Lest We Forget: 11/11/12

In memory of the members of our family who gave their lives in the service of their country. This list has been updated from last year, with the addition of five more names to the World War 1 Roll of Honour. The list now contains three sets of brothers.

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

(Lawrence Binyon, For the Fallen, 1914) 

 

Died	Place	Rank	Name	Age	Regiment / Service
Afghan Wars
12 Jan 1842	Afghanistan	Captain	Edward Macleod Blair	38	Bengal Light Cavalry
Indian Mutiny
14 May 1858	India	Major	John Waterfield	40	Bengal Native Infantry
Boer War
14 Feb 1902	South Africa	Artificer	George Howard Clark	23	Queensland Imperial Bushmen
World War 1
25 Apr1915	France	Private	Richard Michael Ryan	25	Royal Irish Fusiliers
9 May 1915	France	Corporal	Charles Mulligan	28	Black Watch
9 May 1915	France	Rifleman	Thomas Stanley Groves	31	Royal Irish Rifles
27 Jun 1915	Belgium	Private	John Julius Groves	32	DCLI
24 Aug 1916	France	2nd Lieutenant	Lawrence Ernest Bennett	22	Queen’s Regiment
15 Sep 1916	France	Gunner	Cyril William Coles	23	Tank Corps
18 Oct 1916	France	2nd Lieutenant	Christopher Gilbert Durant	20	Worcestershire Regiment
10 Jan 1917	Egypt	Captain	Duncan James Nugent Blair	34	Royal Field Artillery
26 Mar 1917	Palestine	Private	William Gurney	21	Middlesex Regiment
19 Apr 1917	France	Private	Arthur Tom Munden	31	Hampshire Regiment
23 Apr 1917	France	Lance Corporal	Hubert Gurney	21	Middlesex Regiment
10 Jul 1917	Belgium	Lieutenant	Sanford William Shippard	21	North Lancashire Regiment
12 Aug 1917	Greece	Private	Ernest John Bentley	41	Durham Light Infantry
16 Oct 1917	France	Private	Frederick Alexander Drackett	21	Hampshire Regiment
9 Apr 1918	Palestine	Lieutenant	Gilbert Seymour Worsley Spencer-Smith	23	Hampshire Regiment
11 May 1918	France	Captain	Arthur Alexander Austen-Leigh	27	Royal Berkshire Regiment
18 Sep 1918	France	Captain	Eric Fairfax Bennett MC	20	Queen’s Regiment
World War 2
21 Jun 1940	at sea	Sub Lieutenant	Ian Reginald Winn Stileman	20	RNVR
21 May 1941	Crete	Driver	Robert George Davis	25	NZ Army Service Corps
28 Oct 1942	Egypt	Private	Ronald Archibald Halkett-Hay	34	Australian Infantry
3 Nov 1942	Egypt	Lieutenant	Nigel Aves Watson	22	Royal Hussars
13 Jul 1943	Italy	Lieutenant	Derek Pease Gregg	26	Glider Pilot Regiment

Parishmouse: Old books, parish registers & photos

Parishmouse is a blog which "contains free transcriptions of historical books and parish registers for England and Wales and a large collection of photos of churches and graves and illustrations from the old books".

 

 

The transcriptions cover many counties but Parishmouse is a particularly rich source of information for Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Most, but not all, of the old books seem to be directories.

I only came across Parishmouse yesterday and I've already obtained two important nuggets of information from it:

• about a Baptist minister who lived in our house in the late 18th century
• about the school in Tardebigge, Worcestershire where Frederick and Charlotte Davis taught in the 1850s

This is the kind of website where you never know what you will find until you look and the range is so wide you are almost bound to find something. There is a comprehensive list of records under Categories plus a built in Google site search. Multiple transcriptions are being added each day, so this is a site you'll want to either follow or bookmark and revisit. Do let me know if you find anything. Happy hunting!

Census Night: Looking back - Part 2

You can read the first part of this post here.

Please click on each of the images below to see a larger version.

3 April 1881 - A family divided by tragedy

 

 

This is the 1881 census entry for my husband's 2x great grandfather, Mark Gurney. He was living in the village of Martock, near Yeovil, in Somerset, with his three youngest children, Frances, (Ada) Charlotte and (George) Edward.

Sadly, Mark's wife Frances, nee Heale, was not with them. She can be found in the 1881 census in the Somerset and Bath Asylum in Wells, described as a lunatic. She had first been admitted there with mental illness in July 1874. Her admission notes stated that she had been ill for two weeks. She could answer questions rationally and said that she did not approve of doctors. If anything was done contrary to her wishes she got excited and used threatening language.

At the time of her admission, Frances was about 12 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, Kathleen, who was born in the Asylum in February 1875. Frances was discharged shortly after the birth but by June her baby was dead.

Her next admission was in June 1878, when George Edward was nine months old. Discharged on Boxing Day 1878, she was, as we have seen, back in the Asylum for the 1881 census. In November 1882 her oldest son died and in May 1884 she lost her husband, Mark.

By February 1885 she was back in the Asylum with "mania", described as suicidal and dangerous. She gave her next of kin as the son who had been dead for two years. Discharged in June 1885 she went to London, where she was admitted to a workhouse in poverty and then despatched back to Somerset. At that point poor Frances vanishes from the records, with no further appearances in the Asylum or the censuses and no death certificate found.

5 April 1891 - Orphans boarded out with a nurse

 

 

This is the 1891 census entry for my grandfather, Lawrence George Buchanan Davis, and his twin sister, Georgina Alicia Davis (Georgie). They were both 11 months old and were living in Earle Street, Yeovil, Somerset in the household of Thomas Woodward, a naval pensioner, and his wife, Elizabeth, who was a nurse. (The Woodward family are shown on the previous page of the census.)

Lawrence and Georgie were the children of Rev Alban Edgar Brunskill Davis, Rector of Brympton d'Evercy, Somerset, and his wife, Georgina, nee Lowe. They were born in the Rectory at Brympton on 3 May 1890 and on 11 May their mother, Georgina, died from metroperitonitis (inflammation around the uterus). The informant on Georgina's death certificate was Elizabeth Woodward of Earle Street, Yeovil, who had been present at the death.

It would seem that Elizabeth Woodward, having nursed Georgina Davis at the time of her death, then took over responsibility for the week old twins, who spent at least their first year of life boarded out in her household. She was probably also their wet nurse.

31 March 1901 - The housemaid

 

 

This is the 1901 census entry for my grandmother, Alice Eaton. She was a 20 year old housemaid in the household of Joseph Rock, an East India Export Agent, at 13 The Downs, Wimbledon, Surrey.

This was a real Upstairs, Downstairs household consisting of Joseph, his wife, eight children, a grandchild and five servants. There were also a coachman and his wife living over the coach house next door.

Although not shown in the census, I know from my grandmother's stories that the household also employed a butler, who used to pour an entire bottle of port into a huge whole round of Stilton at Christmas time.

Alice went into service with the Rocks as an under housemaid at the age of 14. Her duties included getting up at dawn to lay the fires in the grates. By the time of the 1901 census she had been promoted to housemaid but was still second to bottom in the pecking order of servants.

She stayed with the family until her marriage to my grandfather, Vivian Macaulay Bentley, in July 1904. For her big day, the Rock family gave Alice the use of their coach and coachman for her journey to and from the church. It was a kindness which Alice never forgot and she always talked about the Rock family with affection.

2 April 1911 - So much information

 

 

This is the 1911 census entry for my great grandparents, John and Agnes McCarthy, nee Fritz. They were living at 66 Salford Road, Streatham Hill, London, with their three daughters, Edith, Dora and Sheila, and a general servant.

This census provides unique information, not available in any of the previous censuses. For the first time, the form was filled in by the head of household, not the enumerator. So this document shows me John McCarthy's own handwriting and signature. It also reveals that the house had eight rooms, counting the kitchen but not including the bathroom. Most importantly, it provides details about the marriage and the number of children born and surviving.

John and Agnes had been married 23 years (they married on 21 July 1887) and the marriage had produced six living children, of whom three had died. My mother, who lived with the McCarthy family as a child, was able to give me the names of those three children. Agnes, born in 1888, died of typhoid in Le Havre, France,  in 1891. Edith's twin, John, died as a one year old baby and Richard, born in the gap between Dora and Sheila, died of bronchitis, aged 9 months.

This census also gives more information about employment than any previous one. As well as a person's occupation it also gives the industry or service sector in which they worked. John McCarthy is listed as a Chief Inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police, it being the year before his promotion to Superintendent. His two elder daughters were both out at work, reflecting the increasing economic participation of women in the Edwardian era. Both were working as shorthand typists, Edith for an insurance company and Dora, my grandmother, for a firm of sanitary engineers.

Census Night: Looking back - Part 1

Having just submitted the census returns online for our household and my mother's, I thought it would be fun to look back at how some of my ancestors were recorded in the eight censuses from 1841 to 1911 which are now in the public domain. The examples I have chosen show how important census information is in tracing family history.

Please click on each of the images below to see a larger version.

6 June 1841 - Reaching right back to the 18th century

 

 

This 1841 census entry is for my 4x great grandparents, James and Elizabeth Snelling (nee Toop). They were living in East Lulworth, Dorset, the village where they had both been born.

James, who was baptised in October 1757 was 83, and Elizabeth, who was baptised in July 1764, was 76. The census enumerator correctly rounded both their ages down to the nearest 5 years, as 80 and 75 respectively.

Because of their ages, this census enabled me to jump right back to the parish registers of the mid 18th century. Sadly, their extreme old age seems to have reduced them to want, as James' "profession, trade or employment" is given as "pauper". This reminds me that I must look at the local Poor Law records to see if James and Elizabeth were being given any form of outdoor relief.

30 March 1851 - A wealth of information, some of it misleading

 

 

This 1851 census entry is for my 2x great grandparents, Frederick and Charlotte Davis (nee Aves). They were living at Toll End, Tipton, Staffordshire. They were the schoolmaster and mistress at the church school in the newly created parish of St Mark's, Ocker Hill.

There is a lot of useful information here. The birthplaces of the children show how the family had moved around since Frederick and Charlotte married in 1842. Frederick's grandmother is living with them. There are two pupil teachers, one of whom had clearly been brought with them from their previous school in Willingale, Essex. Also in the household is the curate of the parish, Rev Joseph Brunskill, after whom two of Frederick and Charlotte's sons were named.

But there are also inaccuracies. Frederick was not born in the parish of St John, Westminster, Charlotte was actually 32 and it is highly likely that Frederick's grandmother was in fact his mother. Don't believe everything you read in the census.

7 April 1861 - Crucial information about employment and birthplaces

 

 

This 1861 census entry is for my 3x great grandparents, George and Susannah Rayman (nee Lee). They were living at 16 Bovingdon Street, Hoxton, in the East End of London.

This census has proved absolutely crucial in tracing back both sides of the family. In 1851 George and Susannah only gave their county of birth. By 1871 they were both dead. Without this census, specifying the parishes of Ewell, Surrey, and White Roothing, Essex, I would have had no idea of where to look for their births. As it is, armed with this information, I have been able to find baptisms for both of them and the names of their parents.

In the two previous censuses, George's occupation was simply given as "warehouseman" but the 1861 census shows where he was employed - as a foreman at London's East and West India Docks. The records of these companies are preserved at the Museum of London Docklands and I am hoping they may include employment records for George.

2 April 1871 - A thriving business

 

 

This is the 1871 census entry for my 2x great-grandparents, William and Harriet Munden (nee Coles). They were living in Christchurch Street, Ringwood, Hampshire, with their four youngest children and a general servant.

William had made a remarkable rise from humble origins, as the son of a labourer and decoyman, to become a highly successful millwright and engineer. This census shows him when his business was at its peak. He was employing 30 men and 5 boys at his engineering works, which made all types of agricultural machinery, as well as supplying local mills with their mill wheels and other gear.

William's old workshops are now the premises of the Ringwood Brewery. The 1873 Return of Owners of Land shows that they covered almost 2 acres. When William died in 1900 he was described as a "gentleman" and left an estate worth around £1 million in today's money.

You can read the second part of this post here.

Fearless Females: A Mother

In honour of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist has created  Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.

March 25 — Tell how a female ancestor interacted with her children. Was she loving or supportive? A disciplinarian? A bit of both?

This is a poem which Rev Frederick William Davis wrote about his mother (and my direct ancestor) Charlotte Davis, nee Aves, the wife of Rev Frederick Davis. She died of tuberculosis, aged 40, in 1858, when Frederick William was 15 years old.

I don't know when the poem was written but it was published in the women's magazine "Hearth & Home" on 30 September 1897, almost 40 years after Charlotte's death. I think it answers all of the questions in Lisa's blogging prompt.

 

Ancestors who died of tuberculosis

Today is World Tuberculosis Day. It commemorates 24 March 1882, the day on which Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the cause of tuberculosis - the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

 

 

Tuberculosis has been with us since antiquity. Tubercular decay has been found in the spines of Egyptian mummies and the famous Greek physician, Hippocrates, described it as the most prevalent disease of his day. In the 19th century, as people crowded into cities following the Industrial Revolution, living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions, it became the particular scourge of the urban poor.

 

 

Effective treatment only became possible after 1946, with the development of the antibiotic streptomycin. However, hopes that tuberculosis could be eradicated have been dashed, following the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains of the disease. In fact, tuberculosis is once again on the rise in all parts of the world, including the developed nations. According to Wikipedia, one third of the world's population is thought to be infected with the disease and new infections occur at a rate of about one per second.

 

 

Genealogists do not have to read many death certificates before they come across an ancestor who died of tuberculosis. The disease may be described in a number of ways, the most common being consumption, phthisis and TB. To mark the day, I thought I would list the known victims from my own family tree, whose deaths spanned a period of nearly 100 years:

21 January 1856: Elizabeth McWilliams, nee McCarry, aged 39, Dundee.

5 October 1858: Charlotte Davis nee Aves, aged 40, Cornwall.

2 August 1867: Frederick Thomas Rayman, aged 28, London.

1 April 1880: William Bluett, aged 26, London.

20 March 1883: Ann Hay Clark, aged 17, France.

20 April 1888: Cecilia Rayman, nee Baldwin, aged 54, London.

22 January 1895: Ada Charlotte Gurney, aged 23, London.

16 March 1898: Christian Robb, aged 66, Aberdeenshire.

15 July 1899: Robert Lowe, aged 35, USA.

12 May 1902: Mary Bunch, aged 71, Dundee.

8 September 1912: Matilda Anderson, nee Gall, aged 63, Dundee.

29 October 1940: Ida Blanche Bentley, nee Wreford, aged 29, London.

15 July 1948: Reginald Vivian Bentley, aged 39, London.

 

 

The last name in the list is the most tragic of all, my father's beloved brother, Reg. The preceding name is that of his wife Ida, whom he married in 1936. He knew that she was suffering from TB, and that he risked catching it from her, but his love for her was such that he married her anyway.

Reg died in 1948, two years after the first successful trials with streptomycin, but before treatment with the drug had become widespread. The wonderful new medical breakthrough with antibiotics came just too late to save him from this cruel disease.

He was long mourned and sadly missed by his whole family. I was born after his death but my father often spoke of his sunny personality, generosity and wonderful sense of humour.

RIP Uncle Reg.

Fearless Females: Timeline for Charlotte Aves

In honour of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist has created  Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.

March 23 — Create a timeline for a female ancestor using your favourite software program.

This timeline for my great great grandmother was created using Family Tree Maker 2011. 

 

Scanning Saturday - My new Flip-Pal

Yesterday I received my new Flip-Pal scanner, thanks to the kindness of a friend in the United States. For those who haven't yet come across this gadget, it is a small, portable, battery operated scanner that can be used to scan a wide variety of objects.

Small photos and documents can be placed inside the scanner in the usual way. With the lid removed and the scanner "flipped", it can also scan photographs whilst still in their albums, pictures in their frames, fabrics, wallpaper and three dimensional objects such as medals, coins and jewellery. There is even this You Tube video of someone scanning a bottle of water by rolling it under the Flip-Pal:

For any object larger than the Flip-Pal's 10.25″ x 6.5″ dimensions, the scanner comes with software which will stitch together a large image from a series of smaller, overlapping scans. This is ideal for scanning old maps or deeds which are larger than the traditional flat bed scanner.

I have been experimenting with the scanner for the past 24 hours and thought I would share some of the results with you.

This is a tiny photograph, measuring 2¼ by 3¼ inches, given to me by my mother. On the back she noted that they were on holiday in her father's taxi, in the late 1920s:

The scan quality was so good that I was able to enlarge  a section of the picture to see the number plate of the taxi and the people inside - my grandfather behind the wheel, wearing a driving helmet, with my mother in a straw hat beside him and my grandmother in the back:

I used a picture of my grandmother which is larger than the scanner to test the photo stitching software. I scanned it in six overlapping sections, which I cropped to eliminate all traces of the background on which the photo was lying:

I then used the stitching software which comes with the scanner to put the photograph back together. I think you'll agree that the result is amazing:

Finally, I used a free photo editing program, PhotoScape, to trim the jagged edges and auto level the colours. The resulting photograph looks as good as the day it was taken:

For my last experiment, I tested the Flip-Pal colour restoration software on the most faded picture in my album. This is an even smaller photograph - only 1¾ by 2¾ - and has lost so much colour that it is almost impossible to make out the subject with the naked eye. I was delighted that the initial scan enabled me to see quite a lot of the detail:

Then I used the automatic colour restoration program which comes with the scanner. The result was so much clearer that I immediately recognised the location - St James' Park, London - from the government buildings behind the line of trees in the background:

The last step was to apply auto level and noise reduction in PhotoScape:

I think the picture is of my grandmother with my mother on her knee and must have been taken in the spring of 1921. I shall ask my mother when she comes to lunch tomorrow!

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.

Googling for Grandma - Old News is Good News

Newspapers are my favourite sources. They put flesh on the bones of our ancestors, turning dry and dusty genealogy into living, breathing family history. They cover all aspects of society and all areas of the globe and you are as likely to find a dustman as a duke in their pages.

Newspapers find their stories wherever there is human interest. With far less access to information than today, newspapers in the past frequently copied material from each other, and this practice crossed international boundaries. So although my family history is focused on the British Isles, I have found gems of information in papers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. In the case of newspapers, it really does pay to "search outside the box" - and this is where Google comes in.

In 2008 Google launched an initiative to digitise historic news archives and make them searchable and accessible online. Content is drawn from global media such as the BBC, Guardian, Time Magazine and the New York Times but also from hundreds of small local publications. The period covered by each news archive varies - some only cover recent years, whilst the New York Times goes all the way back to 1851 - but all this information can be accessed in one place using Google News Archive Search.

I have had particularly good results when searching for my policeman great grandfather, John McCarthy. His promotion to be head of the CID got a good deal of coverage. My favourite is this article from a Newfoundland newspaper, the Harbor Grace Standard, dated 21 August 1912. The details are delightful:

Nobody who has met John McCarthy grudges him his promotion. He is a man without enemies, unless they be some of those desperate international criminals whom he has tracked down and arrested ... this jolly looking man with something of the farmer squire about his appearance ... Tall and broad shouldered he is built on a generous frame above the average in physique. He has the twinkling blue eyes of the Irishman ... Latterly he was busy with the suffragette agitations, and such was his charm of manner and courtesy that the women agreed that it was a pleasure to be arrested by Mr McCarthy.

But I learned from another newspaper that John had been tempted to jump ship at an earlier stage in his career. The St John Sun of New Brunswick reported on 1 April 1907:

During a visit to England, King Alfonso XIII was apparently so impressed by Scotland Yard detectives that he decided to revolutionise Spanish police methods. John McCarthy was offered the job of heading the new CID in Madrid, on a salary of $5,000 a year plus expenses. According to the newspaper, he was reluctantly obliged to decline the offer because he had been specially chosen to protect King Edward VII.

Of course, these articles concern a man in a prominent position in public life but I have had equal success finding information about more obscure family members. My great grandfather's brother, Clement Lawrence Scott Davis, disappears from the English records after the 1871 census. A handwritten family tree records that he ended up in the Nokomai region of New Zealand, prospecting for gold. The Google News Archive includes material from Papers Past in New Zealand and a search on Davis and Nokomai turned up an article he had written for the Otago Witness in 1886, describing a prospecting expedition:

Shortly after writing this, Clement disappeared on another prospecting trip in the mountains. A young man in his 30s, he left no family, no photographs and few details of his life have come down to us. This lengthy newspaper article is the only link we have to the man and his personality.

Follow Friday: Audrey and Annie

My favourite reading over the past week has been "The Family Recorder", written by Audrey Collins of The National Archives (TNA):

• Saturday: a post about old houses in Fetter Lane. Fascinating for me because my 2x great grandfather, Julius William Fritz, lived in Fetter Lane from 1865 to 1887.
• Sunday: an excellent piece examining the new Family Search website from the point of view of British researchers.
• Monday: a beautifully drawn map of an enumerator's route, found amongst  the 1861 census returns for Marylebone - to which a 20th century hand has added a stick figure saying "oh!" Since the stick figure is on the site of Lord's cricket ground, he really should be saying "howzat!".
• Tuesday: an introduction to Wordle.net, which generates amazing pictures from the most frequently used words in your blog.

Two weeks ago, Annie Barnes of www.hibbitt.org.uk left a comment on my post about Rev Frederick Davis. Last night I finally found time to check out her website - and what a treat it is. It has to be one of the best designed family history sites I've seen. I was so impressed that I searched the site to see what software she used - and so came across her Follow Friday post last week about GED-GEN.

GED-GEN is a program which creates family group sheets for your website from a GEDCOM file and is sophisticated enough to offer all sorts of customisations. I was so taken with Annie's site that I downloaded the free trial and, after a couple of hours playing with it, I bought the registered version. At only $20 I thought it a bargain. When registering my purchase I mentioned some trouble I was having with the non-standard GEDCOM file produced by Family Tree Maker 2011 and received an instant, helpful response from Mike Voisin of GED-GEN. I sent him my GEDCOM and he again responded very quickly and positively today. I am seriously impressed with both the program and the customer service. Thank you so much for the introduction, Annie.

10 things my ancestors did to annoy me

The Society of Genealogists sells a booklet called "My Ancestor was a Bastard". I have to admit that is often the way I feel about my own kin.

Here are 10 things they did to annoy me:

1. They settled where three counties meet. That way they could get married in one county, baptise their children in a second and be buried in a third, all without travelling more than a few miles from home. But I have to travel to three different record offices, miles apart, to have any hope of tracing their complicated genealogy.
2. Namesake cousins married namesake girls. I am either descended from John Coles and Mary Holloway, who married at Damerham, Wiltshire on 23 October 1737, or from John Coles and Mary Holloway, who married at Damerham, Wiltshire on 16 December 1738. I bet they are all having a good laugh about that one at the great family reunion in the sky.
3. They were not wise children and did not know their own fathers. Mary Ann Baldwin gave her maiden name as Blakey but her father's name as William Clayton. It took years to find the marriage of Susannah Blakey and William Clayton which proved he was her step-father. William Prebble Barnes invented a bank manager called George Barnes as his father. It took decades to find his illegitimate birth to Elizabeth Prebble.
4. They moved around. Joseph Bentley served as a Methodist minister in 17 different places. Frederick Davis lived in nine different counties and three different countries.
5. They baptised their children in batches, in a place remote from where they were born. Susannah Baldwin was born in Portsmouth and baptised four years later in Gravesend. Thomas Heale baptised his first four children as babies but made the last two wait over twenty years until he had died.
6. They left the country at census time. Thomas Bluett went all the way to New Zealand to avoid an entry in the 1841 census which would have told me whether or not he was born in Ireland.
7. They lied about their ages. Frederick Rayman claimed to be 23 when, aged just 15, he married his pregnant 21 year old bride. Catherine McCarthy stayed 40 for two successive censuses. Alice Wiles was 55 in one census and 72 in the next.
8. They kept just off the page of any printed pedigree. The Red Book of Perthshire contains detailed family trees for the Haldanes, Haliburtons, Reids and Stewarts which stop just short of connecting with my own proven research. Douglas' Baronage of Scotland mentions two of the children of John Smith of Glasswall, but not the daughter through whom I am descended.
9. They disappeared. John Winn sailed to North America, where he vanished. Clement Davis went out prospecting in the Nevis mountains of New Zealand and never came back.
10. They spent all the money. When William Winn died in 1891 he left £82,446 12s 9d, the equivalent of £5.5 million today. His son, William, inherited one quarter. By the time he died in 1906 it was all gone. In the space of 15 years he had squandered the equivalent of over one million pounds on yachts and gold plated taps.

Googling for Grandma

Googling for Grandma was the title of a lecture by the incomparable Cyndi Howells which I attended on the 2007 Wholly Genes Genealogy Conference and Cruise. Cyndi's excellent lecture equipped me with many new and exciting Google tools for extending my family research into the nooks and crannies of the internet.

In time, I became proficient enough to give my own talk on the subject to our local U3A Family History Group. I hope Cyndi will forgive me for stealing her catchy title. At the end of my talk I invited members of the audience to give me family history subjects, about which they would like to find more information, for me to Google then and there.

The first request was from a lady who had recently discovered that her ancestor, William Cooksley, ran a factory in Bristol. Would there be anything about him or his factory online? A Google search on <+Cooksley +factory +Bristol> immediately threw up a hit which stunned us all. William Cooksley's modest Bristol nail making business was mentioned in the pages of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital":

In my experience, this kind of spectacular result is far from unique. I have already blogged about my black sheep ancestor Rev Frederick Davis and his unlicensed lunatic asylum. I first became aware of this story because of Google Books. A search on <"Manor House" +Northfleet +Davis> led me to an article from the German psychiatry magazine Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychisch-gerichtliche Medizin, Volume 35, 1879. (Google Translate tells me that this is the General journal of psychiatry and psycho-forensic medicine.)

Only a "snippet view" of the article was shown but it was enough to inform me that Frederick had appeared before the magistrates at Rochester, Kent on Friday 29 June to face a charge by the Lunacy Commissioners under the Lunacy Act. From this, I was able to do further research.

Last Wednesday marked a further stage in my Google education, as I attended a webinar by the equally awesome Thomas MacEntee on Google for Genealogists. It is Thomas' fault that I have not blogged since then - I have been too busy trying out all the new Google toys he gave me to play with. But chatting with Cyndi and Thomas after the webinar gave me the idea for a series of blog posts about how Google has helped my genealogy research, of which this is the first. I hope that, as the series goes on, you will learn some new tips and tricks and make some new research discoveries of your own. Please let me know if you do.

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