Men of God and War

Joseph Hubert Baron SULLIVAN died on the 8^th of February 1932. I thought I was looking at the family for the first time but soon discovered that I had written about them before (see Taphophilia).

South face of the memorial with the remembrance of Joseph.

The East Yorkshire Family History Society’s Survey of the churchyard notes that his burial is not found in the St Oswald’s register. He was only forty-one when he died at Parkgate, a small village in Cheshire overlooking the Dee estuary saltmarshes.

This is the prospect from the road near 2, Holywell Close, but his last address was 12 miles away in Liverpool.

Free BMD Marriages Dec 1928

SMITH Agnes B & SULLIVAN Joseph H B, Wirral 8a 977.

(Death registration for first wife Dorothea not found.)

And this is 40 Tithebarn Street today.

£709 in 1932 is now worth about £50,000.

Joseph was one of a generation of young men sent to their deaths. In 1916 the King approved his admission to a Cavalry Division as a Second Lieutenant. He was still alive a year later and was promoted to Lieutenant. He had the Great War good fortune to serve with the Indian Reserve of Army Officers (Bonar Horse). Before the war, he had played cricket for Yorkshire once and when the conflict was over, he stayed in India and helped the Europeans Cricket Team to defeat their hosts.

Michael is on the Shared Tree, with a baffling middle name initial and no forebears. Supposedly born in Cavan, he told the enumerator in 1901 that his life began in Tullow, County Carlow – and you wouldn’t expect the Vicar of Brackenfield to tell fibs. He married into the MOONs of North Yorkshire and, if you have clicked on Taphophilia, you will have seen their pedigree going back several generations. My Primitive Methodists is a revelation, indicating that Michael worked in Lancashire factories before becoming a Dissenter. He was not a Prim for long.

MALTON

Church & Dissent

The Rev. Michael Sullivan, recently a Primitive Methodist Minister, has been admitted a deacon of the Church of England, and licensed to the curacy of Buckland, Newton-cum-Plush, Dorsetshire. Mr Sullivan was well-known in Pickering (where he was formerly stationed) and Malton, having married a daughter of Mr Joseph Moon, draper, of Malton.
Yorkshire Gazette 14 June 1884

Michael and Maria, the draper’s daughter, took two children to Dorset and returned to the north with the same complement. Third child Joseph was born in York in 1890. Twenty-two years passed before the vicar’s next, and possibly last, newsworthy move.

TOWN AND COUNTY GOSSIP

The Rev. R. C. Turner, the vicar of Brackenfield, has resigned the living – which he has held for six years – on account of indifferent health. He will not take up ministerial work for the present. The patron is Mr W. G. Turbutt, of Ogston Hall. Mr Turbutt has appointed the Rev. Michael Sullivan to succeed Mr Turner. Mr Sullivan formerly resided in York and was formerly an English chaplain in France. At present he is in South Devonshire, near Tiverton, and it is expected that he will commence duty in April. Mr Turner was on Thursday presented by his parishioners with a piece of silver plate…
Derby Daily Telegraph 15 March 1912

In 1914, the son of Michael’s patron was killed in France.

LATE LIEUTENANT TURBUTT

Memorial Service at Brackenfield

In honour of the late Lieut. Gladwyn Maurice Revell Turbutt, son of Mr and Mrs W. G. Turbutt, Ogston Hall, Brackenfield, who was killed in action, a memorial service was held in Brackenfield Trinity Church on Tuesday afternoon. There was a crowded gathering of sympathisers.

At the entrance to the church the following telegram was on view: “Buckingham Palace, October 28th. To W. G. Turbutt, Esq., Ogston Hall, Alfreton. The King and Queen deeply regret the loss you and the Army have sustained by the death of your son in the services of his country. Their Majesties truly sympathise with you in your sorrow. Private Secretary.”

The service was conducted by the following clergy: The Rev. Michael Sullivan (vicar of Brackenfield), the Rev. T. Allen Moxon (rural dean and vicar of Alfreton), the Rev. Canon Prior (vicar of Morton) and the Rev. Bernard Hallowes (rector of Shirland)…
Derbyshire Courier 7 November 1914

Find a photograph of Brackenfield Church here. The prominent War Memorial names the “Sons of Brackenfield who fell in the Great War”. Gladwyn tops the list.

Returning to Michael and his contentious birthplace. There isn’t a “Turlow, County Cavan” on Google’s Earth but there is a Tullow, County Carlow. And on the 1921 census form, that is where our Man of God said he was born.

Edmund or Edward?

William John PERRYMAN (Tuesday’s post) is currently without parents on the FamilySearch Shared Tree.

The parents have a presence, lacking children and forebears.

The Blue Hints are to the marriage register. FamilySearch offers a page image and the groom provides a signature.

(Citation: “England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSFC-MN7T?cc=3734475 : 12 April 2021), > image 1 of 1; London Metropolitan Archives, England.)

Filey Genealogy & Connections has given Edward and Hannah six children.

The three daughters are all present and correct in the 1841 census – but their father is “Edmund”.

The address given is No. 22 Tower, Dymchurch. “Edmund” is not given an occupation but the Tower referred to is one of many built on England’s southern coast to deal with the invasion threat posed by Napoleon Bonaparte. After that danger passed this Martello Tower served the Dymchurch Coastguard Station.

Look for “Edmund” Perryman on a list of British coastguards on Genuki, and then scroll up to “Perriman” to see EDWARD and Hannah with two children in 1871.

In 1861, the family is in Murray Street, Filey, but not easy to find – unless you search for “Edmond PENYMAN”. I have not found the parents in the 1881 census but there is an 1883 death registration in Scarborough for an EDMUND Perryman, with an age at death that fits his birth year. I failed to find a death record for an Edward Perryman.

His widow appears in the next two censuses, living with son Edward James in St Mary’s Walk, Scarborough. She dies on 13 April 1901 (less than a fortnight after the census) and a Roman Catholic register records her burial four days later, giving her age as 86. The same age is found in the civil death registration source but the recent census giving her age as 91 is a better fit with her other vital records.

I have enough information now to extend the family on the Shared Tree. My coastguard will be Edward, not Edmund.

Tree 72 · West Avenue

Selective Memories

Father of twenty William John PERRYMAN died in 1925, aged 82. He was survived, as far as I know, by just four of his children. The large red marble headstone in St Oswald’s churchyard has plenty of space to remember the whole family but it bears the names of just three.

In loving remembrance of AGNES PERRYMAN, born July 17 1869, died Jun 29 1890.
‘Thy will not mine O Lord’
ALBERT PERRYMAN, born Oct 7 1886, died Oct 11 1887 (sic).
AGNES PERRYMAN, beloved mother of the above, born Sep 2 1849, died Oct 15 1909.

Dates inscribed in stone are not always correct. The church burial register notes that Albert was eleven months old when he died.

William seems to have been a successful plumber and house painter and in 1911 was living at 7, The Crescent – a lodging house as well as home for himself and unmarried children Jeremiah, 31, and Alice, 30.

Jeremiah died in Bridlington in 1927 aged 49. Alice reached the grand age of 93.

Path 157 · Sand Hill Lane

What Happened to Peter?

Elizabeth MURPHY was sixteen years old, single, and a yarn winder in 1861 (Sunday’s post). Ten years later she was mother to four children and working as a “baller in a flax mill”. The birth of the first child, Mary, was registered in Malton in the same quarter as her marriage to John NASH.

For a few shocked moments, I contemplated a Free BMD record being wrong.

Bramham is just a mile from Elizabeth’s home in 1861. On census night that year, Peter was about fourteen miles away, an apprentice “living in” with Spurriergate butcher John JUDSON. John’s eldest daughter, Ann Elizabeth, was a year older than Peter but fate (or passion) connected him to Elizabeth Murphy.

McClear is an Irish family name and McLEAR Scottish. Representatives of each clan seem to be few and far between in England but there is this birth registration fifty miles away from Bramham in the quarter following Peter and Elizabeth’s marriage.

Nine years later, Elizabeth and John Nash named their sixth child James. James McClear/McLear was not with them in 1871 but I haven’t found a record of his death.

I have been unable to find a source for Peter’s death. The 1861 census gives his birthplace as Liverpool. A Peter McLEARY was born in 1843 (mother McCONNEL) and a Peter McCLARY the following year (mother McDERMOTT) but I could find neither boy in the 1851 census in Lancashire or Yorkshire. (I tried “fuzzy searches” and all the variant spellings I could think of.)

Another Peter McClear did, however, appear. Born in Ireland in 1802, he was enumerated in York in 1851, living less than a mile from Spurriergate, and for a moment I wondered if he was the father of “our Peter”. But he is listed as an unmarried Master Mariner. That he is the uncle of the Head of the household, one Thomas HUSBAND – a flax dresser! – could help further investigation but all I have so far is that he was still a boarder in St Clement’s Place twenty years later, aged 69, and single. (Peter McCLERE, Retired Mariner). He died in York aged 76 in 1879.

I searched newspapers for all the people mentioned in this post and only found this possible reference to Peter the Elder.

Another snippet gives Malabar’s weight as 1,372 tons. William Clark may have painted her.

With so few of the McClear clan crossing the Irish Sea to seek their fortunes in Victorian Britain, it seems unlikely that I’ll hear any more of young Peter – but I would like to know what happened to him. He seems real enough to be given a place on the Shared Tree. (Two Blue Hints appearing on his record suggest “the system” concurs.)

Water 42· Martin’s Ravine

Feeling the Heat

Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast News majored on The Great Distraction this morning – the Premier League season kicks off this evening – but earlier this week I was shocked to hear Climate Change mentioned. What? Hothouse Earth, 200 feet of sea-level rise, some parts of the globe uninhabitable? Auntie rarely touches this subject and I wondered if these predictions were Project Fear offerings,

But no, it was just a 20-second piece triggered by a new scientific paper released by Stockholm Resilience. (A PDF can be freely downloaded.)

It took about 70 years for a Frenchman, an Irishman, and a Swede to explain that it would be no joke to pump unnatural amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Joseph FOURIER “discovered” the greenhouse effect in 1824, John TYNDALL carried out experiments beginning in 1858 and Svante Arrhenius supplied quantitative data in 1896.

The path to Hell on Earth is clear now. It just requires humankind to do a collective about turn. Homo sapiens appears, though, to have a death wish.

1850_TYNDALLjohn2_PnkPD John TYNDALL looks rather slight in this portrait, made about 1853 by an unknown photographer (and in the public domain). He was, however, a strong, adventurous young man, known as much for mountaineering exploits as his scientific achievements. He didn’t marry until he was 55 years old. His wife, Louisa Charlotte HAMILTON was just thirty but the couple doesn’t appear to have produced children. John endured ill health as he entered his seventies and in early December 1893, Louisa made a mistake when giving him his night-time medication. He remarked upon the sweet taste of the sulfate of magnesia he was expecting and Louisa realized she had instead given him chloral. When she told him he said, “My poor darling, you have killed your John.” At the inquest, a verdict of accidental death was recorded and much sympathy afforded to Louisa.

John died at Hindhead House in Surrey and there is a photograph of his grave in the Francis Frith Collection. His name and achievements are more grandly represented in The Tyndall Centre in Manchester where, among the many scientists and engineers investigating climate change and global warming there are two of my favorite “explainers”, Kevin ANDERSON and Alice BOWS-LARKIN.

John Tyndall came from a humble background and this is reflected in the brevity of his male line on FamilySearch Tree. (One source claims a connection to William TYNDALE of Bible fame.) Louisa was from “the upper crust” and amongst her noble forebears, you will see a number of the BOWES family going back to William (1389-1465).

Geatches Tout

I have been keeping a dream diary for about a year. Last night I was a young man, not prospering financially but befriended by a rich landowner, a few years my senior. His name was Geatches TOUT. He spent most of his time and money designing, building, and competitively rowing single scull boats. He seemed to value my encouragement and limited expertise in this field (or river) of endeavor. All went well until he made an inappropriate advance that I rebuffed. I lost my luxurious accommodation in The Big House and was sent below stairs. Apart from one ancient retainer, the servants treated me very unkindly.

Geatches Tout possibly strikes you as a strange, made-up name, but it may ring a bell with Filey folk who read this post. Towards the end of the 19^th century, five children of William TOUT and Elizabeth Spry GEATCHES had to live with the moniker. In order of arrival:- William Robert, Rhoda Bessy, Mary Medga (?) Jessie, Minnie Maud Charlotte, and Rosie Hettie.

Elizabeth Spry gave me the opportunity to add these young people to the FamilySearch Tree. I have carried a candle for Minnie for almost a decade, so she is obviously the spark for the dream name. The watery connection may be a coincidence, rather than obscurely psychological – but paterfamilias William was a Coastguard!

Three of the girls married. Young William died aged 21 and is buried in Filey churchyard. I went in the rain at lunchtime to photograph his headstone, now sadly lacking its cross.

D234_TOUTwm_20180210_fst

His sister Rosie’s husband, Thomas HARRISON, also died quite young, just a few doors down the street from where I’m writing this. The young widow seems to have immediately taken herself and three children to Canada. FamilySearch has a record of the middle child, Mary Eleanor Tout HARRISON dying within months of arrival in North America. She was just fourteen.

From competitive rowing to professional cycling. Today’s Image shows that the work on “re-cobbling” the lower part of Crescent Hill is almost complete. On Saturday 5 May, riders in the Tour de Yorkshire will pass this way.

On my stroll home this morning, I was pondering more of the dreams I have had recently when a flutter of paper caught my eye in West Avenue. A pair of dessicated wind-blown “leaves” from an old book. I had to smile at the title.

GoodWives

I found a true love late in life and today is the 4^th anniversary of his departure to The Big Kennel. I talk to him every day. He was picked up off the street in 2001, when he was about a year old, and named Jude – because his origins were obscure. He was, like his two-legged namesake, something of a philosopher.This photo was taken in March 2009 when we had been living in Filey for about eight months.

20090312JudeMem1_6m

I noticed on FST that the Geatches Tout children’s GIDLEY forebears go back to Walter, born about 1500. The name in the pedigree that most appealed to me, though, belonged to Minnie’s great-grandfather, Robert MEMORY. Perhaps he was a Bad Husband – because his son took a variant of the Wife’s name, Elizabeth GETSIUS.

Families, eh?

A Sherwood Forester

Henry PERRYMAN was born in Filey in 1883 to William John, of Irish and Alice GIBSON, a Folkton girl. The couple brought 19 other children into the world but when William John filled out the 1911 Census form, as a 65-year-old widower, he indicated that only eight were still living. Four years later there would be seven..

At age 17 Henry was working as a house painter for his father but in 1911, still single, he was a “Police Fireman”, boarding at 1 Guild Hall Cottages in the city of Nottingham. A few days after the Census he married Mary Ellen PATTISON, 25, whose roots were in Swaledale, North Yorkshire. The couple had two children before the Great War started, Sydney in 1912 and Barbara the following year.

Henry had enlisted with the Territorials in Filey in 1908 so it is not surprising that he volunteered for the army within a month of the war beginning. He joined the 7^th Sherwood Foresters and in February 1915 landed with his battalion in France. The following month an article in The Nottingham Evening Post, with the title Robin Hoods Under Fire – Will Make a Name for Themselves, prompted him to write a letter to the Editor.

Just a few lines to let the Nottingham people know how the Robin Hoods fared in their first experience of being in the trenches under fire. We left Bocking, Essex, on February 25th, and arrived France on the 28th. At some places we were only 80 yards from the German lines. It was quite exciting, the English, French, and German guns going all day and night long. It reminds one of a fireworks display, especially when the rockets go up every now and then to find out the different positions at night time; only you have to be very careful. I have heard it said the Germans can’t shoot, but you must not expose yourself in the daytime. We only lost one poor fellow by accident and two wounded by the enemy so didn’t do amiss. We are enjoying ourselves as well as we can, and our officers do everything in their power to make us as comfortable as possible. We don’t stay long in one place, always on I the move, not much time for letter writing. You can take it from a good source that the Robin Hoods will make a name for themselves before they come back to England.”

Source: http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/rollofhonour/People/Details/21806

In early October 1915, Henry and his fellow Robin Hoods were part of the 18^th Brigade in the trenches at Potijze, near Ieper.

The battalion advance post known as Oder Houses was rushed by the enemy about 6.30 in the morning’ (on 5 October). The Germans at first opened a heavy artillery and trench motor fire on Oder Houses, and on the main fire-trenches occupied by ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies in rear of the post. The front trench and two cottages in the rear were flattened out by the enemy’s artillery, and what remained of the garrison withdrew down the communication trenches towards the main line. Captain Robert, commanding ‘B’ Company, from which the garrison of the post was drawn, arranged for a counter-attack up the two communication trenches leading to the post, while the so-called ‘Toby’ Motors were laid on the front of the post. A patrol was first sent forward to ascertain the exact position of the enemy, but these, on seeing the advance of the patrol, at once retreated and the post was reoccupied. The casualties were rather severe, ‘B’ Company having 11 killed, 19 wounded -mostly by shell fire- 1 man missing, believed killed, and 1 wounded and missing, believed captured.

Source: The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War compiled by Colonel. H. C. Wylly, C.B. pages 114 & 115. Gale & Polden Aldershot 1924, extract found here.

This source shows that Henry was one of eighteen Foresters who died of their wounds on this day. He is buried at Vermelles British Cemetery in the Pas de Calais.

If you followed the link to Henry’s letter you will have seen that he is remembered on the Nottingham Holy Trinity Church and Police Force War Memorials as well as on the CWGC website. In Filey, his name is on the Murray Street Memorial and in St Oswald’s Church (where he has been given a promotion to Corporal).

As I write this, he is not on FamilySearch Tree and his pedigree on Filey Genealogy and Connections appears limited at first glance. His older sister Carrie’s marriage connects him to the wider “Filey family”. I hope to link him on FST to those forebears already there (scattered) and perhaps add some more, found while researching this post. I have created a LaF Wiki page for him.

His grandparents, Henry GIBSON and Alice née BAKER, though “incomers”, are buried in St Oswald’s churchyard. I photographed their headstone this morning – and William John’s former lodging house on The Crescent.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Looking at Filey REDUX

adventures in the kin trade

Ireland