Before we move on from Dad’s Dad’s family, a brief reprise of the family’s A-Lister. Captain Matthew Webb was a genuine Victorian hero once he achieved the first swim of the English Channel 125 years ago this week. He was brought up in one of our stomping grounds, in what is now Telford, and he learned to swim in the River Severn. He travelled the world with the Royal Navy before taking up swimming as a career, of sorts. The picture is a scan of his calling card, which I managed to acquire a few years ago. Somewhere in the family, we should still have his Stanhope Gold Medal (presented for attempting to rescue a man overboard from the SS Russia), and an award for his most famous feat. Lots more on the blog.
I’ve finished the five generations of the tree – it’s quite a book now. For context, I’m looking at the in-laws and following through to living generations, even though I won’t be publishing the latter.
So, I mentioned that one of my gt-grandfather’s sisters married a literary editor (“Faber Book of Ballads” and so on). At the time, I couldn’t find out where he was in 1939. Now I’ve discovered that he was in the Special Operations Executive – but only that he operated roughly in North Africa. After the war, he was a professor of English: his son remembers him remarking once that he’d quite enjoyed his time as a ‘professor of terrorism’.
That part of the family also owned a Scottish engineering company whose cranes helped build the Forth bridge. Another of gt-grandad’s sisters also married into an engineering family. One of their companies started out making silver-headed walking sticks, and developed into providing all the batons for the UK military marching bands.
Under the able direction of my third cousin, they have entered into a joint venture with Pearl Percussion and the Royal Marines (!) to supply the drums too! And, apparently, they run the online shop for the Gurkha brigade!
Aero-engines played a big part in my Grandad‘s working life. He worked for the Air Ministry at the start of the war, and had to drive around the Midlands inspecting Merlin production, probably at the 21 shadow factories operated by Alvis. One was the peacetime producer of Tizer soft drinks! I remember a story about him stopping at a phone box to warn a test facility of his own approach. Health and safety rules prohibited running more than 8 engines at a time: as he arrived he would hear 8 engines slowing up, leaving the permitted 8 running. As he drove away, he would hear the second bank starting up again.
Grandad mistrusted seatbelts as he once had cause to leap across to the passenger seat when a tank transporter (pic1) took out the driver’s side of his car, during the blackout.
At some point, he transferred to Alvis, who were making and repairing Rolls Royce V12 Merlin engines (pic2), as used in Spitfires and Lancasters (pic3). This was in a new 1936 plant intended first for French engines under licence, and then for their own Leonides (pic4) design. The men from the Ministry changed their minds on both designs, and instructed that the first batch of Leonides engines be destroyed. Grandad had them bricked up at the back of the factory instead…
I know that he went to work in Coventry in April 1941 after it had been flattened in the air raids, and I’ve heard the stories about people working in roofless factories with salvaged machine tools to keep production going. But I was surprised to see – last year at Coventry Transport Museum – an enlargement of a German reconnaissance map (pic5) clearly showing the aero-engine factory. I subsequently discovered that the Germans were able to eliminate the plant with extraordinarily precise and destructive bombing. I then found out that the bombing was better than the intelligence: the target had actually been the car plant, the aero-engine plant having been built in the empty space to the north! So that put pay to production of the lovely pre-war cars like the Speed 25 (pic6) and Silver Eagle.
In 1944, the government allowed Alvis to start planning for peace, and the Leonides was dusted down.Those early Leonides units were used in the first hovercraft (pic7) and early helicopters (pic8). They did eventually make cars after the war but the main business was armoured cars (pic9). When BAe had finished with the name, Alvis was bought by enthusiasts, who started on a mission to complete the batch of cars (and engines) originally planned for 1939 (pic10)!
My photos, gathered over the last couple of years.
Alvis Cars, Factory, Leonides Engine and Applications
‘Weaver’ is not a trade name – in Britain, that is Webb. Rather, the name is thought to derive from the River Weaver in Cheshire. Pictured is the church at Weaverham, possibly the centre of the universe… before it shifted to Sutton Coldfield. The C15 Thomas De Wever sounds quite grand but in Sutton (C18-C19), we were agricultural labourers, living in ‘Blabbs’ – which seem to have been a group of shacks named after the sound of the brook running past.
My 3rd gt-grandmother Rebecca can’t have had an easy life – she seems to have fallen out with her father (who ended his days in the Aston Union Workhouse), and was a domestic servant from the age of 12. She never revealed the father of her son. However, she met a good man, who took them both in, and she lived until the age of 95. My grandad’s sister remembered her well and was therefore able to pass on mid-C19 reminscences of the time long before cars! Her son worked his way up to head gardener at Middleton Hall (pictured) near Tamworth, which is now (normally) open to the public.
His children did well, and remained in the Sutton area. But the big surprise has been the number of coal miners in the family that have shown up in the research. There were small coal seams around Tamworth and West Bromwich, but the family followed the work to the West Yorkshire coalfield, and, by 1939, many of Rebecca’s brother’s descendants were to be found in the Wakefield area. Others remained in the industrial West Midlands – including Small Heath of ‘Peaky Blinders’ fame, or emigrated. The Barnes family remained well-off farmers in Staffordshire. One family member was an engine driver, another wrote a book on satire! (Use the menu to find the family pages).
Facebook post #009 (Apr 2020 – 006-008 were progress updates)
OK, so we’ve reached the great war in the family history… the Great Chocolate War. With the younger sons in Mum’s family trying to make a living away from the family farm in Yorkshire at this time, and Dad’s moving out of Peaky Blinder country, it’s not too surprising that some of the cousins ended up working in chocolate factories. (See George Powell and Leonard Lambert). This was the start of cocoa for the masses. Who would win, Rowntree, or Cadbury?
The picture is of a tin in my collection, the result of a collaboration between the Quaker chocolate company founders, reluctant to support the actual war effort, but also reluctant to offend the Queen. It was a luxury Christmas present for troops in the Boer War.
By WWII, chocolate was considered an essential household food.
Doing a bit of family tree. I have Fred Parrott, son of Fred Parrott, and Ernie Parrott, son of Ernie Parrott. Different parents, same grandparents. Then we have brother Major Parrott who married a Frankie. The there is Frank Parrott, son of Frank Parrott, son of Frank Parrott, and a Frank Parrott son of George Parrott, and a Dick Parrott, son of Harry Parrott and all three have different parents but the same grandparents – but (obviously)(partially) different from Fred and Ernie’s. It turns out that the middle Frank, has a brother-in-law called Frank Collier. He also has a nephew called James Parrott, and a brother called James Parrott, and a brother-in-law called James Collier. This James Collier is the son of James Collier who married first Ann Astbury, and then Alice Mary Astbury. James Collier Jr married a different Alice Mary. Their son Sid only had three grandparents as James and Alice were half first cousins. One of these was my 4th great aunt, Martha Barnes, since you ask. And they were all farmers in C19 Staffordshire.
Update (Jan 2020): Even better – one of the Parrots could fly. Third cousin x2 James Edward Parrott got his Royal Aero cert in 1948 in a Miles Hawk at Wolverhampton Aero Club. Here’s one I snapped last summer (a Hawk, not a Parrott).
