Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 03 June 1932
After Fifty Years
Romantic Reunion of Brothers at Wombwell
Man With Three Pensions
A romantic reunion between two brothers has just taken place at Wombwell. For nearly fifty years time and tide have divided them. With one in America and the other in England, neither knew of the other’s existence until a letter addressed by the vicar of a small parish in Northamptonshire revealed the fact to the one in America. He had been making enquiries as to the whereabouts of his relatives. The American brother is now in his 80th year, but in order to renew acquaintance with “the old folks at home” he has just made the double journey across the Atlantic.
The two brothers met in Wombwell. One is Mr. George Hunt (63), Bartholomew Street, Wombwell, and the other is retired Sergt, John Hunt (79). Wharton, New Jersey, U.S.A. Sergt Hunt has just qualified for a triple United States pension, equal to twenty-five shillings a day. He has been for 44 years in the employment of the United Staten Government in one capacity or another, and is also an ex-Service man of the British Army.
Natives Of Northants.
The brothers are natives of Ufford, Northamptonshire, and when the parents, who were workers on the land, found themselves with a growing family of eight children, the boys had to scatter. When a youth, John enlisted in the British Army, and George, who was sixteen years his junior, saw little of him except when he was on furlough. There was also “a bit of grievance” that kept John away from home. But, his time in the Army having expired, he returned to the farm labourer’s cottage in the village, when George was still at school. In the meantime George had often heard his parents talk of his soldier brother.
George remembers his homecoming very well, because John, the soldier. went to the village schoolmaster and succeeded in persuading him to allow George to stay at home for a few days, so that he might have someone to “knock about with.
A Roamer.
“But he was not the type to stay at home long,” George told a “South Yorkshire Times” representative. “John was always a wanderer, a sort of self-reliant, care-ftree lad, who could get on anywhere. The next we heard of him as children was that he was in Egypt. I was sixteen years of age ‘when I last saw him.” Another brother, William, is now in Australia. He went out half a century ago, and when last heard of in 1930 was happily settled on his own farm. A photograph of hint sent to Wombwell shows him working in a maize field. There is little chance of William coming home. George, at 11, left home to go into private service at Manea (Cambs.). Then he came north to work at the old pottery in the pit yard at Darfield Main, and when work fell of there he took a job as a trammer underground. He has worked forty years at Cortonwood, Houghton Main, Barfield Main, and other neighbouring collieries.
Reunion.
The extent to which the brothers had drifted apart made their ultimate reunion all the more remarkable. It was in John’s mind that the idea developed, and a letter of enquiry to the Vicar of Ufford was written accordingly. Imagine his delight when he learned not only that his sister (Fanny Bloodworth) was still domiciled in her native district but that his brother George had been traced to Wombwell!
Correspondence between the two brothers ensued, and at the first opportunity John sailed on the Mauretania, stayed at Wombwell nearly a week, and then went to see his sister. A liner from Southampton last Saturday took him back to America, but before he embarked he promised (D.V.) to return to England next year.
A man of striking appearance, soldierly bearing, and tanned textures, John looked a picture of good health, and few of the people he met would believe that he was indeed nearly eighty.
Good English Ale.
John’s letters to his brother express in simple but touching language the sentiments of the Englander long exiled. He said he longed more than ever to hear the “wandering voice of the cuckoo” and the “blythe sweet notes of the nightingale.” “I shall be up early,” he wrote, “and I shall play at marbles. I shall spend a little time in the public house and I shall drink some good English ale. (It was exceptionally good when last John sampled it). “I like good ale,” he said, “because I have an idea that that accounts for my enjoying good health.”
John said they had had a mild winter in New Jersey. “It has been like a spring in England. I have been sitting pretty. ” With the soldier’s craze for doggerel he burst forth:
“I am silting by my fireside smoking my long clay.
That’s how I like to pass the wintry days away;
With a glass of grog, a flaming log that splutters now and then.
It makes me feel that I am one of the happiest of men.”
John said the damp and changeable weather of England did not exactly match his constitution, but all the same he believed he could get used to it again. “If my wife was willing,” he said, “I should stay in the old country. My two boys are well able to look after themselves. Jack, the eldest, is chief mechanical draughtsman in a Government department. I am now in a position to go where please.” In his – search for the friends of his boyhood days, John has come across a remarkable sucession of “Fannys.” Three people in the village remembered him well, and all three have – Fanny as their Christian name. The fourth Fanny (his sister) has already been mentioned.
A Military Career
A cutting from an American regimental Journal deals with John’s retirement and gives interesting details of his record. The note states: “Sergt. John Hunt, U.S.A., retired, who for the past fourteen years has been a familiar figure around the reservation at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, where he was a policeman of the Picatinny Guard Force, was recently retired finally from the Federal service after the completion of 44 years’ service in the employ of Uncle Sam. Five of these years were served with the U.S. Marine Corps, 25 with the Army, and the remaining fourteen with the Civil, Service.
“In addition to this long service with the U.S. Government, Sergt. Hunt served with the 18th Royal Irish Fusiliers of the British Army before coming to America. As early as 1874 he tried to make the Gold Coast in the Ashantee War. Again, in 1878, he was found among those who wanted to take part in the Afghan War. In 1882 he embarked with the Irish regjment on the s.s. “City of Paris,” and landed at Ismalia. He holds from the British Government the Order of the Eastern Star, conferred upon him for meritorious service in the Battle of Tel-el-kebir, Egffpt, for saving a British column from ambush by Egyptian troops
“All of Sergt. Hunt’s service with the United States Army was in the Ordnance Department. During the entire time, most of which was spent in handling high explosives, he never had an accident. Ile holds eight discharges, all with character excellent. ‘His service while at this arsenal,’ says a recent dispatch from Picatinny, “has been of the highest order. He carried out his orders promptly and strictly to the letter.”
“Upon his retirement from Picatinny, Sergt. Hunt said that he was ‘far from retirement,’ as he is just beginning to ‘step out.’ He plans to go to ‘Blighty’ for a visit to renew old acquaintances in London and at other places in the British Isles,”
Mr. George Hunt said he could have recognised his long lost brother in a crowd; his voice sounded so familiar.