Tag Archives: family

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, Procktor

William Procktor-poulterer, porkman & cheesemonger

Procktor ancestors

The jobs you see in old census records sound so odd to 21st century ears. Some no longer exist – stay maker, maltster, lime burner – and some have changed so much they’re barely recognizable – tallow chandler (candle maker & dealer), cordwainer (shoe maker), braid picker (selecting & wrapping cord & ribbon), wheelwright (made & repaired wheels).

My 3rd great grandfather, William Procktor, was a poulterer – he sold game and poultry – in the middle of the 19th century in the East End of London – he moved around Stepney & Shoreditch and one of his locations was 58 London Wall, the road along the long gone city walls. His father was a mariner from Bermondsey and his children all moved “up” as best they could and did not follow their father into the business. London was a very different place by the end of William’s life.

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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.

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

William Williams, brewer

Elberfeld
Elberfeld, William Williams’ birthplace

Other than wondering how one survived childhood with first and last names almost the same, I hadn’t thought much about my 2nd great grandfather, William Williams. I had him in the family tree and knew he was born in 1840 in Elberfeld, Germany, but lived in England as an adult, dying in Forest Hill, London in 1907. I don’t think we have a beer brewer anywhere else in the family tree, but William picked about the best time to get into the beer brewing business as it was booming in England in the mid- to late-1800s. He moved frequently from one beer-brewing town to the next in England and Germany and managed to make a decent living along the way. Not bad given the very rough start he had.

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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

A base child…

Fore St, Kingsbridge, Devon
Fore St, Kingsbridge, Devon

What a terrible phrase: “A Base Child”. I looked it up to be sure, but it meant what I thought it did – a child born out of wedlock. People use phrases like “born on the wrong side of the blanket” in conversation, but to see the parish curate or vicar write something in the register seemed extraordinarily harsh, especially as the “sin” wasn’t the child’s.

My maternal great-grandmother’s immediate family lived in London, but her parents were both born and brought up in Devon in the Kingsbridge area and have roots going back several generations in Dodbrooke, Charleton and Stoke-Damarel.

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Family history, Williams

Maisie and Cedric Alfred – or is that Charles Archibald, or…

Wallace Ash advertisement 1916
Where Cedric Beacon worked

My great aunt Maisie married Cedric Alfred Beacon in 1914. He was dead before I was born, but their story turns out to be quite a tumultuous one that I didn’t know much about until a week or so ago.

Cedric worked for a local store in Portsmouth, Wallace Ash Ltd., as a Publicist and Staff manager.  On the marriage certificate, he’s a “Furniture Dealer” – not entirely false, but somewhat puffed up in my opinion.

Cedric’s dead father, listed on the marriage certificate as a Clergyman and in the newspaper announcement as “…the late Rev. A. A. Beacon, Ph.D., M.A., etc….” was variously a schoolmaster and Train Inspector (assuming this is the right Mr. Beacon; this is a tangled family tree).

Perhaps it is how someone behaves that matters, not a minor gloss over awkward details or a little bit of aggrandizement. By that yardstick, Cedric doesn’t fare well at all.

Continue reading Maisie and Cedric Alfred – or is that Charles Archibald, or… →