Capper
The Family Story

The End of the Line

When these three delightful little girls were photographed in 1942 in Crewe, Cheshire, England, they were probably not thinking that the Capper line ended with them.

They probably weren't wondering why, of all places, they should be living in Crewe. They were most likely wondering when they could stop posing for the camera and go and play with their dolls or their friends.

Well that's okay. We'll do the wondering for them. We'll wonder why the Capper name ends with them, why they never knew their Capper grandparents, why they were born in Cheshire and why they were given the names they were given.

First let's meet our subjects. Left to right they are Janice, Patricia and Jennifer Capper.

The girls were born into a line of the Capper family which started two generations earlier with their grandfather, Charlie. What the girls grew up knowing of Charlie Capper was very limited. They knew first and foremost that he was dead. He died before all of them were born as did his wife, their grandmother, Mona.

Whilst most children today grow up knowing all four grandparents and perhaps even some of their eight great-grandparents, it was not that uncommon in the 1940s, the "War years", for children to have only one pair of grandparents surviving or maybe even one or two odd grandparents. Such was the case for the Capper girls. They knew only one grandfather and one grandmother and they were named Philpott, not Capper.