Black Nana

When I was younger and my grandmother was still alive she showed us this old family photo on a tin plate image. The baby was my grandfather, Thomas Welch, with his mother, Mary  Miriam Price and his father,  Thomas Welch who was a postman. The older man in the hat is my grandfather's mother's father, Luke Price, who was a lamplighter from Merthyr Tydfil and the old lady in bonnet was my grandfather's mother's mother,  Mary Du Prez. When I first saw this photo I said to my grandmother:

"who is the black woman in the photo?"

"Black woman!? She wasn't black, she just worked with coal and it tinted her skin"

No amount of explanation would ever make her see this any differently! After my grandmother died we had some contacts with the other side of the family who knew more about her and had a big picture of her on their wall. She was known to them as "Black Nana"