Tag Archives: education

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.

Continue reading From Knottingley to Chelmsford via Wakefield Girls’ High School and Newnham College Cambridge →
Family history, Williams

Beacon: Amos or Alfred, Charles or Cedric, teacher or tram inspector…

My connection with the Beacon family is limited – my great aunt Maisie was briefly married to Cedric Alfred Beacon (1914-1922).  Cedric and his father – Alfred Beacon, or Amos Beacon, or Dr. A. Beacon, or the “Rev. A. A. Beacon, Ph. D., M.A., etc.” are a puzzling and colorful pair, and I wanted to try and put together their story – or at least an outline of it. I believe that some part of their series of unusual transformations is upheaval that was going on in England at the time – a transformation in how children were educated in Alfred’s case and World War I and its aftermath in Cedric’s.

Cedric’s father Amos leaves you scratching your head. If census records are accurate (and this is all self-reported data, so it’s not always correct), a man who was a schoolmaster and for a while ran his own schools, in later life became a farmer, a green grocer and a timekeeper for a tram car company! How did that transition happen? Continue reading Beacon: Amos or Alfred, Charles or Cedric, teacher or tram inspector… →

Family history, Forster

Winifred Adelaide Procktor in Mum’s social history

Winifred Adelaide Procktor 1918
Winifred Adelaide Procktor 1918

I provided an overview of my mother’s social history of her parents for teacher training college in a separate post. This is the detail section for her mother, Winifred Adelaide Procktor. I scanned and converted into text (production note: OCR software is still sadly an almost-success where fixing up errors almost negates the time saved) to improve readability, but the spellings (English versus US) and rather odd sentence structure – more like notes than an essay – I left intact. You’re seeing what my mother turned in – it surprised me to see such ragged work, but possibly she was pushed for time given other coursework.

Continue reading Winifred Adelaide Procktor in Mum’s social history →

Family history, Forster

Leonard Cyril Forster in Mum’s social history

Leonard Cyril Forster 1919
Leonard Cyril Forster 1919

I provided an overview of my mother’s social history of her parents for teacher training college in a separate post. This is the detail section for her father, Leonard Cyril Forster. I scanned and converted into text (production note: OCR software is still sadly an almost-success where fixing up errors almost negates the time saved) to improve readability, but the spellings (English versus US) and rather odd sentence structure – more like notes than an essay – I left intact. You’re seeing what my mother turned in – it surprised me to see such ragged work, but possibly she was pushed for time given other coursework.

Continue reading Leonard Cyril Forster in Mum’s social history →

Family history, Forster

Mum’s social history of her parents

Yvonne Poulson
Yvonne Poulson

My mother, Yvonne Mary Poulson (née Forster), attended Teacher Training College at Eastbourne College of Education from 1966 to 1968, intending to become a school teacher. She didn’t finish the training – she said managing classroom discipline as a teacher walking with two sticks (or in a wheelchair, which she sometimes used) was impossible for her. As part of the course she completed a social history of her parents. Amazingly – given the number of moves and other upheaval that followed – it didn’t get lost or tossed, and I have inherited it.

Continue reading Mum’s social history of her parents →