 Ancestors 2020

Week 40  Oldest

The oldest members of my mother’s family were her cousins, twins Betty and Edith “Peggy” Cavill. 

They were born in 1916. 

Betty died aged 101 in 2017.  Peggy died aged 103 in 2019.

Betty and Peggy were the children of Bessie (nee Fleming) and Thomas Cavill.  It was Bessie’s parents, William and Mary Josephine Fleming who had taken in my grandmother Josie and her sister Elsie when their parents had separated. (see 52 Ancestors 2019 “Nurture”)

Betty and Peggy had two brothers, one older and one younger.*They had a happy childhood full of music and entertaining.  Their mother played the piano and their father had a beautiful singing voice.  They were in the same class at school and sat together – apparently Peggy always came top of the class and Betty came second.

They remembered their teenage years as being full of balls and parties.  My mother, whose sister was about their age, reminisced about the times they would come to Quirindi to visit and all the girls would go off to dances dressed in beautiful gowns. 

Both the girls met their future husbands at a dance.  By this time World War II was on, but they married (Peggy in 1940 and Betty a year later) and when their husbands came home, they bought houses very close to one another.

Peggy had two girls and Betty had two boys and the families grew up together, spending their holidays on the south coast of NSW.  When the children grew up, both Peggy and Betty got jobs at Channel 10.

They never lived more than a suburb apart, and in their old age, both widowed, they moved to the same nursing home.  Here they celebrated their 100^th birthday in 2016 and were TV celebrities for a day when the morning shows ran the unusual story of twins celebrating 100 years.

 

 

*Their sister-In-la w, wife of their older brother Alan, died shortly after her 104^th birthday in 2017.