Lost in London - 4: Tracing an ordinary London family

 

 

To illustrate how much can be found about ordinary London families, I am including the following examples relating to my own Bluett and Fritz ancestors. They were poor Irish and German immigrants but the documents I have uncovered show that they actually lived extraordinary lives. The photographs of Mary Ann Bluett and Julius Fritz included in the family tree, above, came to me from hitherto unknown, distant cousins. We only made contact because my tree was online. 

 

 

This article is from the Times of 15 May 1846. There was a family tradition that Thomas Bluett had been shot in London but the details were completely wrong. As a result, I researched without success for 18 years. Yet I found Thomas easily as soon as the Times Digital Archive came online. That one newspaper published nine separate articles about the shooting, arrest, death, autopsy, inquest and trial. There was also a classic thundering Times leader following the acquittal of the perpetrator, John Graham. Many other national and regional papers also published articles. From all this material I discovered that Thomas had been born in Ireland, whereas I had been searching for him in Devon & Cornwall for years!

 

 

This article is from the Times of 11 June 1846. It provides wonderful information about Mary Bluett, née Langley, and her daughter Mary Ann Bluett, later Fritz. The second half of this article refers to Mary's previous residence in Hong Kong and to her having returned home on a ship whose Captain was subsequently tried at the Old Bailey, with Mary Bluett giving evidence. Armed with these clues and in collaboration with a cousin, found via the internet, I researched an amazing story of travels on three continents, confidence tricks, abandonment, mutiny, celebrity and crime.

 

 

Successive censuses showed that Julius Fritz had been born in Prussia but became a British Subject. I found his naturalisation papers in the National Archives and they gave me much valuable information about his origins, family, occupation and residence. They even gave me the name of his father in Prussia - Heinrich.

 

 

Cousins I found via the internet had a tradition that Julius was a Freeman of the City of London. I was initially sceptical as there was no such story in my branch of the family. But it turned out to be true and they were able to supply me with a copy of his application for the Freedom. This also gives the name of Julius' father - but as Ferdinand -and the information that he was dead by September 1876.

 

 

17a Fetter Lane, London was the Fritz family home and the location for Julius' tailoring business and second-hand china shop. Julius also let rooms to lodgers. It was a slum and was demolished in 1887. But it had been the home of the poet John Dryden in the 17th century and so it was sketched by several artists immediately prior to its demolition. A number of these pictures were found on the internet by a cousin, using Google. Members of the family are shown at the windows in this illustration. In another, a shop sign for J Fritz, Old China Dealer, can clearly be seen. 

 

 

This article is from the Times of 28 May 1878. It reports an affray involving one of the lodgers at 17a Fetter Lane, Mrs Amelia Lewis, in which Mary Ann Fritz (nee Bluett) and one of her daughters got caught up. They later gave evidence in court. Ordinary people frequently appear in police reports in this way.

Lost in London - 3: Helpful websites

 

 

Access to Archives. Search by name or place across the catalogues of most London repositories including the London Metropolitan Archives, City of Westminster Archives, Corporation of London Records Office and Guildhall Library.

Ancestry. Currently their catalogue lists 30 London specific databases, including London Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906; London Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921; London Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980; and London Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812.

Black Sheep Index. It's pot luck if you find anyone. I found two young ancestors who got on a train, very drunk, and objected violently to some pious fellow passengers who tried to convert them! I also found the reason for the disappearance of my great-great grandfather, Rev Frederick Davis – he fled abroad to avoid a charge of assaulting a young woman on a train.

British Newspapers, 1800-1900. 49 local and national titles. You may be able to access this collection for free using your library card.

Charles Booth Online Archive. Street by street notebooks and maps, documenting social conditions in London between 1886 and 1903.

City of Westminster Archives Catalogue. WESTCAT contains details of the official records of the City of Westminster and the former Boroughs of Paddington and St Marylebone together with parish registers and other parish records for these areas. The collections also include records deposited by businesses, estates, schools, clubs, societies, charities, institutions and private individuals. There are also images of prints and photographs drawn from the archival and local studies collection.

Cyndi's List. Check Cyndi's pages for London and the surrounding counties for thousands of relevant links.

Deceased Online. Digitised images of burial and cremation records from the London Boroughs of Brent, Camden, Greenwich, Havering, Islington and Merton.

Docklands Ancestors. Indexes to baptisms in dockland parishes, plus resources for researching Thames watermen and lightermen and other dockland ancestors.

Find My Past. The London Collection includes the City of London Burial Index; West Middlesex Marriage Index; London Docklands Baptisms; London and West Kent Probate Indexes and participants in the 1888 Matchworkers' Strike.

GENUKI: London. Don't forget to visit the pages for Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex as well.

Google. To find all instances of a search term on a website, use the search prefix "site" plus your search term, for example: "site:www.blacksheepindex.co.uk gurney". This is very useful for sites such as Black Sheep Ancestors which have multiple databases with no overall search engine.

Google Books. Search for references to ancestral names or places inside old books. Read them online or order the book from your local library on inter-library loan.

Historical Directories. Digital images of 81 London directories from 1808 to 1919.

London Ancestor. A miscellany of London links.

London Gazette. Includes bankruptcies, business failures and closures. I found a direct ancestor imprisoned in Maidstone Gaol as an "insolvent debtor".

London Jews Database. A database of names, addresses and some other information about Jews who lived in London in the first half of the nineteenth century.

London Lives, 1690-1800. A fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.

London Metropolitan Archives. Information about collections, research leaflets and catalogue search.

London Road Name Changes. Indexed lists of the road name changes made by London County Council after 1889.

London Roll of Honour. London war memorials and rolls of honour.

Middlesex Marriage Index. Covers 31 parishes on the outskirts of London.

Old London Maps. Includes views of the city from the 16th to the 19th century.

Principal streets and places in London and its environs, 1856. Produced by the Post office, this directory gives the postal district for every street in London.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Pot luck again. This site has amazing detail about cases, with names, addresses and statements of victims, witnesses and perpetrators.

Society of Genealogists, City of London Resources. Includes information on the City Livery Companies, in addition to the resource categories listed for Middlesex, below.

Society of Genealogists, Middlesex Resources. Includes parish registers, marriage licences, monumental inscriptions, censuses, directories, poll books, periodicals and wills.

Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985. Information on how to gain free access and how to search. The Times is not just a source for "top people". Many ordinary people appeared in its pages, especially in reports of court cases and "human interest" stories.

Topographical Dictionary of London, 1831. "Containing descriptive and critical accounts of all the public and private buildings, offices, docks, squares, streets, lanes, wards, liberties, charitable, scholastic and other establishments, with lists of their officers, patrons, incumbents of livings, &c. in the British metropolis". 

Tower Hamlets BMD. Indexes to registrations of births, marriages and deaths within the Tower Hamlets district from 1837 to date.

Victorian London A to Z Street Index.

Lost in London - 2: Research strategies

 

 

General strategies

These are strategies applicable to all family history research:

• Keep an open mind. Evaluate everything, assume nothing. What you think you know about dates, ages, relationships or places may be wrong and may be preventing you from looking in the right place.
• Use all available sources. Never be content with just the readily available BMD and census information. More sources equal more pieces of the jigsaw.

• Research related lines. Siblings share parents and first cousins share their grandparents. Work backwards through them and then come forwards down the tree again. Find living relatives. Different stories, photos and documents are passed down different lines. Distant cousins may hold vital clues. They may even help you research.
• Use the internet. More and more images of primary sources are online, plus incredibly helpful indexes and search engines. The internet is an amazing tool, which has revolutionised genealogy. Use it!
• Share your research. This combines the last two points. Publish your research online and watch the new cousins roll up and the brick walls tumble.

London strategies

Learn the geography.

"Mr Weller's knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar". Dickens

You need to "do the knowledge” like a London cabbie.

• Learn the administrative structure. London consisted of the City of London plus parts of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex. There were different boundaries for registration districts, poor law unions, Church of England parishes and electoral wards. These overlapped in confusing ways. There were also frequent changes. During the 19th century there was repeated sub-division of Church of England parishes and, in 1889, the London County Council was created.
• Study 19th century growth. London was transformed by the coming of the railways in the 1830s, leading for the first time to a divide between the inner city and the suburbs. There was new building on a massive scale, with the development of Islington, Paddington, Belgravia, Holborn, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Southwark and Lambeth.
• Research street name changes. Many streets disappeared as a result of new road construction such as Kingsway in central London. Many had their names changed (sometimes more than once) to remove duplications. To track the changes you need maps. Reproductions of old Ordnance Survey maps and the A to Z of Victorian London are particularly helpful.
• Consider migration routes. Identify possible routes  into London from your ancestors' rural places of origin. For example, the Gurney family moved from Norfolk to Bedfordshire to Hertfordshire to North London. And remember that they didn't just travel by road. You should look at the pattern of rivers and railways as well, when trying to identify where they came from or where they went.

Understand the society

"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained." Conan Doyle

To do this you must read, read, read. Some helpful starting points are:

• Ackroyd, Peter.  London: The Biography
• Dickens, Charles. Any of his London based novels. See Dickensian London: A character in itself.
• Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
• Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor.
• Booth, Charles. Life and Labour of the People of London. The London School of Economics has put Booth's poverty maps and notebooks online. If you are lucky, you may find a detailed description of your ancestor’s street.

Remember the history

"If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us!" Coleridge

• Your ancestors did not live in a vacuum, isolated from the great events of their day. To see the connections, superimpose a timeline of historical and/or local events on a chronological list of events in your ancestor's life. Tools to help you do this can be found in many genealogy software programs.

• Are some of your male ancestors missing from the 1901 census? This baffled people when the 1901 census was first released. They had forgotten about the Boer War.

• Did your ancestors appear in London out of nowhere in the 1840s/1850s? Remember the Irish Potato Famine, 1845-1852 and that Irish people did not necessarily have uniquely Irish surnames. 1848 is known as the Year of Revolution across Europe. Uprisings took place in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland, and their suppression was the trigger for a wave of emigration. Many ended up in London.

Lost in London - 1: Why is London such a problem?

Back in 2008 I gave a talk to the Family History Group of Thornbury U3A on the theme "Lost in London - Breaking down brick walls in London research". As my health no longer allows me to travel to give talks, I've decided to share my presentation on this blog. I've broken it into four parts for ease of reading. I hope you find it helpful.

 

Why is London such a problem?

"Hell is a city much like London - A populous and smoky city." Shelley

• Size. By 1800 London was already the world’s largest city, with a population of 1 million. By the 1851 census, that figure had grown to 2.5 million and was 6.7 million in 1901.
• Scale. The small market town where I live, Chipping Sodbury, consists of one parish and it is possible to search the whole parish register, if necessary, for one event. But there were over 100 parishes in the square mile of the City of London alone. And some of the parishes in the wider city were truly enormous. By mid century, the population of St Marylebone was over 150,000.
• Range of repositories. In addition to the major collections in the London Metropolitan Archives, Guildhall Library and Westminster Archives, there are separate record offices in most London boroughs, plus numerous specialist repositories
• Range of sources. The numbers of different churches, charities, directories, newspapers, books, government reports, etc. covering London make it impossible to search everything.
• Difficult research period. During the early 19th century there was a decline in the number of children baptised, especially in poor urban areas, and this was prior to the start of General Registration in 1837 and the first useful census in 1841.

Why are Londoners such a problem?

"There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear—the city of London and the South Seas." Herman Melville

• Extreme poverty. In "The Condition of the Working Class in England", published in 1845, Friedrich Engels described the abject condition of the London poor:

  On the occasion of an inquest held Nov. 14th, 1843, by Mr. Carter, coroner for Surrey, upon the body of Ann Galway, aged 45 years, the newspapers related the following particulars concerning the deceased: She had lived at No. 3 White Lion Court, Bermondsey Street, London, with her husband and a nineteen-year-old son in a little room, in which neither a bedstead nor any other furniture was to be seen. She lay dead beside her son upon a heap of feathers which were scattered over her almost naked body, there being neither sheet nor coverlet. The feathers stuck so fast over the whole body that the physician could not examine the corpse until it was cleansed, and then found it starved and scarred from the bites of vermin. Part of the floor of the room was torn up, and the hole used by the family as a privy.

  On Monday, Jan. 15th, 1844, two boys were brought before the police magistrate because, being in a starving condition, they had stolen and immediately devoured a half-cooked calf's foot from a shop. The magistrate felt called upon to investigate the case further, and received the following details from the policeman: The mother of the two boys was the widow of an ex-soldier, afterwards policeman, and had had a very hard time since the death of her husband, to provide for her nine children. She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place, Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the utmost poverty. When the policeman came to her, he found her with six of her children literally huddled together in a little back room, with no furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone, a small table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish. On the hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as a bed. For bed clothing they had only their scanty day clothing. The poor woman told him that she had been forced to sell her bedstead the year before to buy food. Her bedding she had pawned with the victualler for food. In short, everything had gone for food. The magistrate ordered the woman a considerable provision from the poor-box.

• Extreme mobility. Because so many were leading a hand to mouth existence, with very little money for accommodation, renting rooms by the month, week or even by the night was common. Most poor families gave a different address at the birth registration of each child. It is not uncommon for the address to change in the few weeks between birth and baptism.
• Fragmented families. The Industrial Revolution led to a huge migration of population from the countryside into the towns. People lost their rural roots and the extended family structures which went with them. Family members were scattered over wide areas of the city and children no longer supported their aged parents.
• Social breakdown. People were no longer well known to their neighbours, or to the authorities, as is demonstrated in the cases cited by Engels
• Official anonymity. Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was not compulsory until 1875. There was deliberate evasion of the census takers and it was easy to cover up cohabitation, adultery and illegitimacy. One of my husband's ancestors fathered two illegitimate children whilst he was an apprentice. He and his partner were able to pass themselves off as man and wife when baptising those children in a large London parish. Once his apprenticeship ended, they went several parishes away to tie the knot quietly.

Surname Saturday: Haliburton

Haliburton is a Scottish surname which comes from two farms near Greenlaw in Berwickshire - Meikle and Little Haliburton. It is thought that the original name for the area was Burton, from the Norse bur, a storehouse, and dun (pronounced toon), a fort. Then a chapel was built and the area became Holy or Haly Burton.

The earliest recorded bearer of the surname was David de Halyburton who, in 1176, gave the chapel at Halyburton to the Abbey of Kelso. The Haliburtons originally held estates at Merton and Muirhouselaw near Dryburgh. In the 14th century they acquired by marriage the lordship of Dirleton, in East Lothian and, in the 15th century, the lordship of Pitcur in  Angus.

From Pitcur there developed a strong Angus branch of the family in and around the parish of Kettins, where Hallyburton House and Forest remain to this day. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Angus branch of the Haliburtons were also active as merchants and writers (solicitors) in Dundee and in Edinburgh.

Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott was descended from the Haliburtons of Dryburgh through his mother. In 1820 he published a book called Memorials of the Haliburtons which is now available to read online at the Internet Archive.

Battle of Killiecrankie, 1689

One of the Haliburton lairds of Pitcur was killed at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, fighting on the Jacobite side under John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. He is mentioned in the folk song The Braes of Killiecrankie: "The bauld [bold] Pitcur fell in a furr [ditch]:

 

 

My Haliburton ancestry

My own Haliburton ancestors come from the same period of Scottish history. I've traced them back to the early 17th century in the parishes of Kettins and Newtyle. My family were tenants of land belonging to the Haliburtons of Pitcur, so are likely to be related in some way, but at present I do not know how.

 

 

Name	Father	Mother	Spouse	Marriage	Place	Death
John Haliburton						aft 26 Aug 1622
George Haliburton	John Haliburton		Susanna Halden	bef 30 Sep 1664
James Haliburton	George Haliburton	Susanna Halden	Agnes Smith	9 Jul 1677		bet 1698 & 1700
Jean Haliburton	James Haliburton	Agnes Smith	Charles Hay	8 Jul 1720	Coupar Angus, Perthshire	aft 22 May 1753

Wordless Wednesday - Maidstone Gaol

 

A picture of the Gaol, Maidstone, Kent in 1829. My 3x great-grandfather, John Baldwin, a journeyman tailor, was imprisoned for debt there in 1841.

Postcard from the Past

From time to time I buy old postcards of ancestral places on eBay. They are usually very cheap and provide windows into a vanished world.

 

 

My latest purchase is a postcard of Coupar Angus, Perthshire, dating from 1917. My family has had a long association with the town, from the 17th century to the 1950s. Some of the names I am researching there are Clark, Fife, Gibb, Haliburton, Hay, Hood, Lowe, Malcolm and Smyth.

When my postcard arrived I turned it over, expecting to see the usual few lines, scrawled by a holidaymaker. Imagine my surprise at finding the following information instead:

 

 

I'm a genealogist so, naturally, I started to research R Bingham Adams. So far I've been able to piece together the following facts:

Richard Bingham Adams was born in Portsmouth in 1873 and married Violet Plater there in 1897. They had two children - Violet Plater Adams, born in 1898, and Dorothy Plater Adams, born in 1901. Richard appears in the 1891 census as a solicitor's clerk in Portsmouth. In the 1901 and 1911 censuses he was working for an insurance company, first in Horsham, then back in Portsmouth. During the First World War he served in five different units, including the Labour Corps. After the war he continued to serve in the Territorial Army, which awarded him the Territorial Efficiency Medal in 1928. His Medal Card gives the details of his previous service:

 

 

Richard died in Portsmouth in 1956, aged 82. His elder daughter, Violet, married Alfred Tree in Portsmouth in 1922. They had a son, Kenneth, who was born and died in 1924, and a daughter, Olive Violet, born in 1925. According to a well-sourced family tree on Ancestry, she is still alive.

I also did some research on Richard Bingham Adams' ancestry. His father, James Lewis Adams, was a pilot who worked for the Colonial Service in Port Louis, Mauritius, and all of Richard's siblings were born there. James himself was born in the then new town of Anglesey in the parish of Alverstoke, now part of Gosport, in 1833. His father was the wonderfully named Balthazar Bowman Adams, who was a ship's carpenter in the Royal Navy.

Balthazar's father, also Balthazar, was the son of Henry Adams, the Master Shipbuilder at Bucklers Hard, who built many famous ships of the Royal Navy. These included Nelson's favourite, HMS Agamemnon, and two other ships which saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Balthazar Adams senior and his brother, Edward, inherited the thriving business when their father died that same year, but they over-extended themselves and by 1811 they were bankrupt.

Waitangi Day - Thomas Bluett, Wellington, 1841

February 6th is Waitangi Day, New Zealand's national day, which commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840. To mark the day, the Auckland Research Centre have issued an invitation to blog about New Zealand ancestors.

 

 

My 3x great grandfather, Thomas Bluett, was born around 1819. On 4 December 1836 he married Mary Langley at St Mary, Lambeth, Surrey. Mary had been born in Ireland around 1813, the daughter of Thomas Langley. Thomas and Mary had two known children. Their first child was a son, Thomas, whose birth has not yet been traced. Their second was a daughter, Mary Ann, who was born at 34 Little Pulteney Street, Westminster, on 3 March 1839. It is through her that I am descended. Mary Ann's birth certificate states that Thomas was a printer and we know from other sources that, at this time, he was employed as a lithographic printer by Day and Haghe of London, the country's leading lithographic printing firm.

 

 

On 17 September 1840, Thomas Bluett's name was entered in the New Zealand Company's register of emigrant labourers applying for free passage to New Zealand. He gave his age as 21 and his occupation as smith and bellhanger. Thomas was said to be married, with a wife aged 25, boy aged three and a girl aged eleven months, and the family were living at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand, London.

On 27 September 1840, there was another Bluett application. Adam Bluett was registered as a smith, living at 18 Union Place, Sloane Square, Chelsea. He was aged 30, with a wife aged 29, boy aged 12 and girl aged 10. On 20 October 1840, there were two further applications. Another Adam Bluett, differentiated from the first by the designation senior, was a locksmith and bell hanger, resident at 50 St Clement's Lane, Strand. He was married, aged 40, with a wife aged 38. Immediately after him in the register came an application from Peter Langley, an unmarried labourer, aged 21 and also resident at 50 St Clement's Lane.

 

 

After seven years' research, the relationship between these various groups of people is still unclear but, from the coincidence of names, occupations and addresses, it can hardly be doubted that there is one. Some of the information given in the applications is false - Thomas' occupation and Mary Ann's age were probably altered in order to qualify for free passage - but much has been proved accurate from other sources.

Thomas Bluett and his family were originally booked to sail on the Lady Nugent, which left England on 21 October 1840, but they delayed their departure, presumably in order to travel on the same ship as the others. At some point Adam Bluett junior and his family decided not to travel. He and his wife, Catherine (nee Sweeney), plus Adam's two children from a previous marriage, William and Betsy, can be found in the 1841 census living in Henrietta Street, Marylebone. So it was a party of seven which finally set sail on the barque Olympus from Gravesend on 9 December 1840, as steerage passengers bound for New Zealand. The passenger list notes that Thomas Bluett acted as cook for the voyage.

The Olympus arrived at Port Nicholson (the harbour of Wellington) on 20 April 1841. Thomas Bluett lost no time in getting to work but not as a smith and bellhanger. For he had brought with him in the hold of the Olympus the first lithographic printing press to reach New Zealand. Moreover, one of the cabin passengers on the Olympus was a lithographic artist, Jacob William Jones. It seems highly improbable that this was a coincidence. On 1 May 1841, the New Zealand Gazette announced:

 

 

On 29 May, Jones and Bluett produced a chart of Port Nicholson, the first printed map in New Zealand:

 

 

By 12 June they had added a plan of Wadestown and a view of Lambton Harbour & Mount Victoria from Tinakore:

 

 

By 17 July the Gazette was selling their plans of the town:

 

 

But then it all began to go wrong. 16 September 1841 saw the publication in Wellington of the first, and only surviving, edition of an extraordinary newspaper, the Victoria Times. It was a lithographic print of a handwritten original and the publisher was Thomas Bluett, whose address was given as the Lithographic Printing Office, Wellington Terrace.

 

 

As was the custom, the first page consisted of advertisements, including one promoting Thomas Bluett's lithographic services on "very moderate" terms and another seeking "a steady and respectable lad as an apprentice to the lithographic business". The second and third pages were devoted to an editorial in the form of an extended diatribe against the Gazette. The fourth page reprinted the Jones and Bluett plan of Wellington:

 

 

From the plan, it can be seen that the Lithographic Printing Office was situated on land owned by Jacob William Jones. But, having alienated the Gazette, which had previously sold - and praised - his lithographic prints, Thomas now went on to alienate his collaborator and patron. The last mention of Thomas in New Zealand is an advertisement which appeared in the Gazette on 10 and 13 November 1841:

 

 

By the end of the year, Thomas Bluett and his family had left New Zealand for Australia. Their many adventures thereafter, culminating in Thomas' headline-making death back in London in 1846, must be the subject of future blog posts.

As for their travelling companions on the Olympus, I can find no reference at all to them in New Zealand following their arrival. Peter Langley simply vanishes without trace but Adam Bluett senior and his wife, another Catherine, reappear in England. On 16 August 1849 they were convicted at the Wiltshire County Assizes of uttering counterfeit coin and each sentenced to one year's imprisonment. Adam died in the Workhouse in the parish of St Giles, London, and was buried in Victoria Park Cemetery, Hackney, on 27 December 1858, aged 59.

Surname Saturday - Panther

One of my ancestors was a Panther! Elizabeth Panther was born in Finedon, Northamptonshire, around 1802 and married William Eaton in Dean, Bedfordshire, on 30 March 1821.

 

 

William was a carpenter, aged 44. He had been married twice before and had nine children, eight of whom were still living, aged four to sixteen. His second wife had only been dead six months when he married the nineteen year old Elizabeth. No doubt he needed to provide a stepmother for his brood but Elizabeth clearly had her own attractions. William went on to have a further eight children with her, the youngest born when he was aged 65. William died in 1857, aged 80, and Elizabeth only survived him by a decade. She died at Dean on 14 August 1868, aged 66. Raising sixteen children clearly wore her out a lot faster than fathering seventeen of them did him!

 

 

Sadly, the surname Panther has nothing to do with big cats. It is a variant of Panter, which is an occupational surname. The panter was an officer in a medieval household, who supplied the bread and had charge of the pantry. The panter in a monastery also distributed loaves to the poor. The word is derived from the Old French panieter, via Anglo-French paneter.

 

 

The earliest occurrence of the surname cited by Reaney & Wilson in their Dictionary of English Surnames is Reginald le Paneter in Kent in 1200. In later centuries, when the original derivation had long been forgotten, the name probably began to be spelled as Panther because of the association with the animal.

The surname Panter is rare today and its variant Panther even rarer. The distribution is extremely localised to Northamptonshire and its surrounding counties. In 2002 I did a study comparing the occurrence of the surname Panther in the 1881 census to the entries in the modern British phonebooks. In 1881 there were 302 people with the surname Panther, of whom 52% were living in Northamptonshire, with a further 9% in the surrounding counties. 61% of all the Panthers in the 1881 census were born in Northamptonshire. In 2002, the surname Panther appeared in significant numbers only in the Northampton phonebook.

Hey, kids, look what I've just found out about Grandad!

Thomas MacEntee recently suggested on Facebook that we should talk to our children about genealogy. I've been talking to my children about genealogy since 1985. Their eyes glaze over at the mere mention of the word. They believe compulsory childhood tours of graveyards were a form of child abuse. I may soon be arrested!

My husband shows his love by recognising my need to share family history stories and accepting that he will be the main audience. But even when the stories are about his own ancestors he sets firm time limits. Exceed ten minutes and he adopts the strategy of the 1950s People reporter: "I made my excuses and left". On our very first journey together I took him to Tipton, of all places. Whilst I photographed a gravestone, he made the unwelcome acquaintance of an old man in a ginger wig. He is still traumatised by the experience.

 

 

My husband and son also speak bitterly of the time I booked a holiday in Scotland and forgot to tell them it was an old ancestral stamping ground. They didn't seem to appreciate that the holiday cottage was on an estate once owned by my family. Surely that made up for the owner being a control freak, personally trained by the Stasi? And I truly believe that, in amongst all the touristy stuff, one teeny graveyard visit a day was not excessive. The two hours I spent in the graveyard in Broughty Ferry were an aberration. They didn't have to wait lunch for me. And in any case they were in a pub. Since when did British men complain about spending two hours in a pub?

 

 

The family member with the most interest in genealogy is my dear mother. She implanted my love of history when I was tiny. She told me all the family stories over tea time toast and honey. In the early days we even shared research trips to London. But now, aged 91, even she has her limits. If I witter on too much after Sunday lunch, I can see she is thinking longingly about her nap.

Which is where the distant cousins come in, bless them. Those wonderful souls who have also inherited the recessive genealogical gene. Those co-addicts who would rather spend their days with a microfilm reader than visit the sights of London or Edinburgh. We email each other with discoveries in the middle of the night. We compete to follow up on a new research lead. We argue over possible ancestral motivation and bond over shared ancestral secrets. And, when we finally meet, we always have something to talk about.

Strange sources and freakish footnotes

Family history information can be found in the oddest places. The strangest source I've used is The Book of Duck Decoys: Their Construction, Management and History, written by Sir Ralph William Frankland-Payne-Gallwey (you couldn't make that name up) and published in 1886¹.

According to Sir Ralph:

A Decoy is a cunning and clever combination of water, nets, and screens, by means of which wildfowl, such as Wigeon, Mallard, and Teal, are caught alive. A Decoyman is the man who works and manages the Decoy, and who by his art, as well as by his knowledge of the birds and their surroundings when in the waters of the Decoy, entraps them.

In 1831, my 3x great grandfather, James Munden (1790-1855), was employed as a decoyman on the Charborough Park estate at Morden, Dorset, owned by the Drax family. Sir Ralph's book contains a map of the decoy where James worked:

He also provides some useful information about the demise of the decoy:

Morden, 6 miles N. of Wareham, on the property of Miss Drax of Charborough Park. There used to be a Decoy here until 1856, when it ceased to be worked, and since then the shooting around it having been let, the place has been too much disturbed to admit of the Decoy being successfully carried on.

Today the old decoy pond is part of the Morden Bog National Nature Reserve. The curved arms of the pond can still clearly be seen in this beautiful photograph:

This is a landscape immortalised by Thomas Hardy as Egdon Heath in novels such as The Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge. It must have looked much the same in James Munden's time as it does today, though the wild people of Hardy's novels have been replaced by the wild creatures living on this Site of Special Scientific Interest:

Near the pond there is a Grade II listed building, called the Decoy House. It is described in the listing as:

Detached cottage. Late C18-early C19. Brick walls, thatched roof with brick parapets to west gable, brick stacks. One storey and attics. Ground floor has central casement window with glazing bars - replacing original door, and 2 C20 metal windows. Attic has 2 dormers with casements with glazing bars. Cl9 single-storey wing on west, of brick with slate roof. 2 ledged doors, 2 casement windows with glazing bars and one C20 metal window. Internally, main ground floor room has large open fireplace with timber lintel. Possibly the Decoy Keeper's cottage.

If this was the decoyman's cottage, then James, his wife Elizabeth (nee Snelling) and nine children would have been living there in 1831.

And the freakish footnote? If I shared the genealogy world's obsession with "correct" citation, it might look something like this:

1. Frankland-Payne-Gallwey, Sir Ralph William, "The Book of Duck Decoys: Their Construction, Management and History," Decoymans.co.uk (Online: John Norris, 1999) [originally published as The Book of Duck Decoys: Their Construction, Management and History, London: J Van Voorst, 1886], page 73, <http://www.decoymans.co.uk/>, accessed 19 January 2011.

But I don't - and that's a subject for another post.

Amanuensis Monday - A letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury

A letter which my 2x great grandfather, Rev Frederick Davis, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait. It illustrates the many obstacles to becoming a clergyman in the mid 19th century, for someone without wealth or connections:

The Manor House
Northfleet
Kent

30 August 1875

My Lord Archbishop,

Two years since, I took the duty of ministering in the fields to the hop pickers at Ospringe, at the instance of Canon Griffin. On that occasion Mr G promised that he would always in future look to me first for such assistance, I having given him & his parishioners complete satisfaction. I was, then, surprized the other day to see him advertizing for such help, & wrote to him. His reply was the enclosed¹.

Now my Lord, for 12 years I have ministered in your diocese, with acceptance to clergy & people alike, in several cases with your Grace's written permission, & never have I given offence but once – to the Churchwarden² at Offham, where I officiated for 4 months – by simply determining to do my duty & obey the law. At the death of the late Rector he desired me to make changes. This I positively refused to do, saying that, as a mere locum tenens, I had neither right nor authority to do so. He then quarrelled with me, and wrote me several ungentlemanly letters.

When in charge of Thurnham last year, I wrote to your Grace, asking you to renew your permission to me to officiate in your diocese, as your former permission had lapsed. Your reply was that I must first produce certain papers, which I could not clearly understand. The ordinary papers for the past three years I could certainly procure when necessary. But it seems to me that your lordship required papers from the diocese in which I was ordained, & from the Bishop thereof.

As I had then only one or two Sundays more employment in your diocese, & I knew not when I should be called upon to officiate therin again – for it has only been at long & distant intervals I have been so – I determined not to trouble your Grace, nor my friends, for papers till occasion should arise requiring them. Had then Canon Griffin sought my services I should certainly have at once complied with your Grace's requirements with great cheerfulness.

I now write to say that I can certainly procure the ordinary papers required by law, which I respectfully imagine are all your Grace can require. But papers from the diocese where I was ordained I cannot obtain for very satisfactory reasons, though I can send you a letter from the Bishop who ordained me, who though being dead yet speaketh. I send you herewith printed papers, the originals of which I can furnish if necessary, which will show you my history, & prove the truth of my allegations.

After serving to the best of my powers the Church, both in my own person & in those of my whole family, for many years, I was strongly recommended for ordination to the late Bishop of Exeter, who ordained & licensed me to the Curacy of S. John's Torquay. At this place I was living, keeping a school. I was a widower with eight children – but doing well with the school. I was to receive no stipend for my curacy – but the Incumbent sent me some half dozen scholars before my ordination on the ground that I trained them as choristers taking them to Church on all occasions.

After my ordination he refused to pay me as before for the scholars holding that I was now as Curate bound to teach & train them. Added to this he was appointed Chaplain to the Cemetery and then insisted upon me taking nearly all the funerals. At Torquay, my Lord, these are, as probably you know, very numerous³ & I can say truly, that nearly every day of my life, Sundays not excepted, I had to walk three miles to the place, & three miles back so that in addition to taking the service, & often waiting, the half of every day was occupied. This naturally told upon my school which descended below paying point.

Having proceeded more than 12 months, & fearing that by getting into pecuniary difficulties I should bring disgrace upon the Church & myself, I petitioned the Bishop, who went thoroughly into the matter, to allow me to leave the diocese to come here, where there was an opening for a school & a prospect of success. With some hesitation, because he desired to make my Incumbent comply with his wishes, he released me giving me the enclosed letter. I was told by the Bishop's chaplain that that letter would satisfy any bishop, which it certainly did Bishop Wigram, when twelve years ago I showed it to him.

Now, my Lord, that Vicar of mine was obliged soon after my leaving him to resign the living, & is now non-est; the senior Curate seceded to Rome, & is now a Romish Priest in that neighbourhood, one Churchwarden is dead, & the other removed to where I cannot find him. Your Grace will now see that I can do no more than send you the letter of the late illustrious bishop.

Why I did not proceed to priest's orders is easily explained. When I came here I had no dependence but a small uncertain school to depend upon for the maintenance of myself & eight children. I was obliged to ? myself heartily with work interests to keep so many persons. Bishop Wigram offered to ordain me priest, if I could get the necessary title⁴. The title I was offered by several - but they could offer no stipend &, moreover, I must reside. Under the circumstances neither would suit, so I went on from that time to the present attending to my work here, & employing my Sundays as you will find from my printed papers.

The school was given up by me after several years in favour of keeping a Temperance Establishment², which I was asked to undertake as being a man likely to carry it on successfully. This has gone well and I have now six inebriates of noble families & lineage. Hence – my Lord – being now 60 years of age⁵, with a great & responsible work upon my shoulders, I have not time to prepare for priest's orders & don't intend to seek them.

But being strong & able, I desire to serve the Church as I have always done, on Sundays, & with such views I seek canonical authority. I remain idle, & to cease officiating somewhere, or somehow, is utterly impossible; therefore, since I am entirely independent of the income I receive from the Church, which has never been more than an average of £50 in my life, I do hope & trust that your Grace will not force me to consider my position & duty in regard to doing God's work by refusing me the lawful & proper authority. I have never done anything to forfeit it, & I always conform to what is the rule of the Church to which I am called.

I would mention that I have two sons clergymen, another to be ordained in September, another at College with a view to orders; a son in law who was an officer in the army, now about to be ordained, that my daughters have been trained to be deaconesses, & that my wife, as the Bishop of Oxford⁶ will tell you, died in doing the Church's work.

With the above before me I must, with all humility, maintain that I have a right to work, with authority, in & for the Church I have so long laboured – & it will be a source of great thankfulness & pleasure to me to receive your Grace's license. If refused, the greatest stumbling block & discouragement of my life will be placed in my way, & I cannot yet see the result.

I write thus strongly because I am hurt by the writing of your Lordship's secretary to Canon Griffin.

I remain, my Lord, your faithful servant,

Frederick Davis

Source

Lambeth Palace Archives, Tait 207, Folio 206.

Notes

1. Now lost.

2. See previous post.

3. Torquay was evidently then, as now, popular with elderly retired people.

4. Appointment to an ecclesiastical living or benefice.

5. He was actually 54!

6. Frederick and his wife, Charlotte, had run the church school in the parish of Tardebigge, Worcestershire during the 1850s, whilst John Mackarness was vicar there.

Black Sheep Sunday - Rev Frederick Davis

Black sheep embarrass the family whilst they are alive but they make wonderful ancestors. Brushes with the law, financial peccadilloes and sex scandals are the lifeblood of newspapers. Ancestors who got into serious trouble usually got plenty of column inches and those old newspaper articles are gold dust for the family historian.

 

 

My favourite black sheep ancestor is my 2x great-grandfather, Rev Frederick Davis. Not just a bad boy but a clergyman to boot - some years ago a cousin christened him "the pervy vicar" and I'm afraid the naughty nickname has stuck.

 

Frederick was born in Lambeth, Surrey, in 1821. One family story suggests that his father was wealthy but disowned him after an argument. Frederick was certainly well educated but struggled for the rest of his life to establish a financially secure career.

 

At first he worked as a warehouseman. In 1842 he married a schoolmistress, Charlotte Aves, and by 1848 Frederick had also become a schoolmaster, following teacher training at the Church of England National Society's Training Institution in Westminster.

 

Frederick and Charlotte worked as a husband and wife team in a succession of church schools in East London, Essex, Staffordshire and Worcestershire. By 1858 they were running the parish school in St Columb Major,  Cornwall, when tragedy struck. Charlotte died of tuberculosis, aged 40, leaving Frederick with eight children aged two to fifteen.

 

Headstone on the grave of Charlotte Davis, Colan, Cornwall

 

With Charlotte's death the family lost stability. Frederick initially put his daughters into an orphanage run by Anglican nuns at Wymering, near Portsmouth. By 1862 he had moved to Torquay in Devon where, for the first time, he set up his own private school rather than being employed by the Church. On the recommendation of clerical friends, he was also ordained deacon by the Bishop of Exeter and appointed curate of St John's, Torquay.

 

This proved disastrous. The curacy was poorly paid but so busy as to prevent him running his school properly. He lost pupils, fell out with the vicar and, within six months found himself in precarious financial circumstances. Although supposed to remain in the diocese until he was ordained priest, Frederick petitioned the Bishop to allow him to leave his curacy and move to Northfleet in Kent, to take over a private preparatory school based in the old Manor House.

 

The Manor House, Northfleet, Kent

 

Frederick rebranded the school as Northfleet Grammar School, later the Collegiate School, and advertised his willingness to coach young men for entry to the Universities and the armed forces. Some pupils came (two of them later married two of his daughters) but the school struggled and Frederick supplemented his income by covering for clergy absences in various Kent parishes, not telling them that he was only in deacon's orders.

 

In 1874 the churchwarden of one of those parishes wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury about Frederick:

Having been prompted to make enquiry concerning his private character in consequence of his having most persistently and impudently attempted to extort more money (to the extent of 4 guineas) than he was entitled to according to my agreement with him, I have ascertained from a most reliable source that he is inhibited by the Bishop of Rochester from doing duty in his diocese.

... Dr Claughton would not have inhibited him, unless there were good and weighty reasons for so doing. I have heard what those reasons are, but would rather not commit them to writing as they are of a most serious and damaging nature. No doubt if Your Grace orders inquiry to be made in the neighbourhood in which he lives quite sufficient cause will be found, to induce Your Grace to take immediate steps to prevent the possibility of his ever performing the duty of a clergyman of the Church of England again.

Archibald Campbell Tait, 1811-1882
Archbishop of Canterbury

The Bishop of Rochester added his own disapprobation:

I have not actually inhibited Mr Davis ... but I do not approve of him. He behaves extremely ill to the Clergyman of his Parish.

Thomas Legh Claughton, 1808-1892
Bishop of Rochester

 

By 1875 Frederick had given up his school in favour of running a home for six wealthy dipsomaniacs (alcoholics). Following complaints that a lady was being detained against her will, the Lunacy Commissioners paid a visit and discovered that one of his patients was mentally ill. In the summer of 1877 he was prosecuted for running an unlicensed lunatic asylum and fined £50.

 

The Archbishop had reluctantly allowed Frederick to continue officiating in neighbouring parishes. On Sunday 16 December 1877 he was returning from taking services when, on a train between Strood and Gravesend, he was alleged to have indecently assaulted a 17 year old servant girl called Rosina Webb. When the case came up for trial in January 1878 Frederick did not appear. Instead, one of his sons wrote a letter maintaining his father's innocence but saying that, as he feared his word would not be believed, he had gone abroad.

 

A warrant was issued for Frederick's arrest and an advertisement in the Police Gazette gives us a description of the man, for whom no known photograph exists:

 

The Police Gazette, 4 February 1878

 

When Frederick fled abroad he left behind him a second wife. Her existence only came to light because her birth and death dates, minus a name, were recorded on a family gravestone in Northfleet churchyard. The gravestone was destroyed in the 1960s but, thankfully, it had been carefully transcribed by an antiquarian in the 1900s. The death date led to the discovery of the name Harriet Davis in the Northfleet burial registers. Her death certificate revealed that she was the wife of Frederick Davis and that she had died of apoplexy in October 1878, aged 60. No record of their marriage has yet been found.

 

Frederick went first to Bruges in Belgium before settling in Dinard on the coast of Brittany in France. Both places had substantial numbers of affluent English residents, so Frederick was probably able to earn a living as a tutor. There was an Anglican church at Dinard and the incumbent, Rev Anthony Francis Thomson, was the father of one of Frederick's old pupils, Anthony Standidge Thomson, later to be his son-in-law. Frederick lived in the pretty seaside resort -  no doubt helping out with services - until his death in 1883.

 

The Quay at Dinard, Ethel Carrick Fox