More than just the 3 R's

A few years ago I made a small photobook about the members of Dad’s maternal grandfather’s family who emigrated to New Zealand in 1841. It’s been in the back of my mind to do something similar for other emigrant/settler families too. I thought I might make a start by jotting down some notes as a Christmas present for him – partly because it’s so hard to know just what to buy a 94 year old.

But in building out the story for the children in this family (his paternal grandfather's line) I came up against the same old dearth of information about education and where they might have gone to school. It’s not even that long ago (in the scheme of things), which makes it more frustrating that there doesn’t appear to be surviving records.

I suspect that they may have attended a church school in either the parish where they lived or a neighbouring parish. They are noted as scholars on the census prior to leaving the country. Then where did they go to school after they arrived in New Zealand in 1862?

I found some clues for the previous generation though.

In the 1841 census, Sarah Norman (12) and her younger sister Caroline (8) are enumerated in the “household” of the schoolmaster at Cutcombe, Somerset. This was likely to be a church school. Great to see girls, the daughter’s of farmers, getting an education. Their elder sisters were above school age on this first census available readily for family historians, but it seems likely they too would have had the opportunity to attend school.

In 1841 schools and schoolmasters were asked to record the names of the children who had attended in the last week as the census was taken very close to the summer holidays beginning (6 June). There were all sorts of rules about who could be recorded and who couldn’t – those with a governess weren’t “at” school so different rules applied. However, if you are lucky you might find the governess enumerated with a family and can then speculate as to which children she taught.

James Davys (15) was enumerated in Barnstaple, Devon at a school led by Elias Bray. It has taken a lot of pondering and searching outside the box, but I have found that this school which I originally thought I had identified as a Free Grammar School was actual Mount View Academy. A boarding school for boys. As the census indicated it was located at 66 High Street, whether this was also the address where the boys lived is unclear. Since finding James there, I have presumed that his elder brother may also have attended there previously and I have often wondered what subjects were taught. Sometimes you can get clues about that in the occupations recorded for some of the teachers, but many of them are just “teacher”, “schoolmaster/mistress” or “assistant schoolmaster”.

Anyway, having recently had some better luck with the search in FindMyPast for British Newspapers since they recently changed it I though I would have another try. And lo and behold!

Mount View Academy was established in 1828 by Elias Bray. He remained the principal until 1856 when he retired and Hugh Gawthrop became principal. But what did they teach? And what did it cost?

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According to in2013dollars a guinea was slightly more value than a pound, but more or less became a pound as we remember it in the pre-decimal world (although people still talked of guineas even in the 1980s! I remember my grandmother mentioning them). One hundred guineas in 1841 would be the equivalent now of almost £13,000, so 25 guineas for a years tuition including board would be around £3000. Interestingly in2013dollars also says that since 1841 the British pound has LOST 99.218% of it’s value, meaning that todays prices are 127.93 times higher than they were in 1841 and that today’s pound can only purchase .078% of what it could then.

That makes the cost of living crisis were are all in currently bite just a little more.

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Examinations at the Academy were held at the end of each term and were public, this makes me think they weren’t written exams, but more like recitals or spelling bees style. Parents and families were invited to attend and prizes were given. Often at the end of year events the boarders presented a gift of thanks (an inkstand, bowl, lamp) to Mr Bray.

I wonder, did James’ family take up the invitation to attend the examinations and celebrations? How did James travel back and forth at the beginning and end of each term. I don’t believe there was a railway that early, so a carriage or coach must have been the only option. Something to explore another time.

So, this was an interesting little foray into education. What an educated young man my great great grandfather was, and so pleased to see that my great great grandmother also had some formal education a long time before education became compulsory. It hasn’t helped me learn where or how the following generation was educated, but even if they were home schooled they should have all received a broad education from their parents knowledge.

Back to what I had started now, having been pleasantly distracted, and rewarded.

Best Dressed Doll 1930 at the 4th Annual Winter Show and Exhibition at the King Edward Barracks, Christchurch

My Mum has a tiny doll in a tiny antique pram which weighs not much more than a feather. Even as a child it felt fragile to me. A not to be played with toy.

There were other dolls from Mum’s childhood that became part of the doll family I had as a child. Darrell (who I renamed Carol) and Josephine, who had been her younger sister’s doll. These two were composition dolls manufactured by a mixture of glue with sawdust which was heavier and denser than papier mâché and easily molded. They had hollow bodies and moveable limbs and head thanks to some contraption inside the body which seemed like rubber or elastic bands and hooks. Their facial features and hair were painted, and they both had eyes that opened and closed if you laid them down to sleep. Josephine was a taller doll and could stand up – if you balanced her feet correctly. Being wood based they were susceptible to damage from moisture though.

This other even smaller and more fragile doll was made of celluloid and first belonged to Auntie Hilda, the youngest sister of Mum’s father.

Celluloid was first created in 1863 and is one of the first synthetic plastics created from wood products that included camphor and cellulose nitrate. Doll makers began experimenting as early as the 1870s. By the early 1900s celluloid dolls were plentiful. Earlier dolls were breakable and fragile made from china and bisque. Celluloid although inexpensive is flammable, so not perfect, and one would imagine there could have been tears with open fires and coal range stoves. Dolls continued to be molded with celluloid as late as the 1950s though the majority were made between 1900-1940.

Hilda, my great aunt, was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in the summer of 1914. She was the youngest child with four older siblings. They lived in Middleton Road on a 3 acre block which was part of the original Wharenui settlement. Her father worked for the railways and her mother, most likely assisted by the children, tended the land and home. They had an orchard with fruit trees and rows upon rows of raspberries as well as other vegetables and a cow which supplied milk and butter. I am sure they probably had chooks too.

In my quest to build knowledge of the lives of our forebears, to keep their memories alive, I often search digitised newspapers for snippets about them and clues about their day-to-day life. Recently, while searching to see what I might be able to glean about school life and other social activities of my grandfather and his siblings I came across a couple of pieces of information that seemed connected to the little doll as well.

I had not ever really thought about her doll and the history attached to it, other than that it had belonged to her in a bygone era. I don’t know if it had a name and it is so fragile, I can’t imagine it was ever played with as we, or our children play with dolls in more recent times. Hilda like most young girls in her generation and earlier generations was a knitter and a seamstress. Like her contemporaries she will have learned these skills from her mother from a very young age. 

Prize List, Needlework, Winter Show and Exhibition 1930 from Press, Monday 11 August 1930, page 17.

Hilda would have been about 16 at this time, was the doll bought just to be a model for her handiwork? Or was it a treasured childhood toy? I knew that when given to Mum the doll was dressed in clothes which may have been made by Hilda or perhaps her sister or mother. But I hadn’t given it much more thought than that. Now though? Was she wearing those items that had won Hilda the prize? Is that why she had been kept all these years?

Two entries from secondary school students for Hand-knitted baby's jacket; first prize to Hilda (perhaps made for her nephew). Three entries for Most useful article; Very Highly Commended to Hilda (I wonder what it was) and three entries for Best dressed doll; first prize to Hilda.

Can you imagine sewing or knitting these tiny items in a room unlit by electricity? The detail is incredible, smocking, stitched lace, embroidery. The knitting (feather and fan on the cape) must have been at least 2 ply on needles the size of toothpicks!

These days, although she still wears her original undergarments and booties, she has a new cape and bonnet knitted by Mum and a dress knitted in feather and fan found at a craft market or fair. Her original dress, cape and bonnet are showing a little wear and have been carefully packed away to save further damage. Some of the ribbon ties have not survived the close to 100 years. Recently she made a trip back to her hometown of Christchurch and spent a few days being tenderly restored so that her limbs were no longer loose. Maybe with a little luck she will be cherished for another hundred or so years perhaps within the family, perhaps in a museum collection.

Week 3: Out of Place #Ancestors2023

Does this mean putting something important in a safe place and then losing it because you don’t remember where that safe place was? Or is it more finding something unexpected.

I did have one of those occasions when searching the 1921 census for my great grandmother’s stepmother and her half-sister. This particular half-sister we weren’t even aware of until the 1901 census became available in 2003.

My grandmother told us that both of her grandfathers were married more than once. One twice and the other thrice. She told us the names of the children in the second marriage of her maternal grandfather, when one had died, how the other emigrated with his elder half-brother to the US, who they both had worked for and who they had married. Nana wasn’t aware of a 3^rd child in marriage number 2 who had died in infancy. I also can’t remember now if she knew the name of wife number 3, but I know we were not aware of a child being part of that marriage until we found the census. Nana didn’t meet any of these people though, they had all died or emigrated to the US before she was born – all except the surprise half aunt and the stepmother.

So after discovering her in 1901, we waited patiently for the 1911 census, looked for her on the 1939 register, found her death in 1991 and ordered the certificate. We discovered a photo of her as a child in an album taken to the US by her eldest half-brother. Then this time last year the 1921 census was released.

In 1901 and 1911 she was living with her widowed mother, who was taking in boarders and working as a housekeeper. When her mother died in 1936, they were still living together at the same address where they had lived since at least 1901. By 1939 she was a housekeeper herself. When she died in 1991 she was described as a retired housekeeper and (discovered just this minute) the undertaker was the son of the gentleman she was housekeeping for in 1939, still living at the same address!

But back to the 1921 census. I had expected to find her still living with her mother. But no. She was quite a distance away from home. In a different county. In a hospital. A homeopathic hospital. What type of conditions would they have treated? Could it have been Spanish Flu? Could it have anything to do with having had a child three years earlier? There is form for me to speculate about this – and maybe that would explain why she hadn’t been remembered by later generations.

There is something else going on here as well – a DNA match I can’t resolve. A close one who should be connected through the child of one of my great grandmother’s half siblings…like this lady. The father of our mystery match was born near the end of WW1, named for an uncle who had died 9 months earlier to parents who had been married barely 9 months before his birth. He had no other siblings for seven years. His documented father had fought in WW1, his mother lived down the street from my family. His parents while born in the same geographic location as my family, do not jump out as potential extra marital children – although they could be. But then where are the other matches with their families? The match’s mother was born in a completely different part of the country so doesn’t seem likely either. It has me completely lost.

Maybe there is another surprise that will unlock it. Great-great-grandfather had plenty of opportunity to have fathered other children – perhaps there are others yet to be found.

Maybe one day the DNA match will reply to a message and we will be able to work it out together.

But for now, I just can’t make it fit into place.

Green Fingers

The other morning, I checked facebook before I got out of bed to start my day, like I do most mornings. A post appeared in my feed packed with questions,

“Do you have an indoor houseplant that is a family heirloom? Or a memory of such a houseplant? Maybe a story about an ancestor and houseplants?” asked Blaine Bettinger, family historian and genetic genealogist.

Well, yes, I thought. I can answer yes to all those questions. As I was replying to the facebook post, my mind was working overtime – here was a great blog prompt.

My initial answer was to share that my mother and I have cared for my grandmother’s maidenhair fern between us since 1988. I don’t know how long Nana had had it before then, but I remember there being one at her home, on the bench or sulking in the laundry tub with a bit of water if it dared to look like it was going to give up the ghost, for most of my life.

As well as the maidenhair fern, there is an orchid.

Nana had bought it at an orchid show when it was in flower because she liked the colour. After it had finished flowering, it was banished outside, behind the trellis where it was a little protected from frosts. She never saw it flower again, but I rescued it from its spot behind the trellis before her house was sold. It has been repotted a few times in the ensuing 34 years and divided up and shared with my mother, sister-in-law and a cousin. Most years, particularly the most recent, it/they have flowered profusely.

But these early morning questions stirred up lots of other memories about plants and gardening.

Vegetable gardens have always heavily featured through the generations, most likely because that is just what you did to feed your family. My attempts to have a thriving vegetable garden have been half hearted and often fallen foul of location, soil and prevailing weather. At least one of my cousins though has a pretty spectacular vege garden. I think I just didn’t get that bit of DNA.

Nana, though loved gardening. She spent a lot of her time outside tending to it, and visiting local nurseries acquiring new seedlings, trees and shrubs to try. She loved roses and often ordered from the growers when she spotted one in a catalogue or at a public garden which took her fancy. Crimson Glory, Josephine Bruce, Queen Elizabeth, Peace…There was “Love in a Mist” (Nigella) in the front garden; violets, beautifully scented dark purple ones, covered a patch beneath some trees in the back corner of the garden. She loved to share her love of gardening, and the plants with us all. I remember seedlings arriving overnight on a Road Service bus from Hamilton, rolled up with a bit of soil in damp newspaper and packed into a box for Mum to plant in our garden after we had moved. She also gave me seedlings from her garden to start my own. I did have her Debutante Camellia for some years transplanting it from her garden to mine and then to Mum and Dad’s when I moved. But when they moved house, it didn’t move again as it had become too big to transplant easily.

Mum and Dad have also been avid gardeners, often starting with bare blocks, visiting nurseries, investing in plants suited to the climate and environment, natives and those which will attract the local wildlife. Within a few short years the bare blocks are transformed, and it is hard to remember how it all started. Mum, Dad and Nana often “took cuttings” from plants they saw overhanging footpaths in the street, or nurtured seedlings to cultivate and share with friends and family.

Lots of research in garden books and many visits to local nurseries to find new varieties of trees, shrubs and ground covers. I remember Dad planting a Gunnera in a shady spot once which became huge quite quickly. It looked like giant Rhubarb – but was much pricklier and definitely not a dessert option. There was a Pepper tree as well, not great for climbing but it did host brightly coloured fat as your finger Gum Emperor caterpillars most years.

Another tree brought after it was much admired in the garden at our Dr’s surgery was always known as the Dr Broad plant. (Stachyurus Praecox). It is deciduous and has hanging catkins in the early spring. You can see it's stunning autumn display in another photo below.

Nana had a cutting of a plant from her sister which liked the shade and Mum took a cutting from that plant as well and it has been moved to a couple of other gardens over time. Always referred to as the Auntie Laura plant, turns out it is a Chatham Island Forget me Not (Myosotidium hortensia)

I have mixed success with my own plants. Often it is because of poor choices – buying something that I like but isn’t suited to the climate or the situation. Currently though, I have a healthy looking bunch of indoor plants and I am nurturing some outdoors in the hope they will attract butterflies to the garden. I don’t have anything that is a family hand me down or seedling though – the downside of living in a different country I guess.

 

My daughter had two small trees growing in pots in Wellington before we moved. They too moved – to Mum and Dad’s new home where they were liberated from the confines of their pots. “Lemmy” her lemon tree has grown and fruited year after year – so much fruit it is hard to keep up, and her Fairy Magnolia has quadrupled in size and taken charge of its space covered in petite pink flowers every year. 

Nowadays she has a thriving garden on her balcony. She knows all their latin names and takes great care of them. The neighbourhood possums have a penchant for the flower buds though so there is a constant battle there. She also has some indoor plants doing well too. Her paternal grandmother had the magic touch with African Violets. She could grow them from a leaf and had them in an assortment of pots and containers growing and flowering profusely. Seems like she has that DNA too. 

 

                                               Not mine                                                      Mine

So, do you have any plants in your garden that have come from an ancestors or family members garden? What about a houseplant that is either the original or has been propagated from an earlier heirloom plant?

Do you have green fingers? Or are they like mine, bordering on a murky khaki colour?

Week 2: Favourite Photo #52Ancestors2023

I have been deliberating about photos for two weeks now, trying to pick one.

There aren’t truckloads of photos in our family. Not “old” ones. There are plenty of more recent holidays and adventures as a family as my parents took lots of photos and slides when were kids and to a certain extent that love of photography has been passed on - at least to some. A lot of digital images though, stored in the cloud somewhere or on phones and other devices. Not as easy to pick up and reminisce about.

This one, then, made the cut.

It is taken at Sumner Beach near Christchurch, New Zealand about 1908-1909, I am guessing, based on the ages of the children. Only one person looking at the camera, or at least in the general direction, and the others with faces turned or obscured by hats. Cave Rock and the pier are in the background.

The gentleman standing is my great grandfather, John Fuller. Every photo we have of this man, he is wearing a hat that shades his face. EVERY one! John was born in Christchurch in 1866, the second son of Julius Fuller and Maria, nee Horskins. He worked for the railways and for most of his employment was based at Middleton Station.

The children are his three eldest. Edith (Edie) the eldest born 1902, at the back looking at her father or toward Cave Rock, Frank (facing the camera) born 1904 and Albert (Bert) my grandfather born 1906, bending over studying the sand perhaps.

Who took the photo? Maybe my great grandmother?

The family lived in Upper Riccarton, in the Wharenui Hamlet. To travel from there to Sumner would have been a relatively long, bumpy, probably cramped tram ride. Possibly requiring a change of tram in central Christchurch to continue on the way.

Its hard to tell which season it is from their attire. No bare feet on the sand for those kids! But there is someone in the water down the beach a bit further.

Climbing Cave Rock was a popular pastime for those who made the journey to Sumner. There had been a Yard and Mast Arm on the rock since 1865 alerting ship’s captains to the conditions when crossing the bar to dock at Ferrymead or sailing around the heads to dock at Lyttelton. I imagine climbing the rock dressed in petticoats and long dresses, carrying a parasol might not have been easy.

The pier in the background is crowded with people strolling along its length, taking in the sea air. Toward the end of the pier you can see the roof of the Sumner Lifeboat Institution, along with a slipway. The building was built in 1898, but there had been life savers and lifeboats stationed there since the 1870s.

There would most likely have been tea rooms serving refreshments, a band rotunda and possibly swings and roundabouts near to the tram stop or in the small seaside village. There were definitely donkey rides. You can read more about them here.  I had never thought about them as being an Edwardian family until reading this, but they were, and I think from now on I will try to remind myself of that.

cropped and enlarged from original photo

Week 1: I'd like to meet #52Ancestors2023

More often to answer this question I would choose a brick wall ancestor, closer in time, but since I am still waiting for that wall to fall, I have looked further afield this time.

Who would I like to meet? This guy.

Thomas Davys, the elder, the younger, the even younger

Thomas Davys the elder of Milverton in the county of Somerset and his son Thomas Davys the younger are parties to an indenture dated “the second day of March in the fifth year of the reign of the Sovereign Lord George…” So when was that? And what is the indenture for or about?

George I ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 August 1714. If he is the Sovereign Lord George named in the indenture, then the fifth year of his reign would have been 1719.

This date ties in with the date of the marriage (about 1719) of Thomas the younger to Jane Helling/Hellings, the daughter of John Helling/Hellings of Raddington which is also referred to in the indenture. The indenture pertains to land, messuages and buildings in four parts making up the lease of the Hagleigh Tenement and to me is being divided as a marriage settlement with Thomas the elder retaining one quarter along with stipulated barley fields and use of the cider wring and mill.

At this time a Thomas Davys also owned the manor of Raddington, in a parish adjacent to Milverton where Hagleigh is. At British History Online digitised copies of “A History of the County of Somerset” and other counties are available to read free. There is a wealth of information about each parish including, geography, church history, local government as well as the history of any manors. For Raddington the history of the manor dates from 891 A.D. In their commentary it states that in 1718 James Waldegrave (later the 1^st Earl Waldegrave) sold the manor to Thomas Davys the younger. The Waldegraves had held the manor, or had interests, in it since the mid-1500s. James Waldegrave seems to have disposed of a number of land holdings around this time. 

Here is where it gets trickier, British History Online (BHO) also states that in 1719 Thomas the younger settled the manor of Raddington on his father – Thomas the elder. That has always seemed a bit out of order to me, why would a son be buying an estate and then gifting it to his father? Surely if he had the financial backing to be entering these sorts of transactions then his father would also have means? BHO cite a source but I can’t work out whether it is the indenture I have “read” and we have partially deciphered or a separate one. I am thinking there may be a separate document that has either been lost to time – or is lost to me at this point. I also think that they could be citing the Hagleigh Indenture and misattributing the intention. 

The descriptor for the indenture at The National Archives states that it IS for the settlement of three quarter parts of the Hagleigh Tenement in the parish of Milverton on Thomas Davys the younger and his wife to be Jane Hellings prior to their marriage. The length of the lease was three lives (99 years) determinable from the deaths of Thomas the elder his wife Judith (nee Burchell) and Thomas the younger. A note on the outer wrapping of the indenture claims that the leasehold was granted by Lord Lymington to the first Thomas Davys who came from Wales. Another Thomas? But when? The family seem well settled in Somerset in the mid-1600s, if not before. 

I would really like to talk to Thomas to determine just what the indenture is telling us 300 years later. The thing is, I’m not sure just WHICH Thomas I need to speak with, and I’m not sure if there might be more than one indenture I need to ask about.

Thomas the elder; husband of Judith Burchell and leaseholder of the Hagleigh Tenement since when? Thomas died in 1724, but his wife Judith lived to be 100 and died at Hagleigh Bridge in December 1770.

Thomas the younger; husband of Jane Hellings styled himself as “Lord of the Manor”. Pretty flash we all thought when we discovered him in our tree, then we discovered that when he died in 1783 he left no will and left a debt-ridden estate.

Thomas the grandson. As the eldest son Thomas inherited the manor and its debt from his father. This Thomas had studied at Balliol Oxford and was ordained in the Church of England. He had the Advowson of Raddington from 1749-1784 and two of his younger brothers also lived on the farms that made up the estate. Sadly Thomas died in March 1784 and the debt-ridden estate passed to his brothers James, George and Benjamin.

Here also BHO has conflicting information compared to the Clergy of the Church of England Database, with the order of clergy at Raddington. It would appear the brothers separated the Advowson from the rest of the estate after Thomas' death.

I have got a list of questions for the three Thomas’, and I am sure they would all have extremely interesting stories to tell. Maybe one of them would know about that "first" Thomas Davys from Wales as well.