Measure of Man 80 · War Gaming

In April 1891, Sarah WOOD was living in Sykes Street, Hull, with her widowed mother Eliza, brother Herbert and Arthur Ernest WHITE, a lodger aged 21, the same age as herself. Five months later she married German immigrant Ferdinand AHLBACH in Filey. Where and how did they meet? I couldn’t find Ferdinand in the 1891 census.

After the wedding, they set up home in Hull, brought two daughters into the world and then returned to Filey where, on the 18th of May Fred was born – and lived for twenty hours. He is recorded in Filey Genealogy & Connections as “Ferdinand” and three years later another Ferdinand was baptised at St Oswald’s (his birth registered as Ferdinand William). He would live to see England beat West Germany to win the FIFA World Cup in 1966.

Between these two boys, FG&C has their sister, Sarah Alice but no information about the family’s future. I was surprised by the number of children that would appear after the family left Filey at the turn of the century. In 1911, Ferdinand declared he had been married for 19 years – eleven children had been born alive and two had died. I have found only ten registrations in the GRO Index and the FamilySearch Tree has nine (as I write this). Fred is missing.

The female Fred born in 1909 is Freda. Her date of birth is given as 10 May 1908 in the 1939 Register. She had married Harry JOWETT, a wool sorter, and with them in Leafield Avenue Bradford on 29 September was Elsa May Ahlbach.

When I chose the doomed Ferdinand (aka Fred) for today’s anniversaries I had no hope whatsoever of discovering any Ahlbach ancestors other than “Joseph”, father of the bridegroom, named in the St Oswald marriage register. The Shared Tree takes the male line to the beginning of the 18th century – and other branches way beyond that: KREKEL to the 15th century and DUCHSHERER to the 16th. Beating the English WOOD forebears convincingly.

Edith Emily’s ID will take you to her father and husband, but her mother and twin sister need to be brought into the light.

I have put William and Eliza’s headstone photo on the Shared Tree – it is one of a number of stones moved from Area D of the churchyard to the north wall.

There is a plaque on the wall inside Filey St Oswald’s that reads (in part) –

[Sacred to the memory] …of ISABEL, daughter of WILLIAM and ISABEL WATT, who died 17 May 1858, aged 2 years.

The Register indicates she was buried the following day. I haven’t traced her family yet.

Path 167 · Cleveland Way

“Lind” was a middle name given to Esther, and her sisters Annie and Elizabeth. Their father was usually happy to go with the middle initial ‘L’ but he was a Lind too. Although he was born in Ireland, it is possible that Dr James LIND was a forebear. (A connection with the Swedish Nightingale is extremely unlikely – she was only seventeen when James Lind MURRAY was born – but I have a dim and distant memory that Jenny has a connection of sorts to Hunmanby.)

Anyway, Esther was born in Exeter but at the age of seven was living with her family in King Street, Filey. In 1881 four of her siblings were with the parents in West Parade but Esther had gone into service. She can be found in a Scarborough household of only two people. Frances CHESTERS, a single woman and daughter of an artist, claimed headship. Her younger brother Leonard M, 29, a student of theology, was with her on census night.

I don’t know what happened to Esther. One of her sisters, Lucy Abry Murray went to America and married twice. Her second husband’s ancestors appear to have been early colonizers of the old New World. (See Jan Willemsen de DUYSTER.) The Murray family is fragmentary on the Shared Tree and it will be quite a job to bring them all together.

Jane was born in Lebberston and baptised at Filey St Oswald’s. On her next big day at the church, 26 November 1842, she met William ROBINSON at the altar. The couple returned ten months later to witness the christening of Hannah Frances, their only child in Filey Genealogy & Connections. William hailed from Cloughton, north of Scarborough, parents unknown, and Jane’s father on the occasion of her marriage is William MILBURN and not, perhaps, genetically connected to her. (In the marriage register, the groom’s father is John WILLIAMSON.)

After Hannah’s birth, the Filey family Robinson disappears from England’s records. The Shared Tree brings some news. At the age of thirty, Hannah married John WATT in Wellington Ontario. There is no end of life information about William and Jane though.

I have put headstones on the Shared Tree that remember Francis and Susannah HAXBY and Arthur BAILEY. John William NUNN’s wife, Sophia HAXBY, was an anniversary person on 2 January.

A Spanner in the Works

My RootsMagic update of Filey Genealogy & Connections currently has Joseph DANBY born in Ulrome, a son of Robert and Jane née GARTON. The register entry for his marriage to Ellen PROCTER gave me pause.

An hour or more of searching didn’t bring me two Josephs I could swear by and I had to put today’s married couple aside.

Filey Genealogy & Connections shows Walter John to be the first child born to John ROSS from Castleton/Danby and Mary Elizabeth (surname unknown). I found these sources –

Marriages Jun 1883

McFARLANE Mary Elizabeth & ROSS John, Wetherby 9a 157.

1884 Births

ROSS, Walter John, Mother’s Maiden Surname: MCFARLANE. GRO Reference: 1884 J Quarter in SCARBOROUGH Volume 09D Page 374.

The fifth child, Grace Eileen, was born in Filey in 1899 but the family moved shortly afterwards to Retford in Nottinghamshire where Walter quickly made an impression.

He has left home by 1911 but I have not been able to discover what happened to him. (His mother died in 1908 and the following year his father married Lucy NETTLESHIP, a single woman.)

Searching for Christopher BRUMPTON is somewhat compromised by the likelihood his surname will have variant spellings. I found neither hide nor hair of him after this:-

For more on ‘Tommy Arvery’ and his two sons, see Yawl ‘Trio’and ‘Trio’ Again.

It took me a while to realise I had two versions of John COOK in RootsMagic – and only one gave the triggering birthplace, Heybridge in Essex. John is the brother of Lucy, who had an anniversary on 29 March. However, if you put her ID (MGZS-4VL) in the Shared Tree, she appears out of nowhere. You will find her as “Louisa” if you look for John. Their mother, Susanna, is with John, three grandchildren and daughter in law Jane, on census night 1861, in Gristhorpe. Her husband was unlawfully killed. (See Captain Cook.)

Measure of Man 79 · Bridge Hole

Flight of Fancy 47 · Portent

Edwin’s parents were born in Scotland and may have known each other as children before moving south to Middlesbrough, where they were married in 1843. Thomas worked in the Coastguard service and was perhaps posted to the Filey area in that capacity. In 1861 the family was living in Reighton, where Edwin was born in 1857. Ten years later the McPhersons resided in King Street, Filey. Edwin, 14, worked as an errand boy.

The 1881 census was taken less than a month after Thomas died. His widow was staying with friends in Camberwell and her youngest son was working as a barman in a Hope Street hotel. I don’t know where Edwin was on census night, but he was with his father in St Oswald’s churchyard a couple of months later.

John Williamson’s family on the Shared Tree is a disaster area. He married Mary Elizabeth POOL in 1889 and on Filey Genealogy & Connections they have six offspring. I suspect half of the children ascribed to his wife “Eliza Winship” have nothing to do with Mary Elizabeth. John Williamson and his wife sleep eternally in St Oswald’s churchyard and I have put a photo of their headstone on the Shared Tree.

Jane Margaret was the first anniversary of this year. Her husband married again and is buried in another part of the churchyard.

The two wives of Thomas Fenby Crompton are remembered on a stone in the churchyard. I think his second wife, Annie WICKEN, may have been divorced rather than widowed. There is work still to do on their Shared Tree entries.

I haven’t had time today to put Amelia PLASKITT’S headstone on FamilySearch.

Mark of Man 89 · Holiday Memory

I chose Florence May because Filey Genealogy & Connections only provides her birth date – and a couple of siblings. I am pleased she had a long life, but after almost five hours of research, I was still not in a position to put her on the Shared Tree. (If you look for her in FamilySearch Records, birth year 1880, the top four hits should be hers.)

I couldn’t find Catherine on the Shared Tree either. A singleton from Flamborough, I chose her because she may have lived to be a hundred and five – and Kath noted her epitaph in FG&C.

To help the helpless in time of need, and ease the labours of my sex with speed;
To save the infant and the tender wife; was the employment of my life;
Many from pains my skilful hands did free, but none from certain death could rescue me;
My time on earth is gone, my life is past; You must surely follow me at last.

I put Robert and Rachel’s headstone photo on the Shared Tree; Jane’s was already there. I will update this post with information about Florence and Mary Pickering in the next few days.

Update 17 May

I thought my first task a couple of mornings ago would be to give Florence May SWEETMAN representation on the FamilySearch Shared Tree. After another look, I discovered she was already there.

Poor Florence, she isn’t looking well. The anniversary of her baptism is on 12 June. I will visit her on the Shared Tree then and hope to find she is looking more like herself.

The PARKE Family

Here are the children in Filey Genealogy & Connections.

It is a sad calculation – Mary Pickering’s life expectation looks to be about 12 years.

It gets worse.

Lucy Parke is missing from the list above. Born in 1813, she married Paul SUNLEY in the spring of 1841 and died in 1843. Also missing are the children Samuel and Jane may have had in the nine years before Lucy’s birth, following their marriage in 1804. And who, pray, was Jane’s first husband?

Jane died in 1840, aged 58, and Samuel towards the end of 1843 at 63 – the last of his family to bid farewell to suffering.

A Mysterious Child

Sophia WALLIS was baptised at St Oswald’s on this day in 1850 and buried in the churchyard less than a week later. The burial register offers “Inft” in the age column but I can’t find her birth registration in this country. She may have been born in Germany weeks or months earlier – and baptised in Filey as her time for departure drew near.

Whatever forces brought this family to Filey, they didn’t keep the survivors here. I wonder how the parents fared.

Mary Ann was the fifth and last child of fisherman and lodging housekeeper Matthew CRAWFORD and Sarah JAMESON (FG&C). She married John Robert STORRY at Filey St Oswald’s on 3 December 1904 and they set up home in Scarborough. Henry was born in the summer of 1906 and may have been their only child. John, a labourer at marriage, was described as a “retired coal dealer” in 1932 when Mary Ann died. She left him effects valued at a little over a hundred pounds.

John was still living at 72 Commercial Street when The Register was taken in September 1939, working as a grocer and general dealer. He died at the Fair View Hotel in Scarborough in the first week of January 1951. His son Henry may have been the hotel’s proprietor because at probate John’s address was given as 2 St John’s Avenue. Henry and his wife Jane Ann are named in the Probate record; John’s effects were valued at £6,199 3s. 1d.

There are earlier two posts looking at Christopher and Elizabeth – End of a Line? and Coltas Continued.

Edward didn’t use all his given names all of the time and is remembered as just Edward on the family headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard. I have put him on the Shared Tree and connected him to Georgina, who was already there, waiting. There is a little more work to do on the family

It is Fanny the Second who was buried this day. She lived about sixteen months longer than her older namesake.

Townscape 80 · Filey

Insect 44 · Small White♀

A few brief comments about today’s anniversary people.

I put John William on the Shared Tree and linked him up with his wife – and his mother. He has nine siblings out there somewhere.

Richard GREENLEY has two IDs on FamilySearch – and two sets of parents. Filey Genealogy & Connections offers George Greenlay (sic) and Ann PASHBY and they have a son called Benjamin who is mentioned in an obituary of Richard on the Shared Tree. Confusingly, this document is attached to the record with the “wrong” parents (possibly).

Robert Tate KILLINGBECK is a grandson of John, who was killed by an express train (Anniversary 31 March).

Rosanna was eighteen when she married John Thomas GRASSBY at Filey St Oswald’s in July 1874. They named their first child Rosannah but she only lived for seven months. Rosanna died at the age of twenty-one. Her husband had three decades of life ahead of him but I haven’t attempted to discover what he did with his time. (He has 19 sources on his Shared Tree record.)

Bushed

Margaret BULMER and her husband, William Hunter CAMBRIDGE, were born in Hartlepool, but after the birth of their fourth child, the family moved south to Filey. On census night 1851 their house in Murray Street sheltered four boat builders – William, his Hartlepool brother Thomas, and two young apprentices.

William died in 1875 and Margaret followed seventeen years later. A fine stone remembers them but it has been almost entirely overwhelmed by the large bush that arches over the main path. A few days ago I snapped the inscription while holding back the leaves.

Here is the rear view.

Filey Genealogy & Connections marries Esther to George PICKERING in Bridlington in 1900 and gives them nine children but doesn’t tell us when they left this world. I wondered if FamilySearch would have this information. The Shared Tree adds two more children to their collection, giving Esther three score years and ten and George a bonus of five more. As if this isn’t pleasing enough – there are photographs of the serious-looking couple, taken on their wedding day. They have a host of ancestors.

Robinson was born in Snainton and baptised in the village two days later. Perhaps he wasn’t expected to live. Aged 13 in 1841, he is with his mother on census night in his grandfather Thomas BURNETT’s house in Carr Lane, Brompton-by Sawdon. FG&C doesn’t record the death of his father, Richard, but it won’t be a surprise to find he didn’t make old bones because Robinson died at thirty-seven. The Shared Tree reveals that this is nine years more than his father enjoyed. In 1851, Robinson was working as a butcher and farmer with his father-in-law and as a cattle dealer in 1861. He married in 1850 and had five children with Mary. The youngest, Thomas, was three years old when Robinson died. Thirty-six years would pass before Mary was reunited with him in St Oswald’s churchyard.

The Shared Tree has the marriage of Robert and Prudence on this day in 1803 but the original source doesn’t give their ages. Another source says the wedding took place a little over a year earlier, on 6 May and says the groom was 32 years old and the bride thirty. Prudence lived long enough to be enumerated in 1841 (Muston) and 1851 (Mosey’s Yard, Filey) and her declared ages indicate her birth in 1771 and 1767 respectively. Aged 84 at her last census, she died a few weeks later – at 85 according to the death registration. Prudence has a possible duplicate ID (MGTP-H7D) on FamilySearch attached to an Egton (Whitby) baptism record, dated 20 June 1767. Only her mother’s name is given – Jane Petch. The 1851 census transcript says Prudence was born in “Easton”, Yorkshire, and it is very clearly written thus on the page image. There is a place called Easton in the East Riding, at the edge of Bridlington, but perhaps the enumerator misheard. An “Independent” widow in 1841, Prudence is a “Miller’s widow” in 1851. Robert’s occupation could have taken him to several villages in the course of his working life – and he may have been in Nunburnholme with Prudence when he died there in February 1823. There is a March 1st Hutton Cranswick burial record for this fellow, aged 53.

Elizabeth was only 27 years old when she died in Filey on this day in 1813. The available records indicate that ten days passed before she was buried. She is one of eight people named on a large flat stone in St Oswald’s churchyard, most of whom are yet to be connected on the Shared Tree. As I write this, FG&C is more informative. (Mary HASELWOOD MGCT-5WP, the grandmother of Elizabeth Richardson is in the wings, awaiting connection.)

Tree 77 · Beech

Sunset 13 · Cleveland Way

Henry was the first child born to Stephenson HALL and Jane WRIGHT but in the Crescent lodging house his parents kept in 1881 he had a brother some six years older. John Yarnell Wright, father unknown but maybe a Mr Yarnell, had been accepted by Stephenson as his own son.

Filey Genealogy and Connections gives Henry three sisters and a brother. All five children and their mother seem to be strangers to FamilySearch, but you will find Stephenson’s first family on the Shared Tree. The two boys, Henry and Moses, lived longer in Mary Gardiner’s womb than out of it, their deaths registered in the same quarter as their births. Mary, four years or so older than her husband, died in the June Quarter of 1875, at the given age of fifty-nine. Before the year was out, Stephenson had married the much younger Jane. (The “gap” was about twenty years.)

With a large chunk of my working day getting this far, I made a punt at trying to discover what became of Henry Stephenson Hall. He married Minnie FELL in Scarborough in November 1900 and at the start of the Second World War, they were living in Main Street, Seamer. And they are both on the Shared Tree. I know enough to give Henry some forebears but that’s a task for another day – or for someone else to tackle.

Eunice married Harry McINTYRE in 1925 and died twelve days after giving birth to their son, Gordon. She was seventeen years old. I don’t have a photograph of her headstone yet but the inscription reads –

‘I.H.S.’
Sacred to the memory of EUNICE, the beloved wife of HARRY MCINTYRE and daughter of ALFRED AND EMILY LONG, born April 14th 1908, died Jan 31st 1926.

In 1939, Gordon was living in The Newlands, Filey with his father Harry and Margaret McIntyre.

Ruth has featured in a number of LaF and LaF Redux posts. Check out her husband Wilf, and be sure to follow links to Norwood School.

Mark Of Man 88 · Happy Bench

Mark of Woman

Some lost hours today and poor time management of the remainder have not mixed well with more Shared Tree shenanigans. Anniversary stories are fragmentary.

Mary is the illegitimate daughter of a young woman who was herself, I think, born out of wedlock. I don’t think Mary survived her first year of life because her mother is in service on a 330 acre Driffield farm in the spring of 1881.

Hannah has two fathers on the Shared Tree. Their names are similar but “the system” does not flag them as possible duplicates.

Registered at birth as John Robinson, Hannah’s father chose to sign the St Oswald’s marriage register as, I guess, John Stubbs Robinson.

Hannah married John William ROSS and has two memorials in the churchyard. An open book is barely legible but this flower container gives clear information –

Hannah SPENDLEY was William MASON’s second wife. Elizabeth CAMMISH is on the Shared Tree with some of their children but has yet to be properly acknowledged. She was 29 years old when she died and has a symbolic shrouded urn on her headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard.

Robert Shepherd WOODCOCK’s stone is saddening for a different reason – there is plenty of “real estate” to let us know he had company on his life’s journey but it hasn’t been used.

When Doris LONGHORN has been given an ID I will put a photo of her stone on the Shared Tree.

Looking at Filey REDUX

adventures in the kin trade

Author: Ian Elsom