Grace’s Guide confirms that Bentfield Charles HUCKS was born on this day in 1884 but his parents didn’t register the arrival in Bishop’s Stortford until the New Year. Most sources give Stansted as his birthplace, and within the village of Stansted Mountfitchet, there is an area called Bentfield. He was, of course, born before Stansted Airport was a twinkle in the eye of anyone. I wrote about Bennie and his brothers a while back – see The Three Marine Engineers.

The post’s link to “one pilot and his pupil” has broken. It refers to the unfortunate Hubert OXLEY and Robert WEISS. I will say more about them on the anniversary of their deaths but here is a brief newspaper report of their passing.

Bentfield volunteered to serve in the Royal Flying Corps but ill health limited his contribution to the Great War effort. He caught the “Spanish Flu” in 1918 and died from pneumonia.

Ann PYBUS was baptised at Filey St Oswald’s. Her mother Mary COWLING had been blessed there almost forty years earlier but her father hailed from Masham, sixty miles or so inland. Both parents are represented on the Shared Tree but with IDs MSLP-1CT and MGCT-1R3 they have yet to tie the knot. (Mary has, however, married George PARVUS at St Oswald’s on 30 December 1819.)

Ann married Charles PRESTON at St Oswald’s on 9 December 1857 but I have been unable to follow their progress thereafter. There are some indications that they continued to live in the East Riding and that neither reached a great age but there are no convincing birth registrations of children or census returns. Perhaps they went overseas.

Mary HALL was the second of James HODGSON’s three wives. They married at St Oswald’s and were living in Mosey’s Yard in 1841 and 1851. These census snapshots catch them with just one child, Mary Ann, born in 1828 and therefore the daughter of James’ first wife Mary ROSS (died 1834). Mary Hall appears not to have had any children. I am not sure when she died (hence the italics of uncertainty in the grid.  James married Sarah PINKNEY, previously the wife of Robert PINDER, in May 1856. I haven’t looked for James and “the other two wives” on the Shared Tree.

William John was born in Filey to Alexander John Porteous CHRYSTALL and Rita Annie HOLLIS. He died aged just 22; his last address was in Mere, on the Wirral.

(This is a “placeholder” image. I hope to photograph the stones again – after making them more presentable.)

Her parents registered her at birth as Maria and she is Maria on a headstone in Filey churchyard.

In between, you may find she goes by Mary or Marion.

She was the daughter of James PUTSEY, a licensed victualler in Scarborough, and Emma BAYES. She had seven children with Arthur Herbert HAXBY, a joiner who worked for Sawdons the Builders. In 1921 Maria ran a lodging house in Filey at 17 The Crescent and her last address was 4, Brooklands.

Beach 181 · Filey Sands