George LEAK, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Ann were caught in Ingleby Berwick by the 1841 census enumerator. With the couple was Margaret NELSON, aged two. A fellow recorded as George LEAH had married Ann Nelson in Thirsk, 25 miles to the south, a few months earlier. Ten years later, Margaret had the Leak surname, two sisters and a brother at the family home in Balk End, Scarborough. George was then a railway labourer and the only one given a birthplace – Aldborough, about fifteen miles south of Thirsk.

Ann was pregnant when the enumerator called and gave birth a month or so later. The baby girl was baptised at Filey St Oswald’s on the last day of July. (Lebberston is in Filey Parish and Scarborough Registration District.)

Just over a year later, another daughter with the same given names was baptised at Filey’s parish church.

Birth registrations tell a different story.

A death registration in 1851 was for Jane Hannah…

…but she was buried somewhere in St Oswald’s churchyard as Jane Ann five days after baptism.

After the baptism of Jane Ann a year later I could find no further information on the family.

Christopher AUTON was born in Patrick Brompton near Bedale and found his wife Margaret WILLIAMSON in Leyburn, a small market town about seven miles distant. They raised a family of ten children in York, where Christopher worked on his own account as a painter, plumber, and glazier. One of their sons, William Williamson carried on the same trade in Filey. After Christopher died, Margaret spent some of her short widowhood in Clarence Terrace, Filey, with William and his wife Jane. Christopher and Margaret’s representation on the Shared Tree is somewhat sketchy.

Horace William HOLSWORTH’s father worked in Great Yarmouth as an oilskin dresser for seamen and gentlemen’s outfitters. In 1916, Horace was a pupil teacher but in 1917 joined the army and served in France with the 12^th Bn King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Demobbed in 1919 he was given a Government Allowance of £120 a year for three years and attended Sheffield University.

Meanwhile, in the north of England, Durham-born John Thomas WAGGITT married Annie Hoggard HAXBY and settled in her hometown, Filey. While he worked as a hairdresser, Annie kept a lodging house on the Crescent. Lilian was the eldest of four daughters and married Horace in 1923. It would be interesting to know how the two families came to be connected. More so because Lilian’s youngest sister Edith had married Horace’s older brother Harry five years earlier.

Harry was also a teacher, for many years the headmaster of Tibenham and Pulham St Mary School in Norfolk. In the summer of 1963, Horace and Lilian attended Harry’s cremation service at St Faith’s, Norwich. Edith was supported by her daughter Daphne, now Mrs INGHAM. The daughter of Horace and Lilian, Mrs Hilary ROSS, was also present. Lilian still had almost thirty years to live; Horace only four.

Theodosia POCKLEY makes the grid because she is the only person in FG&C who died on this day. This could be an error though – FamilySearch says she was buried on 31 July. The Shared Tree doesn’t make it clear that Theodosia was from the elite OSBALDESTON family. Sir Richard (1655-1728) was her grandfather but the link that would connect them has not been made yet. (From her mother KZ56-W42, there is a direct line to Alfred the Great, King of Wessex L8MB-ZF7.)

Scotsman William MUNRO married Agnes BARBER in Edinburgh in February 1832. It seems to have been an extended family decision to travel south and set up a home in Filey. On census night 1841, a dwelling in Main Street sheltered William, a surgeon, his father Donald, grocer, and younger brothers John, confectioner, and Donald junior, an engineer. Agnes had died the year before, and William’s mother Janet must have been away visiting. She died in 1843. Three servants, one of them male, ran the household. There was another Munro family enumerated in Bridlington that year who may have been close relatives.

William added to the fees he collected as a doctor. A note in FG&C reports –  

A warm bath may be procured by applying at the house of Mr Munro, surgeon, who is possessed of a portable one, manufactured out of tin on an improved construction, which can be either lent out, or persons may be accommodated with it at Mr Munro’s house.

Erected to the memory of WILLIAM MUNRO, late surgeon at this place, who departed this life on 27th July 1841, aged 36 years.

Also, of [unreadable] his wife, who departed this life on the 25th Dec. 1840, aged 40 years.

Also, of JANET, wife of Donald Munro and Mother of the above, who died the 22nd December 1843

Landscape 160 · Cayton Bay