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.
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.
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.
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!
John Walden Poulson – The Wastrel; my great grandfather – had so much going for him, but couldn’t seem to avoid turning every advantage into a tale of risk, broken promises, embezzling and very likely drinking and gambling. Some parts of his tale are very public (were covered in local newspapers), but lots of the details I’ll probably never know for sure. Today he might be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but in the late 1800s even if there had been such a diagnosis, there wasn’t anything to be done other than watch a life unravel. Continue reading The wheels finally fall off for the Wastrel→
John Walden Poulson – The Wastrel – was my great grandfather and his first wife Polly (Mary Ann) was my great grandmother. After she died, he married Polly’s sister Emily, but ran off to Canada leaving his six children behind. It was only recently I learned that he had married a third time – no more children as Bertha was a 45-year-old widow when they were married.
Bertha Hollyer, neé Buckstone, John Walden’s third wife, came from a very famous theatrical family with sisters and brothers who followed in their father John Baldwin Buckstone’s footsteps and became actors. I have no pictures of Bertha, but based on pictures of two of her sisters, I’m guessing she was beautiful. He certainly didn’t marry her for money as there wasn’t any – her famous father had died when Bertha was 3 following a bankruptcy where he lost the lease of the Haymarket Theatre which he had run for over 20 years, in spite of the success of many of the plays he wrote as well as his own performances. Continue reading The Wastrel marries again – a widow from a well-known family→
Somewhere in the early 1900s, Upstanding Edwin’s oldest son – John Walden Poulson, the Wastrel – transitioned from promising oldest son of a local family to an intractable problem that defied family attempts to help him.
John Walden was captain of the Knottingley cricket team – younger brother Thomas played too. When Thomas married Lily Taylor in September 1901, the newspaper write up talked of the crowds outside the Wesleyan chapel. John Walden was there with his new wife Emily, and daughters Emily, 11, and Nellie, 10, were bridesmaids. But by the time his youngest brother Charles married in 1909, John Walden had vanished, although Doris (Aunty Goggie), 13, was a bridesmaid and Ernest (I think Gamps, who was John Ernest Llewellyn), 12, was a page. Something had changed… Continue reading John Walden’s unraveling starts with a boat trip→
On September 9, 1901, John Walden Poulson – The Wastrel – attended the wedding of his younger brother (and fellow cricket player) Thomas. There were apparently large crowds – for a small town – outside the Weslyan Methodist Church in Knottingley to wish the young couple well and watch local sort-of celebrities!
Two of my great aunts – Emily and Nellie – were bridesmaids and Mary Ellen, the three Poulson boys older sister, made the trip from Portsmouth. This was possibly the last family event where Edwin and all of his children were there. Both weddings took place at the local Wesleyan Chapel – the picture is at the head of the post. Continue reading Thomas Llewellyn Poulson marries→
John Walden Poulson – the Wastrel – was growing up. At the very end of 1889 the 19-year-old became a married man, and in May 1890 a father. By the 1891 census he was Pottery Manager, versus just clerk on Emily Muriel’s birth certificate in 1890. In the Summer of 1891 his second daughter, Nellie Gwendoline was born and he was living next door to his father Edwin on Marsh End in Knottingley.
Over the next 5 years, business and political affairs appeared to be progressing for John Walden. In December 1892 he was elected to the Ferry Fryston (Ferrybridge) school board and was involved in Liberal politics in the Pontefract district – following his father Edwin Llewellyn Poulson.
The Wastrel was a widower, but not for long – my great grandfather John Walden Poulson in 1901 was 31 with four young children and an earthenware manufactory to manage for his father (and owner) Edwin.
When I sent for the marriage certificate for his second marriage, I was puzzled as to why it took place in Newcastle-on-Tyne, a long way from Knottingley where he and his family lived. Even today, the train ride is nearly 3 hours. The marriage was on February 25, 1901, so this wasn’t some summer holiday lark. As far as I knew, no one in the Poulson family had anything to do with anyone in Newcastle. Continue reading All in the family with wife #2→
I don’t remember meeting Aunty Suzanne, but I do remember getting birthday presents of pretty – fancy – dresses from her, the sorts of clothes I didn’t normally have. Ethel Suzanne Poulson was actually a great aunt, the youngest of my grandfather’s (Gamps) five sisters.
I haven’t yet done a blog post on wife v2.0 for John Walden Poulson – the Wastrel – but Ethel Suzanne was born March 9, 1905, in Knottingley, Yorkshire, and her Mum was Emily, the Wastrel’s second wife. Just after her fifth birthday, her Dad took off for Canada and she spent a large chunk of her childhood with her maternal grandfather, John Henry Shepherd in Ferrybridge – he had variously been an inn keeper, horse dealer and farmer over the years. Continue reading Aunty Suzanne from Leeds→
