D - Draper

I always thought a draper worked in a drapery, a store which sold fabric, maybe even curtain material (drapes - right?) and they might have also had a small section of the store given over to haberdashery; ribbons, lace, buttons and the like. I am sure I remember there being one such shop at Five Cross Roads when I was growing up in Hamilton, next to Gailer's who sold the best cakes and pastries (but that is another story). In the centre of town there was Pollock and Milne too in a similar line of business.

Well, how wrong was I ? 

It seems that in my Somerset family located near the Devon border, the Brendon Hills and the Quantocks if you weren't a Yeoman or a Farmer you were most likely a Draper or a Draper's Assistant. I have been doing a spot of research since realising how prevalent this career choice was from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s.

There was a lot of textile industry across Somerset; glovers, sailmakers and the cloth to make these as well as clothing, was also produced there in part. Industrialisation though had an impact on cottage industry. There was also a change beginning in the retail sector too with a demand for ready-made clothing. Tailors were not to sell ready-made clothing although some did appear to begin to trade this way with a small amount of ready to wear garments. Most of their work was made to order.

Drapers, however, may have sold second-hand clothing, taken orders and made new clothing with either staff sewing on site or outworkers sewing in their homes. They also sold ready-made, off the rack attire. It was big business. Upwardly mobile house servants and other working class labourers had wages burning a hole in their pockets and to the dismay of the upper classes spent it frivolously on an extraordinary amount of clothing to wear outside of work. The Clothing Trade in Provincial England 1800-1850 by AlisonToplis.

In Paddington, London William Whitely opened a fancy goods store in 1863. A fledgling department store, by 1867 he had 17 departments including food halls. Dressmaking began in 1868 and he leased a long row of houses where staff lived and worked. In 1872 there were said to be 622 people employed on site and 1000 outside. This expanded to a workforce of 6000 by 1906. In 1927 the business was acquired by George Selfridge.

My Draper relatives weren't running such large emporiums as Whiteley's and were based in Taunton, Bedminster and Wells. Some moved to London for their career, including George Williams in 1842 who went on to establish the YMCA in response to the conditions he witnessed being experienced by many young men who like him had come to London for work. He found employment for many years making gentlemen's clothing in St Paul's Yard near St Paul's, another sizeable establishment Hitchcock & Rogers. George worked his way up the ranks, marrying his employer's daughter, having his name added to the business and eventually, after the death of his father-in-law becoming the sole owner.

My great great grandfather's elder brother Thomas Davys, left the farm he had lived most of his life on and relocated briefly to Bedminster near Bristol where his children were employed in the Drapery business as assistants and apprentices. Whether this was an attempt to explore employment opportunities for his daughters particularly is unclear. But it does seem plausible as he had 6 daughters who would need to be able to support themselves if they were not to marry.

Another Thomas Davys, second cousin to the last Thomas is described on the 1851 census at Trowell where he was living aged 25 with his father, stepmother and some siblings as "Retired Draper and Land Proprietor". Retired at 25 ! He was also recorded as crippled. I have heard stories about a one-armed Draper - was this him ? Thomas died just seven years later.

His nephew John, son of his elder brother John, ran a successful business in Wells for many years. Like most of the other Drapers in this family, John's father, grandfather and great grandfather were Farmers. John was the only son and chose a different career path. His parents would leave the farm in their later life and join him in Wells. He employed one of his sisters and her son and often placed advertisements in the local newspapers looking for young ladies or lads to join his business. His home and business were located on Market Place and later High Street. Another of his sisters lived for a time in Vicar's Close where she was a housekeeper providing lodging to Theological students. How she came to be living in the close claimed to be the oldest purely residential street with original buildings surviving intact in Europe and dating from the 14th century I don't know. But her association with the Vicars and the Cathedral may have played a part in the Cathedral being the final resting place for her parents, her brother and sister.

Back to Drapers though, John ran a successful business regularly advertising the range of fashion available to his customers and often on sale in the local newspapers. Women's clothing, millinery, gentlemen's suits, coats, newspapers, children's clothing, accessories for all seasons. 

C - Coachman

When my grandmother was born her family were living in the Coachmans's Lodge at Cranford House on Kenilworth Road near Blakedown and Old Milverton in Warwickshire. George Timms was listed as the Coachman on the 1901 census at the same address before he was married. They remained there living above the stables until about 1908.

As Coachman, George would have tended the horses, groomed them and fed them as well as being in control of them when they were harnessed and out and about. He probably wore a uniform of sorts because the job would have been relatively prestigious at the time and image was everything when out representing your employer. 

George was born in Milverton in August 1877, the youngest son of James Timms and Jane Lawrence. His mother died when he was 6 months old and he was probably cared for by his older sisters and his mother's parents who lived nearby. By 1891, his father had remarried and his older siblings (5 sisters and a brother) had all left the family home. Some were married, others had moved to Birmingham looking for work or were employed locally. 

It must have been from his father that George learned to tend horses and drive a cart or carriage. James, who came from a long line of Oxfordshire Ag Labs, had found employment as a drayman, jaunting car driver and coachman after arriving in Milverton some time during the 1850s. George embraced new technology and the advent of motor cars, becoming a chauffeur and motor car driver and later a taxi driver. 

Apart from those eight or so years at Cranford House and a couple of short periods in different houses he lived his life just metres from where he had grown up with his siblings along Rugby Road and in Stamford Place. In fact for a time he lived with his own young family in the exact house where he had been born.

I wonder what he would think of the size and horsepower of the vehicle one of his great grandsons is driving these days ? He'd need a few cushions I reckon, to see over the steering wheel, a ladder to get in and maybe some adaptations to reach the pedals. I've only seen a couple of photos but I'd guess he would be about 30cm shorter than said great grandson.

B - Brass Finishers and Bedstead Decorators

Brass manufacture isn't a new thing, even the Romans experimented to produce it. Until the passing of the Mines Royal Act in 1689 which removed the crown monopoly on mining and brass production the trade had heavily relied on skilled workers from the continent. 

Up until the end of the 18th century Bristol dominated the brass industry in Britain. In the 18th century Birmingham's toy trade produced items such as buckles, button and sugar tongs and large amounts of sheet brass and ingots from the Champion Brass Works in Bristol made their way to Birmingham

The first patent for "Refining copper and manufacturing brass and brass wire" was granted in Birmingham in 1767. Until the 19th century casting (pouring molten copper alloys into moulds) was the usual method used by brass founders. Braziers produced candlesticks, pails, kettles and kitchen utensils working with sheet brass. Both Braziers and Brass Founders had their own guilds established in London, but Birmingham was not a guild town and this allowed it to attract workers and entrepreneurs from near and far. 

By the time Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 Birmingham had become the centre of the industry. Innovative practices, organisation of the workforce and working practices were factors which benefitted the growth in the industry. A lot of the work of a brazier had been taken over by stamping machines, but casting continued to prosper in the production of buttons, doorknobs, curtain rods and church furniture.

As demand for one type of product declined another took its place: electrical fittings for the developing Electric Lighting industry, scales for weighing letters came out of the launch of Penny Post. By the end of the 19th century manufacturers were producing a wide range of goods, some specialising in one area others offering a range. These included lamp-making, gas and electrical fittings, bell and general foundry, cock-making and plumbers brass foundry, rolled brass, stamped work, naval brass foundry and tube manufacture. The increasingly mechanised stamping and piercing work manufacturing buttons, medals and other ornamental work resulted in a larger female workforce. 

Metal frame beds and brass bedsteads had become more desired and fashionable in the early 1800s as they were more hygienic and easier to clean (recommended by Florence Nightingale) and the developments in production resulted in higher quality metals at cheaper prices.

Some of my grandmother's aunts left their home in Leamington, Warwickshire as young girls and found employment in Birmingham in the 1880-1890s. For a short time before her marriage Fanny Timms was a Metallic Bedstead Decorator. What exactly did a Bedstead Decorator do ? Painting decorative detail using a set pattern or design on porcelain or china decorations or bed knobs ? Did she have a creative flair or was it just a matter of reproducing a pattern over and over again ? Fanny married John Ashford who was a Cycle Polisher in the burgeoning Bicycle industry. In 1901 on the census their neighbours were mostly Brass Dressers, Pearl Workers, Brass Casters, Brass Polishers, Japanners and Brass Finishers.

There have been lots of B occupations mentioned here - more than I had initially decided to mention - and to think I always though Birmingham was most famous for chocolate and that Bournville factory run by the Cadbury family.

A - Acreman

acreman noun

acre·​man | \ ˈā-kər-mən \

plural acremen\ ˈā-​kər-​mən \

Definition of acreman

: the leader of the plow team on a medieval English manor

Acreman funnily enough was one of the contenders for the letter A in my other plan, so I was surprised to see it in a list of occupations.

I don't know if the Acreman in my tree got his name from his occupation or even if he was a ploughman. It is quite a long way back and records then aren't easy to find and if they are they are written in that odd spidery old english style, and sometimes in Latin.

The first Acreman I have is John born circa 1695 in the parish of Ashbrittle, Somerset. On the 22nd of April 1720 in the parish church at Ashbrittle he married local girl Jane Davys. She was the daughter of Thomas Davys and Judith Burchell of Hagley Bridge.

Information on Ancestry says that  between 1840 and 1920 people with the Acreman surname were found in census records in the USA, Canada, Scotland and the UK with the majority being found in the UK. In 1891 just over half of the Acremans in the UK were in Somerset. 

Perhaps some of John's siblings or cousins or their descendants emigrated to Canada or the USA or maybe one of his and Jane's children. They had at least three children, identified so far on church records. A few generations later in 1876 one of their great grandsons Samuel Pyne, a Tailor, farewelled England and took his family to Utah, USA. I wonder was he joining other family members who had gone before him.This branch of the tree was a new discovery made through RootsTechConnect in part of RootsTech2020, so there is still some work to do to substantiate all of the links.

It's August again

 You know what that means - it's Family History Month in Australia and New Zealand.

Last year I challenged myself to do an A - Z Blog challenge through the month. So I have been wondering what to do this year. First I thought I could do one for every day, highlight someone's marriage, birth or life but when I checked my tree it looked like it would be pretty tricky and that some of the August people were way way out on branches quite distant to me.

Then I thought why not do the same as last year and choose different words, families, names...then I cross refernced my new list with last year's posts and heaps of them were the same or very close. So that might be repetitive.

Now what, you're thinking.

Occupations ! That's what.

That is going to be a challenge in itself because some letters have very limited number of occupations and some have lots of to choose from but nobody in my tree who can fit the bill. How many of us have knocker-ups (people paid to wake up factory and mill workers in northern England for early shifts) or umbrella makers or zoologists in our trees waiting for their story to be told.

Suggestions welcome, I might need to be a bit creative and use some lateral thinking. But I'm willing to give it ago. Maybe I will just wander completely off topic for those tricky letters.  So same as last year 26 letters through the month posted one a day, except for Sunday and we will be at the 31st before you know it !

The Family of William Norman and Sarah Vickery

On Friday 19 December 1817 at St Mary Magdalene in the tiny village of Withiel Florey in Somerset a wedding took place. Just three days before the winter solstice. It was the only marriage that year, in fact it was 15 months since a wedding had been celebrated there. Four days earlier William Norman accompanied by his future brother-in-law had been granted a license after swearing an oath to the Lord Bishop of Bath & Wells. William was from Huish Champflower a neighbouring parish to his bride. The license states both bride and groom were upwards of twenty one years…the church record says they were married by license with the consent of parents. Both William and Sarah signed their own names in the register.

Why would consent be required if they were both of age ? Perhaps it was because William and his bride Sarah Vickery were first cousins.  William’s father and Sarah’s mother were brother and sister. Theirs was a family deeply rooted, like many in this branch of my tree, in the parishes on either side of the border between Devon and Somerset on or near the Brendon Hills and Exmoor.

Sarah and William spent the early years of their marriage farming at Tripp Farm in Clatworthy.

It was there in 1818 that their first child was born just three months after the death of Sarah’s mother. In her honour they named their daughter Jane Vickery Norman. They farmed there for at least six years before moving to Treborough where they lived and farmed at Chapmans Farm. By the time they arrived in Treborough they had three children: Jane, Marianne (Mary Ann/Marian) and William. Another daughter Elisabeth had lived just 15 weeks. A further two daughters, Sarah and Caroline completed their family at Chapman’s.

At Chapmans, the census in 1851 recorded that there were 260 acres and that William was employing 3 labourers.

Marianne was the first of their children to marry. On 8 October 1846 she married Thomas Davys of Kingston in the parish of Raddington. Her siblings Jane and William were witnesses to the marriage. Two pages later in the church record, Jane and William were witnesses to another marriage. This time Sarah married James Davys, the younger brother of Marianne’s husband, on 18 January 1849. On the same page, four months later Jane married Joseph Partridge on 12 April. James Davys was a witness this time along with William. Turn the pages a couple more times – 1852 was a popular year for marriages in Treborough and there is Caroline’s marriage to Thomas Langdon Norman, a first cousin, on 24 June. This time George Sutton was the witness alongside William. Thomas Norman’s father was a brother of Caroline’s father, William.

William married Mary Dommett Raddon in Exeter, Devon in 1860, they had one daughter and lived most of their married life in Bristol where William was a publican running the Bell Inn in Hillgrove Street for a number of years before retiring to Nailsea.

After her marriage Jane and her husband farmed at Monkham Farm near Luxborough. They had just two sons before Joseph died in 1853. Jane stayed and ran the farm, her parents came to live there too until their deaths. William died 12 April 1874 and Sarah 1 January 1881. Jane died at Monkham Farm 30 July 1887.

Marianne and Thomas lived at Kingston which he had inherited from his father and grandfather. They had a large family of six daughters and three sons. Two of the sons died young, the third trained as a jeweller and had a business in Truro, Cornwall. They spent some years away from farming in the drapery business in Bristol, but returned to Kingston for the last twenty years of their lives.

James and Sarah lived first at Nethercott Farm in Lydeard St Lawrence. They were there on the 1851 census where James was farming 80 acres of land and employing 1 labourer. On census night Sarah’s younger sister Caroline was visiting and they were parents to one son. Their second son would arrive 6 months later. I had hoped that birth certificates might reveal their places of residence so that I could create a timeline, but no. For the first four children just the parish of their birth was recorded. However sons number 3 & 4 were baptised at Bathealton and their birth certificates state Milverton - which is a sizeable parish - as their birthplace, which suggest that home was no longer Nethercott. They were at Hurstone by 1857 though as the three youngest children are recorded as being born there. On census night 1861 they were at Hurstone with their family of six boys. Just one month after the census they would welcome their first daughter, however Caroline lived just 7 months.

It was Hurstone they left behind, servants and all, when they joined the growing emigration movement, packed up their family and set off for New Zealand in 1862. It has been suggested that James was left £600 by his grandmother, in contrast Thomas as the eldest son was left the lease of Kingston. This endowment, it has been speculated was possibly used to fund the move and establish James and Sarah’s new life in New Zealand.

Their plans did not initially come to fruition, but they were obviously made of tough stuff. Three more children completed the family after their arrival in New Zealand, one born in Auckland and the youngest two in the Coromandel where gold was the lure. Farming was something they knew and they pursued this endeavour in the Tuhikaramea area near Hamilton.

It was in Thames that Caroline, her husband and young daughter joined James and Sarah, arriving in Auckland in 1864. Sadly Caroline died at Shellback Creek near Tararu on the Thames Coast just 5 years later. Caroline & Thomas’ daughter Harriett married her first cousin, James and Sarah’s second son.

Other members of the wider Norman family were also emigrating from England, several cousins and an uncle went to Canada and America – some even fought in the Civil War. I’m sure there are others too – I just haven’t found them yet. 

Drapery was big business it seems and several other members of the Norman family and the Davys family were in this industry in the 1800s – another area I need to research further and record. Time permitting there are more new blog posts under development.

I have some other posts about members of the wider family, or which mention them if you are interested to read them while you wait for me to get organised.  The Great Chatsworth Rail Disaster  . YMCA and Land - there may be others.

I have made a map it still needs a bit of tweaking but for now using the link should allow you to move about the locations I have talked about.

The Pandemic Unfolded

So, it has been a year. And what a year it has been.

A year ago we had no idea what was coming. None of us were ready.

A year ago much of the population across the globe became obsessed with toilet paper and other essential items. Stripping grocery shelves bare within minutes.

Our understanding and realisation manifested as facts were uncovered – but not as quickly as the virus spread.

Countries which should have been well prepared for an event such as we were facing turned out to be amongst the least prepared. Whether it was through lack of preparation, poor assessment of the situation, bad advice, a lack of understanding about pandemics or by those in power being deniers of the facts or not having the ability to grasp the basics about epidemiology, citizens of many countries faced challenges, losses and illness which will have irrevocably changed their world. Some countries acted quickly, others did not. Some changed their thoughts from one action to the other. Closing borders, opening borders, not allowing travel, encouraging travel – to their detriment. 

It was difficult to watch.

It was just as difficult to watch the ridiculous panic buying and hoarding behaviours, the protests about being told to stay home or wear a mask. Common sense does not prevail for us all in these times.

Thousands of people lost their jobs as industries ground to a halt, or at least a go slow. Plane spotting was an event, not an everyday occurrence. Businesses rewrote their business plans overnight or in a week to adapt to the changing restrictions about gathering in numbers, social distancing and many managed to stay afloat. Parents became teachers and work from home orders saw office supplies and computer gear vanish off shelves as quick as toilet paper as everyone set up their home office.

We couldn’t go anywhere so we became tourists online, touring palaces, museums and art galleries. People in the arts bought their art to our homes, we watched ballet, musicals and concerts filmed in the artists home and beamed into ours. Some of us are still doing that. Conferences became virtual, meetings were held on Zoom. We learnt new skills, knitting, crochet, painting, baking. For a lot of us it was a chance to catch up on things we kept putting off because work and busy lives have a tendency to take over our free time.

We have been lucky down here in the far removed countries of Australia and New Zealand. While at times it felt like we were losing control we did not experience the depths of despair seen on our television screens in Europe, Britain, United States and South America.

A year ago I began this blog series intent on making monthly updates, but they have fallen by the way side as life returned to some sense of normality here AND I got a job. Not as much spare time as I’d become used to – but the financial benefits far outweigh that.

So here are some sobering facts as we all either celebrate that we have had one of our two vaccinations, or have had both, or wait for our turn as our countries roll out their vaccination plans.

123,000,000 people globally have been diagnosed with COVID-19,

69,500,000 people have recovered and

2,710,000 have died. 

The worst affected country is

United States of America with 29,800,000 cases and 541,000 deaths, then

Brazil 12,000,000 cases, 10,500,00 recovered and 293,000 deaths

India 11,600,00 cases, 11,100,00 recovered and 160,000 deaths

Russia 4,400,000 cases, 4,010,000 recovered and 93,090 deaths

United Kingdom 4,290,000 cases and 126,000 deaths

France 4,250,000 cases and 92,167 deaths

In our corner of the world

Australia has recorded 29, 192 cases, 25,486 recovered and 909 deaths and

New Zealand 2,453 cases, 2369 recovered and 26 deaths

Mostly new cases in Australia and New Zealand are occurring in Managed Isolation Quarantine facilities amongst citizens returning to the country for overseas. The total number of citizens returning to both countries is nearing 50,000 since the pandemic was declared. Outbreaks in the community are dealt with swiftly by imposing stricter travel restrictions, short focussed lockdowns, more social distancing regulations and wearing masks.

There is a visual timeline which I have referred to many times during the past twelve months which shows the speed and spread of the virus and the changing fortunes of the ten most affected countries. currently it is updated to February 21, 2021, you will need to scroll down the page a bit to find it. It is both mesmerising and horrifying.

The “travel the country”, “holiday at home” messages have been hard to take when such uncertainty prevails in Australia with each state declaring its own path to recovery and its own way of managing outbreaks. We have looked with envy at our Kiwi mates who have freely travelled and holidayed within their country since lockdown 1.0 ended in the middle of the year.

Now though, it feels as if a travel bubble will finally open and we will be able to travel with strict guidelines between both countries. Real international travel though, I fear, will not recommence until at least mid 2022 if not 2023 – and I would expect that being fully vaccinated will be a requirement.

We have new words and phrases embedded in our vocabularies and for the most part we have adapted to our new normal. In some respects while it was confronting to watch it all play out on our screens everyday in real time, in other ways it was helpful to see how every country worked together. How our medical people rose to the challenge to find a vaccine – at least three – in such a short time. How a kindness pandemic spread around the globe at the same time, as we all showed support for each other and respect for our frontline healthcare workers. How we all learnt something new about ourselves and realised the lessons to be learned from history – because pandemics are not new, and this one will not be the last. 

Many of us will have been surprised to learn that Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens wrote about epidemics in Jane Eyre and Bleak House promoting isolation and social distancing as a means to keep other safe. Despite our many misgivings about technology taking over our lives and the difficulty many of us have about disconnecting from our digital devices to have a digital detox, having this technology has enabled us to be much more informed that our ancestors were about previous pandemics. Let’s not forget the lessons we have learned and make an effort to keep them with us and to pass them on to future generations.

Wash Your Hands. Shelter At Home. Wear a Mask. Do it for the ones you love.