Kath added this note to the record of Joseph HEWITT junior, born 1907, though it refers to his father.

Hewitt was born in humble circumstances but qualified as a solicitor and later acquired substantial interests in the coal mining industry. He was an adviser to the Coal Controller during the First World War, and for these services he was knighted in 1919 and created a Baronet in the 1921 New Year Honours.

Joseph senior’s father Alfred was described variously in censuses as – an engineer at a factory, engine fitter, mechanic in a linen mill, and a retired foundry mechanic.

In 1881, while Alfred left a Barnsley terrace house each workday to get his hands dirty, fifteen-year-old Joseph laboured as a general clerk in a solicitor’s office.

Some of the money made in a West Riding town (and a World War) would eventually be spent in Filey parish when the ennobled Hewitts lived for some years at Gristhorpe Manor.

The working man has a place on the Shared Tree but is without a wife and children.

Joseph senior’s first wife, Kate FOSTER, died at the age of twenty-nine. He found his second wife in the GUEST household when he visited the family in 1891. Margaret Eliza was nineteen, about six years younger than her suitor. In 1940, their son Joseph junior married Marguerite BURGESS in St Oswald’s Church. Her last address, in 2001, was Lebberston Manor.

I think Alfred, the common man, should be graced by connection to his “betters” on the Shared Tree.

Beach 172 · Filey Sands