This label is on a steamer trunk that used to belong to my grandmother. If you can’t read the handwriting, this is what it says:
Mrs. Derys Morris
Ship: Queen Elizabeth
Class: Tourist Date of Sailing: June 13th
From: Southampton To: New York
Address in USA or Canada: 300 6th Avenue S.E., Childersburg, Alabama, USA
My grandmother was Welsh; born in Cardiff, Wales, UK in 1919. She emigrated to the United States in the 40s after marrying an American servicman named William (Bill) Morris who she met during the war. She came to the states on the RMS Queen Mary - yes, the same ship docked in the Long Beach harbor - moving to Alabama via New York, I think shortly after my uncle was born in 1945. I don’t know how she got from New York to Childersburg, AL, I can guess train, but I know she was sorely disappointed with the stark change in landscape when she arrived. She had traveled without her husband and was met by his family in Alabama. I don’t know much of the rest of that story, but I do know that my grandfather designed and built the house they lived in while they were there. My father was born in Childersburg in 1950 and my grandfather died in an auto accident in 1955. My grandmother admitted to me that she was planning to leave her abusive husband before he had died. Funny enough, she stayed loyal to that husband until her death - never remarrying, never even seriously dating another man. After Bill’s passing, my grandmother made several trips back home to Wales to be with her family and learn how to be a widowed single mother. She brought my father and his brother and they both attended school in the UK for a time. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to again leave her family and her home in the UK and return to the states for good.
It’s been almost a year since my grandmother died at the age of 88. Like everyone who has lost a loved one, I wish I had taken more time to learn about her life, listen to the stories and wisdom she had to share and remember that there is so much we can gain from one another. The trunk and this label are somewhere around 50 years old and my grandmother held onto it and the memories it contained. I just moved to a new apartment and the trunk came with me. I think it’ll be coming with me for the rest of my life, too.
