Hello everyone,

A little while ago I purchased a small antique sampler stitched by Ada Lilian Baldwin from Ruardean (18.03.1874 - 16.08.1944). As I started doing research, I quickly found out a lot through the family tree I was able to make on the ancestry website, and then I found this website here, with photos and even more information on the Forest of Dean area!

I would love to ask anyone that has photos of Ada and her family, to get in touch. I would love to have a much higher resolution version of the photo that is in the photo gallery here (with her husband and 9 boys). Other photos, of course, would be fantastic also!

I have already gotten in touch with one great-granddaughter here - but if there's other living relatives, I'd love to hear from you! As a collector of samplers I try and get a glimpse into the lives of the girls who stitched these samplers. Below is the original, very small sampler Ada stitched. It is in very poor condition, but for me the stories are more important than the condition :).

I am working on a series of podcasts about these samplers - so if you know anything about Ada, or if you're a descendant, please do get in touch as I'd love to hear from you!

Also, if you have stories about the mines or if you know a lot about them or even worked in them, I would love to hear from you as well. All of the Duberley's seem to have worked in the mines, so that would be very interesting too.

Kind regards,
Jacob de Graaf