Category Archives: Poulson

Family history, Poulson, Williams

Twenty-somethings in Portsmouth in the 1920s

Gamps in a swimming costume
Gamps in a swimming costume

My paternal grandparents married in St. Luke’s Church in Portsea (Portsmouth) in April 1923 after about 3 years of knowing each other. Portsmouth wasn’t a family home for either of them. Gamps and his sister Goggie had left their home in Knottingley, Yorkshire to live with their Aunt Mary in Portsmouth in 1910. In 1913, Goggie went to Chiswick Hospital to train as a nurse; in January 1914 their uncle died. August 4th Britain declared war on Germany and that day my 17-year-old grandfather lied about his age to join the 2nd Hants. Battery; on October 9th he was on his way to India.

Nanny’s family ran a tobacconist in Portsmouth after her father, Ernest Henry Williams, retired from the Army in 1907 – she was born in Malta during one of their overseas tours (two younger brothers were born in Bermuda). Whether they realized it or not, something Gamps & Nanny had in common was having moved around and being apart from most of their families.

I don’t know how they met but had long assumed it was via Gamps’ friendship with fellow bank clerk and cricket fanatic Ernie – Ernie was married to my grandmother’s older sister. Turns out there was a bit more to the story.

Gamps in India (seated, 2nd from right)
Gamps in India (seated, 2nd from right)
Portsmouth Evening News 5 Aug 1914-King needs you
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Family history, Forster, Jenkins, Meredith, Poulson, Procktor, Shepherd, Williams

Families from Faulds to Williams – roadmap to the blog posts

I’m not finished writing family short stories, but there are enough for walking through them to be confusing. My second cousin mused how great it’d be if a Wikipedia-like service could organize all online family stories. It would, but as an interim step I thought I’d try a roadmap/Table of Contents as a start.

WordPress has a search feature – which works well – but that presumes you know what you’re looking for. With the bow tie charts to show family in our three groups and a list of posts about each of the people, I’m hoping content will be easier to navigate.

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Family history, Poulson

From Knottingley to Chelmsford via Wakefield Girls’ High School and Newnham College Cambridge

My paternal grandfather’s oldest sister – 7 years older than John Ernest Llewellyn Poulson – was probably the reason her parents were married. She was born just 4 months after John Walden Poulson and Mary Ann Shepherd were married on Christmas Day 1889.

I knew her as Aunty Poul – half of Poul & Blacker, retired teachers, who lived in Chelmsford. Helen Blacker was the gym teacher at the Chelmsford Girls’ High School where both taught. I think I visited their house once – Emily died in 1966 – and don’t recall any stories about her other than my father saying she was the headmistress of a girl’s school (she wasn’t, but I think he believed that was a better part in the play if you were a “spinster” teacher) and him insinuating they were closeted lesbians! Aunty Goggie was the sister my grandfather was closest to as they had grown up together in Portsmouth; she was my Dad’s favorite aunt.

Uncovering more of Emily’s story showed an accomplished woman, even with the few pieces I’ve been able to gather via Ancestry, FindMyPast and the British Newspaper Archive.

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Family history, Poulson

Royal Navy to BOAC via HMS Royal Arthur

St. Edwards old boys in the war, May 1943

On page two of the first notebook of his draft memoir, David Poulson relayed a wildly exaggerated tale about school he’d told his mother and noted “Truth and my imagination were already uneasy bedfellows“. One unambiguously true statement! David’s school days at St. Edwards, Oxford, ended in July 1942 after completing School Certificate and Higher School Certificate in French and Spanish (he took History as well, but described that in his memoir notes as “less successful”). Each branch of service had presented at St. Edwards, and David’s notes tell of two uninspiring recruiters (for the Army and Air Force) and one blond Navy flier who “scooped the pool“. He couldn’t enlist until 17, so he planned to join up on his birthday in February 1943 and, in the meantime (according to the memoir notes) “I was free to enjoy life to the full. I wanted the evening use of my father’s car. Cars equals girls. ” My educated guess is that the memoir is a blend of reality and a good story, but his notes are the primary source for David’s war years and first real (and only non-theatre) job with the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

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Family history, Poulson, Shepherd

Shepherds in Yorkshire in the 1800s – coal, beer, gambling, & large families

Bow-tie chart for Shepherd relatives

My grandfather John Ernest Llewellyn Poulson was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in one of a collection of small towns along the River Aire. There was some light industry (potteries, glass works), coal mining, lots of small farms, breweries, and mariners or watermen moving goods along the Aire & Calder canals, eventually through Goole, out to the Humber and the North Sea. Pretty much all those ways of earning a living were represented in his parents’ families. His Dad, The Wastrel, was born in Knottingley and his Mum, Mary Ann Shepherd, in Ferrybridge. Several generations of large Shepherd families in Ferrybridge, Knottingley, Castleford and Brotherton meant that your publican, inn keeper, blacksmith, horse dealer, grocer, confectioner, waterman, school board member, etc. had a good chance of being a relative.

Area in Yorkshire where Shepherds lived

The bow-tie chart will serve as a reminder of where the Shepherds fit, but the sheer spread of the family is hard to grasp. Starting with the Samuel Shepherd born in Brotherton in 1803, who had 8 children, those 8 provided 45 grandchildren. The oldest of Samuel’s kids (also a Samuel) provided 9 of those grandchildren who in turn contributed 45 great-grandchildren. John Henry Shepherd (my 2nd great grandfather), provided 8 grandchildren, but (slacker!) only managed to add 16 great grandchildren!

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Family history, Poulson

David Poulson – cars, sun & shorts

David Poulson – Dad – worked in the theatre most of his life which may account for his focus on appearance, both his own and other people’s. Creating your public image by how you dressed, what stories you told, what accessories you could flaunt (think car, watch, jewelry, cigarette holder) was part of who he was – and it went beyond his professional need when casting a play to assess whether someone “looked right” for a part. Toddler David (around 1928) didn’t choose the sweater and knitted shorts – conventions used to be that little boys wore shorts and you advanced to long trousers at the right age (11-ish). Utterly daft concept (why should little kids have cold legs?) . Once he was old enough to make his own choices, a very different (less cuddly, more jet-set) image took shape.

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Family history, Forster, Jenkins, Poulson

Growing up with our grandparents

Rose & Margo, Lyme Regis

This is part II of the story of four generations preceding me and my four brothers – our parents growing up between the wars in England and somehow all ending up in the theatre. For Yvonne and David, I have written recollections. Yvonne left many – some illustrated – diary-like notes and a book, Mind Boggled. David left a stack of notebooks filled with a scribbled draft of a memoir he never finished – to his credit, he numbered the pages, books, and various inserts – in his near-illegible writing. It’s mostly theatre name-dropping and “funny stories” but parts are about his early years. A characteristic blend of gauzy generalities of an idyllic childhood and tales of David’s excellent adventures. Old newspapers add details – of piano competitions, school prizes or sports matches – plus there are stories we heard from them growing up. David’s “Progress Book”, written by Billie, and a few notes in an album by Wynne are the only accounts from the grandparents directly. Margo’s brother Harding kindly provided some childhood stories for her. I’d like to offer a sense of where they lived, went to school, what home life was like, and to sketch out their path from babies to the adults we knew.

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Family history, Forster, Jenkins, Meredith, Overview, Poulson, Procktor, Williams

Who were those people in the family tree?

I’ve spent many hours combing through records and newspaper articles about ancestors and long-dead relatives, and although there’s much I don’t know, I realized I have lots of thumbnail sketches of where they lived, what sort of work they did and occasionally other snippets of information which I haven’t shared. The more substantial stories – such as interfering in an election in Pontefract – have blog posts, but the smaller details are only in my head. Recently I sent my brothers two bow-tie charts, and one replied that it looked odd as he’d never heard of many of the names. Time to put a little flesh on those bones!

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Family history, Forster, Poulson

Born in London with ancestors in Utah?

21 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, London (picture courtesy Google Street View)
21 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, London (picture courtesy Google Street View)

Deciding to take a DNA test has been a source of all sorts of surprises – an unknown cousin, for example. The discovery of Cornish mining ancestors for my husband’s family as another. My current puzzle is how a kid from Camden Town in London (photo on left is the flat my parents lived in) has DNA matches to a group of people who have been living in the USA since the 1860s. The more digging I do, the more clear the picture becomes with one small, but important, missing piece – how this group of related people in the US is genetically connected to me!

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Family history, Poulson

In quashing Jeffrey’s teasing, a 66-year-old secret comes to light

Jill & Sven Lindgren
Jill & Sven Lindgren

My lovely husband, Jeffrey, has a vibrant sense of humor, and, after a bout of teasing and joking from him about who was more British, I naively thought I could shut him up by taking a DNA test. From that frivolous (and totally futile) effort, came a completely unexpected series of discoveries – and even more teasing and joking! I should probably start at the beginning…

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