My grandmother was born Dorothy Gordon Hibbard in Philadelphia in 1899; she met and married my grandfather William Henry Whyte, in Malaya (as it then was) in 1927. He was almost twenty years older, and died in 1949, leaving their two children, my father John Henry Whyte (1928-1990) and my aunt Ursula (1939-1998). My grandmother lived until 1979, so I have pretty clear memories of her as a genteel old lady, hit by a stroke in her last couple of years.

She has left us many boxes of her memoirs, which I am gradually putting online here. There is a chronological account of her life from birth until the mid-1970s, and also several standalone notes about events and people. It’s a work in progress, and breaking it all up into digestible chapters is proving a challenge; there is a certain amount of repetition between the various documents (though thank heavens little contradiction) and I haven’t tried to edit that out. Thanks to the Internet, and Ancestry.com in particular, I’ve been able to find biographical details of a lot of her friends and relatives, possibly more than she knew in some cases.

Here is what I have so far:

Notes

• Her father, Henry Deming Hibbard (1856-1942), my great-grandfather; born in Boston, an engineer (like many in the family) made safes for Wall Street firms.
• Her husband, William Henry Whyte (1880-1949), my grandfather, born in Dublin, a professional soldier for much of his career, also managed rubber plantations in Malaya.

Chronology

• Dorothy Hibbard 1899-1910: born in Philadelphia, brought up in Plainfield, New Jersey, with an elder brother, Lyman (1893-1956). Her mother dies when she is six, and she develops a close relationship with her aunt Lily (also known as Zora).
• Dorothy Hibbard 1911-1913: Her father remarries; her aunt Lily takes her on holiday to Europe for a year the one year trip turns into two years, in Paris and then in Rome; and she returns home to disappointment.
• Dorothy Hibbard 1914-1918: Dorothy was excited to be invited to spend more time in Europe with her aunts. But it was the summer of 1914, and when the war started she was shipped back from England and sent to American boarding schools. There are some vivid descriptions of London at the start of the first world war.
• Dorothy Hibbard 1918-1921: The war is over, and Dorothy is an adult. She stays with her aunts in London for almost a year, and then moves to Paris, working up her batik technique and meeting lots of people.
• Dorothy Hibbard 1921: visit to Romania – a summer in Sinaia with the royal family, as a guest of one of the ladies-in-waiting of Queen Marie; flirtation with the young Prince Nicholas (after whom I am definitely not named).
• Dorothy Hibbard 1921 (after Romania) and 1922 – fun in France; she is offered but turns down a place at Oxford.
• Dorothy Hibbard 1923 (Egypt) – Dorothy and her aunt Zora go to Egypt for the first half of 1923, and have a whale of a time partying and riding with the British colonial occupiers.

As I said, I remember her as an old lady, but this is her passport photograph as a teenager, her whole life ahead of her.