While we were researching our actual question, something caught our eyes. On the southeast side of the church there was a very large grave, 9 by 4 feet, and what strikes you most at first glance is the name “Wilberforce”.
All four of us had the same reaction to this grave, we all got extremely excited over the name, started guessing what he looked like and decided that he must have been an extremely intense man. At first we decided that, since he needed so much more height than everyone else that he must be some huge, muscular, blond man of Scandinavian decent, looking a little like this…
But then the more we talked about him the more we felt that he must have been a very important person as well to warrant a raised marker and a spot so close to the church. He was, obviously, a very serious man, probably a bit grim and bound by honour to do his duty. The more I thought about him, the more he evolved in my head into Eddard Stark.
Wilberforce soon became our favourite grave out of the bunch and we even managed to find out a bit about the true Hubert Wilberforce Wilson on the Internet.
Hubert Wilberforce Wilson was born in Hong Kong during the British occupation to Wilberforce Wilson and Jessie Ransome. He was the second oldest of ten children, but the genealogy sites do not tell how many of these siblings survived childhood. He is recorded to have been a Consul and diplomat for South America and his portrait hangs in the British National Portrait Gallery. He also was on the 1930 Honours List as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George according to the London Gazette. He died in Victoria B.C. in 1949.
One interesting thing we did uncover researching Wilson was that his grave says he was born in 1857 but all the online genealogy sites say that he was born in 1867. It would be interesting to track down more records on him and find out which is wrong!
Anyways, the point of this post was to draw attention to our curiosity to know about the dead and who they were based off of simple things they leave behind, such as their names. Who knows, there could be other interesting stories to be told about the people at St. John’s but we just did not look into them because their names did not catch our imagination as fully as Hubert Wilberforce Wilson did.
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