Written by Bea Tilbrook, dear friend of the Price family, and historian and biographer of Quidhampton/Bemerton WW1 soldiers:

"Charles was a photographer who fell in love at first sight when he took a photograph of Clara Jane Elkins. Charles was well educated, a talented musician, gregarious, and inventive but there had once been money in his family and he always believed a family fortune would come his way so he did not take the business of earning a living very seriously. His love of alcohol and gambling meant his family was short of money and his businesses did not do well. When the photography business in Hythe collapsed they moved to Sherborne in Dorset, but again he lost his job and around 1889 they moved to Church Lane, Bemerton, near Salisbury only to leave after a year for the cheapest cottage they could find in the neighbouring village of Quidhampton.

Charles’s behaviour had became more and more difficult; he was absent for long periods, including the time when his daughters drowned, and sometimes he was violent when he returned.

In 1907 Sidney, his second son, persuaded Charles to join him and his family in Alberta, where Sidney had immigrated in 1902. (Charles lived another 30 years in Canada.)"

Charles' granddaughter Lilian recalls:

"Grandpa Charles Price was 88 years old when I was born. He was a fascinating old rogue. He had white hair and a white beard and moustache. He spent most of the day sitting in the dining room in his favourite arm chair and I can still picture him sitting reading. He read a lot of books and always had a dictionary on the table next to him. Sometimes he called me to come and visit with him and ask if I would like a peppermint. He always kept a supply of scotch mints. I didn’t really want one as he always cracked it into pieces with a pair of old pliers and I didn’t like it all broken up.

Grandpa had been a photographer in England and every now and then he’d decide it was time to take more pictures of us. Out would come his camera which he placed on a stool with the black velveteen cover over it. We had to stand “just so” and when he was satisfied he’d disappear under the cover to check through the lens. His head kept bobbing in and out and we were supposed to stand still. We’d get fidgety, making him cross with us.

Grandpa was more or less confined to the house by his age and infirmities the last few years of his life but Mom recalled some stories about him. If he was attempting to fix something without success he would say “the cussed contrariness of inanimate objects!” He was often cantankerous and once, after an argument with Dad, he shouted “Pricey, the day you married Annie was your lucky day, but she is too good for you!” When he was still able to go out he walked to the end of the street to wait for the streetcar and when he saw it coming he stood in the middle of the tracks and waved his cane back and forth to make sure the conductor saw him. Apparently Grandpa was a good pianist, so the older ones said, but he had given up playing the piano by the time I was born."