One of my grandmothers was a FENN so I couldn’t ignore Philip William of that ilk. It is unlikely we are related, but… heigh ho.

Filey Genealogy & Connections says he was born in “New Filey” and baptised fifteen days later at the old Primitive Methodist chapel. His father George Philip was a coachman from Kent and one wonders what accident or design brought him here. After marriage to Mary Ann SOMEBODY, their first child was born in Walthamstow, Essex. Philip was the second of four children on FG&C who were first-generation Filonians. What became of them?

George Philip, his wife Mary Ann BRAIN and six children are on the Shared Tree. I reckon the “extra” child is Hannah Elizabeth, a transcription error.

1871 Census Enumerator Book

FamilySearch hasn’t killed any of them off. It takes a minute to look at Free BMD.

Shocking. I thought of the fatherless children and hoped this was a different man. Lancaster is over 120 miles from Filey, on the other side of the country.

This George Philip was buried at Bolton le Sands on the thirteenth of April and his death had not been newsworthy. I couldn’t find the family in the following two censuses but Mary Ann was a widow in 1901 with four unmarried children at 62 Carnarvon Road, Stratford.

Philip William, 36, was working as a fruit salesman. He died at this house three years later.

John CLIFFORD was baptised at Filey St Oswald’s and 82 years later he was buried in the churchyard. He doesn’t have a monument but the family is remembered because a Yard was named after them. It is now Clifford’s Terrace and on FG&C Kath says their small farm off King Street adjoined The Packhorse, later The Crown and now apartments. John chose to remain single. His older brother Francis was also not the marrying kind and the pair shared accommodation in King/Queen Street for most of their adult lives, with live-in female relatives or servants to look after them.

Hector McDonald OVENDEN followed his father into papermaking according to FG&C but the only clue to their origins is Hector’s birthplace – “Sutton on Horne”. I have never heard of it – Sutton at Hone in Kent neither. Hector’s grandfather, Thomas Henry, made paper by hand and taught his son Herbert. Herbert was recorded as a papermaker in the 1939 Register but Hector had given up the “trade” by then and at the outbreak of war was working as a London Transport Inspector. (Hector had served in the Royal Navy and there is a partial entry in the Register that seems to indicate he was “invalided out” of the service.) Mary Jane TROWSDALE, born at 25 Church Street, Filey, has yet to meet Hector on the Shared Tree.

Ernest Alfred ABBOTT was born in Brampton, Huntingdonshire, and came up to Filey with the Cyclist Battalion in 1915. He met, courted and married Mary Ann STORK before the year was out. When the battalion was disbanded in late 1916, he was transferred to the 683^rd Agricultural Company, Army Labour Corps. It isn’t clear where or how he was wounded but he died in Cambridge Eastern General Hospital a week after the Armistice. His Commonwealth War Grave stone in St Oswald’s churchyard carries the Hunts Cyclists’ insignia and his number. (In the Army Labour Corps he was 434613 Private Abbott.) His second son, Tom, was born after his death and Mary Ann did not long survive him.

Kate Ellen CROFT is the daughter of Eliza CHAPMAN and John Simpson CROFT but there appear to be problems with Eliza on both FG&C and the Shared Tree. But here is Kate’s headstone and its transcription.

Row 5 | 1800 Crosby F58 | Red Granite

In loving memory of a dear wife and devoted mother, KATE ELLEN, the beloved wife of AMOS CROSBY of Headon Farm, Brompton, who died Nov 15th 1932 aged 46 years.

‘He will keep me till the river

Rolls its waters at my feet

Then He’ll bear me safely over

Where the loved ones I shall meet’

Also of AMOS CROSBY, who died May 6th 1970, aged 86 years.

‘At rest’

Crimlisk Survey 1977