My Oxley Grandparents

I posted a few pictures in my post, Family Memories, of my Oxley Grandparents, including their wedding photo from 1919, but I haven't related their rather interesting story.

My Grandmother Oxley was born Olive Elsie Victoria Brown in the village of Horndean, Hants, England. Her Father, Henry Brown, was a shipwright in Royal Dockyard Portsmouth. When she was an infant, Her Majesty the Queen-Empress Victoria (from whom her third Christian name was taken, of course), came to Portsmouth to launch a new ship for the Royal Navy which my Great Grandfather had helped build.

Of course, all the labourers' families came to the launching to see Her Majesty. The Queen-Empress graciously kissed the babies who were held up to her. I often say that that kiss never rubbed off my Grandmother! She outlived the Old Queen by 57 years, into the reign of Victoria's Great Great Granddaughter, Elizabeth II, but she remained a Victorian until the day she died.

I often joke that, in a sense, I grew up in the Victorian Era. Until my Mum remarried after my Dad's death, my Gran lived with us, and I often heard such 'Victorian' phrases as 'Children should be seen and not heard', and 'Cleanliness is next to godliness'. At Sunday dinner, which was always a standard English 'joint and three veg', we ate at a formal table with a lace tablecloth and saltcellars!

My Grandfather, Charles Albert Oxley, was a bit of a character. He was born in Malden, Massachusetts. When he was old enough to leave home, he enlisted in the 11th United States Calvary. Whilst serving with the 11th he participated in the occupation of Cuba after the Spanish-American War. During the Castro led rebellion against Batista, leading up to the establishment of the Red dictatorship in Cuba, much of the fighting was taking place in Oriente Province. Grandpa had served in that area, and he would set me down with a map and explain the terrain, etc.

When his enlistment was up in the 11th Regiment, he decided that he still didn't like civilian life, so he re-enlisted, but this time in the Coastal Artillery. He spent the next three years in a battery on the coast of Maine. Before the Great War, both Britain and Germany were viewed as potential enemies of the US, so he wasn't sure who might attack, but he knew the Coastal Artillery were ready!

Getting out of the Coastal Artillery, he decided it was time to see a bit of the world. He went into the US Merchant Marine. Early in 1915, his ship was transporting horses and mules to Britain to help in the war effort. Docking in Liverpool, he and a shipmate decided to jump ship. After two or three days, they were getting low on ready cash and people were looking askance at them. They were young and obviously hale and hearty, but they were not in uniform! Slackers?

Finally, they decided they should enlist. Since the United States was not at war, enlisting an American was a breach of neutrality, so Grandpa knew that if he admitted to his citizenship he would be refused. When the recruiting sergeant asked where he was from, he replied 'St John's, Newfoundland'. Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada, but a separate Dominion in the British Empire. The recruiting sergeant couldn't tell the difference between my Grandfather's Boston accent and a Newfie one, so he took him. Officially, the British Army thought he was from St John's until he asked for his mustering-out pay to Malden, Mass!

Unofficially, however, the ruse only lasted minutes. When he walked into his physical exam, the doctor took one look and said, 'You're an American, aren't you?' Grandpa waffled and said something like 'Why would you think that'? The doctor replied, 'You're wearing a belt. Only a fool or a Yank would wear a belt'! Of course, most men in the British Empire at the time wore braces (suspenders), so the belt was a giveaway.

When the US finally got around to joining the War in April, 1917, Grandpa considered asking to transfer to the AEF, but he figured the War would be over by the time the two bureaucracies got done with the paperwork! He technically lost his US citizenship by swearing allegiance to King George V, but it was restored in a general amnesty after the war, and he received his Victory Medal at the hands of General of the Armies John J. Pershing, on Armistice Day, 1919.

He ended up in the Royal Field Artillery and was posted to Mesopotamia (now Iraq) to fight the Turks. Most peoples' ideas of the Great War come from the Western Front. The other theatres are often forgotten, but Mesopotamia was a major area of conflict. Unfortunately, conditions were not the best. Dysentery was endemic, since the rivers were little more than open sewers. He told me, tho' I've never verified it, that dysentery killed more Imperial soldiers than did the Turks. I wish he had been alive during the Iraq Wars to do the 'map thing' with me, as he had during the Cuban Revolution.

He was one of the lucky ones. When he contracted the disease, he was invalided back to England. As he was recovering in hospital, he fell in love with the matron on his ward, my Grandmother. Shortly after the War ended, they were married in All Saints' Church, Catherington, my Gran's CofE parish church.

They then came to the States, where my Uncle Albert and my Aunt Hazel were born. Then sometime after Hazel's birth, they returned to England. One evening, when my Gran was pregnant with my Mum, he said to her, 'Ollie, I'm going out for a pack of fags (British slang for cigarettes)'. He went out, and didn't return!

My Grandmother was left pregnant, with two children under four years of age. She never divorced him or sought to have him declared presumed dead.

Fast forward to the 1939-45 War. My Mum, upon reaching working age, was conscripted into war work. She was posted to an aircraft factory in High Wycombe, Bucks. High Wycombe just happened to be where Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron of the Eighth United States Army Air Force was situated. My Father, Perry Weismiller, was serving in the Squadron. She met my Father, and after the War ended in Europe in May 1945, they were married on 7 July, in the same church in which her parents' wedding had taken place.

In the meantime, her sister, my Aunt Hazel, had met and married Charles Sluggett, a Sergeant in The Canadian Scottish Regiment (Princess Mary's). As the War had ended and Perry and Charles were going home, taking their new wives with them, my Gran, who was a US citizen by virtue of her marriage to my Grandfather, decided she might as well go, too. My Uncle Bert thought that he'd join in since his entire family was emigrating.

So the entire family came to North America, Uncle Charles and Aunt Hazel to Canada, where he remained in the Army, and my Dad, Mum, Gran, and Uncle Bert to Kansas. In time, my Uncle Bert met my Dad's Niece, Mary Orr, fell in love with her, and married her. This created an interesting mix of familial relationships! We used to tease my Mum that, by marriage, she was her brother's aunt, and I often referred to Mary as my 'cousin-aunt'!

Sometime in the late 1940s, we tracked my Grandfather down. After leaving England, he rejoined the US Merchant Fleet, a fact I didn't learn until just few years ago. I was researching the family history when I found records of him entering and leaving the US several times on merchant vessels during the 1920s. 

Then, he finally settled down and returned to Massachusetts. When he was rediscovered, he was living in the Boston area, from whence he had come originally, and had been working as a cook and housekeeper for an elderly couple. When we 'found' him, my Gran was living with us. My Dad said that Grandpa could come to visit, but he couldn't live with us, because 'He deserted my wife before she was even born!'

Dad died in August 1952. In February 1953, Grandpa came out from Massachusetts to live with us. He took the bus, and we met him at the station. I was around the corner playing with another boy when he got off the bus, so Mum saw her Father for the first time in her life, just seconds before I met my Grandfather!

Grandpa and Gran lived with us until Mum remarried in January 1957. She worked, Gran took care of the house and Grandpa cooked, except for Sunday dinner. That formal dinner I mentioned earlier was always prepared by Mum and Gran.

After Mum remarried, my Grandparents got their own apartment. After having been separated for thirty years, they lived together as a reasonably happily married couple until Gran passed away in 1958. They enjoyed playing 500 rummy to pass the time. I can remember them bickering over their game and accusing each other of cheating, but other than that, they were happy, and I'm not at all sure that that bickering didn't contribute to their happiness!