Jabez Brown (1843-1921) Railway clerk of Litchurch, Derby

Each Saturday night the indefatigable Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings posts an article inviting fellow Geneabloggers to join him in some fun, usually a little exercise on the lighter side of family history. This informal but regular event is a popular one in the geneablogging community but, for one reason or another, I haven't yet got around to participating. This weekend's challenge is what Randy calls "Ahntenafel Roulette," and I thought I'd get in on the act for the first time, albeit a few days late. So here goes.

The assignment is as follows:
(1) Divide the age of your father (or the age that your father would be if he were alive today) by four, and round the result off to the nearest year,
(2) consult your Ahtenafel using your favourite genealogy software to find the ancestor whose number corresponds to the answer arrived at in (1), and
(3) write three things about this ancestor in a blog article.


Five-generation Ancestor Chart for C.D.B. Payne
with Ancestor number 20 (Jabez Brown) highlighted
My dad would have been eighty-one this year, which produces a rounded integer of 20. Because of the regular and reproducible manner in which the Ahtenafel system works, number 20 is the paternal grandfather of one's paternal grandmother, one of eight possible great-great-grandfathers. In my case his name was Jabez Brown and he has been one of the more elusive of my Victorian ancestors.


Jabez Brown (1843-1921) of Rosehill, Derby
Undated paper print (109 x 159 mm) by unidentified photographer
Image © and collection of Charles Bernard Payne
My aunt Bunnie believes that the subject of this photograph is our ancestor Jabez Brown. The reverse of the undated print is annotated:

Mother died Aug/14
Father died 14 Feby/21

I have recently established from the acquisition of their death certificates that Jabez Brown died on 14 February 1921 and his wife Annie died on 18 August 1914. The implication is that Jabez and Annie's son Frederick Montague Brown (1870-1960) - my great-grandfather - wrote the inscription referring to his parents, and it therefore seems very likely that the subject of the photograph was Fred's father. This rather battered paper print is the only known surviving portrait that we have of Jabez and, sadly, we have none of his wife at all.


What I knew about Jabez, c.1999
Ten years ago I would have struggled to find three solid facts concerning Jabez Brown about which I could write authoritatively. My original information came from my father, who as a "steam age," pre-computer/internet family historian had created a card index system to document and rationalize the family history. Some of his material about the Brown family had originated with his cousin Gillian through correspondence in the 1990s. All we knew about Jabez was his name, that he worked for the railways, and a possible death date. As he died some years before my father was born, my dad had no first hand knowledge of him, and didn't recall his mother speaking much about her grandfather either.


Jabez Brown and family, 14 Rose Hill St, Litchurch, Derbyshire
1881 Census-As Enumerated Microfiche: NA Ref. RG11-3402-14-21
Image © and courtesy of the LDS Church
Those of you who have been researching for over a decade or so may recall the microfiche version of the 1881 Census (produced by the Federation of Family History Societies in conjunction with the Genealogical Society of Utah). A kind fellow genealogist found Jabez and family and extracted the information for me that he was born in Dent (Yorkshire) around 1843, that he was married to Annie, with whom he had four children, that they were living at 14 Rose Hill Street, Litchurch (near Derby) and he was working as a railway clerk. And that was about it. From the birth places of their children I deduced that they had previously lived in Nottingham and Lincoln. I wondered if he had moved around while working for the railways, as Lincoln and Nottingham were both main line stations of the company Midland Railway, which had its headquarters in Derby. However, I had no real evidence to work with.


Jabez & Annie Brown, 50 Sale St, Derby, Derbyshire
1901 Census NA Ref. RG13-3219-134-19-125
Image © The National Archives and courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk
Ten years later and things have changed considerably, mostly courtesy of the internet and the improved means of genealogical research that it has enabled. I now have images of the original census sheets for the census every decade from 1851, when Jabez was still living with his parents, until 1901 - see image above - by which time his own children had all left home.


Certified copy of marriage certificate for
Jabez Brown & Annie Hazard, 8 October 1865,
St Peter-at-Arches, Lincoln
Image © and courtesy of the General Register Office
I also have Jabez Brown's birth, marriage and death certificates, all obtained from the General Register Office using their certificate ordering service and reference numbers from FreeBMD. The census and BMD information alone has provided an excellent framework of dates and locations on which to hang the story of his life. I would find it very difficult to restrict myself to only three things that I now know about him, so I won't bother to hold back in sharing the picture that I've built up about Jabez and his family.


Dent village & St Andrew's church, Cumbria
Image © Steven Watson and courtesy of his Flickr photostream
Jabez Brown was born in the small and picturesque village of Dent, situated in the West Yorkshire dales, on Tuesday 18 April 1843. He was the youngest of ten children of a sawyer William Brown (1795-1867) and his wife Dorothy née Parrington (1797-1858). By the time of his birth his two oldest brothers had already married and left home, although they were still living nearby in the village. Then, in the late 1840s, the entire Brown family moved, lock, stock and barrel to the town of Lancaster. I don't know why they moved, but I can surmise that it was for economic reasons - most internal migrations in mid-Victorian England were towards better employment prospects. Presumably the town of Lancaster was booming and needed plenty of sawn timber, and a skilled sawyer was no doubt in more demand than in a small Yorkshire village.


View Brown family migration in a larger map
Click on the yellow buildings for details of their movements
By 1861 Jabez (aged 17) and his older sister Margaret were living with their widowed father at 3 Upper Robert Street in Lancaster. Jabez is shown in the census working as a railway clerk, and it is presumed that he was employed by Midland Railways which, according to contemporary trade directories, served this Lancashire town.


Silk map of Midland Railway Network, undated
Lancaster, Lincoln, Nottingham & Derby highlighted
Image © and courtesy of The Roy F Burrows Midlands Collection Trust
Some time during the next four years Jabez moved to Lincoln (Lincolnshire), which was also on the Midland Railways network. He married Annie Hazard (1835-1914) at St Peter-at-Arches, Lincoln in October 1865; the marriage certificate shows his occupation mnerely as "clerk" and states that he was living at 15 Park Street. Their first son George was born at Lincoln in January 1867, but between then and 1870 they moved to Nottingham.


Ryehill Cottages, Kirke White Street East, Exchange, Nottingham, June 1973
Image © Reg Baker and courtesy of Picture the Past
Image Ref. NTGM009920
They lived at number 18 Rye Hill Cottages, in a close on the south side of Kirke White Street, Exchange Ward, and that is where Annie gave birth to twin boys named Christopher Dickenson and Frederick Montague Brown (my great-grandfather) on 17 April 1870. The actual building where they lived was probably one of the Victorian terraced houses shown in the photograph above, taken a century later, just before they were demolished under a 1970s clearance scheme. It was located in the former King's Meadow area, not far from Nottingham's Midland Railway station. The census of a year later shows Jabez again working as a railway clerk. A daughter Maggie and another son John Henry were born in 1872 and 1875, but sadly the elder of the twins Christopher died in late 1872, aged two-and-a-half.


Junction of Rose Hill & Madeley Streets, Litchurch, Derby, c. 1980
Image © John S. Grant and courtesy of Picture the Past
Image Ref. DRBY002084
Some time in the twelve months prior to November 1880, the Brown family moved to Derby and into a house at 14 Rose Hill Street, Litchurch. Jabez again described himself to the 1881 Census enumerator as a railway clerk.


The former Brown residence, 50 Sale Street, Litchurch, Derby
Image © and courtesy of GoogleMaps
Click on image for interactive Streetview version
In June 1887 Jabez Brown stood unsuccessfully for election for the post of Relieving Officer with the Derby Board of Guardians (The Derby Mercury, 22 Jun 1887). The Derby Borough Electoral Registers show them living at the Rose Hill Street address until October 1887, after which they moved to 50 Sale Street, also in the suburb of Litchurch and only a few blocks away. By census night of 5 April 1891 all three sons - George (23), Fred (20) and John (15) - had become railway clerks too! This was the last census that would find all of the family together in one house. George married a year later and moved to Station Road, Borrowash (just east of Derby). Fred married my great grandmother Edith Newman Miller at Mugginton in 1894; they settled first at 18 St Giles Road, Pear Tree, Derby, and in the early 1900s at 121 Crewe Street, Normanton. John became a commercial traveller and moved to Nottingham, where he married prior to 1901. It is not known what happened to daughter Maggie Brown.


Derby Union Workhouse, Uttoxeter New Road, Derby, c.1908
Postcard by Frank W. Scarratt
Image © and courtesy of Picture the Past
Image Ref. DRBY001173
Annie Brown died at 60 Holcombe Street, Litchurch on 18 August 1914. Jabez's death certificate shows that he died on 14 February 1921 at Boundary House, Derby. Boundary House was the former Derby Workhouse in Uttoxeter Road. After 1948 it was known as the Manor Hospital, and it was where my grandfather died in 1975 too. I can remember my father telling me that it still had all the old connotations of being the former workhouse, and my grandfather had a dread of going in there when he got sick.

Instead of restricting myself to three things that I know concerning my great-great-grandfather Jabez, I'm going to list three things that I still want to find out about him. The first of these concerns some Crimean War medals that my father recalled seeing in the Brown family household when he was a boy - that is, the family of his maternal grandparents Fred & Edith Brown - together with clasps for several of the battles. He didn't know who had earned them, but presumed it was a member of the Brown family. Sadly, nobody seems to know what has happened to them. The Crimean War took place between 1853 and 1856, when Jabez was aged 10 to 13, and it seems rather unlikely that he was the one, unless he was perhaps a drummer boy, but who else in that branch of the family could it have been? What happened to the medals, and who earned them? I hope to answer that question one day.


Nottingham Road Cemetery, Derby
Image © Daniel Richardson and courtesy of Geograph.co.uk
Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
The next thing I'd like to know is where Jabez and Annie Brown are buried. The location seems likely to have been the Nottingham Road Cemetery in Derby, about which I have written previously, since several other of my Derby family were buried there during that time frame. Created in 1855, it was the first municipal cemetery in Derby and is still used to this day. The cemetery registers are kept on site, but sadly they don't appear to have either an online presence or an email address. Perhaps they are wary of the flood of enquiries such a move might precipitate.

Lastly, I'd like to able to confirm that Jabez Brown's employer from the early days in Lancaster until his retirement was indeed, as I have always assumed, Midland Railways. An article in The Derby Mercury in June 1887 stated that he had "been a collector on the Midland Railway for 25 years," giving a start date of around 1865, when he would have been about 22 years old. However the 1861 Census, taken four years earlier, also showed him working as a railway clerk. In January this year, my cousin Lynne Tedder from Alberta sent me some photocopied Midland Railway staff records dating from 1881 to 1906 for George William Brown which she had very kindly obtained on a visit to the National Archives at Kew, London. However, she could find nothing for William's father Jabez or William's brothers.

References

Midland Railway Staff Records for George William Brown, 12 Feb 1881 to 14 Mar 1906, National Archives, Kew, London, NA Ref. RAIL 491/1068, Courtesy of Lynne Tedder

Derby Borough Electoral Registers 1877-1900. Derbyshire County Record Office, Matlock, Derbyshire, England. Accessed on microfilms from the LDS Church Tauranga Family History Centre

1881 Census-As Enumerated Microfiche from the LDS Church Courtesy of Alan S. Flint

General Register Office (GRO) Index to Births, Marriages & Deaths from FreeBMD

UK Census 1841-1901 Indexed images from Ancestry.co.uk

19th Century British Library Newspapers from Gale CENGAGE Learning
- The Derby Mercury

Slater (1869) Royal National Commercial Directory of Cumberland, Lancashire and Westmoreland from Ancestry.co.uk

The Workhouse web site, & the Osmaston Road Workhouse, Derby, Derbyshire

Seddon, Peter (2007) Nottingham Road Cemetery - Derbeians at Rest. Bygone Derbyshire.

A mystery marriage in Barton-under-Needwood - Epilogue

In Part 1 to Part 7 of this story, I described Nigel Aspdin's and my successful investigation into the identities of five people in a wedding portrait by William Farmer of Barton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire (shown above), and the location of this and two other carte de visite photographs. As part of that discussion I gave something of the background to the Smith and Hoult families. To round off the story, I would like to report on my research into what happened to the members of the two families after the wedding.


Rectory Farm & St Mary the Virgin Parish Church, Weston-on-Trent
from the Trent & Mersey Canal, 26 September 2007
Image © 2007 Brett Payne
Jacob Botham Smith and his wife Mary Ann settled initially at Rectory Farm, near the village of Weston-on-Trent in southern Derbyshire, where their only child, a daughter Mary Hardy Smith was born in about April 1870 and christened at the parish church on 7 May.


1871 Census: Rectory Farm, Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire
National Archives Ref. RG10/3552/141/5/27
The census of 1871, taken on the night of Sunday 2nd April, found Jacob, Mary Ann and daughter Mary aged eleven months at home at the Rectory Farm. Jacob is described as a "farmer of 300 acres employing 5 men and 5 boys" so it must have been a fairly substantial operation. Also living in the household are two teenage girls, working as domestic servants, and three of the male farm servants.


Rectory & Glebe Farms, Weston-on-Trent
Source data - 1:25,000 Scale Colour Raster
Image © and courtesy of Ordnance Survey Get-a-map
F. Wright's Directory of South Derbyshire for 1874 includes the following listing under the village of Weston-upon-Trent:

• Smith Jacob Botham, farmer, Glebe Farm

Presumably the family moved the few hundred metres from Rectory Farm to Glebe Farm (shown on the current OS map above) between 1871 and 1874. Both properties were probably been leased from Sir Robert E. Wilmot-Horton, Baronet, who is listed as the principal landowner of the parish in Kelly's Post Office Directory of Derbyshire for 1876, as well as lord of the manor. The same directory lists the chief crops in the largely loam soils of Weston-on-Trent as "half grass, half arable." In January 1878, Jacob B. Smith was sworn in as a member of the Grand Jury at the Derbyshire Epiphany Sessions in the Derby Crown Court [Source: The Derby Mercury, 9 January 1878].


1881 Census: Glebe Farm, Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire
National Archives Ref. RG11/3386/122/6/31
On Sunday 3rd April 1881 Jacob and Mary Ann were living at Glebe Farm; Jacob is described as farming 286 acres and employing four men and four boys. The servants living on the farm included a dairy maid. Rather strangely their daughter Mary, then aged ten, was not shown at home and I haven't been able to locate her in the census anywhere else.

Mary Ann Smith's death was registered at the Shardlow Register Office in the first quarter of 1885. I presume that she was buried in the churchyard at St Mary, Weston-on-Trent, although I have not been able to check the parish registers. She was only fifty years old.


1891 Census: Glebe Farm, Weston-on-Trent, Derbyshire
National Archives Ref. RG12/2201/27/13/64
On Sunday 5th April 1891, the widowed fifty year-old Jacob was living with his daughter Mary at Glebe Farm. No details of the farm size or number of employees were provided by the census enumerator, but there were seven servants living at the farm, including a housekeeper.


The Derby Mercury, Wednesday, January 11, 1893; Issue 9288.
Less than two years later, Jacob Smith decided to retire from farming. The Derby firm of auctioneers, Cumberland & Sons, inserted the following advertisement in the newspaper:

THE GLEBE FARM, WESTON-ON-TRENT, NEAR DERBY
(3 minutes' walk from Weston-on-Trent Station, Midland Railway)Messrs. CUMBERLAND and SONS are instructed by Mr. J.B. Smith (who is declining Farming) to SELL by AUCTION, on MONDAY, February 6th, 1893, the whole of his LIVE and DEAD FARM STOCK, viz.-
107 Beasts,
60 In-lamb ewes or theaves,
8 horses, pigs, poultry, Farm Implements, Tackle, &c.Lunch by Ticket 10. Sale at 11.30.
Particulars in future papers and catalogues.

The Derby Mercury, Wednesday, February 8, 1893; Issue 9292.
A report on the sale published in The Derby Mercury gives some idea of the farming operation, as well as the respect he had earned amongst the local farming community in the 25 years or so that he had been living there.

STOCK SALE AT THE GLEBE FARM, WESTON-ON-TRENT.Although it cannot be said that the agricultural prospect has materially improved of late, except as regards the weather, great interest was shown in this sale, held at Weston-on-Trent on Monday, and an unusually large attendance of country gentlemen, agriculturists, stock dealers, and butchers assembled at the place of sale. Doubtless the hopes engendered by Spring, and the prevailing opinion that prices hace now touched the bottom, the nearness to a good railway centre, the acknowledged usefulness of the cattle and horses to be sold, combined with the popularity of the owner, Mr. J.B. Smith were all instrumental in calling together one of the largest companies seen at a local stock sale for some years. A capital lunch was provided, to which over 500 persons did justice, and here, as in the sale yard, most satisfactory arrangements had been made under the direction of the auctioneers, Messrs. Cumberland and Sons. The sale commenced with the farm implements, waggons, tackle, dairy utensils, &c., which, being in trim order and modern, were quickly disposed of, and the live stock was then dealt with. Before proceeding, Mr. Cumberland said it was almost superfluous to impress upon his audience the sterling character of the lots he had to dispose of that day, both in cattle and horses. Mr. Smith's reputation and judgement were sufficient guarantee for any praise that he might bestow. The Shropshire inlamb ewes and theaves first came under the hammer in lots of five. They were a very fine flock, and made from 58s. to 63s. apiece. There were over 100 beast, which came up in capital form and condition; incalves realised from 15l. to 22l, barren cows 10l. to 14l., heifer yearlings 13l. to 15l. the pair. Calves 2l. to 2l. 10s. Fat bullocks 15l. to 21l. 5s. Fat heifers 17l. to 25l. 5s. Fat cows 19l. to 23l. Two bulls made 22l. 15s. and 21l. 5s. respectively. A good deal of interest was shown when the horses were trotted out. They were all of a very useful stamp, and eagerly bid for. Traveller, bay gelding, made 24½ guineas; Captain, black gelding, 28gs.; Jack, black half-legged gelding, 29gs.; Poppett, brown mare, 26gs.; Weston Blossom, bay shire mare, served by Harold, 60gs.; Berry, black shire mare, 62gs.; Florence, black shire mare, 29gs.; brown nag mare, 45gs. These concluded a sale that was in every way considered highly satisfactory, and as the company dispersed the general hope and expression was that Mr. J.B. Smith would experience many years of health and happiness in his well-earned retirement.

1901 Census: High Street, Castle Donington, Leicestershire
National Archives Ref. RG13/3204/61/5/34
In early 1899 Mary Hardy Smith, too, died at the age of twenty-eight. Her father retired to Castle Donington, Leicestershire, where he was shown living on the High Street - with three servants - on 31 March 1901. Subsequent directory entries demonstrate that he remained living at "The Hawthorns" in the High Street until his death in late 1915, aged eighty six.

Since their only daughter died at a young age without having married or had children, Jacob Botham Smith and Mary Ann née Hoult would have no surviving descendants. However, both had several brothers and sisters and numerous nephews and nieces.

• Joseph Botham Smith (1829-1915) married Jemima Bancroft (c.1840-1913). They farmed at Draycott Fields near Wilne and had six children.
  
• Elizabeth Botham Smith (1831-1912) married Charles John Storer (1828-1891), a Derby grocer and chandler.
  
• James Hardy Smith (1836-1928) married Jemima Marples (c.1836-1901) and farmed at Alvaston. They had no surviving children.
  
• John Hardy Smith (1838-1920) married Fanny Margaret Smith (c.1849-), with whom he had five children. Although originally a farmer, after his marriage they moved to Leicester, where he was a leather merchant.
  
• Margaret Abigail Hoult (1841-1901) married James Archer a farmer of Hoon Hay and Brailsford, Derbyshire. They did not have any surviving children.
  
• William James Hoult (1843-1900) married Hannah Newcomb (c.1847-1896) and farmed initially at Cranage, Cheshire, where their only son was born in 1870. In the 1870s they moved back to Barton-under-Needwood, and farmed at Tucklesholme Farm. James Newcombe Hoult (1870-1940) became a brewer's clerk, married Mary Ann Bruxby (c.1872-1916) and lived nearby at Efflinch; they had at least three daughters.
  
• Louisa Georgiana Hoult (1847-) married Edward Etches (c1816-), a cheese factor from Derby, and had three children.
  
• John Abell Hoult (1849-) married Fanny Archer (c1850-1929) and, after farming at Upper Blakenhall with his father James until the latter's death in 1882, moved to Newbold Manor Farm, north-east of the village of Barton-under-Needwood, in Dunstall parish. They had at least seven children, including a son Albert James Hoult (1883-) who served on the parish council in the late 1890s and early 1900s, and purchased Fulbrook House on Captain's Lane, Barton-under-Needwood in 1933. His son William John Hoult (1916-2000) also served on the parish council from 1952-1976.
  
• Joseph Emmanual Hoult (1851-) married Carolina Victoria Archer and settled in Cheadle, Staffordshire, where he was a chemist. They had one daughter.
  
• Constance Emily Hoult (1853-) married Charles Henry Hess, manager of a chemical factory; they settled in Hampstead, London.

... and that's it. I think I've done this one to death now, and will move on! I hope you've not found the journey too tedious.

Post Script

Many thanks to Michael Spencer who kindly checked the Weston-on-Trent parish registers in the County Record Office at Matlock for me. I now know that Jacob Botham Smith and Mary Ann Hoult were married by the rector Thomas Wadham at Weston-on-Trent on 22 February 1870 by licence, and that the witnesses present at the ceremony were Joseph Botham Smith, James Hardy Smith and Jemima Smith (two brothers and a sister-in-law of the groom).

When Mary Hardy Smith was baptised at Weston-on-Trent on 7 May 1870, the following was written into the margin of the baptism register:

Chas John STORER,
Elizabeth STORER,
The Mother Apr 5 1871

Mike states that similar notations elsewhere in the register specify the named individuals as sponsors of the child. I'm not sure what the sponsors would be in this context - perhaps something like godparents. I suspect that this means that on 5 April 1871, her mother asked the parish clerk to make the additional notation in the register that Charles John Storer and Elizabeth Storer had assented to become her daughter's sponsors. CJS and ES were, of course, the child's paternal aunt and uncle.

Mary Ann Smith née Hoult was buried at Weston-on-Trent on 12 January 1885, her place of residence at the time of her death, aged 51, being shown as Rectory Farm.

References

J.G. Harrod & Co.'s Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Staffordshire, 1870, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
F. Wright's Directory of South Derbyshire, 1874, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
E.R. Kelly's Post Office Directory of Derbyshire, 1876, from Ancestry
Kelly & Co.'s Directory of Derbyshire, 1881, from Ancestry
Kelly & Co.'s Directory of Derbys, Leicestershire & Rutland, and Nottinghamshire, 1891, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
Kelly & Co.'s Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland, 1899, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
Kelly's Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland, 1908, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
Kelly's Directory of the Counties of Derby, Nottingham, Leicester & Rutland, 1912, from Ancestry
Kelly's Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland, 1916, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
The Derby Mercury, in 19th Century British Library Newspapers, Digital images online from GALE Cengage Learning
UK Census 1841-1901 indexed images from Ancestry
Barton under Needwood Parish Council History on the Barton-under-Needwood Community web site

A mystery marriage in Barton-under-Needwood (Part 6)

James Hoult (1803-1882) was born at Church Broughton in Derbyshire, son of a shopkeeper. He settled at Swadlincote in South Derbyshire around 1828 where he operated a bakery and grocer's shop. He married Abigail Abell (1815-1874), daughter of Lullington farmer Richard Abell, around 1832. In 1842 James Hoult, perhaps with assistance from his father-in-law, started farming on a property of some 280 acres at Rangemore, near Tatenhill, across the county border in Staffordshire. By this time they had three daughters, and another three daughters and three sons were born at Rangemore before they made a second move some nine years later to Upper Blakenhall Farm near Barton-under-Needwood.


Advertisement from The Derby Mercury, 24 March 1847
A sale notice for stock, farm equipment and household effects at Upper Blakenhall appeared in The Derby Mercury of 24 March 1847. Presumably the Hoults moved in not too long after the property had been vacated by the previous tenant.


1851 Census: Upper Blakenhall Farm, Barton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire
National Archives (NA) Ref. HO107/2012/368/34/122
Image © The National Archives and courtesy of Ancestry
The census taken on the night of Sunday 30th March 1851 appears to have caught the Hoults in mid-move. Their eldest daughter Mary Ann, then aged seventeen, was obviously regarded as pretty responsible, as she was installed with nine year-old younger sister Margaret Ann and a servant in the new house at Upper Blakenhall. James and a pregnant Abigail - she would give birth to a fourth son in about August - remained with two more children and a couple of servants at Rangemore, presumably winding up affairs. The other children, perhaps to keep them out of the way during the upheaval, were staying with Abigail's brother John Abell farming at Coton Park in Derbyshire.


A Cottage in Needwood Forest, 1790, by Joseph Wright (1734-1797) of Derby
Image © Derby Museum & Art Gallery & courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Upper Blakenhall, a separate farm to that of Blakenhall Manor, was probably part of the Wychnor (or Wichnor) Estate, home of the Levett family, and was situated on the southern margin of what had been the huge 70,000-acre Royal Forest of Needwood, celebrated by Derby's well known romantic artist Joseph Wright in his 1790 painting, Cottage in Needwood Forest (shown above). However, the agricultural enclosures which were enacted in 1803 and completed by 1811, although strongly resisted by many including the poet F.N.C. Mundy, resulted in its deforestation with only a small few patches remaining today. By the mid-1800s, the denudation was well under way - indeed, the Hoult's previous farm at Rangemore was one of those created by this process.


Extract from the First Edition of the One-inch Ordnance Survey Map, 1834-1891, showing Upper Blakenhall Farm & Barton-under-Needwood
It seems likely that James Hoult was a lessee of Upper Blakenhall, rather than a freeholder. They were to remain living there for over three decades until James Hoult's death in 1882, and not only would it have come to be regarded as the family home but they, too, would have undoubtedly have left their mark on the property. The amount of land which they leased varied over time, according to census data, from 232 acres in 1851, to a maximum of 247 acres in 1861, then 192 acres in 1871 and finally 212 acres in 1881.


Farmland and Park Piece Plantation, near Upper Blakenhall Farm
Image © Copyright Cris Sloan and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence, Courtesy of Geograph.co.uk
Kelly's 1868 edition of the Post Office Directory of Staffordshire describes the countryside in the parish of Barton-under-Needwood as, "exceedingly fertile, and in a high state of cultivation, studded with numerous farmhouses ... a great portion is fine pasture and meadow land ... The crops are wheat, beans and barley." A map produced by Gerald Carey in his book on Barton parish shows the area occupied by Upper Blakenhall Farm as "mainly arable with some cattle," and it is likely that this predominance of crops over livestock doesn't represent much of a change from what it was a century and a half ago. The Derby Mercury reported on 15 October 1862 that:

Mr. Dickenson held his 12th monthly sale of fat and store stock, &c., at the Bowling Green Inn, Burton-on-Trent, on Monday se'nnight. There was a very large show of beef and mutton of first-class quality, and a considerable attendance of butchers and farmers. The stock was supplied by the following gentlemen ... Hoult, Blakenhall.

The 1861 Census shows James Hoult employing four labourers, including daughter Margaret as a dairy maid, son William as a shepherd and daughter Catherine as a house servant. Mary Ann Hoult was still living at home, and presumably helped on the farm, although she is not shown with an occupation. Her sister Ann was living and working in Lichfield, where she was apprenticed to a milliner, while another sister Sarah Jane was at boarding school in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire.


Advertisement from The Derby Mercury, 10 May 1864
In June 1864 Upper Blakenhall Farm was offered for sale by auction. Although it is not clear who bought it, or indeed if a sale was effected, the advertisements in The Derby Mercury, which appeared for four weeks prior to the sale, are useful since they detail the actual properties occupied at that time by James Hoult:

• Blakenhall Farm, 182a. 0r. 4p.
  
• Ryelands and two Row Meadows, 19a. 3r. 20p.
  
• Cote Closes, with Buildings and part of Allotment, 28a. 1r. 18p.
  
• Damford Weir Meadow, 6a. 3r. 39p.

This amounted to a total of 238a. 3r. 1p. (1 acre = 4 roods = 40 perches) which presumably James Hoult continued to lease.

Mary Ann was not the first of James and Abigail Hoult's children to marry. Their eldest son William James Hoult (1843-1900) had married Hannah Newcomb in 1868 in Cheshire, and by February 1870 was probably operating the 184 acre dairy farm at Cranage in that county, where he was certainly living at the time of the census in April 1871.

Living at home with James and Abigail in 1870-1871 were four of their children:
- Ann Botham Hoult (1835-1872)
- Louisa Georgiana Hoult (1847-)
- John Abell Hoult (1849-)
- Constance Emily Hoult (1853-)
Mary Ann's other siblings were living further afield:
- Margaret Abigail Hoult (1841-1901) was living at Hoon House, Hoon, Derbyshire, where she was housekeeper to a farmer, James Archer, who she later married in 1874.
- Sarah Jane Hoult (1846-) was in Over Whitacre, Warwickshire, also working as housekeeper to a farmer James Archer, who she later married.
- Third son Joseph Emmanual Hoult (1851-), their first child born at Upper Blakenhall and now aged twenty, was apprenticed to a chemist in the High Street, Burton-upon-Trent.

Mary Ann Hoult's husband-to-be Jacob Botham Smith (1840-1925) was born at Aston-on-Trent, where his father Jacob Botham Smith senior (1800-1864) was a butcher and farmer. His three older brothers Joseph Botham Smith (1829-1915), James Hardy Smith (1836-1928) and John Hardy Smith (1838-1920) were also farmers, with properties at Draycott, Weston-on-Trent and Aston, respectively. He also had a sister Elizabeth Botham Smith (1831-1912) who was married to Derby grocer and chandler Charles James Storer (1828-1891).


The married couple who we are trying to fit into this wedding portrait were:

• Jacob Botham Smith, aged 29, and Mary Ann Hoult, aged 31

I have demonstrated that there were certainly no shortage of male family members to be present at the marriage ceremony and reception party, but we should also investigate the likelihood of which of them were actually there. In summary, the males most likely to be present were, in order of decreasing age:

• James Hoult, aged 67
  
• Joseph Botham Smith, aged 40
  
• James Hardy Smith, aged 34
  
• John Hardy Smith, aged 32
  
• William James Hoult, aged 26
  
• John Abell Hoult, aged 21
  
• Joseph Emmanual Hoult, aged 19

Since the marriage took place in the groom's home parish of Weston-on-Trent, it is probable that some of his family would be present at the ceremony. If the reception did take place in the bride's home at Upper Blakenhall - a possibility suggested earlier in this article - the wedding party would have needed to travel there from the parish church at Weston-on-Trent, a distance of about 20 miles (32 kilometres). Some of the Smith family may also have accompanied the happy couple to the bride's home for the reception, but the Hoult family would surely have been present in force. The journey would probably have taken several hours [Source: Yahoo Answers] in a horse-drawn carriage, suggesting that they would not have arrived at Blakenhall until the afternoon or the following day.


Estimating ages from photographic portraits is always tricky, particularly with early cartes de visite. However, it is a process that one often has to attempt in the course of researching old photographs, and I shall provide some provisional ages for this one, in order to try and match the participants with the family concerned.


1. The Groom is seated on a chair to the right of, and slightly behind, the bride, perhaps to accomodate the large skirts of her wedding gown. He has short hair with a slightly right of centre-parting, short sideburns, and looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties. This could well be Jacob Botham Smith, who was aged 29 at the time of his marriage.


2. The Bride is dressed in a white wedding gown with veil and is carrying a bouquet in her left hand. She is seated more or less at the centre of the group, and her being slightly forward from her husband gives the appearance that she, rather than her husband, is the primary subject of the photograph. She looks to be around the same age as her husband, i.e. in her late twenties or early thirties, although the harsh white light reflected from the wedding gown, together with the fact that she has her eyes facing somewhere in front of the photographer's feet, has made it difficult to see her face very well. Since Mary Ann Hoult was thirty-one when she was married, it would also fit rather nicely.


3. The Youngest Male in the group, standing on the left, is probably in his late teens or early twenties. He has both of his hands resting lightly on the shoulders of the groom, seated directly in frot of him. Often, this would have been arranged by the photographer to suggest that there was some relationship between them, but might not necessarily have been the case. Jacob Smith didn't have any younger brothers, so I suspect this was one of Mary Ann's two youngest brothers, John Abell or Joseph Emmanual Hoult, aged 21 and 19, respectively.

N.B. The rather vacant expression in his eyes is due to a technical photographic quirk, rather than any zombie-like qualities of the subject. Albumen and collodion emulsions used in early photographic processes had poor sensitivity to certain wavelengths of light, and in particular extra sensitivity to the blue end of the spectrum, which could result in some rather strange effects such as that seen here. Photographers often retouched their subjects' irises as pencilled dots on the negatives to make the portraits a little more realistic.


4. The man standing in the middle appears to be the Oldest Male. He has a fine moustache and long sideburns or Dundreary whiskers, and hair which is perhaps thinning somewhat on top. I would say that he is in his thirties at least, perhaps even early forties. None of Mary Ann's brothers were that old. It could, however, be one of Jacob's three older brothers, aged between 32 and 40.


5. The fully Bearded Man standing on the right is probably in his mid- to late twenties or early thirties. This could be Mary Ann's brother William James Hoult, aged 26, or the youngest of Jacob's three older brothers John Hardy Smith, aged 32.

One of the questions that occurs to me at this stage is why the wedding group should include this particular selection of family members. On refelection, however, it is clear that this portrait, or indeed the group of three cartes de visite, should not be considered as a complete set. Almost certainly they were originally part of a larger collection of photographs, and the full context has naturally become obscured as a result of being separated, as well as from the loss of any knowledge of the provenance.


Glebe Farm, Weston-on-Trent, 14 April 2009
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Jacob and Mary Ann Botham settled at Glebe Farm, near Weston-on-Trent, after their marriage, where Jacob farmed 300 acres of land, employing five labourers and five boys. The census of Sunday 2nd April 1871 shows them living at the farm with a daughter Mary H. Smith, aged 11 months, and five servants. Mary Hardy Smith was born at Weston-on-Trent, probably in the month of April 1870, if the age given in the census was accurate. The birth was registered at the Shardlow Register Office during the second quarter (April-June) of 1870, and Mary Ann was baptised at St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church, Weston-on-Trent on Saturday 7 May 1870.

This implies that Mary Ann would have been at least six months, and presumably quite visibly, pregnant at the time of her marriage in early February 1870. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to look for any signs of such a pregnancy in the carte de visite portraits. Unfortunately, large expanses of white colour never photographed well in those early years (photographers usually advised their customers to wear only dark clothing to avoid this problem) and, even with digital enhancement, the definition is not clear enough to make out whether the subject is pregnant or not.


The portrait of a woman feeding the dogs is intriguing, but it is difficult to interpret a great deal from it. I can't even make out whether the subject is the same woman as the bride in the wedding group portrait. If it is, then she has changed clothing, presumably into a brown or black "travelling dress" as discussed in Part 4 of this series of articles. Perhaps she is saying a last goodbye to the family pets. Again though, I can't make out whether she is likely to be pregnant or not.

At this stage most readers will be able to tell that I am fairly confident that the Smith-Hoult marriage is by far the most likely candidate for the wedding portrait. In Part 7, I will discuss the architectural aspects of the portrait that have convinced me - with a confidence of, say, above 90% - that it must be the right one.

References

International Genealogical Index (IGI) from the LDS church online at FamilySearch
1841 Census of Swadlincote, transcribed by Brett Payne, on the Swadlincote Parish Pages
Derbyshire Petty Sessions, an index compiled from original records by Michael Cox and presented online by John Palmer on his Wirksworth web site
The Derby Mercury, in 19th Century British Library Newspapers, Digital images online from GALE Cengage Learning
Index to General Register Office Births, Marriages & Deaths from FreeBMD
UK Census 1841-1901 indexed images from Ancestry
Pigot's Directory of Derbyshire, 1831, from Ancestry
W. White's History, Gazetteer & Directory of Staffordshire, 1851, from Ancestry
Harrison, Harrod, and Co.'s Directory and Gazetteer of Staffordshire, 1861, from Ancestry
E.R. Kelly's Post Office Directory of Staffordshire, 1868, from Ancestry
J.G. Harrod & Co.'s Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland & Staffordshire, 1870, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
E.R. Kelly's Post Office Directory of Staffordshire, 1872, from Ancestry
F. Wright's Directory of South Derbyshire, 1874, from the University of Leicester's Historical Directories
E.R. Kelly's Post Office Directory of Derbyshire, 1876, from Ancestry
Reprint of the first edition (1834-1891) of the One-inch Ordnance Survey of England and Wales: Sheet 34 (Stafford) & Sheet 42 (Lichfield & Birmingham), publ. 1970, David & Charles, ISBN 0715346342 & 0715348574
Gerald Carey (undated) The Parish Of Barton Under Needwood In Staffordshire, a 2004 web version of the book of the same title by Gerald Carey
Gerald Carey (1999) The Manor Of Barton Under Needwood in the County of Staffordshire, 2001 web version
Needwood Forest, Wikipedia article
How fast can a horse and carriage travel? from Yahoo Answers
Cameras From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, by Brian Coe, 1978, Crown Publishers, ISBN 0517533812

Dwight Minns Ware of Springfield & Boston, Massachusetts

Today's portrait is what is commonly referred to as an orphan and, to me at least, this means that it has become separated from any family ownership. There are several popular online photo archives which seek to reunite such orphan photographs with descendants or family members, of which perhaps the most well known is the catchily named DeadFred run by Joe Bott. I don't intend to duplicate the admirable efforts of such monumental enterprises, but I would occasionally like to record some of the "orphans" that come my way with a brief account on what I've been able to discover. If that does result in some family member eventually stumbling across this story through the wonders of Google, enabling me to reunite the photograph with the family, then so much the better.


This cabinet card showing a mother and young child was sent to me recently by a friend in Massachusetts, who came across it in a deceased estate sale, although she knew that the deceased had no connection with the subject of the photograph. The card mount identifies the photographer as Chauncey L. Moore of Republican Block, Springfield, Massachusetts.


Fortunately. the reverse has a clearly inscribed name, age and date, which makes researching the subjects a great deal easier.

Dwight Minns Ware.
14 months old.
1886

This is clearly the child in the photograph, and it seems fairly safe to assume that the woman is his mother. Although the exact date which the portrait was taken is not given, just the year, this is enough to provide an approximate date of birth for Dwight M. Ware as late 1884 or 1885. Without boring you with all of the intricate details of how I did it, I managed to find him very easily in the 1900 Census, then aged 14, and then, by going back and forwards in the census records, to outline his immediate family in some detail.


US Federal Census, 297 Walnut Avenue, Boston Ward 21, Suffolk, Massachusetts
4 June 1900
Image © National Archives and Records Administration & courtesy of Ancestry
In fact, this is one of those occasional cases that one comes across where an individual rather improbably appears twice in the same census! He is shown both living at home with his parents at 297 Walnut Avenue, Boston (Massachusetts) (above), and as a student attending Morristown School in Morris, New Jersey (below).


US Federal Census, Morristown School, Morris, New Jersey
9 June 1900
Image © National Archives and Records Administration & courtesy of Ancestry
I suspected that the census for the two locations may not have been done on exactly the same date, which might explain why both enumerators managed to catch him, so I checked the dates noted at the top of the enumerators' schedules. Ward 21 in Boston (MA) was enumerated on 4 June 1900, while that for Morris (NJ) one was done on 9 June 1900, so I suppose it is quite possible that he left for school some time in the five intervening days.

Dwight Minns Ware was born in September 1885, the third child (and first son) of Leonard and Laura Ware of Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts. His father Leonard Ware (b. 1840) was one of ten children of an oil dealer Leonard Ware senior (1805-1888) and his wife Sarah Anne Minns (1816-1884), prominent citizens of Roxbury in Norfolk County.


John La Farge's Triptych stained-glass window, All Souls Unitarian Church, Roxbury, Massachusetts
Image © Richard E. Stevens and courtesy of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst
The lives of Leonard and Sarah Anne Minns were commemmorated in the right-hand panel of a stained glass window in All Souls Unitarian Church of Roxbury, Massachusetts by the celebrated John La Farge, one time mentor of Louis Comfort Tiffany, commissioned by their children in 1889, shortly after their deaths. According to Kyle Cave the windows were were later removed from the Roxbury church, and in 1925 installed in the building that now houses the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, where they remain today.

Leonard Ware junior married at the age of forty, on 7 January 1880, to a girl fifteen years younger than him, Laura Dwight Foote in her home town of Springfield, Hampden County. They settled in Boston, where Leonard worked as a fish oil merchant. In the 1900 Census, however, he described himself as an estate trustee and he had retired by 1910.


Obituary of Delia Dwight Foote, New York Times, 28 May 1897
Image © and courtesy of the New York Times Article Archive
Laura Dwight Ware, the presumed second subject of this portrait, was born on 7 September 1855, one of at least six children of Homer Foote (1810-1898) and Delia Dwight (1814-). Her father was a hardware merchant in Springfield and her mother a daughter of the "merchant prince" of Springfield, James Scott Dwight. Her mother's obituary, from the New York Times of 28 May 1897, gives some indication of the family's status in the Springfield community of the late 19th Century.

Delia Dwight Foot, wife of Homer Foot, a prominent public man of Springfield, Mass., died yesterday afternoon in Springfield in the eighty-fourth year of her age. She was the daughter of the late James Scott Dwight, one of the oldest residents of Springfield, and known as the "merchant prince," from the extensive mercantile business he conducted. In 1834 her marriage to Homer Foot, son of Adonijah Foot, Armorer of the National Armory of Springfield, took place. After her marriage she continued her residence in her native town, taking a leading part in the social life of the community. Homer Foot, her husband, was a wealthy hardware dealer, and at the time of Lincoln's first campaign in National politics was nominated for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts against his will. he did not withdraw his name, however, and polled a vote of some 53,000, which was a strong showing, although not enough to elect.

Mrs. Foot was herself the last of a family of twelve children, and the mother of ten children, all of whom attended the golden wedding of their parents twelve years ago. One since died at the age of fifty years, and there remain six sons, three daughters, ten grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren of her decendants. Of the sons, for live in New York. They are Emerson Foot, Cleavland Foot, Sandford D. Foot, and James Dwight Foot. Funeral services and interment will be at Springfield.

The golden wedding anniversary celebration referred to above would have taken place in May 1884, some sixteen months before the birth of Mrs. Foot's grandson Dwight Minns Ware. Dwight's parents would probably have attended the event with his two older sisters Anna and Laura, then aged three and one respectively.


Chauncey L. Moore's studio at 441 Main Street, Springfield MA, c.1884
Engraving from King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts
It seems likely that Laura and Dwight Ware visited the studio of Chauncey L. Moore at 441 Main Street, Springfield on another such visit to the home of his maternal grandparents. If Dwight was 14 months old at the time, and we know that he was born in September 1885, then the visit probably took place in November or December 1886. The photographer was well established, as shown by this extract from King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts [Courtesy of the Internet Archive]:

Chauncey L. Moore has been a photographer in Springfield for twenty-eight years, and is now the longest-established photographer in Hampden County. His gallery at No. 441 Main Street, opposite Court Square, has been occupied by him for twenty consecutive years, and is familiar to all who ever have occasion to come to this city. Since he began here, Mr. Moore has photographed almost all the men, women, and children who have been noteworthily identified with this locality. Almost every Knight Templar, Mason, Odd Fellow, clergyman, public officer, and business man has sat for his picture in this gallery; and to-day there are here nearly thirty thousand negatives carefully put away, all registered and classified. Here, too, may be found the negatives of hundreds of buildings and views made during the score of years just passed.

The "Springfield Republican" Block, Springfield MA, c.1884
Engraving from King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts
The mount of the cabinet card shows Moore's studio at the "Republican Block" in Springfield. As shown in the engraving above, also from the Handbook, this was a four-story building housing The Springfield Republican newspaper, and perhaps it was additionally the location for a branch studio for Moore by 1886.

Although his family had lived in Massachusetts for generations, Dwight Ware moved away in his early twenties. The 1910 Census found him lodging in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was working as an electrical supplier's salesman. By 1920 he was living in Seattle, Washington, and that appears to be where he settled, marrying in the early 1920s and having two sons, William (1923-2002) and Leonard (b. 1928). The 1930 Census shows the family living at Sunrise Terrace, Lake Forest Park, north of Seattle.

Dwight M. Ware had a younger brother born in 1900, also named Leonard, who studied at Harvard University and became a newspaper journalist. He was a veteran of both World Wars, serving as a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve intelligence in the 1940s. After the Second World War, he worked for the Boston Herald and was employed as a public affairs officer with the U.S. government.

That's about the limit to what I've been able to dig up about the immediate family - parents, grandparents, siblings, wife and children - of Dwight Minns Ware. If any reader can come up with further relevant material to add to the story, or clues to searching out any surviving descendants of his, please feel free to contact me, and I'll add it to the article in the form of a PS. Of course, if any descendant should happen to read this, I'd be happy to pass on the original photograph.

References

1870-1930 US Federal Census, National Archives and Records Administration, Indexed images from Ancestry.com
World War One Draft Registration Cards, Indexed images from Ancestry.com
International Genealogical Index (IGI), online at FamilySearch from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, Online database from Ancestry.com
The New York Times Article Archive from The New York Times
United States Social Security Death Index, online at FamilySearch from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Stained Glass Treasures: The stories behind the opalescent art of La Farge and Tiffany (PDF), on the web site of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst
King's Handbook of Springfield Massachusetts, A Series of Monographs Historical and Descriptive, ed. Moses King, publ. 1884 by James D. Gill, available online at Archive.org

Letter to America - A moment in the life of a young girl in late Victorian Derby

I've long had a fascination for old photographic portraits, and it was probably during an investigation into the life of my paternal grandfather a few years ago that this matured into what should more accurately be described as an obsession. I hardly knew my grandparents. They lived on another continent - half-way around the world - and what memories I have of them are understandably hazy. I met my grandfather only a few times in my childhood, the last occasion being a year before he died, when I was in my early teens and he was eighty-two. Although my Dad had many anecdotes about his father, he admitted to knowing very little about his early life. My aunt and cousin, who lived with Grandpa and Grandma for many years, have explained that he almost never talked about his war service years. As a result, my initial research relied heavily on linking up a framework of dated events and a sizable collection of photographs taken throughout his lifetime.

I'm sure other photo-sleuths will attest to the peculiar mixture of a sense of accomplishment and gratification, that one receives from the process of trying to extract as much information as one can from a photograph, inevitably accompanied by a modicum of frustration in the knowledge that one almost certainly hasn't discovered everything there is to find. A typical example for me was the war-time photograph of my grandfather which I featured in a previous Photo-Sleuth article, "His lordship taking his rum ration."

As I delve further into the background story relating to such photographs, which capture but a brief moment in the general narrative of the subject's life story, I suppose that what I'm hoping to do is build up in my mind a character portrait of the subject. Conventionally posed Victorian and Edwardian studio photographs certainly provide fewer circumstantial and peripheral clues to a subject's character than the less formal snaps which became commonplace after the turn of the century. Nevertheless, in spite of the stiff, arranged postures and the photographer's presumed instructions not to let a smile pass across their subject's lips, I believe that such a portrait can offer a valuable window into their lives, particularly when presented as part of a narrative, and with the support of other material. On a more practical note, a portrait may also be used as a convenient focusing point on which to base one's initial research of an individual in a family tree.

Recently I've been trying to sort scanned images of a collection of old family portraits belonging to my aunt. Amongst these are a number which ostensibly include the three sisters of my great-grandfather Charles Vincent Payne (1868-1941). Some of the identifications were inscribed on the reverse in recent decades by my aunt and, by her own admission, may not be entirely reliable, since the last of the daughters died over forty years ago. Henry & Henrietta Christina Payne of New Normanton, Derby, who featured in a previous article, had seven children altogether, including three girls.

Their eldest daughter Lucy Mary was born on 29 November 1876 at 38 St James' Road, Normanton, the house that Henry had built for them the previous year, and from which he was licensed to sell beer in September 1877. Maggie, as she was known in the family, grew up in Normanton, her mother running the grocery shop and off-license while Henry was building houses in St James' Road and nearby Crewe Street. Although I haven't had an opportunity to check the actual records, I assume that she attended St James' Road Board School in the 1880s, following her three older brothers and being followed in turn by another brother, two sisters and eventually by my grandfather - her nephew - in the late 1890s.


Lucy Mary Payne (1876-1953), aged about 14
Taken c. 1890-1891
Carte de visite by Chas. S. Swift of 106, Normanton Rd. Derby
Photograph collection of Barbara Ellison
This carte de visite portrait by Charles S. Swift of 105 Normanton Road, Derby (Studio Location) was probably taken in 1890 or 1891, and shows Lucy Mary Payne when she was about fourteen years old. It's the earliest image that I have of her, although there are a further nine portraits and portrait groups (Collection: The Daughters of Henry Payne) taken at irregular intervals throughout the rest of her life.

Although I can't be certain of the exact date, Charles Swift had certainly opened his Normanton Road studio by the time of the compilation of the 1891 edition of Kelly's trade directory - perhaps in late 1890 - having previously worked for his brother William E. Swift in the latter's studio at 30 St. Peter's Street, Derby. William sold his studio to R.K. Peacock and moved to Skegness some time after 1887. The rather crudely painted canvas backdrop used is the same one that can be seen in another of Swift's photographs (Image), and likewise the photographer has inadvertently included some of the rucked up right-hand edge in the photo. His later photographs showed a little more skill, a reason to suspect that the portrait of Lucy Mary was taken early on during his professional career.


1891 Census: 38 St James Rd, New Normanton DBY
NA Ref. RG12/2739/99/18/106
Image © The National Archives and courtesy of Ancestry
In the 1891 Census, shown in the enumerator's sheet above, Lucy Mary is fourteen, and it seems likely that she visited Swift's studio at around this time. Her father described himself as Vaccination Officer (a position to which he had been appointed by the Derby Board of Guardians in 1885), Rent Collector (presumably for the houses which he had been building, but perhaps on behalf of other property owners too) and "Off Beer Licence Holder." His eldest son Charles Vincent (my grandfather), by then aged 23 and working as a joiner/carriage finisher at the Midland Railway works, had moved out and was boarding with a family nearby in Pear Tree Street. The second son Charles Hallam had also left home by then, but had moved significantly further afield. He too had entered the building trade, but had travelled to the United States in late 1890 and was successful in finding employment as a carpenter at the Pullman Car Company railway carriage works in Chicago (Illinois).


Envelope addressed to C.H. Payne, Box 165, Roseland, Chicago, America
Stamped & Postmarked Normanton & Derby 12 Jan '91
and Roseland & Chicago ?26 Jan 1891 on front and reverse
Collection of Brett Payne
In my collection of family papers is an envelope addressed to Hallam in Chicago, stamped and franked at Normanton and Derby Post Offices with the date 12 January 1891. Inside the envelope are letters to Hallam from his father and from his three sisters Maggie, Lily and Helen.


Letter from Henry Payne to his son Charles Hallam in Chicago,
dated 12 January 1891 at Derby
Collection of Brett Payne
In his letter, Henry thanks Hallam for his recent letter accompanied by a "book of Pulman," a large format bound collection of mounted prints depicting Pullman's developments in southern suburbs of Chicago, which has fortunately survived in the family archives. He describes the effects of the severe winter on employment in Derby and relates a couple of anecdotes which provides some insight into the family's day-to-day life in Derby.

We are having awfully cold weather here now for the last six weeks. Many are out of employ. I saw your old friend Smith otherwise Carbo, to day. He, with others had been discharged from [Midland Railway] Signal dept. at Christmas, and is now walking about. Out door work is completely at a standstill on account of the severe weather ... The youngsters are giving you a history of their Switchback slide running across the green from top corner of Crewe St. to half way down St. James's Rd. The lads have had splendid up & down sliding or as they call it Switchback ... Your mother desires me to tell you to be sure and be a good lad & save your money. She occasionally fills a plate at meal times forgetting there is one short at table, but Fred says it don't matter he can manage it ...

The letters from Hallam's sisters are charming, although pretty much what you would expect from a fourteen, eight and seven year-old, respectively, with those of the two younger characterised by rounded, shaky handwriting and a few spelling mistakes.


Letter from Lucy Mary Payne to her brother Charles Hallam in Chicago,
dated 23 December 1890 at Derby
Collection of Brett Payne
Maggie writes:

Dear Hallam
I wish you manny [sic] happy returns of your Birthday, all of us do if they had not time to say so in their letters. We are going to have a little entertainment. We have all sent a few cards to you. I send you my Photo. Ma says when you have half an hour to spare pop across & put hinge on Table door. It wont take long. We often look at the time & think what time it is with you. The snow is coming down fast. Ma & Pa went to our entertainment last Friday & left Frank to serve beer, just fancy. I played a duet. With love from Maggie.

How exciting to find in there the reference, "I send you my Photo." Could she be referring to the photograph of her featured above, now in my aunt's collection? I think it very likely. Hallam was, according to my father, an inveterate hoarder and almost certainly would have brought back to England such letters and photographs when he returned home in November 1892. My grandfather inherited all of Uncle Hallam's family photos when he died in 1960, and they were subsequently passed on to my aunt a decade and a half later. Even if this is not the exact portrait, I think we can safely say that this is more or less how she would have looked at the time she wrote the letter.


Charles Hallam Payne (1870-1960), aged about 20
Possibly taken c. 1890-1892 in Chicago
Tintype by an unknown photographer
Photograph collection of Barbara Ellison
I don't have any portraits of Charles Hallam Payne that I can categorically state were taken during his brief stay in Chicago, from late 1890 until November 1892, but I believe this tintype to be a very likely candidate. Unfortunately it is slightly out of focus, roughly trimmed, has experienced some darkening and loss of contrast, and the lacquer used to coat the image now has a honeycomb of fine cracks, but it still gives a good impression of Hallam as a young man. As referred to in Maggie's latter, Hallam turned twenty on Boxing Day 1890, and he looks to be about that age in this photograph. In the last decade of the nineteenth century tintypes of this size were far more commonly used in the United States than in England. In fact, of only two other tintypes of similar vintage in our family collection, one is of my grandfather Charles Leslie Lionel Payne in a baby carriage, which I am fairly certain was taken in late 1892, also in Chicago.

While this investigation is by no means complete - I expect to continue finding more snippets relating to Lucy Mary's childhood in the years to come - I am starting to build a mental picture, not only of her but of the family and their life at that time.

I can envisage Henrietta getting the four youngest children ready for school each day, and them heading off on the journey which would only have taken them a couple of minutes, as the school was situated diagonally opposite their house, and the gates were just a few yards up Hastings Street. I can imagine the enormous amount of fun that she and her brothers would have had playing in the snow after school had finished for the day, making tracks to slide on when it all turned to ice, not to mention the pile of dripping and muddy clothes that Henrietta would have had to deal with when they got home.

I can easily see her sitting down reluctantly with her two younger sisters, each clutching identical single pieces of notepaper, two days before Christmas, after having been nagged by their mother. Then I imagine them wondering aloud what they could write that might be of the remotest interest to their older brother, who had set off a few months earlier on an exciting adventure across the seas. They were perhaps sitting at the same kitchen table in the St James' Road house where, a few minutes earlier, Henrietta had distractedly served an extra plate of food for an her absent son, which was then wolfed down eagerly by an ever hungry eleven year-old boy. Since my own pre-teenage daughter is learning to play the piano and also performs at concerts two or three times a year, the entertainment referred to by Maggie is another facet of their lives that I have no difficulty in bringing to mind.

To me, the photograph is what brings it all to life, and the family photo collection therefore is the most important part of the material heritage I have received and which I will pass on to the next family historian in due course.