Author: Ian Elsom

Another Mistaken Mary

Mary Jane COLLING is a great-granddaughter of the elder Jane LUNDY (last Wednesday’s post) but today I discovered she has been abducted and married off to a West Riding boilermaker.

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You may wonder how Mary Jane could be mistaken for a COLLEY and be presented as a child of Jane JENKINSON and not the granddaughter she was.

There are two prime culprits. The 1881 census enumerator had a lapse of attention, entering Mary Jane as ditto, for “Colley”. But the correct relationship to the head of household is given.

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Fast forward to the computer age, and a similarly inattentive transcriber/digitizer of the CEBs.

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The given names of the “daughters” should have been one “tell” and the 12-year gap between them another, and more of a concern than the age of Jane, perhaps. Here is Mary Jane in her birth family –

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Sixteen was not a sweet age for Mary Jane. A verse on her headstone expresses sadness at leaving early.

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‘I.H.S.’

In loving memory of MARY JANE, beloved daughter of JOHN AND MARGARET COLLING and grand-daughter of WILLIAM AND JANE COLLEY, who died Sep 25th 1890, aged 16 years.

‘It was in the blooming of my youth

That death to me was sent

All you that have a longer time

Be careful to repent

For in my health I little thought

My days were run so near

But now the time for me has come

No longer to be here’

Also, the above WILLIAM COLLEY, the beloved husband of JANE COLLEY,

who died in the Lord Jan 23rd 1900, aged 72 years.

‘Gone but not forgotten’

Also, JANE his wife, who died Sep 2nd 1905, aged 77 years.

‘Kind thoughts shall ever linger

Round the graves where they are laid’

Richard the Boilermaker married Mary, daughter of butcher William Colley and Susannah. In 1881 she is with her parents, two brothers and two sisters in Stanley with Wrenthorpe, Wakefield. Twenty years later she is a wife and mother of two-year-old “Lawrance” in Goole. Sharing the dwelling in Kingston Street is Richard’s father, widower Edward Langton.

The Difference a Day Makes

The final week of Meteorological Year 2018/19 had eight days in it. This year “Met Weeks” run from Sunday to Saturday – and Sunday is Temperature taking day. There is clearly an opportunity now to compare 2019/20 with last year, but I hope to present findings in a simpler, clearer fashion. I created some tables and graphs today that even I can’t understand.

Given that “climate emergency” is now mainstream, I’d like to keep a finger on the pulse, using data that are (I hope) trustworthy. (New Meteorological Year resolution – I’m going to try not to make any more silly calculation mistakes. I’ve found a few after posting, though they rarely exceed tenths of a degree and so have possibly gone unnoticed.)

One tidbit from today’s labours. Durham Tees, the “coldest” of the eleven stations last year, was the “warmest” in the first week of the new year. It returned a Mean temperature of 3.14°C above (my) Pre-Industrial baseline. Last year it averaged just 0.55 degrees above P-I, so in one week my “home patch” warmed at a rate 119 times higher than projected by the IPCC. Mumbai was second at 100 times warmer.

There is no need to panic. Six of the 10 Stations were cooler and cool enough to bring the IPCC “multiplier” down to x2 for “the Globe”. Phew!

The Resting Places

When Paul gave me a quick tour of the churchyard to show me some of the headstones he and his helpers have repaired and restored, I showed him the grave of George Thomas Brown PLACE. This is how it looked in the summer.

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And yesterday…

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George was a Clerk in Holy Orders and served as a curate at St Oswald’s for a few years. He married his father’s housekeeper in 1906 when he was 47 years old. Emily HORNER was 35. They had one child, Mary Elinor, who was three-years-old when her father died.

The inscription stone has lost most of its leading but, in its much cleaner state, can be more readily deciphered.

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To the glory of God and in sacred memory of GEORGE THOMAS BROWN PLACE, called to higher service May 12th 1910.

EMILY PLACE, re-united Dec 24th 1939, and their daughter, MARY ELINOR PLACE, died March 20th 1985.

‘Non Omnis Moriar’

George was the eldest of seven children. Four of his siblings died in infancy, and brother Arthur Ernest at age 19. The youngest, sister Jane, married Thomas SAWYER of York and had three children with him.

Find the family on the Shared Tree.

Today’s Image

On Crescent Hill this afternoon, the prospect was somewhat different to what it was nine years ago.

20191207FileySeafront