Valentine’s Day: the Diary part two and other stories

I recently read a blog post that asked where the reader’s sixteen great great grandparents came from.  Mine came from seven English counties, two Australian States (then colonies), Scotland and Wales, so were from all over the place.  This led to me to wonder about how these people and my other ancestor couples came to meet and have children.  With Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought it would be nice to share some of the stories I know.

To get into the right mood, here is the oldest wedding photo of direct ancestors that I have – Walter George Charley and Constance Mary Macdonald.  They both lived in the same part of Melbourne, Australia.  A piece of lace from this wedding dress was sewn into a wedding dress worn at a family wedding last year.

I have written before about my great grandfather James JesseBlake who wrote his life story.  He described how he met his future wife, Eliza Todd.  One Sunday morning, James left London to visit a friend in country Kent.  One his way home, he went to a church in Greenwich to have a look.  A church service was just starting so he decided to stay for it.  There was a young lady, Eliza, sitting nearby who couldn’t find the service in the prayer book, so he gave her his book.  After the service, he walked her back to the ladies school where she was a servant.  A couple of weeks later he went back to the same church service in the hope of seeing her again, which he did and he was then also introduced to Eliza’s mistress.  Soon after this, they met each other’s families. They married a few years later.  It is rare to have this much detail about regular people, in most cases the only option is speculation.

I do have some ancestors who were related in some way prior to their marriage and so must have been well known to one another.  I previously told the story of Priscilla Goodyear who married her brother-in-law John Camp Shephard.  A couple with a similar story from the Akeroyd side of the family are George Newsome and widow Hannah Talbot nee Blakeley, married in 1800.  George Newsome was a widower whose previous wife was Hannah’s sister Jane.  At the time of both the Goodyear-Shephard and Newsome-Blakeley marriages were within prohibited degrees of affinity, which means they shouldn’t have been allowed to marry.  Now marrying a sibling in-law is legal in England.  In both cases, the couples were married some distance from where they lived and so would not have been known to the minister who performed the ceremony.

It is not just in-laws who married.  I have at least two sets of first cousins who married, while this seems a bit odd to modern sensibilities, it was not unusual in the past and was never a prohibited degree of relationship under English law.  Oscar Kirby, born in Wales, married his cousin Harriet Partridge, from Gloucestershire, in Stroud registry office in 1878.  They married in the registry office because they were Plymouth Bretheren.

James Rideout and Caroline Bennett were also cousins, both from Tollard Royal in Wiltshire, where they married in 1821.  I have written previously about James and Caroline’s fathers, Ambrose and Jasper, who were literally partners in crime.

Another story that may make for uncomfortable reading is that of Thomas Rowley and Elizabeth Selwyn, parents of Eliza Rowley.  Thomas was an officer in the NSW Corps and travelled to Australia, arriving in February 1792.  On the same ship was a convict Elizabeth Selwyn.  Apparently, the officers got first pick of the convict women.  Thomas and Elizabeth’s first child, Isabella, was born in November 1792, 9 months after they arrived in the colony.  As they stayed together until Thomas’ death in 1806, although they weren’t able to marry, it must have worked out okay.

On a happier note, in my early days of family history research, my grandmother, from Yorkshire, told me about how she met my grandfather, who then lived in Hertford, on a Mediterranean cruise that she had gone on as a twenty-first birthday present from her uncle.  My grandfather gave her a Spanish doll that she still had.  When she told her parents about the doll, they knew it was a serious relationship, at the time well brought up young ladies did not accept gifts from men.  They wouldn’t have met if it not for that cruise.

In many other cases, my ancestors lived in the same village or same corner of London, so probably knew each other growing up.  In some of those cases, they had gotten themselves into situations where they had little choice but to marry when they did, with the first child arriving a little too soon. 

Whatever the situation, most of my ancestors found themselves married for many years, I hope happily, like this ancient couple, Harry Smith and Louisa Jenkins.  I don't know how they met but they were married for 55 years.

My first Australian

As it is Australia Day, I thought I would write about my first Australian ancestor.  Eliza Rowley was born, according to family lore, on 25 Apr 1804, although no baptism record has been found.  Her monumental inscription (see below) suggests that she was born in 1803.   According to an obituary, she was born at Kingston farm, her family’s home, in what is now Newtown in Sydney.  There is still a Kingston Road and a Rowley street there today.

Eliza’s parents were Captain Thomas Rowley, an officer in the NSW Corps, and Elizabeth Selwyn, a convict.  Although Eliza was illegitimate, her father acknowledged her and her four older siblings, Isabella, Thomas, Mary and John, in his will and they all took his name.  There may have been a sixth unacknowledged posthumous child, Henry Rowley. 

Captain Thomas Rowley died in 1806 from consumption and his estate was left in trust to his five named children, so Eliza would never really have known her father.  The estate was mismanaged, in part because the trustees returned to England while the children were still minors.  A court case in 1832 provided a final pay out to four of his children and their spouses.  Isabella died young and her husband made no claim on the estate. Here is a link to the case:

http://www.law.mq.edu.au/research/colonial_case_law/nsw/cases/case_index/1832/doe_dem_harris_v_riley/

Eliza Rowley appears in various early musters and census, living with her mother. They seem to have lived in Newtown, although the family also had land in Burwood and Liverpool, where her older brothers lived.  During her childhood, Eliza would have seen Sydney grow from a garrison town into a small city.  Her family played a role in the growth of the young colony, with her brother John being part of expeditions trying to cross the Blue Mountains to the Western Plains.

On 25 Aug 1826, Eliza Rowley married Henry Sparrow Briggs, whose story was the first that I told.  They married at St John’s Parramatta.  Eliza and Henry had ten children, three of whom died in infancy.  Henry’s story covers some of the family’s experiences.

Eliza lived as a widow for 16 years after the death of her husband in 1866, dying 27 September 1882.  She was still living on the family farm in Newtown, where her son, my ancestor Frederick Henderson Briggs, was a dairyman.  According to an obituary, Eliza died sitting under a pear tree in her backyard, at the house where she was born.  Eliza’s death certificate says that she died of Syncope, which means she passed out from some unspecified cause – Wikipedia suggests a number of possibilities.

Eliza was originally buried in the family vault at Kingston, which was later moved to Waverly Cemetery, Sydney.  Her inscription says Eliza, wife of the above [Henry Sparrow Briggs], died 27 Sep 1882 aged 79 years.

EDIT (26 August 2021):  My and other descendants DNA results strongly suggest that Eliza Rowley's biological father was Simeon Lord and not Thomas Rowley.

Notes on lineage: Me > Mum > Daphne Madge Smith > Esther Ilma Lees > Fanny Sarah Eliza Briggs > Frederick Henderson Briggs > Eliza Rowley

An Innkeeper’s Daughter

Jane Grimshw Spedding was born 28 Feb 1789 in Batley, Yorkshire; the ninth of eleven children of Charles Spedding and Mary Ellis.  She was on the only one of the children to be given a middle name.  At the time in England, middle names were not common and in fact, based on my family history research, were not common until the mid-1800s.  My assumption is that Grimshaw is a family name and that in 1789 there was a reason to commemorate it.  I haven’t yet found definite Grimshaw ancestry but her grandmother, and mother of Mary Ellis, may have been Sarah Grimshaw.  More research is needed to be certain as Ellis is a common surname.

Jane was baptised 8 Mar 1789 in Batley parish church.  At the time, along with some other parishes in Yorkshire, that church used Dade registers.  Dade registers have the advantage of recording a lot of information that wasn’t normally recorded, such as Jane’s date of birth and the names of her grandfathers, Robert Spedding and John Ellis.  This is very useful for proving links between generations.  The short time of about a week between birth and baptism is thought to have been the norm at a time of high infant mortality.

During Jane Grimshaw Spedding’s lifetime, Batley changed from a small community of farmers and weavers into an industrial town, quadrupling in size.  Jane’s family were well off.  Her father was a butcher and innkeeper who was leader in the local community, taking on such roles as church warden and overseer of the poor.  The inn was the “Bull and Butcher” and in 1801 the family lived there.

Another sign of the status of Jane’s family was her marriage by licence on 12 Jul 1809, Batley, to John Akeroyd.  I don’t know why they got married by licence but there are a few possible reasons: John was illegitimate, so it is possible that Jane’s family didn’t approve of him; they came from different parishes, so there may have been an issue with calling banns or it may just have been a status symbol for Jane’s family.  Jane was not pregnant, another reason for a licence.  Her first child was born a respectable ten months after the wedding.  One odd thing about the licence is that Jane is sworn to be aged twenty-one and upwards but she was actually only twenty.  It is possible she didn’t know her exact age.

John Akeroyd was a farmer from Wragby and may be worthy of his own story being told at some point.  When John and Jane married, he may have been responsible for his two young and recently orphaned half-siblings, Mary and Robert Bennington.  So Jane probably became an instant mother, as well as wife.  Between 1810 and 1821, Jane and John had six children born in Ryhill, near Wragby, where John was a farmer.

The family then moved to Batley, and had four more children, including my ancestor Abraham Akeroyd, born in 1827.  The move to Batley took place a couple of years after Jane’s father Charles died in 1819.  Following the move, John took over the “Bull and Butcher”, although he also continued as a farmer.

Sadly, in 1839, John Akeroyd died of Cholera.  He left his farm to his “dear wife Jane”.  From the names listed in the will, it appears that two of his children died before it was written.

In the 1841 and 1851 censuses, Jane Akeroyd is listed as a farmer and in 1851 she had 12 acres.  I wonder whether she kept running the family farm through choice or necessity.  Jane had grown up sons in 1839 who could have joined the family business but they also had their own jobs.

Jane died in 1855 and was buried in Batley churchyard.   Abraham Akeroyd named his daughter born in 1856 Jane Grimshaw Akeroyd, in tribute to his mother.

Notes on lineage: Me > Dad > Helen Francis Ruth Akeroyd > Percy Tomlinson Akeroyd > Frederick William Akeroyd > Abraham Akeroyd > Jane Grimshaw Spedding

A Hint of Nobility

This is likely to be my last post for this year because in a couple of weeks I will be visiting my living relatives and won’t have time for writing about deceased ones.  So, I thought I would write about someone who hints at some particularly intriguing ancestry.

My ancestor Mary Hastings was born sometime before October 1671, the daughter of Henry Hastings and sister of Anne.  I don’t yet know her mother’s name.  Mary married Richard Preston after 1697, his second wife.  Mary and Richard had at least four children, a son, Robert, and at three daughters, including my ancestor Letitia.  Mary died in 1765, aged about 100 years old.  Her Hastings great grandfather had lived to a similar age.

Richard Preston was not a good choice of husband.  He had moved to Ireland from England to live in retirement, having lost what was left of his family’s fortune through gambling and an extravagant living.  He already had a son and heir by his first wife.  The Preston’s were Catholic Royalist landed gentry (they supported the losing side in the English Civil war).  Richard’s branch of the family was from Cockerham, Lancashire, and the lineage can be found in various early editions of Burkes Landed gentry.  Some of the later Preston lineages say that Mary Hastings was the relict (widow) of a Mr Dennis, however I think this is likely to be confusion with Richard Preston’s first wife, Mary Dennis.

So why am I writing about Mary Hastings when I seem to know so little for certain about her life?  It is because she was mentioned in an investigation into the Huntingdon Peerage conducted around 1820 by the Attorney General.  The details of the investigation are covered in “The Huntingdon Peerage” by Henry Nugent Bell (which can be found via Google Books and other similar web sites).

In 1789, the title of Earl of Huntingdon, held by the Hastings family, fell into abeyance.  Eventually, a male claimant wanted to prove that he was the heir to the title.  To do this, he had to prove that there were no other more senior male members of the Hastings family to inherit it.  As a result, a great deal of research was done into the various male lines of descent in the Hastings family.  Mary’s father, Henry Hastings, was one of the descendants of the 4^th Earl of Huntingdon.  Mary and Ann were the only known children of Henry Hastings, so he had no known male heirs to calm the title.

I found the investigation of the Huntingdon peerage of particular interested because it shows how quickly a family line can die out, causing problems with the succession of titles.  The 3^rd Earl of Huntingdon had six sons but the first two failed to have any male children and the third son’s male lines of descent disappeared within a few generations, so eventually the title went to a descendant of the third son.  Curiously, the currently holder of the title doesn’t have any sons and wasn’t the son of the previous title holder, so succession issues continue.

Getting back to Mary Hastings; Mary and her sister, Anne, were mentioned in the will of Ann Hastings nee Cracknell, their grandmother, who lived in Dorset and died in 1672, having written her will in October 1671.  Ann included a lot of detail about her children and grandchildren in her will.  She left little went to Henry or his children.  My assumption is that Henry, as oldest surviving son, had succeeded to property from his father and older brother.

As what was left of Richard Preston’s fortune went the son of his first wife, Mary was left with very little to support her young family after he died in 1721.  According to the obituary of Mary Hasting’s grandson in The Gentleman’s Magazine (see Google books), after Richard Preston died in 1721, she was supported by Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon, for many years.

The peerage investigation mentions that Henry Hastings and his daughters had moved to Dublin by 1682.  That seems to be the last known record of his life.  As any family historian knows, researching Irish ancestors is difficult, if not impossible; so uncovering more about the Mary’s life in Ireland will be quite a challenge.  However, much her of ancestry is another matter and is the stuff of history books, so may not be the topic of many future posts.

Notes on Lineage: Me > Mum > Daphne Madge Smith > Esther Ilma Lees > Fanny Sarah Eliza Briggs > Frederick Henderson Briggs > Henry Sparrow Briggs > Jehu Briggs > Letitia Preston > Mary Hastings

Underground Ancestor

Following on from my previous post, this is the story of another ancestor with a connection to the engineering work of Brunel.

My ancestor Jesse Flower* was born in Timsbury, Somerset, the 7^th of 8 children of Jesse Flower and Elizabeth Shore.  The younger Jesse was baptised 5 November 1786 in the church at Timsbury.  He was the second Jesse Flower born into the family, his older brother, Jesse, died three years before he was born.  While that might seem macabre to modern sensibilities, sharing a name with an older deceased sibling was not unusual at times in the past. Jesse Flower senior died in 1792, when son Jesse was only 3 years old.

In the late 1700s coal mining started in the Timsbury area and the industry became a major employer.  So Jesse Flower and at least one of his brothers, Benjamin, became coal miners.  Jesse worked as a navigator, the person who dug the tunnels.

Jesse Flower married Mary Ann Hoare in Timsbury on 18 May 1820.  While they were living in Timsbury, they had three daughters, my ancestor Catherine Elizabeth Flower, Amelia and Harriet.

In 1825, work started on Brunel’s tunnel under the Thames River in London, joining Rotherhithe and Wapping. Brunel was from Bristol and he recruited miners from his home county to help build the tunnel.  Jesse Flower was one of these miners.  His grandson, James Jesse Blake wrote of Jesse Flower’s work.

 

A new method of tunnelling had been invented to build the tunnel, known as a tunnelling shield, which allowed the construction of a tunnel in soft damp clay.  I found a public domain picture of illustrating the method on Wikipedia.  At this time, the Thames was little better than an open sewer.  While building the tunnel, water seeped in and caused illness among the workers.  It sounds like unpleasant work but then, so was work down the coal mines.  Work on the tunnel continued on and off, with disruptions due to floods, fires and leaks, until November 1841 when the tunnel was completed.

Above ground, life was not much better for Jesse Flower.  He and his young family lived in Southwark and then Rotherhithe.  In 1827 and 1829, he had two daughters, both Elizabeth, who did not survive infancy.  Then in 1832, his wife, Mary Ann, died.

Sadly, Jesse Flower did not quite live to see the Thames Tunnel completed.  He died on 27 Aug 1841, only 55 years old, and was buried a few days later at St Mary’s, Rotherhithe.  His death certificate says that he died of asthma, however I wonder if he was suffering the effects of his years being exposed to coal dust and filthy Thames water.

Other members of the Flower family had migrated to London, so Jesse’s three young daughters would not have been left to fend for themselves.  All three stayed in London and found husbands.

Next to the old tunnel entrance in Rotherhithe sits the Brunel museum.  I have been on a guided tour to the musem that went down the tunnel shaft.  The tunnel is now used by trains and can be seen from platforms at Canada Water and Wapping London Overground stations.  It is kind of cool to be able to see the tunnel and to think that my ancestor helped build it.

*Flower or Flowers.  I have used Flower here as it seems to be the more common spelling.

Note on lineage: Me > Dad > John Edward Blake > James William Blake > James Jesse Blake > Catherine Elizabeth Flower > Jesse Flower

Migrants

Migrants are the hot topic of the moment, so I thought I’d write about two of my ancestors who migrated from Liverpool, England to Victoria, Australia.

I am a migrant.  It took me two months to migrate from Canberra to London but that was by choice and was an excellent adventure.  I was fortunate to have a round-the-world plane ticket and comfortable accommodation booked.  I also had somewhere to stay when I arrived and a passport that would let me stay.  Many others are not so lucky.

My two ancestors also took around two months to travel between England and Australia, leaving Liverpool on 16 February 1861 and arriving in Melbourne 75 days later.  They travelled on the most technologically advanced ship that existed at the time, Brunel’s SS Great Britain.  The SS Great Britain is now a very good tourist attraction in Bristol (see photo) so it is possible to get a good idea what life was like for migrants on the ship.  I visited the ship last year and learnt a lot.

SS Great Britain, in Bristol.

 So who was on board the SS Great Britain?  My ancestor Sarah Pilling nee Holden and her daughters Betsy (also my ancestor) and Sarah, aged 6 and 3 respectively.  They were travelling to join husband and father John Pilling who was already in Australia, having departed England four years earlier, also on the SS Great Britain, probably leaving behind a pregnant wife (I don’t know Sarah Pilling’s date of birth).

The Pilling family came from Haslingden, Lancashire, not far from Manchester.  At that time, cotton mills were the main industry in the area and the Pilling and Holden families worked in the mills, mostly as weavers.  Hours would have been long and the work was hard.  Like many in that part of England, they were Baptists, non-conformists, which may have led to some discrimination and disadvantage.  So life in England was not easy for them.

John Pilling was a book keeper and had gone to the goldfields in Victoria, perhaps to seek his fortune and a better life for his family.  I assume things worked out for him as his wife and children eventually followed.  I wonder if the long delay was due to the family waiting until they felt the younger Sarah was old enough to travel.  Whatever the reason, it seems to mirror what still happens with migrants today with one family member migrating in the hope of bringing the rest of the family along later.

First class cabin

Steerage cabin

Seeing the SS Great Britain was an eye opener for me.  While the first class cabins looked reasonably comfortable although not luxurious by modern standards (see photo), life for the steerage passengers didn’t look quite so nice.  I assume that Sarah and her children travelled in steerage; there is no indication that the family were well off.  In steerage, Women and children were accommodated in cabins whereas men were more likely to have been in long dormitories (see photo).  The cabins (see photo) were tiny, with four narrow bunk beds.  Some luggage would have been stored in a trunk under the beds in the room, the rest in the hull.  It is likely that Sarah and her two daughters would have shared one bunk.  The other beds would be filled by strangers.  It is hard to imagine just how cramped and uncomfortable that would have been.

Steerage dormitory style accommodation

When not in the cabins, steerage passengers had limited access to the deck and weren’t allowed near the first class passengers.  There was none of the entertainment or facilities that are available on a modern cruise ship, so passengers had to find ways to amuse themselves.  According to the SS Great Britain exhibition, drinking was rife so Sarah would have had to protect her daughters from unsavoury behaviour.  On the positive side, all the teetotaller Baptists on board would have held religious meetings and would generally have looked out for each other.

While this sounds like a challenging journey, it was probably the most luxurious and easiest for any of my ancestors who migrated from the United Kingdom to Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Other ancestors experienced things like epidemic disease sweeping through the vessel or ship wreck.  Some of my ancestors had no choice about migrating, being soldiers or convicts.  As for the others, I think they must have been very brave or very desperate to travel around the world in such conditions.  I am grateful that I can now do the journey in just under 24 hours in the relative comfort of a modern airplane.


Notes on lineage: Me > Mum > John Macdonald Charley > Constance Mary Macdonald > Besty Pilling > Sarah Holden

A Sweet End

Thomas Perigo is an ancestor who, after a difficult start in life, seems to have done quite well for himself.

Born 11 March 1819 in Rolvenden, Kent, Thomas was the sixth of eight known children of John Perigo and Charlotte Perigo.  An older brother died years before Thomas was born, a sister died in 1823 and two younger sisters died in April 1825.  As if that wasn’t enough tragedy for the young family, his mother died soon after in 1826.

For some reason, Thomas was not baptised until the summer of 1833.  Perhaps the remnants of his family didn’t need any support from the parish until this time; that was one reason for late baptism. 

Rolvenden was, and is, a small rural village.  According to Wikipedia, its main claims to fame are literary. It is home to “The Secret Garden” or at least home to the garden that inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett to write the story. Edward Gibbons lived there while he wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It is nice to know that I can (vaguely) link genealogy with my interest in Roman history.

During the 1830s, the village of Rolvenden was caught up in the Swing riots, which were violent protest against the use of threshing machines – new technology taking over jobs previously done by people, leading to unemployment and poverty.  John Perigo was a labourer, so probably worked on a farm, and Thomas followed in his footsteps.  Apparently the parish of Rolvenden decided that the best way to reduce the amount of parish relief being paid to the poor was to offer them a onetime payment to sponsor their migration to the colonies.  Thomas took up this offer in 1839 and arrived in Sydney, NSW, in November that year, on the Lady Nugent.

John only survived a year after his son’s departure, dying in December 1840, age 63.  I don’t know whether Thomas stayed in touch with his surviving siblings in England.  According to shipping records, Thomas could read and write a little, which doesn’t make him sound like a prolific letter writer.

A few years after his arrival in Sydney, Thomas met Sarah Elizabeth Playford*.  He may have worked with her father as a brick maker or he may even have known the Playford family from England, as they come from a village in Sussex only a few miles from Rolvenden.  Thomas and Sarah married 16 Mar 1843, at Cook’s River in Sydney.  Their wedding was all too quickly followed by the birth of my ancestor Fanny Sarah Perigo two months later, on 17 June.  She was the first of sixteen children, 10 sons and 6 daughters.  Two of the children died young, but the rest survived to adulthood and most married.

In 1844, Thomas and two others were fined 10 shillings each for rescuing a goat on the way to the pound.  I am not sure whether liberating a goat is a good thing or a bad thing.

By the 1860’s, Thomas and Sarah were living on the corner of Pitt and Liverpool streets in Sydney, where Thomas worked as a sugar boiler.  He made and sold treacle for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, now better known as CSR.  I have come across a number of adds in the Sydney Morning Herald advertising treacle sales and deliveries by Mr T Perigo.  By the late 1870’s, there were adds for Perigo Brothers selling treacle, suggesting some of Thomas’ sons took on the family business.

Thomas and Sarah may have retired to the suburbs.  They spent their final years living at a house called Davisleigh in Rocky Point Road, Rockdale.  Looking at a modern map of Sydney, I think this may now part of the Princes Highway, not far from Sydney Airport.  Thomas died 18 May 1887, from senile decay.  I am not sure whether that refers to physical or mental decline or a bit of both.  He was buried in Balmain Cemetery, now a park, where his two deceased children were already buried.

Thomas Perigo left an estate valued at £1210.  This seems to be a comfortable sum when compared with other estates listed in the newspaper on the same day. 

As for what his life might have been like if Thomas had stayed in England?  In 1851, his brother was a pauper, as was one widowed sister in 1861.  The other surviving sister spent many years as the mistress of the father of her children before he eventually married her.  So as a young man, Thomas took a chance and it paid off, as it did for many who travelled to the “Lucky Country”.

*Sarah Elizabeth Playford was born Sarah Elizabeth Goodsall, but was known by her (step?) father’s surname and may be worthy of having her own story told.

Note on lineage: Me > Mum > Daphne Madge Smith > Esther Ilma Lees > Fanny Sarah Eliza Briggs > Fanny Sarah Perigo > Thomas Perigo