Skipsea

The Strange Metamorphosis of William Grainger

The re-structured family of William COLLEY and Elizabeth WHITING (“Beeford Elizabeth”) currently shows the couple with just three children. There is an eight-year gap between George and Maria so there may have been more.

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The three children reached adulthood. Ann married blacksmith William BLENKIN(G), George had at least ten children with Jane WALLIS/WALLACE, and Maria married William GRAINGER. Some handwritten sources show his name spelt “Granger” with an insertion mark and the “i” above as if he’d noticed the mistake and demanded a correction. He is a man of mystery, to me at least.

Family lore says he was a schoolmaster and the church marriage register supports this.

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Born in 1821, the son of Francis, he is “impannelled” on the Grand Jury at the General Quarter Sessions for the Eastern Division of Yorkshire, held in the Spring of 1844, as “Mr William Grainger, of Beverley, Schoolmaster”. His first child, Anne Elizabeth, was then about six months old.

The births of three more children were registered to a Grainger/Colley duo; Maria (1845), William Henry (1847) and Ellen (1849). I haven’t found any baptism sources that give the father’s occupation.

The census enumerator finds the family incomplete in 1851 at Albert Terrace, Beverley. The two older children are with their parents but William Henry is with his Aunt, Ann Blenking, in Bridlington and Ellen eluded my search. Father William’s occupation is given as “Butler and Proprietor of Houses”. It is a surprising career change, but even more startling is that he has aged terribly. Maria’s given age is 28 and William’s 44. His birthplace is given as Warter. Subsequent censuses agree with the revised birth year of 1807 but give his place of birth as “Holm(e)” or Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, a village about twelve miles from Warter. Searches for a William Grainger of this age and place of origin suggest his father was William and not Francis as stated in the marriage register.

I tried but failed to find a convincing 1841 census record for William Graingers aged around 34 or twenty.

Maria dies in 1852, aged 30, and is buried in Beverley. William the Butler marries Mary SMALLEY, a 40-year-old Lincolnshire woman in 1859. At the census in 1861, Mary is at home with her “daughter” Helen, aged 11. The girl’s name is not a mangling by the enumerator. She will be Helen, rather than Ellen, to the end of her days. On this census night, William is with his employer, Mary HARVEY, 68.

Ten years later the Grainger household in St Mary’s Terrace, Beverley, comprises father William, stepmother Mary, daughter Helen and 54-year-old boarder, Elizabeth TURNER. (Elizabeth will stay with the family until 1881, at least).

Helen is one of several children over ten baptised in April 1866 at the church of St Mary and St Nicholas in Beverley, though her entry has “Xtened only” by it.

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Death came to the Graingers in threes in the early 1880s. William departed in September 1882; Anne Elizabeth, his first child, died just a couple of weeks later (in Derbyshire as Mrs Bradshaw). William’s second wife, Mary, followed in the first quarter of 1883.

Helen lived on at St Mary’s Terrace and married from there in 1890. She was forty, her husband a 56-year-old widower, Robert Smith PARNELL.

William’s age at death is given as 75, consistent with all but the one record saying he was born in or about 1807. As most readily available sources make sense of his life-journey, the real mystery man is the young schoolmaster he may never have been.

Whiting Wrongs

The day after my Tailor, Soldier, Sailor post, the family of William COLLEY and Elizabeth WHITING was re-arranged on the FamilySearch Shared Tree. William, the Tailor of Scawton, was given a new wife and eight of his children vanished.

With Elizabeth née JARMAN taking her place in William’s bed, what has become of “our Elizabeth”?

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Elizabeth is with her rightful husband here, William the Bricklayer, and one of her 18 sources is the 1841 Census showing the couple in Skipsea with daughter Maria, 18, and Robert PAPE, 14, also a bricklayer. Christening sources for Maria and George are also correct. I think Walter should have stayed in Scawton. Twelve sources attached to Elizabeth are bogus, being the christenings of children belonging to the cutler, the soldier, the sailor and the tailor. The 13th is the proof of her own christening. Wrong year, wrong place, wrong father.

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I don’t yet know if this daughter of John reached adulthood and married. When exiled from Scawton a few days ago she took Elizabeth Jarman’s death date with her. She kept the 1811 marriage date too but on the 19th December that year, it was a different Elizabeth Whiting who married William Colley. Hence the Big Red X on the screenshot above.

William’s burial in All Saints churchyard, Skipsea, is correctly sourced. Elizabeth rests eternally nearby but not as a Colley. When I couldn’t find a death registration for her, I guessed she must have married again.

About the time William died in Skipsea, Frances FALLOWDOWN breathed her last in North Frodingham, five miles to the west. A few months later, on 11 October, our Elizabeth married widower Phineas Fallowdown. With Victorian etiquette advising widows to wear “full mourning” for two years, this appears to be a tad unseemly. But our Elizabeth’s birthplace, Beeford, is only two miles from North Frodingham, so the Whitings may have known the Fallowdowns for years. There are also tantalizing glimpses in census returns of families GRAINGER and BARR being Fallowdown neighbours. William Colley’s sister Elizabeth married a Barr and his daughter Maria a Grainger. (In 1851, Ellen Grainger, age 13 and a “visitor”, was with Phineas and Elizabeth on census night.)

Our Elizabeth died in North Frodingham in 1858 and her body was taken to Skipsea. It may have been her wish to be buried with her first husband.

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Second time around, Phineas was fourteen years a widower. He died towards the end of 1872, aged 78. At census the year before he had been living alone. I haven’t found a burial record for him. Phineas has two PIDs but a minimal representation on the Shared Tree. You can find our Elizabeth as a single girl, with parents and siblings, here. The church register entry for her marriage to Phineas identifies her as the widow Colley and the daughter of the Miller of Beeford.

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Today’s Image

The first trees in Filey Parish Wood were, I think, planted in 1996. I remember being underwhelmed when I first set eyes upon it in 2010. This is how the wood looked this morning.

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The ghost of Jude is standing a few feet beyond the gate on the left.

 

The Colley Brothers?

Kath has a note in Filey Genealogy & Connections about John and George COLLEY.

1861; [John] In 5 The Crescent, was he George Colley’s brother (bricklayer) who was the s. of John Colley. 1851; a visitor living with Richard & Jane Ferguson in Back Rd. a bricklayer. did he come to Filey to help with the development of New Filey? 1871: a builder living with family on the Crescent.

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No.5 The Crescent is a substantial property for a brickie and those making up Cliff Terrace were not shabby either. The distance from the black door above to Wrays (photo in Saturday’s post) is about 120 yards. Not far, but not proof of a blood relationship.

Turn the clock back 20 years. John and George are living in Bridlington. John, 16, is a bricklayer’s apprentice, living with his father, stepmother, three brothers and a sister in Church Green. George, given age 30, a journeyman bricklayer, is in Pinfold Street with his first wife Ann. They share the dwelling with another couple, John and Bridget AGAR, and their newborn son Thomas. It is a three-minute walk from Church Green to Pinfold Street. George and John’s proximity in two towns and their shared occupation surely makes them “family”.

Living at 5 The Crescent in 1861 with John, his wife Grace and their two infant boys is John’s father, also John, who headed the Church Green household in 1841. It is he who is George’s brother.

I am not the only one who has been struggling to untangle Colleys. When George was five years old, his eldest brother William married Elizabeth WHITING in Skipsea. I have so far found three of their children, but on the FamilySearch Shared Tree they have been given twelve.

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The marriage of William and Elizabeth is right, and Elizabeth’s dates of birth and death and her parents may be correct. But William was born in 1788, died in 1845 and has the wrong parents here. Only Maria in the list of twelve children rightly belongs to William and Elizabeth. (They also have a Skipsea born and christened George and Ann, their firstborn, who is missing from the list.) All the others belong to someone else.

This outlandish family is, however, well documented. One of them has twenty sources attached. But a close reading of the christenings reveals the family to be itinerants. Chronologically, the children were blessed in Doncaster, Ecclesfield, Hull, Doncaster, Ecclesfield, Doncaster, Skipsea, Bridlington, Scawton (x3) and Gravesend. Yeah, right.

If I seem a bit peeved, it gets worse. Looking for Ann in the FamilySearch Sources returns her as the top hit, but clicking on the tree icon brings up the Mary Ann born in Doncaster three years later (No.4 on the above list). This is very annoying.

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I made a lot of progress with the Real Colleys today – because I had a lot of help. In a dusty folder on a back-up hard drive, I found a Colley Family “story” sent to me seven or eight years ago, in response to a post written for the original Looking at Filey blog. I hope to right most of the Colley wrongs on FST over the next week or two.

Also in the letter Charlotte Brontë wrote to Ellen Nussey (Saturday’s post):-

Filey seems to me much altered; more lodging-houses – some of them very handsome – have been built; the sea has all its old grandeur.

The first observation echoes Kath’s note about there being plenty of work for brickies in “New Filey”. The second gives me an excuse to link to the First Man in Filey. Adam tries out a new camera on the path to Filey Brigg, on Carr Naze, at Bempton Cliffs and Selwicks Bay.

Charlotte wanted to go on the Brigg in 1852.

One day I set out with intent to trudge to Filey Bridge, but was frightened back by two cows. I mean to try again some morning.

I wonder what she would make of digital cameras.

Tangled up in Colleys

About a week ago, in Little Warneford Annie, I wrote this-

Robert is one of the Skipsea branch of Colleys. They settled in Filey for many years, but I haven’t yet happened upon any that sleep here eternally. So, I am unlikely to extend their pedigree on FST.

There is a Skipsea Colley buried in St Oswald’s churchyard – so I feel duty-bound…

I intended writing about the Three Wives of George Colley today. The names of two are remembered on this headstone.

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In loving memory of LOUISA, the beloved wife of GEORGE COLLEY of Cliff Terrace, who died May 21st 1860, aged 39 years.

Also, two children of the above who died in infancy.

Also of GEORGE COLLEY, who died April 10th 1866, aged 59 years.

Also of SARAH, relict of the late GEORGE COLLEY, who died Dec 6th 1866, aged 33 years.

George and Louisa married at St Oswald’s on 29 April 1852. Five weeks or so later, one of Francis Smith’s guests wrote to a friend…

“Cliffe House, Filey, June 6th, 1852.

“Dear E—-, – I am at Filey utterly alone…Do not be angry, the step is right. I considered it, and resolved on it with due deliberation. Change of air was necessary; there were reasons why I should not go to the south, and why I should come here…

“I am in our old lodgings at Mrs. Smith’s; not, however, in the same rooms, but in less expensive apartments. They seemed glad to see me, remembered you and me very well, and, seemingly, with great good will. The daughter who used to wait on us is just married…

Believe me, yours faithfully,

“C. Bronte.”

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Cliff Terrace is just around the corner.

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I think this was where George and Louisa set up home and brought four children into the world. The infants mentioned on the monument were both called Sophia Mabel.

About a year after Louisa’s death, George crossed the Humber married Sarah TOYN in Spilsby and returned to Cliff Terrace.

Their first child, a son they called George Toyn, lived to the age of 77. Their second, daughter Emma, survived for just a week after her christening. When George died the following spring he was possibly unaware that Sarah was carrying their third child. A widow, she died giving birth. The boy’s birth and death were registered under the name “Stillborn Colley” on the 7th of December. (The “6th” is clearly inscribed on the headstone.)

This afternoon, I found a census record which put a question mark against George’s first wife. Other censuses caused me to wonder if George was perhaps the uncle of the Robert Dixon Colley mentioned at the beginning of this post. With several Filey Colleys beginning their lives in Skipsea it would be a surprise if they were not related by blood. As things are, the Shared Tree is keeping them apart. George needs parents, several children and two wives on FST. There’s more work to be done.

Little Warneford Annie

There isn’t a single representative of the WARNEFORD family name in Filey Genealogy & Connections. Kath’s database has Blanche Annie WARNFORD marrying Filey Draper Robert Dixon COLLEY. Born in “186-“, she doesn’t have a birthplace. The couple has two children, Edwin Warnford Colley and May, both born in Stockton, County Durham.

There is a small family of Warnefords enumerated in Queen Street, Filey, in 1881. Retired draper, Richard, his wife Elizabeth, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary. Richard had run a linen and woollen drapery business in York from around 1850 to the early 70s when he retired to the coast. In 1877 he bought at auction a house and shop on the South Cliff, Scarborough for £1,420 but clearly didn’t occupy the property for long.  After residing in Filey for a while he moved the thirteen miles to Bridlington, where he died aged 61 on June 4, 1886. His wife Elizabeth, nine years his junior, was living with married daughter Elizabeth in Sheffield in 1891. Daughter Mary, approaching 30 and single was there too. Both Warneford women were “living on their own means”. Head of household, daughter Elizabeth’s husband William Henry NEAVE, was described as a “Foreign Corresponding Clerk”, which sounds quite exciting.

There are more Elizabeth’s than are helpful in this family. Draper Richard seems to have first married Elizabeth BREALEY in 1854. She gave birth to William later that year and died the year after. (I’m basing this supposition on the death registration of an Elizabeth Warneford aged 28 in York.) Elizabeth the Second appears very clearly in the next four censuses, birthplace Howden, but I cannot find a second marriage source. Christening records are available for Elizabeth and Mary (mother just “Elizabeth”) but birth registrations for them, and for Blanche Annie are yet to be found.

There is a civil marriage record for Blanche Annie and Robert Dixon COLLEY in Stockton (1884) but at her death in 1922 she is just Annie.

FamilySearch offers two christening sources for Anne/Annie Warneford.

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The 1871 census gives “All Saints” as the birthplaces of four children of Richard and Elizabeth I and II – William, Elizabeth, Mary and “Annie”. I can only find a birth registration for the Annie who is a daughter of Farmer John. This little Warneford didn’t marry, preferring to live à deux with female companions.

Are Anne, Annie and Blanche Annie the same person? There isn’t enough evidence yet to say for certain one way or the other. But, hey, remember Robert Dixon Colley was a draper.

Robert is one of the Skipsea branch of Colleys. They settled in Filey for many years, but I haven’t yet happened upon any that sleep here eternally. So, I am unlikely to extend their pedigree on FST.

Just Williams

I made another attempt today to discover where William ALDEN originated. In the 1881 census, he gives his birthplace as “Hornsey”, Yorkshire. I took this to be Hornsea. In 1891 he offers “Hatfield”, possibly Great Hatfield just four miles from Hornsea. In 1901 it is back to “Hornsey” and in 1911 “Hornsea”. Both William and Ann are wayward in giving their ages but a fuzzy search for William in Skirlaugh Registration District between the start of civil registration and 1843 doesn’t find him.

Looking again at the census, I was distracted by a William Alden working as a Carter in Skipsea with a calculated birth year of 1840, between one and three years older than Ann’s future husband may have been. He gave his birthplace as Thorpe, in Norfolk. The fact that Ann’s parents had married in Skipsea 29 years earlier gave me pause. (Perhaps she met him while visiting relatives and fell instantly in love.) After searching for this William in the Norwich area records, and coming up blank, I’m still wondering.

I also looked in newspapers for a Norfolk William who may have been driven from the county of his birth by a shameful deed. I found a William Alden, who could conceivably have been our man’s father, committing suicide by throwing himself from Whitefriar’s Bridge into the River Wensum. This was in 1856, the place of demise just a few miles from Thorpe. (It was suggested at the coroner’s inquest that “the deceased had suffered from a kind of religious fanaticism, and had also been much depressed in spirits”.)

I think I’ll let Ann’s William rest in peace, with his secrets buried with him in Filey churchyard.

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