Author: Ian Elsom

A Lincolnshire Lad

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John was only 22 when he died in Filey, but three enumerators had taken a census snapshot of him.

Just a few months old in March 1851 he was not at home on his father’s 400-acre farm at Hibaldstow, where he was born, but at his maternal grandfather’s house on The Mount, in York. He was there with his mother Anne and older sister Grace.

Ten years later John was at boarding school in St George Gate, Doncaster and in 1871, age 20, he was helping his mother run the family farm. His father had died a little over a month earlier. Widow Anne seems to have made the decision to sell the farm shortly after her husband’s death and an auction had taken place shortly before the enumerator called. Perhaps 860 sheep, 45 beasts and 26 horses had already gone, along with over a hundred acres of sown land and pasture.

I don’t know why John was in Filey the following year or the cause of his death but further investigation revealed that the Danby family must have had some connection with the town. What this might have been exactly is difficult to fathom but two of John’s sisters were married at St Oswald’s.

Grace married farmer William LITTLE from Willoughton in Lincolnshire about 21 months after John’s death. Seven years later, Lucy married Henry Hall BEDFORD. He wasn’t “local” either.

Between Grace and Lucy, there was Lavinia Mary. She didn’t marry but at the age of 53 died in Scarborough.

I have put the photo of John’s headstone on FamilySearch Tree but there is a problem with the IDs of his father, Joseph. I’m not sure how to merge a duplicate because it has already been declared “not a match”. Find Joseph with his more extensive family here.

 

A Visitor

In September 1842, the Reverend Charles CARR and his young wife brought their infant daughter to the coast. They had to make the thirty-mile journey back to Burnby Rectory without Emily Charlotte Frances, having chosen to let her rest eternally in St Oswald’s churchyard. The burial register notes her age, 4 months, and her status – “a visitor”.

EmilyCharlotteFrances

With little information to go on, it seemed idle to wonder what sort of life Emily would have had, given time. Some possible scenarios opened up after a bit of digging in the archives.

Elizabeth Agnes LUNDY was Charles Carr’s second wife, and 22 years his junior. His first wife was also called Elizabeth and she died in Winchester at the age of about thirty, when Charles was Rector of Headbourne Worthy. I haven’t found evidence of her birth but her family name may have been BOYNTON, on the flimsy evidence of her only child (perhaps) being baptised Elizabeth Rachel Boynton CARR.

Nine years after Elizabeth the First died, Charles married the Second, a daughter of Lockington’s Rector, Francis Lundy. Charles’ origins are uncertain but I think he was born in Knaresborough, so by returning to Yorkshire he was, in a way, coming home.

Emily was preceded by Agnes Marianne, and followed by Charles Francis and Amy Elizabeth Emily. The boy was less than six months old when he died but the sisters made it to their sixties. Neither of them married.

Charles died aged 67 in 1861. Somehow, he had turned the shepherding of his Burnby flock into a lucrative business. He left what appears to have been a remarkable art collection.

[To be sold by by AUCTION] on TUESDAY, the 2nd Day of July next, at BURNBY RECTORY, near Pocklington, the whole of the Choice and Valuable Collection of OIL PAINTINGS, by Italian, Flemish, and Dutch Masters of the Old Schools, formed with great taste, care, and judgment, by the late Rev. Charles Carr, embracing fine examples of many of the most eminent Ancient Masters, including “The Holy Family” by Julio Romano, a magnificent production; a “River Scene by Moonlight,” – Vandermeer, a pleasing transparent cabinet gem; a “Grand Mountainous Landscape, with Cattle, Goats, and Figures near a Fountain,” on the banks of a stream, by Berghem; a “Sea Piece”, by Backhuysen, with all the fine silvery tone of the Master; “Landscape and Figures,” by Zucharelli; and many highly important Works by

1861_CARRchas_List

Whatever the sum raised by this sale, it seems to have been enough to keep three ladies in comfort for the rest of their lives.

Ten years after her husband’s death, Elizabeth II was living in Albion Place, Scarborough, with Agnes and Amy, then aged 30 and 24 and without occupation.

By 1881 the trio had moved the short distance to 4, Princess Royal Terrace, where they now formed a quartet with Elizabeth’s unmarried sister, Agnes Eliot Hamilton Lundy, who had “income from house property”.

The four ladies clearly enjoyed living together on their own means and were still resident in Princess Royal Terrace in 1891. Death split up the group in 1900. Elizabeth Agnes was the first to go. Her daughters moved to 34 Londesborough Road, and their Aunt went to live a ten-minute walk away, with her younger sister, 74-year-old Emily Henrietta Lundy, now the widow PAIGE. These two were still together in 1911 but the younger Carr sisters had died by then, Agnes Marianne in 1905 and Amy Elizabeth Emily in 1910.

Our little visitor, had she lived, may have found a good man to love and be loved by, but I think the odds are that she too would have chosen comfortable independence in the Queen of Resorts, free of the messiness of marriage and children. Just a thought.

Find Emily on FamilySearch Tree.