Middle: Susan CROKER

 The further into this challenge I get the more difficult it is to decide which ancestor to write about. The prompt Middle is so well…. Middling. 

So I went to the middle page of my ‘Blue Book’, the one I wrote about in week thirteen ,and looked for those ancestors I hadn’t yet written about. I didn’t quite close my eyes and stab a pin into an entry, but it was pretty close to that. And who have I chosen?

Susan Crocker who was one of my maternal great great grandmothers. She was the fifth child of twelve children born to Thomas Crocker and his wife Catherine Shinick, both Irish born. Though I do not know why or when they left Ireland but they had been living in Gloucestershire, England at least since the birth of their first recorded child in 1831.Susan  was baptised on a Sunday.

Roman Catholic.  Colston Avenue, St Mary-on-the-Quay. Baptisms 1828-1840
Born 01/08/1836 Baptised 07/08/1836

Bristol, England, Non-Conformist Baptism, Marriage and Burial Registers, 1644-1981 

Baptisms for other Crocker children

https://www.ancestry.com.au/search/collections/61689/name=_Crocker&birth=1831&baptism=_bristol-gloucestershire-england-united+kingdom_202043&birth_x=10-0-0&count=50&father=Thomas&mother=Catherine&name_x=s_psx

St Mary-on-the-Quay is a Roman Catholic church (Diocese of Clifton) and was completed in 1840. The architect was Richard Shackleton Pope. The River Frome flows in front of the church but was covered over in 1893.

St Philip and St Jacob Church is considered to be the oldest continually worshiping church in Bristol; there has been Christian worship on the site since 980 A.D.)

Date: Circa 1920s; Photographer: Unknown; Publisher: Haywards, 1 Corn Street, Bristol.

https://stphilipandstjacob.com/history#today 

On the 1841 census is Susan aged 6 living with her parents and four siblings at ‘Narrow Plain’ in the parish of St Philip and St Jacob, Gloucestershire. !841 was the year that the rail line between Bristol and London was completed.  

 The street called Narrow Plain exists today as does the Church of St Mary-on-the-Quay just a fifteen-minute walk away from Narrow Plain.

By the time of the 1851 census, Susan now aged 15, along with her mother Catherine, and three of her siblings are lodgers in what must have been a crowded household at number 3 Hume Row, Plaistow.  The large number of people living in what was likely to be a relatively small terraced house was by no means unusual for the time.  

Bear with me while I try to explain the connection. Head of the house Daniel Hayes was married to Debrah, who was Catherine’s sister. At this stage I have no idea where her husband Thomas or son Richard were. The only possible death for a Thomas Crocker is in the last quarter of 1851. The census that year was in March. The research to check that out will be done when I write about Thomas.

 Their living conditions would have been awful 12 people crammed into what was very likely a small terraced house that was unlikely to have had running water. At the time the nearby Thames was a stinking open sewer and with horse drawn transport crowding the streets the roads in and around London would have been awash with horse poo and urine. The combination of that alongside the foul-smelling chemical works would have been almost intolerable. It is no wonder that there were frequent outbreaks of typhoid and cholera.

 By the time of the next census in 1861 Susan had married Irish born Andrew Dwyer and you can read about them both at https://they-are-my-kin.blogspot.com/search/label/DWYER%20Andrew%20c1837%20-%201895

Her date of death is as yet unknown, but I do know that it was  it was after the 1901 census when she would have been 68 years old. 

Unexpected: Sphia ROLLINGS

Hunting For Sophia Rollings/Rawlings my  Three Times Great Grandmother. 

I want to acknowledge the help from the contributors to the Face Book page called The Brick Wall Group. Without their help I would not have been able to find all the information about Sophia. I also want to thank Wendy Hibbitt of the Writtle Archives for generously providing me with information about my Porter and Rawlings ancestors.

From the Writtle archives, Sophia Married William Porter At Writtle's All Saints Church  23 May 1831, witnesses C Porter, J Bailey & R Livermore. 

(Charles Porter married Ann Bailey 10 Jan 1831, their witnesses J Porter, J Bailey & R Livermore have almost the exact same witnesses).

My head is spinning and I am struggling to get things straight. The most recent known child before the death of this Sophia Porter (June 1845) was John born in the January quarter of 1844 and baptised in May of the same year. So, the drowning occurred more than a year later. There was also the fact of the death of three-year-old Clara b 1839 died 1842. Sadly, there was also the death of eleven year old young Emma b 1837 died in 1846-7

Sophia Rollings/ Rawlings/Porter Born c 1816 

1841 Census

The death below certificate for the person I think was my 3 x great grandmother Sophia Porter, formerly Rollings/Rawlings . Born c 1815. According to the Writtle archives my Sophia was married to William Porter 23 May 1831 in Writtle. Her age on the death cert was 31. It is sad to read that her cause of death was ‘Drowned. Being unsound in her mind’, and the death was notified by a Crown Magistrate in 1846, but she died 5th June 1845. Until I can locate any records from the court relating to her death, or a newspaper article I can only speculate on the reason for Sophia to take her own life.

Though her husband on the only census I have so far located was called he may have been Thomas William or William Thomas, and as it was legal proceeding may have been required to give his legal name.  On her death certificate her status is ‘ wife of Thomas, which I think ‘probably means that her husband was still living. He may have been Thomas William or William Thomas, and as it was legal proceeding may have been required to give his legal name. 

Sophia and William’s Children’s Births   William Edward 3 June 1832,

Edmund/Edward c 1834 Emma was found in a search of the UK GRO with a death age of fourteen years, making her birth pre sept 1837, she was baptised 1 January 1837 and died and  was buried  6 Jan 1847    William Edward Porter was born in 1832 in Writtle, Essex, He died in July 1867 at the age of 35. Edward/Edmund, my grt grt grandfather, born 1834, married Rachel Copsey 1852 at Chelmsford. Died 1902 Westham John b 1844 Residence, 1871 • Kentish Town, London, England, Relation to Head: Visitor the only other details found is the 1871 Writtle Census 1871 census, misspelling of Writtle as Rittle, transcribed as Kettle  I have found a possible second marriage William to Elizabeth Humphreys  Map of Writtle

Handed Down: Family Resemblances

Our family has no ‘treasures’ that have been handed down. On the census records their occupations are mostly listed as ‘ag labs’ and labourers, domestic workers, or appear not to have any occupation at all. My mother would have called them common.

What they handed down was their genes.

If you looked at the few old black and white photographs of my mother and then of me you might think that it was the same person. The same can be said for my father and one of my grandsons. Tangible proof of the legacy of their DNA.

In a photograph of me with my father’s sister and her daughters we are obviously the same family, and there is a distinct resemblance between my sister and our grandmother and our mother’s sister.

I think it is human nature to look for ourselves in group photographs just as is it to seek out resemblances in old snapshots.

Wedding: George Arthur HARVEY & Georgina HALL

This is the start of the story I think I’ve already posted the full story

The Wedding

The wooden steeple of the old stone church pointed into the clear winter sky and a small cluster of red and yellow flowers sheltered against the wall. Here and there a few short rows of old headstones cast long shadows onto the closely cropped grass. It wasn't the old headstones I was interested in though; it was the church itself. For here on Friday 21st February 1942, a marriage had taken place. Then, there was no time for tradition, no time for the banns to be read. The groom only had ten days’ embarkation leave, so they were married by ‘special licence', obtained just the day before at a cost of ten shillings.  A lot of money then, when an unskilled worker would have earned less than five pounds a week. Generally, a soldier needed the permission of his commanding officer to marry and in wartime this was usually agreed to. There is no evidence of this on his military record apart from a change in his next of kin from his mother to his wife.

Here's why I am I revisiting it?

Recently My Heritage allowed anyone to colourise previously black and white photographs for free. I took advantage of the offer and among those that I uploaded to their site were two taken at the wedding of my father’s sister, the other was one that I suspect was taken about the right time, as to date there are  no known photograph of my parent’s wedding.

These three photographs made me think about how my parents own wedding compared with that of Dad’s sister.

My parents George Arthur Harvey and Georgina Mary Hall married on February 21 1942. My aunt Florence Rose Harvey married Herbert Pipkin on July 20 1943,  my mother was one of the bridesmaids (indicated by arrow).

The photograph of Florence’s wedding looks like it might have been a costly affair, just look at the bouquets the women are carrying, and their dresses look that way too. The bride’s father (indicated by arrow) was one of the groomsmen which makes me wonder if he is standing in for my father who might not have been able to get leave from the army. I’ll never know the answer to that one.

By contrast my parent’s wedding probably occurred with some haste as my father was on ten days embarkation leave, and they married by special licence meaning that there was no time for the banns to be read.

 My parents 

Wedding of Dad's sister