Louth

Sisters

Before telling you about the BATEMAN girls…

Mary Ann who didn’t become Mrs FANT married William RONALD, a Scotsman, in 1864. After two boys had been born in Hull, the family moved south to Hampshire where Alexander was born. The birth of their last child was registered in South Stoneham (Southampton) in 1884. William, a boiler maker turned rivetter, took his wife and three children north to Tyneside. The family was together in Neptune Road, Wallsend in 1891. Mary Ann’s death at the age of 61 was registered in Tynemouth in March 1907.

I have happened upon several instances of sisters who were not the marrying kind and chose to live together in their old age. Mary Ann, Jane and Eliza Bateman all tied knots but left it rather late and I don’t think any of them had children.

Jane was the first of the trio to wed, becoming the third wife of Thomas Horton BRATLEY in 1877. Thomas was only thirty-one, Jane a year older but he was not too long for the world, dying in Sculcoates in 1885. The registration says he was only 36 but I think he was pushing 39. He was only 17 when he married Mary Ann Catherine (sometimes Caroline) FEMEL, the daughter of German parents, on Christmas Day 1863.

The Femel name is offered in various flavours, as are the places of origin of the parents and Mary Ann’s two brothers. Curiously, the 1861 census says she was born in Louth in 1845 but her younger brother John arrived in Lindesruth and Henry in nearby Reiskirchen two years later (in 1850). A subsequent census confuses the issue by giving Henry the surname YOUNGER. Louis Younger didn’t marry the widow Femel until 1857.

The first Mrs Thomas Horton Bratley had a son in Louth, then crossed the river Humber with her husband and had three daughters in Hull, two of them called Elizabeth after her mother. And then she died at age twenty-eight. Thomas wasted no time finding another helpmeet. Sarah Ann Bateman was over ten years his senior and I have not been able to discover a family connection to the sisters. The marriage lasted four years and ended with the death of Sarah Ann at the age of 44. Six months passed and Thomas married Jane Bateman.

Mary Jane Bateman married widower James FANT about a year after his first wife had died in Scarborough aged 31. I was surprised to see what he did for a living when he first married. Less than three years later he was working as a labourer.

I looked for children but didn’t find any.

In 1881, at the age of thirty, Eliza Bateman was in service, working as a cook. She did not marry house and ship painter (and bachelor) John William WALLIS until 1888. They were enumerated in Bean Street, Hull, in 1901 and Eliza’s sister Jane was with them. Jane claimed to be a dressmaker but ten years later, when she was in Filey with her other sister, Mary Ann Fant, she had “Private Means”. In the marriage register below you will notice that one of the witnesses to Eliza’s marriage is Emily Minnie Bratley – the daughter of Thomas and his first wife Mary Ann Femel.

A Bright Boy

Farmer  John Would PARKER looks a rather gloomy character in the photographs I posted of him just over a week ago. He possibly made a habit of hiding his light under a bushel.

courtesy The Morrice Collection

This is the “envelope” containing a letter John wrote  to his mother, on or about his fifteenth birthday.

Here are a few lines of its contents –

The cost of a postage stamp for your thoughts Mrs Parker, regarding your son’s penmanship. The execution is not perfect – there are three blemishes at least – but I would be surprised if any teen today could match the elegance of this hand, even if they had a mind to try.

Here is a full transcription of the letter, with the above passage highlighted.

Louth, May 6th 1845

Dear Mother,

Although this is the third letter that I have written to you, I think I have not told you how I am going on with my studies. I have got as far as Decimals in accounts, and in a very few days we shall commence Mensuration. I am learning poetry for practice in parsing and English Grammar. In Geography, I have learnt England and Wales; and I am now learning Scotland. In dictation exercises, I am writing a course of lessons on Natural Science, and I find them very interesting and full of useful information. We have begun surveying, and we are now taking a survey in Stewton Parish, and a very pretty plan it will be, when it is finished.

What a miserable Fair day it was! We had a half holiday and I went to my sister’s to dine, where I enjoyed myself very much.

About the time of the Fair, we went one evening to see an exhibition of Mechanical views, with which we were much entertained, especially with the last, which was the representation of a storm at sea. Shortly afterwards, we had another treat in an exhibition at the Mansion-house, consisting partly of beautiful dissolving views, of cities, ruins, remarkable buildings, etc. and partly of objects, wonderfully magnified by a powerful microscope with an oxy-hydrogen light. By this means we saw the animalculæ in the water, and insects of the size of a flea magnified to the size of a sheep.

P.S. Mr & Mrs Rogers desire their kind regards to you all.

The sister he mentions was probably Sarah Elizabeth, aged 22 in 1845.

With the letter, Peter sent a photograph of John’s widow, Jane Maria née CORTIS, in the sunlit garden of her home in Manly, New South Wales. She was sixty-five years old when she died in 1911 and may not have been long for this earth when the picture was taken.

Found Object 44 · Beach Leaf

wind-blown and sandblasted

Jane Maria

She was the first child of Dr William Smithson CORTIS and Mary Jane née GREEN, baptised on the 5th of January 1846 in St Oswald’s Church, Filey. Her mother died when she was twelve and the household at census in 1861 shows signs of an extended family pulling together. Jane’s aunt Isabella Maria BOWES (her mother’s sister) was in residence with her second son Richard Taylor Bowes. The old salt, Richard Cortis, hale and hearty at 74, was visiting from Hull. Jane’s younger sister Alice Weddell Cortis was away on census night but her brothers were home – William Richard, 14, who became an MP in the Australian Parliament and would be tried for murder, and Herbert Liddell, 4, whose destiny was to cycle twenty miles in an hour before anyone else did. Three servants, all Lincolnshire born, completed the household in John Street.

It was in Lincolnshire that Jane found a husband. John Would PARKER was a farmer of 600 acres, employing 18 labourers and 6 boys in 1871. He was fifteen years older than Jane, in his mid forties when they married in St Mary’s Church, Newington (London) in 1876. They settled on the farm in Ludborough but were not blessed with children. They had dogs instead.

courtesy H F Morrice Collection

This photograph isn’t dated but was taken at Ludborough, I guess around 1890.

The enumerator in 1891 found the couple at “Lindens, Turnpike” near Louth. John was still farming, but possibly not 600 acres. He died  towards the end of 1893, aged 63. John’s spinster sister, Sarah Elizabeth, had lived with the couple for many years but she died a few months later. With all her surviving birth family scattered to the ends of the earth, Jane set off for Australia. Her father died in Manly on 15 September 1906 and she breathed her last in that place, 19 May 1911.

courtesy H F Morrice Collection

It isn’t certain that this is Jane Maria but the photographer was Willey of Louth, a town only six or seven miles from Ludborough. The wee dog could be significant.

Photographer C J Tear, 12 Clapham Road, London, no date, courtesy H F Morrice Collection

This is Jane and she seems to have an engagement ring and wedding band, so maybe the photo was taken in 1876, after her marriage and before she returned to Lincolnshire with her husband.

Photographer Rogers of St Leonards-on-Sea, no date, courtesy H F Morrice Collection

Jane seems to have filled out somewhat but John still looks youthful, though his mutton chops are greying. The photograph may have been taken while on their honeymoon (and Jane’s extra pounds are merely a fashion accessory).

The uncertainty about the identity of Jane in the second photograph seems justified if close attention is paid to the eyes, ears and nose of the lady with a whip. The features are noticeably different, though the overall shape of the face is similar.

What does it matter? I just hope that John and Jane’s seventeen years of marriage brought them much happiness. She was a widow for a year longer than that, and most of that time was spent in a foreign land. I wonder what her life was like in Australia.

Water 31 · Paddling Pool

A Grocer and His Servant

Alfred Burley TOWSE was born on 12 September 1866. I planned to mark his 152nd birthday last Wednesday with a short post but his family proved to be rather demanding. I have done a few hours work on them each day and have a way to go before I have his birth family all present and correct on FamilySearch Tree.

Alfred didn’t cause any problems, for me at least. He married Annie Maud JENNINGS in Grimsby when he was 25 but their three children were born in Filey. He described himself at the 1891 census as a Grocer’s Assistant, presumably working for his father. Samuel Towse was a Grocer and Sub Post Master in Filey.

In 1893 he got on the wrong side of Constable HARRISON.

1893_TOWSEarthurb_NEWS

In today’s money, 21 shillings is about £95.

Eight years later he was a Grocer’s Manager living at 11 Union Street. Samuel was clearly still “the boss”, and would remain so until shortly before his death in 1916.

Before the next census, Alfred had moved south, crossed the River Humber and changed trades. In Scunthorpe in 1911, he is described as a Tobacconist Manager.  With him at 74 High Street were Annie Maud and two of their children, Eric Alfred (17) and Ethel Mary (16). Annie Maud was a Lincolnshire lass and that may be the only reason for the family’s move.

During the next 28 years, Alfred changed his occupation again. In the 1939 Register, at 63 East Street, Grimsby, he is listed as a retired House Agent.

Alfred and Annie made what seems to be a sensible decision, forsaking the fishing port for  Louth, some miles inland. Alfred died there at the beginning of 1954 aged 87 and Annie followed him into the good night a year later.

You can find them on FamilySearch Tree.

Turning the clock back to 1901 finds the couple in their mid-thirties and their children aged 6, 7, and 8. They have a live-in servant, a young widow, Mary Jane HANSON, 32.

I expected to find that Mary Jane’s husband had been a fisherman, but no, he worked as a joiner, not a particularly dangerous trade.

There are only twenty Hansons in Filey Genealogy & Connections and of those, I only had death information for eleven of them. Two boys and a girl didn’t reach their first birthday and only one of each sex passed three score and ten. It is a small sample so nothing can really be read into the average lifespan of those born a Hanson: men 35 years and women 34. I recalled adult, gossipy conversations throughout my childhood during which my mother would say, “Oh, they’re not long-livers.”

Widow Hanson didn’t marry again and died aged 81 in January 1950. There are a lot of Filey Cowlings and calculating their average span will have to wait.

G700_HANSONfrancisE_20120807_fst

In loving memory of FRANCIS E. HANSON, the beloved husband of MARY JANE HANSON (of Filey), who died July 29th 1894, aged 31 years.

‘His end was peace’

Also of the above MARY JANE HANSON, who died Jan 31st 1950, aged 81 years.

‘Re-united’

Find Mary Jane on FamilySearch Tree. Her pedigree is more extensive on Filey Genealogy & Connections.