Category: Genealogy Posts

Facebook post #041 (Nov 2020)

A strange, sad story of coincidence for Remembrance week. As usual, I’m thinking of my schoolmaster gt-grandad Arthur Wheaver, who seems never to have been quite the same after returning from the guns of the Somme in WWI. And I’m thinking of my grandad John Squire, who served out East in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and wasn’t demobbed until well after the WWII had ended – and well after Mum was born. They emerged physically unscathed – but scarcely imaginable are their experiences.

This may be partly why, even when briskly exploring, I pause on passing a war memorial. Others I don’t walk past show up in the photos later, like the one at Knowle Church, Warwickshire. This is the church where my parents married, with John Squire present; Arthur Wheaver having apologised for not being able to make it on grounds of insufficient lifespan. Dad’s family was still close to Sutton Coldfield (post 24) but Mum was an incomer – the third generation of Yorkshire farming stock born in Surrey.

What we didn’t know until my recent round of research was that John Squire’s grandfather, John Traviss Squire, was not the only sibling to leave Yorkshire. By 1891, his sister Sarah was married to Alfred Harris, farming in Packwood nr Solihull, Warwickshire. In 1901, their son, John Bertram Harris (Mum’s grandad’s first cousin) was 17, a joiner’s apprentice staying with his John’s Sr’s widowed mother in Barnsley.

JBH tried to enlist for service in WWI three times but was refused. He eventually enlisted in the 16th Warwickshire Regiment, then volunteered to transfer to a ‘Special Company’ of the Royal Engineers.

It turns out that this was a euphemism for an illegal poison gas unit, formed in response to the German use of gas at the Somme. His fate too was obscured but it emerged that he had an accident while handling gas shells or cylinders. He was taken to the hospital in the port of Étaples, described by Wilfred Owen as:

“A vast, dreadful encampment. It seemed neither France nor England, but a kind of paddock where the beasts are kept a few days before the shambles … Chiefly I thought of the very strange look on all the faces in that camp; an incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England; nor can it be seen in any battle, but only in Étaples. It was not despair, or terror, it was more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look, and without expression, like a dead rabbit’s.”

John Bertram Harris didn’t make it. Perhaps you guessed that our farmer’s lad – who would do anything for the war effort – is commemorated on the war memorial outside Knowle church; also in the Soldiers’ Chapel inside.

Facebook post #040 (Nov 2020)

There are dozens more stories in the Larard quarter of my old-fashioned blog. Servants in illustrious households, working people whose paths crossed with the famous or who travelled the world, wealthy relatives who bought mansions of their own (pictured is Ladywood, Orpington – home of Henry Larard’s cousin, George Burrows). I even found a picture postcard on eBay sent by cousin Ruby Seymour to her daughter from Brighton in 1914.

One cousin on the Mousley side, Florence Bezer, married a gas fittings dealer in 1891, and they stayed in a lodging house in Holborn. It didn’t end well – Albert Flurscheim was German, and died in Utrecht in 1917. His family are interesting though. One of his first cousins was a prominent economist who turned around an important ironworks in Germany, built a railroad in Mexico, and died of depression when the Titanic sank. The other was Hermann Adolph Flurscheim, who emigrated to New York in the 1870s. He made his fortune, and is known to have helped victims of the Titanic disaster. His Fifth Avenue department store (pictured) apparently changed the face of retailing. Outlet stores and evening opening were amongst his innovations.

Facebook post #039 (Oct 2020)

Edith Ostlere (post 38) had a brother known as Abdhullah Mansur! The 1911 census has him living with a sister in Sidmouth under his birth name of George Bury, but an “explorer” by profession! Later, I found that he published an important book that year – “The Land of Uz” (next on my reading list). Then I found that he was suffering from TB at the time, and that he married his nurse from Westminster Hospital a couple of years later… in El Hudayah, Yemen. These days, it’s an important port both for humanitarian aid and for coffee – including for Starbucks.

It turns out that after obtaining a commission into the Warwickshire regiment, George had joined a rebel tribe in Morocco! But like his cousin Henry Mousley in Canada (post 37), his interests were scientific: his ornithological specimens and descriptions are at the British Library. Apparently his looks, build and command of colloquial Arabic were such that he could be accepted as a local. It also helped him to an official position with the boundary commission in British Aden. When he fell from favour, he persuaded the Ottoman Turks to let him continue his exploits in their half of Yemen! Commentators suggest that his successive books give unique insights into the lands and life either side of the border just before WWI – even if his forecasts are not altogether accurate.

George’s father Henry Cox Bury had died in 1884. His will, held by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, shows him a ‘coffee planter of Stratford, late of Ceylon’. A couple of years earlier he was quoted in the Tropical Agriculturalist “on a visit to his fine properties” (in Haputale). “There is far too much outcry over the falling-off in Ceylon coffee production… a turn in the tide must be approaching. It cannot, surely, be in the designs of Providence that the fungus [“Devastating Emily” coffee rust] should be permanent in Ceylon, any more than that the iniquity of slavery should continue to exist in Brazil. The latter is doomed, and so, we hope and believe, is the former.” Sadly, his forecast for Ceylon was no better than his son’s for Yemen later. Coffee was wiped out and Haputale has grown tea ever since.

Facebook #037 (Oct 2020)

A couple of weeks ago (post 35), I mentioned that my Gt Gt Grandfather, Henry Larard, married Fanny Mousley in Croydon in 1870. His mother was Harriett Little of the family who built and owned 24 Thames sailing barges, and whose nephew Ivo was a Flight Lieutenant on the ill-fated R38 airship (posts 15 and 17). Her mother was Rebecca Knight of the South London family described in post 33.

Fanny’s father was Thomas Moseley, a surgeon from Ellesmere, Shropshire (of a family rooted around Tamworth). He trained in London, and eventually moved to Croydon. I recently learned from the son of a Moseley, that it’s pronounced ‘Mouzley’, with the first three letters like ‘mouse’.

One of her brothers, William was a railway contractor, and I managed to piece together some of his history from multiple sources, which lined up with census records showing where he was living. He built the Ely and St Ives Railway, an extension to the Wolverhampton Tramways, the first phase of Derby Tramways, the extension of the (preserved) Bridport branch line down to the harbour, the (partly preserved) Skipton to Ilkley Railway, the Bourne to Saxby railway (including Toft Tunnel), the Weston-super-Mare branch and loop, and the Norfolk and Suffolk Joint Railway! Another brother went to the USA and his descendants tell me that the family were railway pioneers over there too.

William’s son, Henry, worked for the Ottawa-Toronto Railroad. In fragile health during WWI, he became a full time naturalist. At his death in 1949, Henry Mousley had published 131 scientific articles in Canada, the United States, and England, including 32 on species of orchids he had discovered. ‘His contribution to knowledge of the flora of Quebec is especially remarkable when it comes to orchids in southern Quebec, where he studied their morphology, ecology, and distribution’. He left photos and specimens to national museums and universities in Canada.

Pictured:

• Derby Tramway c 1895 (Valentine postcard)
• Lobb Ghyll Viaduct on the Skipton-Ilkley Railway (TJBlackwell on Wikipedia)
• Amerorchis Rotundifolia, discovered by Henry Mousley
• The Cambria Inn, Ellesmere, opposite where Thomas and Rebecca may have lived (my photo, by chance)

Facebook post #036 (Oct 2020)

Why Swindon? For twenty years now! This one is mainly for my children and other close relatives on Dad’s Dad’s side.

So Facebook has started to hide some of my posts, even from me. I’ve found them all and backed them up, but if I reference an old one, and you can’t see it, please let me know and I will tag you.

I mentioned last month that I will be surveying my findings geographically, and I thought a quick summary of Why Swindon? at this point might also tie things together for family members

In Dad’s Dad’s line: John and Margaret James were in Oxfordshire, not too far from Swindon. But, for reasons unknown, their son William – an agricultural labourer – moved (after Hastings!) to Sutton Coldfield (near Birmingham), where he married local girl Rebecca Weaver, who already had a son, John, by father unknown (see post 24). He brought John up but he kept his surname.

John married Caroline Barnes of a well-off Staffordshire farming family, her parents probably moving in the same circles in Worcestershire and Staffordshire. But Caroline’s father didn’t inherit and became a Post Office clerk and had moved into Peaky Blinder country. They still had some pretensions though, it seems – there is a rumour that John and Caroline met at Middleton Hall where he worked as a gardener, and she read novels in French!

The Lamberts (post 27) and Cartwrights (from whom Captain Webb was descended)(post 31) were Shropshire families, as were the Wilsons. Richard Barnard (from the Essex family introduced in post 28), ran the pub in Shropshire pictured in post 23, after he had married Elizabeth Wilson. But they married in London, and their daughter was born in Guernsey! However, she was brought up close to Daniel Lambert in what is now Telford. This couple also married in London and travelled around – showing up in Barrow-in-Furness, before he took up teaching in Dorking, and then relocated to a school in Sutton Coldfield.

My Great-Grandad Arthur Wheaver (son of John and Caroline) was also a teacher, and married Daniel’s daughter Alice. My Grandad married a Larard (post 35), and they moved just far enough outside Sutton for my parents to meet – my other Grandad having taking up a post at Birmingham University. Dad worked locally but moved to South London (post 33) and then to the Bucks/Northants border, for work. I got a job, house and wife not far away, and commuted to London for a while. This gave me the experience to eventually relocate to Swindon for a job at Nationwide.

(The blog has a summary tree of all members of each part of the family in Chapter 4, and Chapter 5 includes a directory for each part of the family of where hundreds and people were living – and what they were doing – in 1939.)

Facebook post #034 (Sep 2020)

New! In around 380, a chap called Cunedda from Clackmannanshire was redeployed by the Romans from Hadrian’s Wall to put down a rebellion in what is now North Wales. When the Romans went home, he stayed – and stayed in charge, founding the royal house of Gwynedd. Wikipedia documents the next 23 generations of his descendants, to Cadwgan ap (son of) Bleddyn of Powys, born 1075. (Cunedda is one of those people who doesn’t need a surname, which is just as well, as they didn’t exist). By this time Powys was in the hands of the Marcher Lords, and the chieftains had lost most of their power.

Just a little earlier, the Saxon king, Edward the Confessor had given the scattered settlement of Weaver in Cheshire (see post 24) to a Norman nobleman (he liked Normans). The nobleman took the name of the locality and become a De Wever. This is recorded in the Domesday Book; Papal Bulls from a couple of hundred years later show that the land was still in the family. A large timber-framed manor house known as Weever Hall became the seat, with other family at Weaverham (as post 24). Some of the younger sons moved out to Shropshire and Herefordshire, forming a distinct branch of the family.

Around the end of the C13, Cadwgan’s 4th great-grandson, Ieuan ap Madoc married a daughter of the Herefordshire Weaver family, and named his son Humphrey Weaver. This marked a shift away from a Welsh identity at just the time the nation was subdued.

Two hundred years later, Thomas and William Stanley led their army to the decisive intervention in the Battle of Bosworth which brought the Tudor dynasty to power, and probably a change of religion for the Weaver family. The Tudor monarchs were, incidentally, also descended from Cunedda. The Stanleys’ big brother John married the heiress of Thomas de Weever, and became master of Weever Hall. Meanwhile, The Herefordshire Weavers were still in the debatable lands.

In 1716, Samuel Weaver was born in Bewdley: tentatively, I think that he was my 7th great-grandfather. This week, Ancestry has updated my likely ethnicity, and for the first time, Wales and the marches are shown as separate and significant. The ‘h’ in my surname came in later (John Wheaver, the gardener – see post 24).

In 1620, Clement Weaver had been born in Glastonbury. He was an anglican, not a puritan, but he joined the Great Migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He married a Quaker, fell out with the puritans, and moved to Rhode Island. Here he became a member of the House of Deputies, and founded a dynasty of his own. His farm stayed in the family for two hundred years. Other than those who anglicised Weber, every American Weaver is a descendant, and there was always a tradition of Welsh descent in every branch. Indeed, like those of many other names, it is probably one global clan.

In the early C20, the family decided to explore their history and deputed people to England to investigate. In 1928, they compiled a meticulously researched genealogical book. A newly unearthed digital copy provided the backbone for this post.

In 1986, Sigourney Weaver, of this parish, saved the world.

Facebook post #033 (Sep 2020)

I’ve finished my survey of in-laws and of third cousins! To round off, I’m working on a geographic summary… Why on earth are Croydon and Barnsley so magnetic?

This week, Robert Harris announced his new WW2 novel, V2, featuring the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. This was the biggest thing ever to hit South London! (see my photo from last year). The area had been sporadically bombed by plane but the rockets brought terror. When I was young, a relative told me of the rough sound doodlebug V1’s made – and the fear when the fuel ran out and the engine stopped. But the V2 was supersonic and no one heard it coming. One hit Woolworth’s in New Cross and killed 168 people.

There were dozens of the Knight branch of my family living all over Norwood (Croydon and Lambeth) at the time – right underneath the onslaught. I worked out that 344 flying bombs fell on houses in their neighbourhoods (CR, SE17+ and SW2/16 postcodes), and 712 people were killed. 1600 houses were destroyed in the Borough of Lambeth, and 35,000 were repaired during the war. Properties were requisitioned and people billeted in Lambeth Rest Centres, and other people’s homes. Among the streets badly impacted were Tivoli Road. Gipsy Hill and St Clouds Road – all of them home to the family. So too was Knights Hill Square, where the charcoal burners’ cottages that had survived interwar housing development, were destroyed. St Luke’s Church, scene of dozens of family baptisms and marriages, was damaged; nearby Georgian homes destroyed. Norwood Cottage Hospital was damaged; so was the Cemetery.

Knight’s Hill was named after the family but my closest relatives came in from Dorking. Chawton House was the seat, and the owner gave £50 towards the fleet to defeat the Spanish Armada. Our Solomon was a house builder though, rather than a house inheritor. On the whole the family was decidedly working class, the southern equivalent of the Barnsley Green’s in my ‘Kes’ post (#016). There were tram conductors, window cleaners, factory hands, clerks, carmen (think ‘white van man’). There were road repairers: one drove a steam roller for the council and I found a pic of the team. I think I detect a little pride in occupations like ‘public librarian’. One of the family worked as a porter at a railway station serving Crystal Palace.

I mentioned before (post #010) the importance of the Crystal Palace (see our page). There were six million admissions to the Great Exhibition (see our page), including train loads of working class Londoners (part of the Charles Dickens ‘heterogeneous masses’ (see post #021)). I managed to obtain a copy of the catalogue of thousands of the 100,000 items exhibited, including the Coalbrookdale swan fountain (see post #027). After Paxton moved the Palace to Sydenham, enlarged it, and set it in its own extensive pleasure grounds, the Crystal Palace dominated the area. The self-esteem of the area rocketed, and it provided considerable local employment. Not only was there motor racing but, vitally, the oldest and finest football club in the world was established at Crystal Palace.

Less than three years before the war broke out, the Crystal Palace burned to the ground. It is still mourned. However, the prehistoric monsters survived (see my photo), the National Sports Centre was built, and my parents took me to the concert bowl for firework music in the early 1970s.

A whole lot more on the blog.

Facebook post #032 (Sep 2020)

My grandmother was a Larard: the Larards were refugees. Generally remembered as Huguenots – the Calvinists murdered in their tens of thousands by Catherine de Medici in 1572 – they may actually have been Flemish or Walloon refugees from the same period, probably weavers!

Somehow, our family identified Mountsorrel near Loughborough as a place offering suitable employment and religious freedom. Then they moved to Derby where they were involved in the nascent silk industry. From there one son moved to Hull. In 1812, he, Thomas Larard, set up a watchmaking business in a building I photographed when I visited the city, not knowing it had been ‘ours’. Since then, I have managed to buy the sign from the successor shop which was run by the family in the centre of Hull from 1871 to 1975. This shop was established by Thomas’s son Frederick. The photos are of Frederick, the two shops, and the sign.

Frederick was a remarkable man who spoke up for the workers and ratepayers of Hull, and was elected mayor in 1904. One of his interests was in improving the local tram system: he visited Hull fair to buy the strongest horses, and Stockton to investigate electric trams. He symbolically laid the first electric tram line in Hull in 1898.

The Larard name has not disappeared from the shopping streets around Hull. In 1896, Frederick’s son founded the Larard estate agency chain, which is still going strong.