Smith and Jones

The information in Filey Genealogy & Connections is sparse. A couple from Worcestershire, David JONES and Mary Ann SMITH married and started a family in Northamptonshire. David was a schoolmaster and his son Harold Clayton Jones followed him into the profession. Harold married Evelyn Rosalie MORETON at Filey St Oswald’s in 1920, without having any prior connection to the town (as far as I know). In 1939, The Register places them in The Schoolhouse, Ellesmere, Shropshire. With them are Evelyn Mary Clayton, 18 and seeking work, and David John Clayton, 14, a schoolboy. A brief note in FG&C suggested Evelyn senior’s father was a miner. A Welsh one perhaps. Evelyn died in Llanelli in 1970, aged 75.

Sarah was the first child born to Ann GARBUTT (burial anniversary 5 May) and John COOK. Sarah died two or three days after she was baptised. Six years later, Sarah Mary joined the family and lived for 85 years.

James WALLER made his way from Norfolk to Filey and in 1878 married Sarah Jane WHEELER at St Oswald’s, thereby connecting to most of the town’s main fisher families. Elizabeth was the couple’s fourth child. In 1906, at the age of 22, she married John William RADDINGS in Hull. Three children were born in the first four years and Elizabeth noted their names on the 1911 Census form. John William was away on business transporting goods to and from Hull aboard the family-owned ships. He died in 1917 and Elizabeth was a widow for sixty years. This wedding photograph is part of a detailed and moving story that explains how events conspired to cause the brutal separation.

Sea 47 · North Sea & Filey Bay

Missing Pieces

I haven’t been keeping score, but the proportion of loving couples who travel a considerable distance to marry in Filey continues to grow. And it is rare to spot a connection that either party has with the town. It isn’t just marriages. Marjorie Lanyon Handcock, born in South Wales, was brought to Filey at the age of four to be baptised at the Wesleyan Chapel. Her mother Caroline LANYON took the opportunity to be baptised too. She was a native of Cornwall, 43 years old.

I didn’t expect to find any Anglo-Welsh connections to the Yorkshire coast but was delighted with what I did uncover. Seeing what anniversary people looked like is always a treat.

Wiki Tree says that Caroline Lanyon was baptised at Lanreath, Cornwall in 1851. I don’t have access to the 1890 Filey Wesleyan registers to check the Filey Genealogy & Connections reference. Not that it matters much. More important is the Lanyon or Handcock family connection to the town. I cannot see it on Wiki Tree.

Marjory and her husband lived for many years at The Homestead on Honiton Road, Exeter. The property came on the market recently and you can download a PDF of the details here.

John, son of Filey farmer Jackson PARKINSON and Frances FRANK, became a master mariner. He married twice but only his first wife Rachel JENKINSON is remembered on the headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard.

In affectionate remembrance of RACHEL, [unreadable], who died [May 1861 in pencil]

JOHN PARKINSON [unreadable], who was drowned on the voyage to London about the 23rd February1867 (?) [1879 in pencil], aged 63 years.

John’s baptism entry in 1817 makes his death in 1867 unlikely. My digitisation of the 1977 Crimlisk Survey doesn’t indicate who wrote that he died in 1879 and I haven’t found any newspaper accounts of his drowning.

He married Mary UNDERWOOD at St Oswald’s in September 1863 and FG&C indicates that they had a son, John Thomas, who was baptised in October 1867.

Elizabeth LACY was blacksmith John MILLER’s second wife. FG&C doesn’t indicate him having children with either woman. (The Edward Miller offered by the Shared Tree looks a dubious character to me.) Elizabeth died in Lancashire five years after John and her body was brought back to Filey. The couple’s headstone was moved from the grave to the north wall some years ago.

The only connection Florence NIGHTINGALE has to Filey is tenuous and unverifiable. William STORY, seventeen, died at Balaclava on 7 December 1855. The details of his passing are not known, leaving open the possibility that he died in a hospital from wounds received in the Crimean War – and was perhaps shown care and compassion by a future national treasure. For more speculation see Hilary, Florence and Richard.

Robert Lacy MILLER was a year and nine months old when he was buried in an unmarked St Oswald’s grave. He was totally alone on FG&C but the timing of his arrival makes him a shoo-in to be the son of today’s married couple. Non-Conformist Baptism Records show his birth in Bridlington on 11 November 1834 and baptism six days later.

The 1841 Gristhorpe Census shows blacksmith John Miller and his wife Elizabeth have two boys under their roof who may be their sons. George aged seven and James, one.

Bird 129 · Herring Gull

Field 15 · Cut Rape

Filey Genealogy & Connections says that Alice Marjorie MATHEWMAN was born at 12 Norman Crescent, Filey but when the census was taken the following year, the family was living in Bridlington, where the head of household Thomas Leaper worked as a traveller for a drapery company. The Shared Tree takes the pedigree back a short distance to the first Leaper but then gathers enough momentum to take Alice’s forebears to Anglo-Saxon England, acknowledging the Conqueror along the way.

David DOVE, a photographer, married Emily NAYLOR in Bramley in 1887. David’s restlessness is apparent in the birthplaces of their children. Herbert Sidney seems to be the only one born in Filey so the family can’t have been here for long. Emily gave birth to six children and all were alive in 1911. Five were with her then in Belgrave Road, Keighley and only ten-year-old Elsie was not in gainful employment. This must have been a great help to widow Emily. Herbert, 18, was an apprentice weaving overlooker. He served with the Royal Garrison Artillery in the Great War (Service No. 118260) and survived the carnage. At the beginning of the Second World War he was living in Parson Street, Keighley – working as a worsted weaving overlooker! His wife, Ethel Victoria, was a shopkeeper and there were two young children at home. Herbert’s older brother, Reginald Naylor, married Beatrice Annie BAKER. Ethel Victoria was her younger sister.

Joseph Martin HADDAKIN married Maud Elizabeth HALL at Filey St Oswald’s in 1905 but they have yet to exchange vows on the Shared Tree. Still single and just Martin, Maud’s “future husband” has attracted a Blue Hint that references her. That Edward Henry HALL is boarding with his sister in 1911 seals the deal. They had ten siblings, so there is much work to do to bring them all together on the Shared Tree.

Metal 30 · Abstract

Rosie Hettie Geatches TOUT, sister of Minnie Maud Charlotte Geatches (baptism anniversary 1 June) was somewhat restrained when she registered her firstborn as “Rosie Bessie”. If husband Thomas HARRISON had an investment in the name choice, his death saved him the disappointment of seeing her marry as “Rosa”. She died as Rosa Bessie Anderson in Ontario. The ID I gave Rosie over four years ago hasn’t been merged and, for who knows how long, it affords our birthday girl a richer heritage.

I have a weakness for picking unfamiliar names to follow. There are only two of the MANTON family in my Filey database. The birth registration of Gertrude Lilley in the December Quarter of 1868 is clearly late – if she is the Gertrude Lillie baptised on today’s date in St Oswald’s. Her father, John Nathaniel, was a dentist and perhaps a busy man who took a sudden opportunity to relocate to the east coast. (He had married Annie Elizabeth TREVETT in London in 1864.) I haven’t attempted to track his career but his daughter married a dentist who took her out to South Africa. After giving birth to four children, she died in Johannesburg. Dr Quinn medicine man married again. Gertrude’s parents are out in the Shared Tree cold.

DAYBELL. Another irresistible name. William Walker came to Filey from his Nottinghamshire birthplace, a distance of about one hundred miles, and married Sarah HARVEY at St Oswald’s. The families thus connected must have known each other because Sarah and her father had been born in Southwell too. The Daybells had three children and then Sarah died at the age of only thirty. William married Winifred HUNT about two years later. (Sarah is an aunt of John Revill STOCKDALE – burial anniversary 31 May.)

George Lewis BATLEY. See Filey for Health.

Thomas MAULSON married three times and has almost fifty sources on FamilySearch. He is grandfather to three anniversary people (at least) – John RAWSON, death 25 May; Richard MAULSON, burial 3 July; John MAULSON, burial, 11 July. I don’t know where he is buried in Filey churchyard.

The Lottery of Life

Donald the First was born in Carlton Road and baptised at St Oswald’s. Thirteen years later Donald the Second was dealt a better hand, marrying at St Oswald’s in 1951. Hilary Margaret married Arthur Leslie DENNISON at St Oswald’s in 1945. She died in Leicestershire.

Joseph was born in Queen Street, the fourth child of bootmaker Joseph IRELAND and Hannah PEACOCK. He was fifteen when his mother died. His father married Eliza LORRIMAN in August the following year, a few months after the lad was described in the Census as a shoemaker. Eliza was 44 and, not surprisingly, remained childless. Joseph junior did not marry and neither did those of his siblings who made it to adulthood. It does seem, though, that Eliza may have cared about our birthday bachelor. Kath notes poignantly that in 1901 Joseph was living alone at 25 Hope Street “near to his stepmother Eliza née Lorriman”. {Eliza’s mother was the first daughter of murdered sea captain Michael COOK.)

Joseph’s grave is among those “lost” but it can be pinpointed – as a sad rectangle of matted grass, its bounding kerb if it has one, hidden beneath the soil.

I expected to find that Samuel Kennedy CASS was related to the Scarborough musical family of that ilk. I was in for a surprise – if the Shared Tree is to be believed. It appears that Eleanor Ida LEWIS, born in Montreal, and Samuel from Pennsylvania, sailed across the Atlantic, married at St Oswald’s in August 1878 – and sailed back home almost immediately. Not, alas to live happily ever after. Samuel died the following August. Canadian sources offered on the Shared Tree are compelling. All I could find over here was the marriage register.

It seems that Eleanor’s father John Lewis had come along for the ride.

Ruth BARKER had a marriage anniversary in March but I was short of deaths to remember today. She was the sixth of eight children born to William, the landlord of the Three Tuns and Elizabeth RENNARD [MGBN-47N]. She had two sons with farmer Tom Gray COCKSWORTH. Tom Gray junior died soon after he was born. Tom Gray Reginald fared better, reaching the age of eighty, matching the longevity of his parents. (At some stage of his life he swapped his middle names and died as Tom Reginald Gray.

The Cocksworth grave is yet another that is overgrown and would make dismal viewing if photographed.

John Frankish ROOKE died at 8 Clarence Terrace on the 8^th of August. He was buried in St Oswald’s churchyard but the location of the grave hasn’t been recorded.

Mark of Man 94 · Hunmanby Sands

Wave 58 · Filey Bay

Annie LEWIS is the granddaughter of “Billam” who died on 6 June. And the daughter of George and Christina née RUSTON. She didn’t get to meet her father. He died before she was born. She married Eric STONES at the Filey Ebenezer three or four weeks after the Second World War began. In December 1942 their son Kenneth Lewis Stones was born. The poor lad died seven days later but he has not been forgotten. Annie is remembered on a small plaque within the bounds of the family grave.

Mary WALLER was baptised in Bridlington. She married George POOL in the town and they had four daughters and a son. Only one of the girls is readily found on the Shared Tree. Mary Ann Pool married Carr DIXON and two of her sons – George Frederick and Henry Waller Dixon – have had anniversaries here (15 and 22 June).

The Shared Tree doesn’t tell us much about Simon and Frances. Blue hints point to him coming from the Nottingham area. FG&C is more forthcoming – it may be worth taking a look at George, the father of Frances.

John William LAWSON was born in Beckingham, a Nottinghamshire village across the River Trent from Gainsborough. The family hadn’t been there for long. John William’s father, Alfred, and Lawsons going several generations further back were Yorkshire born.

John William married a Filey woman at St Oswald’s in October 1921. Margaret Jane COWLING was thirty years old, four years his senior, and they don’t appear to have had any children. In 1939 they were living at 14 Hope Street and John was working as Goods Porter and Shunter (LNE). On the Shared Tree, Margaret Jane is a single woman. Alfred Lawson, her future father-in-law, is also waiting for his spouse to show up.

In loving memory of my dear wife, MARGARET JANE LAWSON, fell asleep 25th March 1951, aged 60 years.

Also, of her dearly beloved husband, JOHN WILLIAM LAWSON, died 9th August 1966, aged 71 years.
‘Reunited’

John MARSAY is a one-off in my database and all I know is that he was 64 when he died at Crow’s Nest, near Gristhorpe. He was buried in St Oswald’s churchyard but is not listed in either the Crimlis Survey record or in the East Yorkshire Family History Society books. I think he was born in Whitby but there are other Johns with middle names in that area that confuse the issue when searching for him in census returns.

Found Object 71 · It’s a Dog Life

Thomas JENKINSON and Rachel FELL married a week before Christmas 1859. In 1871 they named their seventh child Rachel. The infant died a month before her first birthday. Their next child was a girl, and they called her Rachel too. Apart from the date of her birth, there is next to nothing about her life on Filey Genealogy & Connections or the Shared Tree. No sources or blue hints on FamilySearch. A quick search of FamilySearch Sources brings no immediate reward.

Find My Past offers three orange hints – to the birth of Rachel One, and to the birth and death of Rachel Two in the September Quarter of 1874. FG&C had noted the child’s baptism at the Ebenezer Chapel on 22 August and after accepting the death hint, FindMy Past added burial records. Rachel Two was laid to rest on the twentieth of September, aged six weeks. The parents had one more child, a girl they named Sarah Jane.

Thomas and Rachel died in their early sixties. Their headstone carries this verse –

The voyage of life is at an end

The mortal affliction is past

The age that in Heaven they spend

For ever and ever shall last.

Jane SHAW, daughter of Robert and Martha née SHIPPEY, was baptized at St Oswald’s. She married a Cayton ropemaker and twine spinner in 1870. All eleven of their children were born in Filey but the family – parents and six unmarried children – was enumerated in Hull in 1901. Ten years later, they were still living in Durham Street, but had an infant with them – Leslie, the son of Ada Shaw, now Mrs MANGER (or MAUGER). The wee boy was born in Cudworth near Barnsley, where Jane and her husband end their lives in 1916. Jane died first in the second week of July and William followed in the second week of August. The newspapers I am able to access are silent about the circumstances.

Charles Robert SARGENT took the CRIMLISK family name. He married Jane DARLING in 1908 and had five children with her. The Shared Tree hasn’t caught up with them yet, but you can find more about the family on the Crimlisk One-Name Study website.

Measure of Man 84 · Church

George Simmons CAMMISH and Isabella HARRISON married at Filey St Oswald’s in 1860 and set about creating a large family. Between us, Filey Genealogy & Connections and I have noted eleven children but in the 1911 Census, the parents acknowledge just eight. Mary, born in 1875, is obviously one of the later ones. At the age of sixteen, she was working as a general servant at the Three Tuns on Murray Street. At twenty she may have given birth to Isabella Bielby Cammish but the Shared Tree jury is still “out” regarding this. Mary married Wharton Smith HARPER from Foxholes. They had five children. In 1911, the family was complete-to-date at 19 Cambridge Street, Scarborough. Ada turned up a couple of years later and was with her widowed father at the same address in September 1939.

James Moses DONNER was baptised in Brinkhill, a village and civil parish in Lincolnshire that would become part of Spilsby Registration District a decade or so later. James married Sarah JARVIS in Louth, about ten miles to the north of Brinkhill. Isaac may have been their only child. He crossed the Humber and married his second wife Johanna at St Oswald’s in 1888. She was the widow of William Willis WISEMAN, a fisherman washed from Elizabeth and Emma when the Great Gale of October 1880 stranded the vessel at Robin Hood’s Bay. She brought five children to the marriage and provided Isaac with three daughters. The middle one, Alice, is buried somewhere in St Oswald’s churchyard with her husband George Smith BASHAM. It is one of the EYFHS “lost” graves.

Jane STAMPFORD was born on the Holderness Plain, at the edge of the sea. Twenty-three years later, she married George JOHNSON. My records show that their son Thomas was an only child Thomas, but all nine of his progeny married, some connecting with notable Filey families – Fenby, Jenkinson, Scales, Watkinson, Willis.

Thomas William DUKES is the father of Percy – birth anniversary 21 February. Thomas was killed during the Battle of the Somme. He is remembered on the Murray Street Memorial and in St Oswald’s Church…

…and at CWGC.

You can see from his grid dates that Filey’s Humphrey DAVY didn’t invent the miner’s lamp. His parents must have been on holiday when their infant died. They arranged for a substantial cross to be placed on his grave and went back to their home in the West Riding. Percy Davy and Florence née HARVEY had four more children and all are on the Shared Tree. Their Humphrey has been forgotten. The cross on his memorial has gone and the base has tilted and is overgrown.

If you look at Percy’s pedigree you will see his Y line stretch back quite a way – and there are some other Humphreys. The famous one is not among them because in Shared Tree World he died without issue. He was a chemist, and so was little Humphrey’s father and his father before him. So, you never know…

A Choice of Mothers

On the Shared Tree, Lillia Adelaide COLLINSON’s mother is either Ann Collinson or Sarah Ann. The GRO Births Index indicated that the parents registered the births of seven children. The maiden surname for five of them is NELLIST. Sarah Ann’s father, William Nellist, was from Littlebeck near Whitby After his wife Martha Ann POOL died, and as he approached his death, he lodged with Sarah Ann and four of her children in Muston. Lillia was working then as a domestic servant and would marry Tom Oliver a couple of years later. Tom worked as a horseman on a farm and after they had brought three children into the world – Walter Ernest, Mabel and George – I lost track of them.

Jane Elizabeth MOUNTAIN was baptized at St Oswald’s. FG&C says her father was a porter but doesn’t tell us from whence the Mountains moved to Filey. The Shared Tree is more helpful, pointing to a couple of generations of Northamptonshire folk. Sadly, Charles Mountain outlived his daughter. After marrying Henry or Harry PIDD and having two children, Jane died in Bridlington aged thirty-seven. There are photographs of her and a number of other close relatives on the Shared Tree.

Robert Edward WATSON was a musician and his father a gentleman. Patricia WHITEHEAD’s father was a solicitor and I was intrigued by her middle name, Sollie. Robert was thirty-five years old, a bachelor residing in Filey; Patricia was only twenty and a long way from home in Bridport. That one of the witnesses at the wedding in 1902 was Warcup CROSIER, a St Oswald’s churchwarden about to celebrate his eightieth year, suggests it may have been hastily arranged and not well-attended.

Robert’s gentleman father was Henry, a grocer and draper in Nafferton. Eight years of marriage hadn’t blessed them with children. In 1911, they were living in Town Hall Street, Grimsby with a servant, Edith Annie TRAFFORD, 20. Robert gave his occupation as an instructor of music – and wrote his wife’s middle name as “Sola”. She may have been living in Devon at the time of marriage but the census gives Hull as her birthplace. The following information needs to be checked. In September 1939, Robert is a widower, aged 72 and living in Scarborough on “Small Private Means”. He dies there six years later.

William PETTS (or PITTS) was born in Denver, Norfolk and ended his days there. It is probable he never strayed from the county in sixty-one years.

The only child FG&C gives us -Mary – marries a Norfolk man who moves north and expires in Langtoft near Driffield. A son, George, marries women from Hunmanby and Ganton and, inevitably, the two sets of CLARK offspring get mixed up with Filey folk. Samuel marries Rebecca BURR, daughter of David – the burial anniversary on 29 April.

Some stones in the churchyard are economical with the facts.

I have not been able to determine beyond reasonable doubt that Isaac Walker ETHEL(L) and Sarah MAINPRIZE are remembered here. (EYFHS provides the burial register entry for Sarah Elizabeth, who died in 1938 aged 74; her last address was on Station Avenue.)

Sea 46 · Filey Bay Sparkle

All Life is Suffering

James FERGUSON and Faith BARKER have just married on the Shared Tree and await their first child.

William Barker Ferguson, born on this date in 1880, was their fourth child. He lived for eight years and 23 days. Kath attaches a brief note to his record on Filey Genealogy and Connections –

Buried 13 days before older brother Richard and just over one month before his baby sister Jane!

Of the seven children born to the couple, only Jane and brother James Barker the First died in infancy. William Barker, James Barker the Second and Richard died in childhood (before the age of fourteen) and Barker died aged nineteen. Only Ellen, who went by “Nellie”, lived long enough to marry. On census night 1911, Ellen is with her mother at Fern House on The Beach (Foreshore Road), where they take in lodgers. Ellen is 29 and single. She marries Harry SPIVEY the following year. I wonder what memories of William she carried through her life. She was nine when he died.

In loving memory of JAMES FERGUSON, who died August 11 1888, aged 37 years.

Also, FAITH FERGUSON, who died Jan 10 1923, aged 71 years.

Also, sons of the above: WILLIAM BARKER, died Aug 28 1888 aged 8 years,

RICHARD, died Sep 16 1888, aged 14 years,

JAMES BARKER, died Jan 22 1896, aged 14 years.

‘Thy will be done’

NELLIE SPIVEY, died March 24 1951, aged 72 years.

Also of JAMES and JANE, died in infancy

Also of BARKER FERGUSON his son, died May 30 1904, aged 19 years.

Two censuses found Faith keeping a lodging house on Clarence Terrace and two more on Foreshore Road. I don’t know what her circumstances were in 1921. She was living in Church Street when she died. I hope she was not alone.

On FG&C today’s baptised child is “Emily (Amelia)” but there were two girls and, sadly, they had only a short time together. Amelia, born in 1858, married widower Harry DUNN in 1897 and their daughter Florence was born in 1899.

See Normandy.

Annie STAMFORD and her twin brother John were baptised at St Oswald’s on the 5^th of July. John was buried eleven days later and was joined all too soon by Annie. Unmarried mother Indiana [MGZH-HSL] gave birth to Elizabeth towards the end of 1860. When the census enumerator called at widow Alice Williamson’s home in King Street on the 7^th of April, the child was close to death and unaware that gathered around her were four generations of her family. Great grandmother Alice née WOODHOUSE, grandparents John STAMFORD and Elizabeth née CAPPLEMAN, Aunt Elizabeth Ann Borritt, cousins Mary Elizabeth and Susannah BORRITT – and her mother Indiana. Perhaps the cousins were considered too young to attend Elizabeth’s funeral four days later.

Looking at Filey REDUX

adventures in the kin trade

Author: Ian Elsom