First noticed on the census way back when we ordered microfilm to read at LDS family history libraries and then revisited when the internet and Ancestry were fledgling new options to research from afar.
We (my Dad, Mum and I) were trying to find out more about Mum’s maternal line and specifically my grandmother’s maternal line. In about 2001, we managed to reconnect with my 3rd cousin in the USA who was also researching this line (though it was her mother’s paternal line in her case).
Annie appears on the 1881census in Dudley. She was 15, listed as a niece of the head of the house, in transcriptions her name was recorded as Amnie. But who was she?
The head of the household, Henry James, was 64 a market gardener born in Leintwardine, Herefordshire. He was my great-great-great grandfather. Others in the household were his elder unmarried daughter Elizabeth who was a dressmaker and two grandchildren Albert and Laura Kelsey. Laura was my great grandmother and Albert was my 3rd cousin’s great grandfather. Their mother was Henry’s younger daughter who had died shortly after Laura’s birth. Perhaps Annie was a clue to help us make a step back to earlier generations. How did she fit in though?
Henry was illegitimate, his baptism on 17 August 1819 had only his mother’s name; Elizabeth James. For Annie to be his niece she had to be the child of a sibling, or of his wife’s siblings. His wife had another great surname - THOMAS! Her siblings all lived relatively close geographically but Annie’s place of birth on the census was Mold in Flintshire – not remotely close to the family as we knew it.
We purchased Annie’s birth certificate and discovered her parents’ names and that her father was a gardener, possibly on a farm or estate. I started trying to follow this family through censuses and baptismal records. I managed to follow the family back (and forward a little) through the next few decades. Although Annie’s father John mostly gave Leintwardine as his birthplace, his family seemed to be living close by in Mocktree near Kinton, Herefordshire. Was this the clue? Were the Richards family connected to the James family somehow. I wondered what the likelihood was that Henry’s mother had married after his birth. If she had and he had half siblings, he would be an uncle to their children.
Sure enough, Elizabeth James had married 12 July 1821 in Leintwardine, when Henry was about two years old, to John Richards. He was an Ag Lab at Mocktree. It was there that they raised their family of at least seven children, including Henry. Their son John was baptised 17 November 1830 in Leintwardine. On the 1851 census, John aged 20 was listed as a gardener, lodging with a family in the township of Brakes, Herefordshire not far from his childhood home. There are several estates and farms in the area where he may have been employed.
He married Catherine Stacey in Aston, Warwickshire on 18 March 1859. Catherine’s father was a Game Keeper on an estate near Meriden, Warwickshire and had held that same position for at least 20 years. Nothing is known about how they met, although there are many hypotheses that could be suggested. By the time of the 1861 census John and Catherine had one daughter and were expecting their second child. They were living in the Gardeners Cottage at Coton Hall near Alveley, Worcestershire. (Unrelated but interesting, turns out to be the ancestral home of General Robert E Lee of the American revolution fame).
Offley Francis Drake Wakeman inherited Coton Hall on his fathers death in 1855 but did not come of age until 1857. His uncle 2nd Baronet of Periswell Hall in Worcestershire managed affairs until he reached majority. His birthday was celebrated at Coton Hall and in Alveley. He sadly died aged 29 on 20 July 1865 at Coton Hall after exerting himself playing cricket. (Information from houseand heritage.org)
Perhaps his death, and uncertainty about employment was the catalyst for the Richards family move to Nercwys. Two months later, by 11 September 1865 they had relocated to Nercwys, Flintshire where Annie was born. Catherine died there on 1 February 1867 aged 25 from tuberculosis and John moved back to England with his four young children.
John remarried ten months later in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Whether he was living there alone or with the children is unknown, however to continue working it would have been more manageable had he been able to leave the children aged 18 months to seven years with family. John and his new wife Jane had seven children. The birth certificates of the first three give their place of birth as Gravel. I think this is a farm. Sometimes the location was given as Leintwardine and others as Downton. They were all baptised at Downton though. Both places (Downton and Gravel Farm) are very close to Brakes where John had been living in 1851 on census night. There are a couple of estates Downton Hall and Downton Castle very close to Gravel Farm. We can surmise that John may have been employed at one of these, or at Gravel Farm.
On census night 1871 the family were living in Ludlow itself at 97 Old Street. On that census, John is not home and Jane is recorded as the wife of a Gardener (absent). So far, I have been unable to find him, possibly at a place of employ. Shortly afterward they moved to Market Street, and by the time of the birth of their youngest son in July 1878 they were living in Caynham, Shropshire. John died at Hopton Wafers, Shropshire on 29 November 1879 from Febris Recidiva which is a tick-borne bacterial infection causing relapsing fevers. His death was likely the reason Annie was sent to live with her uncle in Dudley, as Jane seemed to have “rehomed” her stepchildren and moved to Nottinghamshire by the time the 1881 census was taken. Annie at thirteen or fourteen might have been just the help her Uncle Henry and cousin Elizabeth needed when they had just taken in the young grandchildren in May 1879 after the death of their mother.
Annie went on to marry John Henry Jolly in Walsall, Staffordshire in early 1887. They remained in Walsall for the rest of their lives and had a family of ten children, three of whom died within a month of each other in 1903. John Jolly died in 1925 and Annie in 1947.
Have
you come across Annie in your tree? Or perhaps some of her aunts, uncles or
cousins? I would love to hear from you.
