The Higgler

Moving on from my grandfather's mother's family, to my grandfather's father ... my great-grandfather, Thomas Faulkner. The fifth of nine children of Charles Faulkner, a farm labourer, and his wife Sarah (nee Mead), he was born at Stewkley in 1864. On the 5th November 1890, aged 26, he married Lizzie Ellen Smith at the Primitive Methodist Chapel, listing his occupation as "higgler" - a small time trader.

Thomas began life in intense poverty. The 1870s and 80s were a time of agricultural depression, and farm labourers like his father Charlie lived hand to mouth. My Dad remembered his grandfather telling him that as a child they were literally starving and only skimmed milk kept them alive. Thomas was an ambitious and able young man with a strong and determined personality. He started as an egg boy, selling eggs door to door. By 1901 he was listed in the census as an egg merchant, and in 1911 was a general dealer. On my grandparents marriage certificate he describes himself as a farmer. In fact, he had built up a successful family business as an egg wholesaler, and by 1911 was living in the village's sixteenth century Manor House.

Thomas and his wife had eight children, and he was able to make provision for all of them. One son inherited the egg business, and he secured farm tenancies for the others. My grandfather and his younger brother Albert began by sharing a farm, until Albert was able to move on to one of his own. This was the first generation to move away from the traditional names that occur repeatedly in the family over previous generations - Richard, William, John, Thomas, Ann, Sarah, Elizabeth and the like. Thomas and Lizzie Ellen choose newly fashionable names for their children - Henry, Leonard, Rupert, Harold, Albert, Ethel, Alice and Clara. (Not a change for the better, in my opinion!)

Thomas's marriage is the first reference I can find to this branch of the Faulkner family as Methodists, and from then onwards they were strongly connected to the Chapel. All their children were baptised there and in my childhood they were all still pillars of the Methodist community. The baptism records indicate that Thomas's brothers Richard and Edmund were also Methodists by this time, although it seems unlikely their parents were. I can guess why, but that will have to wait for my next genealogy post.

Sartorial Elegance, Victorian Style

Thanks to readily accessible parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, I can trace some branches of my family back many generations ... but mostly these are the only details I have, and there is nothing to add to the bald facts.

Back in 2007, I made a lucky find on the internet - a photograph of my great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Bates, taken c.1870.

Although the photo was a random find, I'm 99% certain it is the right Thomas Bates, father of my grandfather's maternal grandmother, Sarah Smith. He was baptised in 1806, so would have been in his early sixties when this picture was taken.

Thomas was one of ten children of a William Bates and his wife Mary, though four of his siblings died during childhood. Three died within days of each other in 1802 - two girls aged nine and three, and a five year old boy - presumably of some infectious disease. On February 10th 1834 he married Ann Dimmock. The 1851 census lists her as born in the adjacent village of Soulbury, but the 1861 census says she came from Kings Langley in Hertfordshire. Dimmock is a common family name in Stewkley, so I'm guessing she had relatives there. My great-great-grandmother Sarah was the oldest of their six children. On the 1861 census Thomas is listed as an agricultural labourer, as were his two eldest sons. His wife Ann and daughters Sarah and Elizabeth were all straw plaiters.

The smock Thomas Bates is wearing in the photo was standard wear for agricultural labourers in the village at that time. Smocks were only replaced by trousers when machinery became common on farms and the loose fabric became a danger.

The Bakehouse Smiths

(Dear reader, if genealogy is not your thing, please do skip these posts. There are times when I use my blog as a catch all for information I want to keep. This is one of them.)

Before moving on to another genealogy post I need to fill in some background information. Virtually every relative of my father's from 1800 onwards was born in the village of Stewkley, in North Buckinghamshire. Both his parents were from Stewkley families, and there are a number of surnames that crop up on both sides of the family tree and in different generations - Faulkner, Mead, Chappell and Keen in particular. All were stalwarts of the Primitive Methodist community, and they tended to intermarry. Not surprisingly, relationships get complicated.

Looking back at Daniel and Sarah Smith jogged my memory and I remembered another Daniel Smith from my childhood. This second Daniel was another grandson of the old couple, and my grandfather's first cousin. Searching the 1911 census I found this:

• Thomas Smith, age 35, baker
• Elizabeth Smith, age 35
• Louie Smith, age 13
• May Smith, age 10
• Daniel Smith, age 8
• Annie Smith, age 6
• William Smith, age 3
• Nellie Smith, age 2 months

The father, Thomas Smith, was the younger brother of my great-grandmother Lizzie Ellen. My grandfather was close to his Smith cousins, and I remember three of them quite clearly - Aunt May, Uncle Dan, Uncle Bill and Aunt Nell. The name Aunt Louie rings bells, but I don't remember her, or Nell or Annie. We must have been particularly close to this branch of the Smith family because our families were doubly related. Uncle Dan married a Kathleen (Kath) Chappell, and Aunt Nell married Kath's brother, Edward (Ned) Chappell. Kath and Ned were my grandmother's first cousins. Those intermarriages!

I don't know at what stage Thomas Smith became the village baker - maybe the bakery grew out of Sarah Smith's grocery? - but it it was a trade inherited by his son and son-in-law. When I was a young child at school in Stewkley, I used to spend Friday afternoons at the "bakehouse", as it was known. School finished an hour early on Fridays, and I used to walk down to the bakehouse and spend some time there until my mother collected me. Aunt May's husband, Uncle Fred - I remember it being Uncle Fred, rather than Uncle Dan - would be mixing the dough and putting it to rise, presumably for an early morning baking. He would give me my own small piece to shape and take home. I treated that dough like playdough, and had a wonderful time with it ... but it meant my poor mother was always presented with an unattractive grey blob of dough, which she was then expected to cook. The bakehouse must have been a relic of the past even then. There were two rooms: the bakery, with a huge round electric mixer, wooden work surfaces and an old-fashioned brick oven; and the shop, with a red tiled floor and wooden shelves for the bread. After Uncle Dan and Uncle Fred died, the bakery closed. It was the end of an era. This picture of Uncle Dan delivering bread, c.1930, also comes from Stewkley in Camera. Like the photo of his grandparents, it was given to the editors by his wife.


I also remember Aunt May and Uncle Bill with particular affection. When I was a small child Aunt May used to look after me sometimes to give my mother a break. For some reason I was particularly attracted to her carpet, and used to like to crawl underneath it. When I was not much older than Little Cherub I was bridesmaid to her daughter, another Kathleen. Uncle Bill worked first for my grandfather on his farm, and later for my Dad. He married the local schoolmistress, but sadly they never had any children. After he died we inherited his dog Judy, a Border collie with a beautiful temperament. Every so often she used to take herself off to visit his widow, a mile or so up the road. Strangely, I had never clicked that Uncle Bill and Aunt May were brother and sister until I found them on the census.

Daniel and Sarah Smith

Jumping back a little from my last genealogy post to Daniel and Sarah Smith, the grandparents with whom my grandfather Rupert was living in 1911 ...

Daniel Smith was baptised at Stewkley on 17th November 1833, and he married Sarah Bates there on 24th October 1861. Piecing together the census and baptism records, it looks as though Daniel was the eldest of seven children of James and Sophia Smith. His father was a farm labourer, and in 1861, aged 61, he was listed as "infirm". In the same year Daniel's twenty year old brother John was also an agricultural labourer, and Daniel himself a drillman - another farm worker, but one who operated a seed drill. All the women in the family, from 59 year old Sophia down to 11 year old Sarah were straw plaiters, an occupation which deserves a post of its own.

In 1881 Daniel was an agricultural labourer. His household included six children - five sons ranging in age from two to seventeen, and a 16 year old daughter, Elizabeth, who was working as a general servant. Another daughter, Minnie, was born a couple of years later. It was Elizabeth ("Lizzie Ellen") who married Thomas Faulkner and became my great-grandmother. When my grandfather was born in 1897 it was Sarah Smith who registered the birth, and there is a note on the birth certificate saying she was present at the time. In 1901 Daniel's occupation is given as "labourer (own account)", as opposed to his 22 year old son Albert who was a "farm labourer (worker)". Sarah, now 62, was a grocer on her own account. Only the two youngest children, 22 year old Albert and 18 year old Minnie were still living at home.

I don't have any photos of my own of relatives further back than my grandparents, but I made a lucky find in a book of old photos from Stewkley, Stewkley in Camera - a picture of my great-great-grandparents Daniel and Sarah Smith. (There appears to be an error in the caption - it gives her maiden name as Elizabeth Bates, when it should be Sarah Bates.)

The Case of the Missing Grandfather

I promised some posts about my 1911 census trawl - if random bits of geneology do not interest you, please feel free to skip them.

I'm starting with my grandfather, Rupert Faulkner. Born in Stewkley in Buckinghamshire in 1898, he appeared on the 1901 census as a three year old. I know his name and age, his parents' names and those of his long list of brothers and sisters (he was one of eight children), so he should have been easy to find. I searched under his name and place of birth - not there. Another search turned up his father, Thomas Faulkner, so I viewed the household transcript. This is what I found:

• Thomas Faulkner, age 46, general dealer
• Ellen Faulkner, age 46, housekeeper
• Henry Faulkner, son, age 19, (no occupation listed)
• Ethel Faulkner, daughter, age 18, dressmaker
• Alice Faulkner, daughter, age 16, help in home
• Leonard Faulkner, son, age 15, assist father
• Harold Faulkner, son, age 11, at school
• Albert Faulkner, son, age 9, at school
• Clara Faulkner, daughter, age 7, at school

No Rupert. Just a gap between the 11 and 15 year old brothers.

Fortunately, Rupert was not a common name even then, so I did another search for all Rupert Faulkners. There were only two in the entire census - one 12 year old living in Staffordshire and a 13 year old living in Winslow district, Buckinghamshire. The latter had to be the right Rupert, so I checked the transcript:

• Daniel Smith, age 77, farm labourer
• Sara Smith, age 74, work at home
• Rupert Faulkner, grandson, age 13, school

So that was something I never knew. Of course, it could just be that he was spending the night there on the date of the census, but it seems more likely that Grandpa spent part of his childhood living with his grandparents. I'm sure a pair of extra hands and thirteen year old legs would have come in very useful for an elderly couple, and like most large families in those days his own home would have been full to bursting. Sending the boy to live with his mother's parents for a while would have been a good arrangement all round.

1911 Census

Every now and then I dabble in genealogy. My mother at one time did a lot of research into both her own family and my father's. I am trying to fill in gaps, and also to find out more about Tevye's family.

In the UK censuses are held every ten years and the returns are made public after 100 years. The last census to be made available (for 1901) was the first to be accessible online, which is a boon to genealogists. Now ... ta da! ... the 1911 census has been released early and can be found here. Some counties are still being transcribed and a few pieces of sensitive information will not be available until the official release date of 2011, but there is plenty there for any one interested in British genealogy to get their teeth into.

I bought some credits, dug around for a while, and have made a few interesting discoveries. More to come later, I hope, when the the returns for North Yorkshire are available. I'm planning to share what I have found in some genealogical posts over the next week or two.

A little family history

My brother is sorting out old photos and papers left by my Dad and bringing them over to me in my self-appointed role of family archivist. He brought the first batch today, which included a soldier's issue New Testament from the First World War - kind of timely after my musings about the Great War last week. The cover is stamped "Active Services" Testament, 1916, and inside the cover it is engraved as follows:

Lord Roberts's Message to the Troops
25th August 1914
"I ask you to put your trust in God. He will watch over you and strengthen you. You will find in this little Book guidance when you are in health, comfort when you are in sickness, and strength when you are in adversity."
Roberts 1914

On the flyleaf is written

235566 Pte.Thos.Mead A.S.C. Remounts
Presented by the Friends of Avonmouth Soldiers Institute
Christmas 1916
Fight the Good Fight.

Inside the back cover is a "Decision Form" signed to say that he accepts Christ as his personal Saviour, and the following inscription:

I cannot see beyond the moment
Tomorrow's strength comes not today
But Blessed Lord I trust Thy keeping
For just the next step on my way.
- suggested by my dear wife, Jan 20th 1917

Thomas Mead was the husband of my father's Great Aunt Rose. "Aunt Rose" brought up my grandmother, whose mother (Aunt Rose's elder sister) died when she was little more than a baby, leaving four daughters and a husband who, from what I have been able to piece together, promptly went off to London to join his brothers there and left the four girls behind. I am not sure when Thomas died, but I am fairly certain he survived the war. Aunt Rose lived into her nineties and I remember visiting her for tea - oddly it was the only place where I would drink tea, which I never liked as a child. Maybe I found Aunt Rose too venerable to refuse? She was very much the family matriarch, and there was some consternation that I was not named Rose in her honour. I can't imagine myself as a Rose, but I did redress the balance slightly by using it as Little Cherub's middle name. The family were staunch Methodists, so the signed statement of faith comes as no surprise.

The Lord Roberts of the inscription was the Grand Old Man of the British Army, a hero of the Anglo-Afghan War of the 1880s and former Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army who died late in 1914. He was a personal hero of Rudyard Kipling, who wrote no less than three poems about him, including this memorial - Kipling was shown visiting "Bobs" in last week's TV movie, My Boy Jack. The historian in me just loves making these connections!

After a bit more Googling I worked out that Thomas Mead must have been serving in the Army Service Corps Remounts Service, which trained and supplied horses and mules to the rest of the Army. According to this summary at its peak in December 1917 the Remounts were training 93,847 horses and 36,613 mules, obtained by compulsory purchase. This gives another nice literary connection: War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, a rare piece of historical fiction for children set during the First World War that tells the story of a horse requisitioned for army service.