Smile for the Camera (14th Edition) - Wedding Belles

The word prompt for the 14th Edition of Smile For The Camera is "Wedding Belles." According to the host footnoteMaven of Shades of the Departed:

Historically, couples married in the month of June to honor Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage. Others did it to time conception so births wouldn't interfere with harvest work. And brides in the 15th century chose to marry in June because it coincided with their "annual bath" - that's right - ensuring a relatively sweet-smelling honeymoon.

Well, I have to confess that despite a diligent search I've been unable to come up with a single one of my ancestors that lived within the photographic era who was married during the month of June. The records are sadly silent on whether they were accustomed to having more than one bath a year, or perhaps merely timed their ablutions according to a non-pagan calendar.

My family also appear to have been somewhat reticent about inviting the local photographer to record their nuptials. I have marriage certificates aplenty, so I know the events actually did take place, but photographic records seem to be rare.

(For those who are expecting wedding photos, and won't make do with any kind of substitute, I have previously published and written on this topic several times. Articles include the wedding of my paternal grandparents (Amateur Photo of a Wedding Group, 1926), a large wedding group in Derby by John Burton & Sons taken c. 1865, the famous and often photographed "wedding" of Mr & Mrs General Tom Thumb, and an 1850s ambrotype of a recently married couple. I also recently wrote an extensive series of articles detailing a successful investigation into the identities of subjects of a wedding portrait (A Mystery Marriage in Barton-under-Needwood).)


Margien Adriana Schipper and her nephew Dirk Smit
Amsterdam, Netherlands, taken c. 1931-1932
Print 74 x 105 mm
Image © and collection of H.A.W. Payne
I've decided, therefore, to instead feature a couple of portaits of a family member who was never married, although if she had, I have little doubt that she would have done so in June. I have inherited a couple of her photograph albums, and therefore possess a fair number of amateur and professional portraits of her and her immediate family. Those included here, however, are from my mother's albums. The first is of my great-aunt Margien Adriana Schipper (1885-1982), known to me as Tante Gien, and her only nephew (my mother's brother) Dirk Smit (1926-1961).


Margien Adriana Schipper and her grand-nephew
Postjeskade, Amsterdam, Netherlands, taken July-August 1963
Kodacolor Print 79 x 79 mm
Image © and collection of H.A.W. Payne
The second, taken some thirty years later, shows Tante Gien in a very similar pose, but with the next generation on her lap. I don't recall that occasion - I was, after all, only eighteen months old - but I do remember visiting her with my grandparents in 1974. I can easily conjure up an image in my mind of how kind she was - she slipped me a few guilders to augment my pocket money - although she spoke practically no English and I, sadly, no Dutch at all.

I am struck by how authentic the colours are in this photograph. The 1960s were the early years of widespread use of amateur colour photography, but Kodak seem to have got it right!

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

A mystery marriage in Barton-under-Needwood (Part 4)

I found the following discussion of Victorian marriage customs on Literary Liaisons, an online resource for romance writers by M. Hoppe. Although written primarily with 19th Century North American practices in mind, it refers to English customs of the time.

Before the 1880s, a couple was required by law to have a morning ceremony ... In the Eastern United States, the fashionable hours were between 10:00 a.m. and Noon because it was an English custom ... The marriage ceremony took place either at home or in church ... In the 1850s, weddings were almost always held in church, and it was customary to use the bride's parish. The clergyman and parish clerk were in attendance. After the ceremony, the couple signed their name in the parish register in the vestry. The bride signed her maiden name. Flowers decorated the church.

In English parish registers, from 1812 onwards, there was also a requirement after marriage ceremonies for the signature of two witnesses. In my experience of transcribing thousands of marriage register entries, by the 1860s and 1870s, these witnesses were usually relatives of the bride and groom. In some cases, such as with wealthier families, additional witnesses often signed the register.

In England, a country bride and her wedding party walked to church on a carpet of blossoms to assure a happy path through life. For the wealthier, a grey horse pulling the wedding carriage was considered good luck. Church bells pealed forth as the couple entered the church ... After the ceremony, the bride and groom walked out without looking left or right. It was considered bad taste to acknowledge friends and acquaintances. The bride's parents were the first to leave the church, and the best man the last after he paid the clergyman for his services. From a custom dating back to Roman times when nuts were thrown after the departing couple, the practice continued, but in the form of rice, grain or birdseed, a symbol of fertility.

Bridal Toilettes, Harper's Bazaar, 2 August 1870
Victorian Fashions from Harper's Bazaar 1867-1898, by Stella Blum (ed.)

Because of the early hour for weddings, the reception was traditionally a breakfast. It was an English custom to have a Noon ceremony with the breakfast thirty minutes later at the bride's home. There, the couple received the guests and accepted congratulations.

The bridal couple usually left for their honeymoon after the wedding breakfast ... If changing into the traveling costumes, the bride and groom did so immediately after the cake was cut ... bride wore a traveling dress, which may have been her wedding dress, especially if the wedding had been an intimate affair with few family and friends, or they were traveling by train or steamer immediately after the reception. Colors for the dress were becoming and practical - brown or black for mid-Victorian ... If changing into the traveling costumes, the bride and groom did so immediately after the cake was cut. Bridesmaids went with the bride to help her, at which time she gave them each a flower from her bouquet. By the time the couple was ready to depart, only family and intimate friends were present.

Carte de visite portrait of an unidentified wedding group
Taken c. 1867-1873
by William Farmer of Barton-under-Needwood
In the previous three parts (1, 2, 3) of this article, I identified a number of marriages between residents of the Barton-under-Needwood area which might have been recorded by the photographer William Farmer in the image shown above, and subsequently narrowed down my list to just three of the most likely couples, in chronological order.

(1)
St. Michael & All Angels Parish Church, Tatenhill
Image © Copyright Geoff Pick, courtesy of Geograph.co.uk
Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Samuel Archer m: Wednesday, 4 March 1867 St Michael Tatenhill, Staffs. Caroline Ball
The Derby Mercury 13 March 1867: On the 4th inst., at Tatenhill, by the Rev. W.P. Smeeth, M.A., Mr. Samuel Archer, of Burton park, to Caroline Ball, of Barton-under-Needwood
Caroline Ball was the 39 year-old daughter of James Ball (1783-1870) and Elizabeth née Brown (1786-1864). She had two sisters, one older, one younger, but apparently no brothers. James Ball was a farmer who lived on the Main Street of Barton-under-Needwood, although he had earlier farmed 18 acres at Tatenhill. The groom Samuel Archer, a farmer of 230 acres at Barton Park, was a widower two years her senior, with five children (aged from 7 to 16) from his first marriage.


View Larger Map
Barton Park Farm, near Barton-under-Needwood
from GoogleMaps
From a recent satellite image of the area on GoogleMaps (above) and an aerial shot from Panoramio (below) it appears that Barton Park Farm is still a working farm, and may well have some farm buildings that have survived largely intact from the 1860s/1870s.


An aerial view of Barton Park Farm, facing south-east
Image © jmhall & courtesy of Panoramio

(2)
St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church, Weston-on-Trent
Image © Copyright J147, courtesy of Geograph.co.uk
Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Jacob Botham Smith m: Wednesday, 23 February 1870 at Weston-upon-Trent, Derbys. Mary Ann Hoult
The Derby Mercury 23 February 1870: On the 22nd inst., at Weston-upon-Trent, by the Rev. J. Wadham, Mr. Jacob Botham Smith, to Mary Ann, eldest daughter of Mr. James Hoult, of Blakenhall Farm, Barton-under-Needwood.
Mary Ann Hoult, aged 35 and a spinster, was the eldest child of James Hoult (1803-1882), tenant farmer of Upper Blakenhall Farm, west of Barton-under Needwood, and his wife Abigail née Abell (1815-1874). Her husband Jacob Botham Smith was 29, and one of four children of Jacob Botham Smith senior (1801-1864), farmer of Aston-upon-Trent, and Anne née Hardy (1798-1873). Mary Ann had seven younger siblings, of whom only a brother William James, aged 27, was married, and farming in Cranage, Cheshire. Her remaining four sisters and two brothers were living with their parents at Upper Blakenhall, in Burton-on-Trent or working as housekeepers on other farms further afield (Hoon Hay, Derbyshire and Over Whitacre, Warwickshire). Jacob had three older brothers, all of whom were farming - in Alvaston, Shardlow and Wilne - and a sister who was married to a Derby grocer, chandler and tea dealer, Charles John Storer. After the wedding the couple settled at Glebe Farm in the parish of Weston-on-Trent, where a daughter Mary Hardy Smith was born in about April 1870.


View Larger Map
Upper Blakenhall Farm, near Barton-under-Needwood
from GoogleMaps
A satellite image from GoogleMaps (above) shows a similar group of oldish looking farmhouse and outbuildings at Upper Blakenhall Farm, identified by reference to both a 1932 1" to 1 mile (1:63,360) Ordnance Survey map and a 1883 6" to the mile (1:10,560) scale Ordnance Survey map, shown below.


Upper Blakenhall Farm, near Barton-under-Needwood, extract from One-Inch OS Map of Burton upon Trent (Sheet 120), Ordnance Survey, 1932


Upper Blakenhall Farm, near Barton-under-Needwood, extract from Six-Inch OS Map, Ordnance Survey Old Maps, 1883

(3)
St. Modwen Parish Church, Burton-on-Trent
Image © Copyright Stanley Walker, courtesy of Geograph.co.uk
Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Samuel Coulson m: Wednesday, 17 December 1873 at St Modwen's, Burton-on-Trent, Staffs. Eliza Marshall
The Derby Mercury 17 December 1873: COULSON-MARSHALL - Dec 9, at the parish church, Burton-on-Trent, by the Rev. C.F. Thornewill, M.A., vicar, Mr. Samuel Coulson, of Alverton House, Denstone, son of the late Mr. Samuel Coulson, of Barton-under-Needwood, to Eliza, youngest daughter of Mr. William Marshall, of Burton-on-Trent.
Samuel Coulson, a 32 year-old maltster, brickmaker and farmer, formerly of the Main Street, Barton-under-Needwood, married Eliza Marshall of Burton-on-Trent. Eliza was one of four children - she had an older sister and brother and a younger brother - of a master currier and leather merchant William Marshall (1815-1886) and his wife Hannah (1819-1852/55). After their marriage Samuel and Eliza settled at Alvaston House, Denstone on a farm of some 110 acres.

On further research it appears that, although Samuel Coulson was living in Barton-under-Needwood when the 1871 Census was enumerated, by the time of his marriage, he had moved some fourteen miles (23 km) away to Denstone, on the border between North Staffordshire and Derbyshire.

---

My research into the families of both bride and groom in each individual marriage has resulted in several observations which may or may not be pertinent.

• The wedding party appears to have included three young or middle-aged men, apart from the groom, and I would expect these to have been family members. The Archer and Ball families from the first marriage do not appear to include any likely male candidates and, while it does not completely exclude the marriage from consideration, it does make them less likely candidates.
• With the Coulson-Marshall marriage, although Eliza had male siblings, since her family was from Burton-upon-Trent and the marriage took place there, it seems likely that they would have commissioned a photographer from one of several studios in Burton.
• If the marriage procedure in our photographs adhered to the protocol outlined earlier in this article - and that might not necessarily have been the case - then it seems likely that the wedding party would have retired to the home of the bride after the service. The photographer would probably have been engaged to take portraits of the wedding party at this stage of the proceedings. Only in the cases of the Archer-Ball and Smith-Hoult marriages were the brides' parents from farming backgrounds.
• James Ball appears to have been a relatively small-scale farmer, and may not have had farm buildings as extensive as those pictured in the photographs.

The only marriage which doesn't appear to have any negative points against it at this stage in the investigation is that between Jacob Smith and Mary Ann Hoult in February 1870. The Archer-Ball wedding comes a close second, while the Coulson-Marshall wedding is regarded as least likely.

That is about the limit of the research that I've been able to conduct remotely, in other words, via the internet from the other side of the world. In Part 5 of the investigation, we take to the road.

References

International Genealogical Index (IGI) from the LDS Church at FamilySearch
Index to GRO Births, Marriages & Deaths from FreeBMD
UK Census 1841-1901 indexed images from Ancestry
Stella Blum (1974) Victorian Fashions from Harper's Bazaar, 1867-1898, Dover Publications, ISBN 0486229904
The Victorian Wedding, Part 1 (The Preparation) & Part 2 (The Ceremony and Reception), by M. Hoppe on Literary Liaisons
Six-Inch Ordnance Survey Maps, 1:10,560 Scale Ordnance Survey Old Maps, publ. 1883
One-Inch OS Map of Burton upon Trent (Sheet 120), Scale 1:63,360, Ordnance Survey, Surveyed 1917-1917, with minor corrections 1932, publ. 1932, courtsey of Nigel Aspdin.

A mystery marriage in Barton-under-Needwood (Part 3)

(Continued from Part 2)

Having established that William Farmer's period of operation as a photographer in the village of Barton-under-Needwood was from roughly 1863 until 1873, we can return to, and examine in more detail, the wedding photograph which I introduced in the first article (Part 1).


I previously estimated that the portrait was probably taken either in the late 1860s or early 1870s. With a better understanding of Farmer's movements and career as a photographer, it seems likely that it was between 1867 and 1873. This and the other two portraits appear to have been taken in a farm yard or courtyard of some sort. From the style of clothing in the wedding portrait, the subjects were fairly well off, by which I mean that they are more likely to have been tenant farmers or landowners than farm labourers.

With that in mind, it seemed likely to me that notice of such a wedding would have been inserted in the local newspaper. From the list of newspapers held by The Magic Attic in Swadlincote it seems likely that the Burton Chronicle and The Derby Mercury would have been the daily newspapers of choice in the 1860s and 1870s. Fortunately a complete set images of issues of The Derby Mercury newspaper from 1800-1900 are included in the 19th Century British Library Newspaper Collection presented online by Gale Cengage Learning. This is available by subscription, or alternatively accessible through many libraries who have such subscriptions, and a friend very kindly conducted some searches for me through such a library facility. I have previously used it during a period when Gale was offering a free trial, and am therefore familiar with the searching mechanisms and parameters.

The search engine deals with text files of the newspaper documents created with the aid of sophisticated scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) software. This allows the user to look for specific words or text strings, either in article titles or in entire documents, limiting searches by publication date and/or title. Using the "Basic Search" tool, and searching for all instances (not just in titles, but throughout all documents) of the keyword "Needwood" between 1865 and 1875 (to allow some margin of error in my date estimate) in The Derby Mercury produced 340 positive results.


Each of these "hits" was presented with the article title so it was then a relatively simple, if somewhat tedious, exercise to browse through the list selecting and viewing all of those which fell under the title, "Births, Deaths, Marriages and Obituaries." Of the 66 hits only eleven were marriage announcements where at least one of the participants was shown as being from Barton-under-Needwood; the remainder were births and deaths, or entries from the nearby, but completely separate, village of Needwood. I transcribed all of these in full (the names of bride or groom, where from Barton-under-Needwood, highlighted in bold are my own embellishment):

1865-03-08: On the 25th ult., at St. Peter's Church, Derby, by the Rev. J. Smith, Mr. Lewis Stretton to Miss Elizabeth Ironmonger, of Barton-under-Needwood.

1865-03-15: On the 4th inst., at the parish church, Barton-under-Needwood, by the Rev. H.G. Cooper, Mr. Thomas Fallowes Walker, of Burton-on-Trent, to Miss Emma Bowler, second daughter of Mr. Bowler, second daughter of Mr. Bowler, of Burton-on-Trent.

1866-11-21: On the 11th inst., at the Register-office, Burton, Mr. William Jones, of Burton-on-Trent, to Miss Emily Smith, of Barton-under-Needwood.

1867-03-13: On the 4th inst., at Tatenhill, by the Rev. W.P. Smeeth, M.A., Mr. Samuel Archer, of Burton park, to Caroline Ball, of Barton-under-Needwood.

1867-03-27: On the 13th inst., at Repton, by the Rev. W. Williams, Mr. Halbard, of Barton-under-Needwood, to Alice Mary, second daughter of Mr. Seth Smith, of Repton.

1869-07-28: On the 17th, at St. James's Church, Barton-under-Needwood, by the Rev. H.G. Cooper, M.A., Mr. George Lewis, Pontypridd, South Wales, to Elizabeth Wilson, only daughter of Mr. Wm. Tunley, of the former place.

1870-02-09: On the 29th ult., at the Register Office, Mr. James Todd of Burton, to Miss Emma Chamberlain, of Barton-under-Needwood.

1870-02-23: On the 22nd inst., at Weston-upon-Trent, by the Rev. J. Wadham, Mr. Jacob Botham Smith, to Mary Ann, eldest daughter of Mr. James Hoult, of Blakenhall Farm, Barton-under-Needwood.

1872-04-10: ASKHAM-LEE - April 3, at the Cathedral, Manchester, by the Rev. H.C. Smith, M.A., Minor Canon, Thos. Askham, of Pocklington, Yorkshire, to Laura Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the late Charles Hastings Lee, of Barton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire.

1873-12-17: COULSON-MARSHALL - Dec 9, at the parish church, Burton-on-Trent, by the Rev. C.F. Thornewill, M.A., vicar, Mr. Samuel Coulson, of Alverton House, Denstone, son of the late Mr. Samuel Coulson, of Barton-under-Needwood, to Eliza, youngest daughter of Mr. William Marshall, of Burton-on-Trent.

1875-06-09: BRADDYLL-BIRCH - On the 2nd of June, at the parish church, Long Eaton, by the Rev. T. Ford Fenn, M.A., Head Master of Trent College, Henry John, eldest son of the late Edward S.B. Richmond Gale Braddyll, Esq., to Mary, fifth daughter of the late William Birch, F.R.C.S.E., of Barton-under-Needwood, Esq.

Apart from the convenience of this search method, one major advantage is that it includes marriages that didn't actually take place at Barton-under-Needwood. Those are the only ones that would be found if one looked, for example at the Barton parish registers. However, there are important limitations of and disadvantages to this method, the most obvious being that the marriage depicted in our portrait may not have received a newspaper notice at all. I proceeded with a more detailed examination of the eleven marriages, keeping in mind the fact that the list was almost certainly incomplete.

Of the eleven marriages listed, only one (1870, Smith-Hoult) is from a family obviously involved in farming, at least from the information given in the newspaper entry. To investigate further, I tracked down each of these families using the 1861 and 1871 Census records, GRO Birth, Marriage & Death indexes, the IGI and other sources, turning up five more candidates.

- Elizabeth Ironmonger was the daughter of Edwin Ironmonger, a farm labourer of Catholme Bridge, Barton-under-Needwood, and herself working as a domestic servant at Harborne in 1861. The marriage date of March 1865 is a little early, in my estimate, for the photograph, and I would place this one low on the list of possibilities.

- Caroline Ball was the daughter of James Ball, a farmer who lived on the Main Street of Barton-under-Needwood. In March 1867 she was 39 years old and married Samuel Archer, farmer of 230 acres at Barton Park. He was a widower two years her senior, with five children from his first marriage, aged between seven and sixteen.

- Philip Halbard was a 43 year-old ironmonger from Burton-upon-Trent, probably only briefly resident in Barton-under-Needwood, who established the Britannia foundry in Horninglow Street, this marriage being his third. His bride Alice Mary Smith, 21 years old at the time of her marriage in March 1867, was the second daughter of Repton farmer Seth Smith.

- Emma Chamberlain was a daughter of William Chamberlain, agricultural labourer of Fulbrook, Barton-under-Needwood, who was 21 when she married James Todd, a 24 year-old brewer's clerk from Burton-on-Trent, in February 1870. Considering the occupation of both the groom and the bride's father, I think this marriage is also unlikely to be the one in Farmer's portrait.

- Mary Ann Hoult, aged 35 and a spinster, was the eldest daughter of James Hoult, tenant farmer of Upper Blakenhall Farm, west of Barton-under Needwood. Her husband Jacob Botham Smith was 29, and one of four children of Jacob Botham Smith senior, farmer of Aston-upon-Trent. They married in February 1870 at Weston-on-Trent, and settled at Glebe Farm in that parish.

- Samuel Coulson, a 32 year-old maltster, brickmaker and farmer, formerly of the Main Street, Barton-under-Needwood, married Eliza Marshall of Burton-on-Trent. They settled at Alvaston House, Denstone on a farm of some 110 acres.

Before I attempt to narrow down that list any further, I would like to discuss the possible modus operandi of the photographer. A preliminary investigation of William Farmer, presented in the previous article in this series, revealed that he probably spent at least a decade or so travelling around with his family in a caravan before settling in Barton-under-Needwood. Although I don't have evidence that he operated as an itinerant or travelling photographer during the entire period, it seems fairly likely. He certainly described himself as a photographic artist on census night in April 1861. This was shortly after the carte de visite was introduced and, although it became popular very rapidly, it seems more likely that Farmer was using the wet-plate collodion process at the time, and producing ambrotypes or tintypes for his customers.


The Itinerant Photographer on Clapham Common, by John Thomson
from Street Life in London, by John Thomson & Adolphe Smith, 1877/78
Courtesy of The Open University
As Robert Leggat discusses in his History of Photography: The Tintype Process, the method appealed to itinerant and street photographers because the process was simple, quick, cheap to produce, with low capital requirements. In addition, since they were direct positives, the intermediate stage of exposure of glass negatives was not necessary. A typical set up for itinerant photographers is shown in the photograph from the late 1870s above, titled "The Itinerant Photographer on Clapham Common" and reproduced from Street Life in London by Thomson & Smith (courtesy of The Open University).

It is likely that Farmer had been using this process since Frederick Scott Archer had developed it and published the details in 1852, making it freely available. Brian Coe states, in his informative book, The Birth of Photography, that "unlike the Daguerreotype process it required little skill and a very modest investment in apparatus and materials. No licences were needed for its commercial operation ... the difference in cost was considerable, and even the poor could be tempted into a photographic studio for a sixpenny portrait." Although the tintype or ferrotype process variation was first described in 1853, it only became popular around 1860.

It was a little unusual for the population of a small village the size of Barton-under-Needwood - only 1,677 people in 1871 - to sustain the services of a resident photographer for very long. By comparison, the only photographers working in that part of South Derbyshire south of the River Trent in the 1870s were James Toft & Arthur Hall in the parish of Swadlincote (pop. 1,927 in 1871) and William Rodbourn in the township of Stanton & Newhall (pop. 3,204 in 1871). None of them managed to stay in business for more than a couple of years. However, it was recently pointed out to me (thank you, Nigel and his knowledgeable neighbour) that Barton-under-Needwood was, and still is, characterised by a large proportion of rather grand houses. The term "Beerages," obviously derived from the word "peerage," is how many people in the area refer to the estates established with old money by Burton brewery owners in and around some of the surrounding villages, including Barton. Some of the residents of the village, such as the ironmonger Philip Halbard (see above), even commuted to work in Burton-on-Trent on a fairly regular basis.

Farmer probably realised that he could find enough wealthy clientele in this community from whom to make a living, and thus avoid the continual travelling with a growing family. They presumably rented the house in the Main Street in which they were living in 1871, but it is possible that Farmer may not have conducted his business on those premises. Indeed he may never have used a regular studio. He was already set up to operate as a travelling photographer, with all of the appropriate equipment, which he is likely to have continued to use. He may also have retained the caravan as a mobile studio, perhaps parked down the lane in a farmer's yard. He would then have the means to carry out visits to rural properties in the surrounding area on commission, and perhaps more speculative excursions to nearby villages at periodic intervals. It would therefore have been a fairly normal undertaking for him to take his photographic equipment out to a farm to take portraits of a wedding party, and would have possibly included shots of the relatives, farm buildings, and even animals, as part of the deal.

So, with that in mind we can return to the six marriage possibilities listed previously. It is probably easiest to exclude the least likely candidates first, and investigate the others in more detail. The clothing worn by the wedding group does not suggest they were agricultural labourers or domestic servants, as were the participants in the Stretton-Ironmonger and Chamberlain-Todd marriages. I feel that the Halbard-Smith marriage, too, is an unlikely candidate since it would have been quite a distance for Farmer to have travelled from Barton to the Smith farm at Repton, where the bride's father lived and where the marriage took place. It would have been far easier, and cheaper, for them to visit a studio in Burton-on-Trent.

This leaves three potential marriages:
- Samuel Archer m: 13 March 1867 Caroline Ball
- Jacob Botham Smith m: 23 February 1870 Mary Ann Hoult
- Samuel Coulson m: 17 December 1873 Eliza Marshall
and I will investigate these families in greater detail in Part 4.

References

History of Local Newspapers from The Magic Atttic
The Derby Mercury Newspaper 1801-1900, images from the British Library courtesy of Gale Cengage
International Genealogical Index (IGI) from the LDS Church at FamilySearch
Index to GRO Births, Marriages & Deaths from FreeBMD
UK Census 1841-1901 indexed images 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
Nigel J. Tringham (ed.), Burton-upon-Trent: Economic history, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 9: Burton-upon-Trent (2003), pp. 53-84, from British History Online
The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal, The Mortimer-Percy Volume, by the Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval, from GoogleBooks
Robert Leggatt's article, The Tintype Process, on A History of Photography from its beginnings till the 1920s, web site dated 1997-2008
Brian Coe (1976) The Birth of Photography, publ. Spring Books, London, ISBN 0600562964
The Rise of the Itinerant Photographer, in Picturing the family, Course A173_1 from The Open University

A mystery marriage in Barton-under-Needwood (Part 1)

The three cartes de visite which are featured in today's blog article have been in my collection, as the result of an eBay purchase, for a couple of years. To be honest, I've looked at them several times as possible subjects for Photo-Sleuth and each time have put them into the too hard basket, probably merely of local or topical interest. On the most recent occasion I chanced upon a line of enquiry which is now leading me on a lengthy research journey. This journey is not yet complete, and I still don't know whether I'm nearing the pot of gold or merely barking up the wrong proverbial tree. However, I would like to share some of the excitement in the discoveries that I'm making with readers, and have decided that the best way to do this particular one would be through a series of installments. I hope that will give more of a feel for the breakthroughs and/or disappointments as the investigation proceeds.

As always, I value comments and suggestions on how to proceed, either as comments (below) or by email (here).


The first portrait shows what appears to be a wedding group, with the bride and groom seated, and three men standing behind them. It is an outdoors portrait, with the group arranged on a checked blanket in front of a building with a painted or whitewashed brick wall, a door and a low window. The door may be a double one - it is difficult to see clearly. The window is so low down in relation to the door and ground level that it probably opens into a basement room.

The bride, looking down towards the ground in front of the photographer, is dressed in white wedding gown with veil, and is holding a bouquet of flowers. Unfortunately, the effect of the bright sunlight on the white dress has meant that little of its shape and form is visible. The groom, also looking slightly downwards and to the right, is dressed in a dark frock coat with matching trousers and waistcoat. He has a chain attached to a button of the waistcoat, perhaps with the other end securing a fob watch hidden in a hip pocket.

The three men standing behind the bride and groom are all wearing double-breasted frock coats with flowers in their lapels. Only the man on the right, who looks to me to be in his mid- to late twenties, with a moustache and very full beard, carrying a top hat, is staring directly into the camera. To his right is a man with a moustache and Dundreary whiskers, perhaps in his late twenties or thirties. On the far left, is the youngest man in the group, with both hands resting on the groom's shoulders.


The second photograph is an unusual one for this period. It shows a woman dressed in dark clothes, wearing a hat, a bead necklace and dangly earrings, feeding something to two rather well behaved dogs, one fairly large and the other much smaller. The action takes place on a cobbled courtyard in front of what appears to be a large painted wooden double door with a simple, open latch. I have been unable to decide whether or not this woman is the same one who appears as the bride in the previous photograph.


The last CDV is in landscape format and shows a horse, dark with a white blaze on the left rear foot, being held by a man with reains attached to a bridle, on a cobbled courtyard and in front of the same double wooden door which appears in the previous photograph. I don't believe this man appears in the group photograph. His clothing, although fairly smart, is perhaps not as formal, and although his face is a little blurred, perhaps from movement, he doesn't look like any of the four in the wedding party.


The reverse of all three card mounts is identical. It shows a simple 1860s-style belt motif containing the words, "Farmer, Photographer / Barton-under-Needwood."

The design on the reverse of the card mount is typical of those from the mid- to late 1860s. However, from the thickness of card, the square the corners, the poses of the portraits, and the style of clothing worn by the subjects, I would estimate initially that it was taken in the late 1860s or early 1870s (this without any further information about the photographer or subjects).

In Part 2 I will investigate the photographer.

Amateur photo of a wedding group, 1926

The popularisation of photography after the turn of the century was brought about largely by the introduction of cheap cameras and roll film which could be loaded without the need of a dark room. This enabled the taking of portraits on special occasions without the need to visit a studio.


One such example from my own family collection is a small and unfortunately rather grainy print, of the wedding party at the marriage of my grandparents, Charles Leslie Lionel Payne (1892-1975) and Ethel Brown (1894-1978), measuring 102 x 61 mm - much the same size as a carte de visite, which had gone out of fashion some two decades earlier, superseded by the postcard. It was presumably taken by a family member or friend with their own camera. The wedding took place on 22 September 1826 at St. Augustine's Church, Normanton, and the photograph was taken, according to my father, in the garden of the Brown family home at 121 Crewe Street, Normanton, Derby.

The group are, from left to right, Charles Vincent Payne (1868-1941) and Amy Payne née Robinson (1867-1932), the groom's parents, Leslie and Ethel Payne, bride and groom, Edith Newman Brown née Miller (1872-1956) and Frederick Montague Brown (1870-1960), parents of the bride. The dog's name is unknown!


For many years, this was the only photograph that we knew of from that day. However, during an exchange of email correspondence in 2001 with a niece of my grandfather's war time friend Canadian Pete MacLaggan, she discovered some Payne photos in an a couple of albums inherited decades earlier from her uncle. Among these was another photo, shown above, of the "happy couple," obviously taken within minutes of the group photo. Of the dozens of photos that I have seen of my grandfather, this is one of the few in which he is smiling.

A large group by John Burton & Sons

This is another contribution from Nigel Aspdin from one of his Hewitt family albums.


The carte de visite is by John Burton & Sons of Leicester, Derby, Birmingham & Burton-on-Trent. It shows a large group of unidentified adults, seated and standing in the garden of a large house. The portrait demonstrates one of the big disadvantages in the use of cartes de visite for large group portraits, i.e. that the physical limitations of the format meant it was often difficult to see much detail of the individual subjects.


The reverse of the card mount includes the words, "Sole Photographer to the Shakspere [sic] Tercentenary Festival, Stratford-upon-Avon 1864."


The firm of Burton & Sons advertised their "commodious gallery adjoining the pavilion" in the Birmingham Daily Post on 5 April 1864 (see image above, © British Library & courtesy of Gale CENGAGE database). The three hundredth anniversary of the birthday of William Shakespeare was celebrated at Stratford-upon-Avon on 23 April 1864. The brewer Edward Fordham Flower built a "special pavilion in which a banquet, a fancy dress ball, concerts, and performances of the plays took place." Burton & Sons obviously took advantage of the occasion by offering for sale a recently published "Series of Shakespearean Views," as well as taking the usual "carte de visite and other portraits."

The firm of John Burton & Sons had originally started in Leicester, possibly as early as 1858, and opened a branch studio under the name "John Burton, Sons & Co." or "Burton & Compy." in mid-1862. The branch remained in business until at least June 1865, and partnership between John Burton, his sons Alfred Henry Burton, Walter John Burton, and Oliver Burton and one Thomas Thorpe, was officially dissolved in May 1866 (Source: Birmingham Daily Post, 3 Jul 1862, 22 Jun 1865 & 7 May 1866).

Although not actually taken in Birmingham, the mention of the Birmingham premises on the card mount suggests that the photo was taken during, or shortly after, the period that it was open. Combined with the mention of the Shakespeare Tercentenary, this indicates a date of c. 1864-1866. The clothing and hair styles on the subjects more or less agrees with this date range. Some of the women appear to be dressed as bride and bridesmaids, although the picture is not clear enough to see which are which.

CDVs - a new Medium for Portraits of Famous People

I've written in a previous post about how the carte de visite became wildly popular in the 1860s, mostly due to its low cost. Part of this popularity appears to have been due to the new fad for collecting pictures of famous people. Such cdvs are now enjoying a resurgence in popularity, and can fetch considerable prices on eBay. Reproduced below are two from my own collection.


As a young man Robert Moffat (1795-1883) was sent by the London Missionary Society to Africa in 1816. He and his wife Mary settled at Kuruman, where they built a mission and remained there until 1870, when they returned to England. They had ten children, their oldest daughter Mary marrying famous African explorer, David Livingstone (1813-1873). During his time in southern Africa, Moffat made several journeys into neighbouring regions such as Matabeleland (later in Rhodesia, now part of Zimbabwe), and published accounts of the trips both through the Royal Geographic Society and as a book, Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa (1842). His grandson Howard Unwin Moffat (1869-1951) subsequently served as prime minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1927 to 1933. According to Wikipedia, "His government passed the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, which defined the pattern of land allocation and ownership and is viewed as being one of the ultimate causes of the land disputes in Zimbabwe from 2000." To explain my interest in this particular cdv, one of Robert's descendants was a friend of mine while I was a school boy growing up in the Eastern Districts of Rhodesia.


The pair in the second example were amongst the most popular non-royal subjects for cartes de visite in the 1860s and 1870s, which was probably the heyday for the Victorian phase of this collecting craze. Mr & Mrs General Tom Thumb were creations of the impresario P.T. Barnum (of Barnum & Bailey fame). The midgets' real names were Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838-1883) and Lavinia Warren Bump (1841-1919). (Of course, he wasn't a general at all, or even a soldier.) They were married on 10 February 1863 at Grace Episcopal Church, New York City, the reception at the Metropolitan Hotel being a huge social occasion with over 2000 guests. This particular portrait appears to be one of a series taken by reknowned American photographer Mathew Brady (1822-1896) on the day of the wedding, and subsequently licensed to E. & H.T. Anthony, publishers of 501 Broadway, New York. An article forming part of a presentation of Brady's portraits by the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution includes the following:

Mr. and Mrs. General Tom Thumb
On February 10, 1863, "The Little Queen of Beauty" married international celebrity "General Tom Thumb" in a lavish ceremony at New York's fashionable Grace Church. The two performers enjoyed a true romance before announcing their engagement, which Tom Thumb's employer, P. T. Barnum , promoted to the hilt. For weeks before the wedding, crowds of 20,000 or more paid $3,000 a day to see the bride-to-be and her engagement ring. Barnum received 15,000 requests for tickets to the reception (which cost $75 each). On the wedding day, crowds blocked Broadway for hours, and newspapers published pages of detailed descriptions of the "Fairy Wedding," the gifts and the guests, who included New York's most fashionable families. Barnum completed the wedding party with best man "Commodore" George Nutt and Minnie Bump, Lavinia's actual sister, and for years the group toured the globe, eventually reaching Japan, China, Australia, and India. Brady made many carte-de-visite photographs in preparation for the wedding, an arrangement that doubtless profited everyone, including the performers, who sold portraits wherever they appeared.

Another of Brady's portraits, including the bridal couple with the officiating minister and witnesses, "Commodore" G.W.M Nutt (another of Barnum's protegés) and Lavinia's sister Minnie Warren, is shown below.


I was intrigued by the "signatures" of Charles and Lavinia Stratton on the reverse of the card mount, imagining the happy couple signing thousands upon thousands of them. However, a close examination and comparison with other examples found on the net show that they are not just similar, but identical, and must be printed facsimiles printed on the card. The carte de visite shown below, currently attracting bids of over £40 on eBay, picturing Minnie Warren and Charles and Lavinia Stratton, may have been taken in London on one of their visits to England, and published by the ubiquitous London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company (who also produced the Robert Moffat cdv above).


Another feature of these portraits of famous people - at least on those from the US - is that they were often blind stamped with marks, symbols or monograms, possibly indicating that the photographs had been copyrighted. Two of these (a flag and the initials CAW, or perhaps GAW/GWA/WAG) can be seen on the reverse of the London Stereoscopic cdv of the Stratton-Warren family above. The cdv of the Strattons published by Anthony shows similar, but not identical, blind stamp marks on the front. If any reader can shed light on these marks, what they mean, and how to interpret them, I would be most grateful (email me).