Pontefract

What’s in Six Names?

George Jenkinson WATKINSON died 89 years ago at the age of fifty-seven. His wife Annie Ellis PITCHFORD found rest just over two years later.

Row 12 1938 Watkinson E112 Kerb

In loving memory of GEORGE J. WATKINSON, died 9th March 1934, aged 57.

Also his wife, ANNIE E. WATKINSON, died 25th March 1936, aged 57.

‘At rest’

Crimlisk Survey 1977

George is a great-grandson of Joseph, a West Riding man who was verger for a while at Filey St Oswald’s. George’s mother Mary was a JENKINSON and an Anniversary Person on the first day of last year (AP 5 · death · 1 January).

Annie had seven children with George but only one appears on the Shared Tree.

Filey Genealogy & Connections is not the only information source uncertain of Annie’s family name. On the day of her marriage, she was not in doubt.

“Ellis” is a common middle name in this part of the world and is often accompanied by “Alice” in brackets. I have never understood why this is. The poor hearing of registrars, transcriber uncertainty or something else?

On the Shared Tree, Annie’s father is without forebears. FG&C gives him a mother, Ann Pitchforth, and maternal grandparents William Pitchforth and Ruth BEDFORD. What are the chances of her paternal grandfather being Henry ELLIS? (I found a suspect.)

The Watkinsons named their third daughter after Annie’s older sister Charlotte, a witness at their wedding. For British boys of a certain age, the name FROBISHER may cause a frisson of excitement. Nice boys will picture the intrepid seeker of the North West Passage; the not-so-pleasant will imagine the pirate looking for plunder. Perhaps Canadians now in their sixties and seventies will recall Martin of this ilk.

Public domain, Martin Frobisher. (2023, January 27). In Wikipedia.

FG&C takes the Frobisher line no further than William and Agatha née FOXCROFT. The Shared Tree delivers. (Martin is the ninth great-granduncle of Annie Ellis Pitchford.)

What of the other witness at George & Annie’s wedding? FG&C doesn’t have Charles WEBB but I found someone with the name in the 1901 census, about the same age as the groom and from George’s neck of the woods. The best man perhaps. Charles was a railway signalman who had recently married Ada LONGBOTTOM. (A seventh name to conjure with.)

Michael Lost

In the early evening of Friday 9 June 1950, two schoolboys walked to the cliffs on the north side of Carr Naze in search of seagull eggs. Only one returned to sleep in his own bed. Michael David WARE slipped while making his way down a grassy slope towards a nest he had seen, failed to control his slide and vanished over the cliff edge into Black Hole.

Michael’s friend, Benjamin ROBERTS, alerted the Coastguard and his account of the accident appeared in later newspaper reports.

Michael was buried on 13 June in the sheltered corner near the south door of St Oswald’s.

The “book” stone remembers his parents Roderick Leslie and Edna May. They are represented on the FamilySearch Shared Tree but Les, as he was widely known, has not yet been connected to his father, William [LH7X-Z15].

William is waiting for a wife – Caroline Elizabeth BEGG – and the WARE male line doesn’t go back far. I wonder what our ill-fated egger would have thought about having King ALFRED as a many times great grandfather, had he lived to be a silver surfer. If the Shared Tree is to be believed, Michael had many other forebears among royalty and the elites of Great Britain and several European nations. I recommend a grand tour of his ancestry, all the way to Welsh kings who lived before the birth of Christ. His father, Les, involved himself in charitable work with Filey Lions for the last thirty years or so of a long life and this contribution is honoured on a bench near the Church Bridge gate.

Michael’s mother died aged 82 on the 43rd anniversary of her boy’s funeral.

Measure of Man 56 · Arndale

A Misunderstanding

There is a note in Filey Genealogy & Connections to the effect that Job Charles CHAPMAN was a bigamist.

In the 1901 census, he is enumerated at Fern House, on Filey Foreshore, a Lodging-House keeper, aged 50. His “housekeeper” is 51-year-old Teresa IBBERSON, a single woman.

The note:-

1901; living at Fern House with sister in law. Written over status: marr which was crossed out and bigamist written over. Ellen’s sister Teresa was entered as wife. This was also crossed out and sister in law entered.

The page image (© TNA) tells a different story.

1901_ChapmanIbberson

Job, a Somerset man, married Teresa’s sister in Leeds in 1880 when he was 29. Ellen was six years his senior and died aged just 52 in 1898.

In 1881, not long married, Job and Ellen are enumerated as “Visitors” at widow Ferguson’s fine residence, No.7 The Crescent, Filey. A third visitor is Teresa, her occupation given as “Ladies Maid”.

In 1891, Job and Ellen are keeping Ackworth House on the Foreshore Road. Ellen was born in Ackworth near Pontefract, so perhaps she bestowed the name upon this building. Theresa is a grocer in Murray Street.

Thirteen years after Ellen’s death, Job and his housekeeper are still in partnership in 1911. The Find My Past transcription doesn’t give Teresa any work to do but the page image shows a faint ditto flourish indicating that she is a lodging-house keeper too. The couple has downsized to St Kitts, a short distance south along the Foreshore Road (now “The Beach”).

20191015StKitts

On the 1911 census form, Job indicates that St Kitts has 18 rooms.

When they retired from the business of looking after summer visitors to Filey, Job and Teresa downsized again, to a modest property in Queen’s Terrace, Filey.

20191015ElevenQueensTce

They both died at the house with the blue door in 1927. Teresa departed first, in February, and Job followed eight months later. Job and the two sisters sleep together in St Oswald’s churchyard, an eternal ménage à trois.

20191015EllenTheresa

Job’s inscription tells us that he was “for 35 years Tyler of the Royal Lodge of Freemasons No.643”.

At rest. So mote it be.

Tree-to-Tree

Find My Past has begun the roll-out of their Tree-to-Tree hints system. I worked on a couple of Filey families today and the information I added brought invitations to assess details other growers have discovered. I still have nightmares about the way My Heritage made it so easy for strangers to butcher your loved ones. Unless you are a vengeful type, there was no upside that I could see.

Before she married in 1888, Mary Ann LANE gave birth to Francis William. In 1901 he was enumerated at the home of his widowed aunt Elizabeth in Alma Square, Filey. He worked as an errand boy and, whatever it was he fetched and delivered, I imagined him whistling cheerfully as he went around the town, oblivious that he was earmarked for cannon fodder.

Filey Genealogy & Connections has very little to say about Francis but, as he isn’t “remembered” in the churchyard, I was prepared to let him go. After the rain stopped this morning, I went to photograph the grave of his mother and stepfather.

F27_COLLINGrobtj_20191001_fst

The large flower is for Mary Ann and Robert Jenkinson’s grandson, also Robert Jenkinson, and has been placed there, I would guess, by Olive.

In loving memory of their grandson, Robert Jenkinson COLLING, dear husband of Olive, died March 8th1993, aged 68.

Francis William is uncle to the younger Robert and thanks to Tree-to-Tree I was able to trace his life journey, effortlessly.

He survived the Great War, as a soldier marrying Sarah Ellen HOYLAND in 1917. Sarah was from a mining family and Francis chose to live in her hometown, Pontefract. He worked as a house painter, took an interest in politics and in 1933, as a Socialist, was elected unopposed to the Town Council. He died in 1965, aged 78.

I put Francis William on FST this afternoon but there much more work to be done.