A mystery marriage in Barton-under-Needwood (Part 7)

In Part 5 I described how Nigel Aspdin identified a possible location for the wedding portrait at Upper Blakenhall Farm, west of the village of Barton-under-Needwood. I would now like to describe how Nigel and I have investigated this aspect in considerably greater detail.


The wedding portrait has clearly been taken outdoors. The lighting and the shadows on the subjects' faces suggest (a) that it was taken against a south-facing wall, and (b) that the sun was behind and a little to the left of the photographer. In other words, the photographer was facing in a northerly direction, the sun was in the south-west, and it was therefore almost certainly taken in the early afternoon.


After examining the south-facing wall of the main house at Upper Blakenhall, Nigel made the following comments:

Looking at the brickwork as it now is on the middle structure it is clear that there has been re-modeling in the south wall, possibly more than once. The small window is a cellar window now, and I believe it was in the Farmer photo, as it appears not to be glazed but barred with perhaps perforated zinc netting to allow air and not insects. I would suggest that in the Farmer photo the door was the entrance to the cellar, the steps proceeding down and to the left as one went in, lit by the small window. Later re-modeling has made the cellar access from inside the building, and the small window has been moved right in this exercise. The original door opening seems to be evidenced by the horizontal fillet of roof tile edges set between 2 course of brick.

The wall dividing the farm yard from the farm garden/vegetable plot with stone copings would not have been there at the Farmer photo time.

If the wall in the Farmer photo is lime washed, this may be consistent with what may have been a dairy area, perhaps for cheese preparation, possibly covered by a lean-to roof or walls not visible. This would have been the obvious place to site such an area between the milking/cattle sheds and the farmhouse. There is no sign of lime wash now, but such would have washed off easily given the 130 years time span.

Our initial attempts to match the doorway and cellar window in the wedding portrait to the existing south wall of the farm house met with some difficulties.

In the Farmer photo there are about 28 courses of brick to the top of the door frame. In the current photo there are about 26/7 to the fillet. The difference is easily accounted for by rise in ground level by subsequent surfacing, indeed the current surface of concrete paving blocks would itself have added 1.5 courses.

However, an initial overlay of the portrait onto the wall (shown above) demonstrated a problem with this interpretation, i.e. the people would have had to be midgets! In the overlay, if the height of the wall is a little over 2 metres above current ground level, this would suggest that the tallest of the standing men was only 1.45 metres (or only 4 feet 9 inches), which seems unlikely. The problem lies in the replacement bricks which are appreciably smaller than the ones used in building the original farm house.


I started again by comparing brick sizes, number of brick courses, etc. In the old photograph, the top of the doorway appears to be 28 brick courses above ground level. Using only "original" courses from above the outline of replaced bricks in the new photograph (shown above), the highest point in the bricked in outline - adjacent to the wall, is only 22 brick courses above ground level. This suggests that the current ground level may be at least 6 brick courses higher than the ground level in 1870. According to my calculations, using a brick height of 2½ inches and a nominal 3/8 or ½ inch mortar joint, that would make just under 18 inches (or 44 cm) raising of height of the ground level between 1870 and 2009.

With regard to the probable heights of the three men, I have done another exercise, based on my estimations of a brick course height of 73.2 mm. This would make the height of the top of the door 2.05 metres above ground level, and the average height of the three men approximately 1.75 metres, or about 5 feet 9 inches tall. I have taken into account that they are standing away from the wall, rather than against it, but not nearly as far away as the feet of the groom. They would therefore be of fairly average height.

Nigel used an alternative method of calculation, coming up with a very similar result:

A standard length of cast iron downpipe is 6 ft, i.e. from the top of the collar to the end of the uncollared end. The only length in the photo I can be reasonably certain is an uncut length is the top section of the right hand drain (the drain that runs near to the left of the old door opening). It would be normal to fit the un-cut lengths first, cutting only the bottom length.

That 6 ft length of pipe spans 23.6 courses of brickwork, or 1.83m.
=> 28 courses of brickwork = 28/23.5 x 1.83 = 2.18 m (i.e. the height of the door opening)

Average height of the men = about 22 courses of brickwork.
=> Average height of men = 22/23.5 x 1.83m (6 ft) = 1.71 m = 5' 7"

With regard to the current ground level, Nigel estimates:

The old door opening appears to be currently 25 brick courses high [in the new photo], but of smaller bricks or coursework than the original wall. Panning left past the re-modeling to original brick work, I estimate that the current "door" is 22 brickwork courses high.
=> current "door" height is 22/23.5 x 1.83m, = 1.71m
=> ground level has risen by (2.18 - 1.71) = 0.47 m or 18.5 inches, and that seems to accord with your calculations.

I must say that an 18 inch increase seems significant, but if the building has no damp course, which I suspect is the case, then there is no reason not to allow the level to rise. The farm yard is concreted, and that probably extended to the area of the photograph at the same time, that would have added perhaps 9 inches (say 4 inches rubble, 5 inches concrete)

Then there is the current concrete block work paving. My research shows that this would have required:
Granular sub base (100mm), Gritty sand 25-40 (say 40mm), Block 50-100 depending on expected traffic (80mm)
Total thickness = 220 mm = 8.5 inches.

So in total the concreting of the yard, and later block work, may easily account for 16.5 inches of our 18 inch rise.

Wedding portrait image projected directly onto south wall of farmhouse with appropriate scale and perspective adjustments
With this knowledge and information I was then able to relate the scale of the wedding portrait to that of the recent photograph of the south wall. Using a vertical line through the left hand door jamb - since vertical dimension is not affected by perspective in either of the two photographs - I adjusted the scale of the wedding portrait to that of the recent photo, and superimposed the former on the latter using Adobe Photoshop. In other words, I have matched the top of the old doorway to just below the upper limit of replacement brickwork, and the base of the 22nd brick below the top of the old doorway (in the old photo) to the current ground level. This, of course, results in everything below waist level in the old photograph being below current day ground level, which is a little difficult to envisage.

For those who might interested I carried out this digital manipulation using Layers in Photoshop, as this feature greatly facilitates the manipulation of the various parts of the image:

Base Layer: Original colour image of south wall of farm house
Layer 1: Outline of replaced brickwork
Layer 2: Lines of perspective (later deleted)
Layer 3: Image of wedding portrait (50% transparent)

I manipulated the image in Layer 3 to cater for the perspective using Photoshop's "Distort" tool, fitting it to the perspective lines that I had drawn into Layer 2, which were later removed before producing the final image. I'm sure the same could be done with any of the other popular digital image editing programmes available.

The position of the old photograph laterally along the line of the wall is, of course, somewhat arbitrary. However, I believe it very unlikely that the doorway could extend between the two parts of the building. The lines of bricks do not match up at all, and there is probably an internal structural wall between the two parts, in line with the vertical down drain pipe, and immediately on the other side of the low external wall extending to the right.


It is also important to examine the proposed location of the wedding portrait in a three-diemsional sense, rather than merely in the plane of the wall. For this purpose, I have produced a simple plan showing an outline of the farm buildings, overlain on a greatly enlarged satellite image for reference to the original location shots shown in Part 5. The plan immediately demonstrates a difficulty with the proposed location - there doesn't seem to be enough room for the photographer, as the distance between the farmhouse and the outbuilding is only about 3 metres. I don't have enough technical knowledge to be sure, but I estimate that the photographer would have set up his camera and tripod between 4 and 6 metres away from his subjects. If the identification of the location is correct, there appears to be no place for him to stand in the current arrangement of buildings.


Nigel spotted that the brickwork on the west wall of the outbuilding (image above) showed evidence that several substantial modifications had been made to the structure over the years.


In particular, the portion of the wall covered with fine lattice work shown in the enlarged image above clearly has a join between walls of two quite different styles and, presumably, dates. This join continues up and to the left diagonally into the shingles on the roof. Nigel and I believe it very likely that the the part of the outbuilding to the left of the join, i.e. the northern part of the building, is of later construction, and at the time the wedding portrait and associated photographs were taken, the outbuilding probably ended at the join. This would increase the "1870" distance between the farmhouse and the outbuilding by 6-8 metres, giving plenty of room for the photographer to set up his camera and tripod, and as a consequence removing a significant obstacle to this being the location for our our wedding portrait.

Upper Blakenhall Farm therefore matches so many aspects of the three portraits in this group, and the extended Hoult and Smith families fit very nicely what we have been able to deduce about the subjects of the photograph, that I feel pretty confident that we have solved the mystery. The only lead that we haven't yet followed up is to investigate whether the buildings at Barton Park Farm (discussed and illustrated in Part 4) include any cellar windows and other features which could match. Nigel may be able to check out that property at some stage in the future, but the families of the Archer-Ball marriage from Barton Park did not correlate well with the subjects of the old photographs, so I regard it as a very long shot.

For the moment, I am very happy to remain with the identification of Mary Ann Hoult and Jacob Botham Smith as the bride and groom, and the location of all three CDVs as Upper Blakenhall Farm near Barton-under-Needwood. In the last of this series - yes, I promise it will be the last - I'll outline what happened to the Smith and Hoult families after this marriage, through into the 20th and 21st Centuries.

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 5)

At the end of Part 4 I said that I'd done about as much as I could to investigate the mystery wedding photograph from behind my Antipodean desk, and that it was now time to take to the road. Actually, I must confess that I am only doing so in a figurative sense. My eyes and ears in the English Midlands take the form of a friend Nigel Aspdin, who very kindly puts up with my periodic requests to make excursions into the neighbouring countryside in search of photographic backdrops and ancestral clues.


Extract from The Derby Mercury, 23 February 1870
I should also admit that I have done considerably more research into the background of the families involved in what I considered to be the most likely of the three marriages. As is so often the case in many of these research projects, I had a gut feeling that the Smith-Hoult marriage was the one celebrated in my carte de visite wedding portrait, and that the surroundings might well be the residence of the bride's family, Upper Blakenhall Farm. It seemed sensible, therefore, to concentrate efforts in this direction.

Further investigation of Upper Blakenhall and the Smith and Hoult families, using The Derby Mercury newspaper, census records, trade directories and other sources revealed a detailed picture of the family structure and their movements. All seemed to fit well with what we had determined from the wedding portrait and the two associated farmyard photographs. Nigel had been following the story as it unfolded, so when he said that he might be able to make a visit to Barton-under-Needwood, I jumped at the chance of getting some groundwork done. Besides looking around the village for buildings that had been around in William J. Farmer's time, I felt that Upper Blakenhall Farm had showed the most promise of being the location of the wedding portrait.

However, I am well aware of how tricky this sort of thing can be. Not everyone has the same passion for genealogical, family and local history research as we do, and landowners are understandably sometimes a little hesitant about nosey incursions into their privacy. A couple of years ago when I was cycling around this part of Staffordshire, I rode past the entrance to the farm near Alrewas where my own ancestors had lived in the late 18th Century. I wasn't bold enough to walk up the driveway and introduce myself to the current owners, and therefore missed a great opportunity to obtain some first hand knowledge of the farm and perhaps some pictures.


(1) Entrace to Upper Blakenhall Farm, 18 April 2008
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Nigel, on the other hand, is less daunted by such hurdles and introduced himself to the current owners of Upper Blakenhall Farm after heading up this driveway. After he had explained the purpose of his enquiries they were very helpful and cooperative indeed, and showed Nigel around the exterior of the house and farm buildings.


(2) Southern and eastern aspects of main house, Upper Blakenhall Farm, 18 April 2008
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
This is a photograph of the easterly aspect of their nicely preserved three-storey farm house. Nigel's bicycle leans against the wooden picket fence, in homage to ubiquitous early 20th Century Derby photographer Frank Scarratt, whose bicycle also appeared in many of his published postcard views.


(3) Composite image of farm buildings, Upper Blakenhall Farm, 18 April 2008
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
The next image, a composite of two of Nigel's photographs taken in the same farm yard, but in a roughly north-easterly direction, show the farm buildings which form the north and eastern boundaries of the farm yard. The position of the photographer in each photo, together with approximate view angles, are indicated on the enlarged satellite image shown below. The farm outbuildings, while showing signs of having been extensively altered since their original construction, are still in a roughly similar style to how they must have appeared in the mid- to late nineteenth century. There were no immediate signs of two characteristic features which had been noticed on the original group of photographs by W.J. Farmer, i.e. a large double wooden door (in the horse and dog photographs) and a low cellar window (in the wedding portrait). The wooden doors are all much narrower, and although some significant alterations have clearly taken place, I couldn't see any obvious gaps where double wooden doors could have fitted.


Main farm buildings at Upper Blakenhall Farm
showing viewing positions & angles of photographs (1) to (4)
Enlarged Satellite Image © and courtesy of GoogleMaps
However, Nigel was then shown around the side of the house, where things started to get much more exciting.


(4) Southern aspect of main house, Upper Blakenhall Farm, 18 April 2008
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
This view of the south-facing wall of the main house is from the south-west, as opposed to the south-east view shown above (2), and the other side of a brick wall which connects the house with a farm building to the south. Nigel's attention was immediately drawn to the window placed low down in the wall. Although clearly not exactly the same one as shown in the wedding portrait, and not adjacent to a door, it is similar and suggests the existence within the house of a room with a floor significantly lower than the current ground level, possibly a cellar.


Detail of image (4) with outline of replaced brickwork
A careful look at the brickwork within this wall reveals some extensive replacement brickwork, possibly in several stages, as outlined in the detailed image above.


(5) Western wall of farm outbuilding immediately to south of main house, Upper Blakenhall Farm, 18 April 2008
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
Another shot taken from approximately the same location, but of an eastern wall of the outbuilding immediately to the south of the main house, includes a promising looking large stable door, but it is clearly not the double door from our old photographs.


(6) Portion of the yard immediately to south of main house, also shown in image (2), Upper Blakenhall Farm, 18 April 2008
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
A more detailed view of the northern end of the eastern wall of the same building, just visible at the left hand edge of image (2) shows a large door with similar long hinges and a very similar latch to those in the horse photograph.


A closer comparison suggests that they can't be the same door - the top hinge is of a slightly different design, and the latch is longer - but both appear to be of a very similar style.

With all of this, I was starting to get a very strong feeling that we had found the location of the photographs. In the next two articles in this series, I will (a) investigate how the wedding group might fit with the Smith and Hoult families, and (b) try to fit the three old photographs into the recent photographs of Upper Blakenhall Farm.

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