Females - Week 9: 52 Ancestors

Joined by mtDNA

Earlier this year, I posted a photo in Facebook of my sister, her daughter and me, stating that we all shared the same mtDNA. Well, I expect we do - I am the only family member to have bothered spending the money to see.  Family Tree DNA, the only genealogical company to offer this service found that my mitochondrial DNA is haplogroup H.  To be precise, I belong to subgroup H1a1a.  I shall not go into the science - it wasn't my favourite subject at school.

Neither have I found mtDNA to be much use in solving my family tree brick walls.  I simply have not got enough maternal great aunts in my mother's ancestry.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed down to both females and males by their mother, but only females pass it on to their children. It does not mutate much, less than one in a hundred according to Scientific American.  It is suggested that 12 generations of females are likely to carry identical mtDNA. . The H haplogroup is one of the most common in Europe.  Approximately 40% of the female population shares it. This haplogroup is thought to have originated near Syria and has since spread throughout Europe, particularly Spain and to North Africa.

At the moment, I can only trace my presumed mitochondrial DNA back five generations, all in Kent, England.  My mitochondrial 3x great grandmother was Elizabeth Terry who was born in Dartford, Kent in 1789 and was buried in Ightham, Kent in 1876, having first married Henry Ashby who died in 1853 and then her lodger William Vaughan, another agricultural labourer in 1867. This family must have been very poor - they were living on the Ightham Common, next door to one of Elizabeth's married daughters and her family. Elizabeth Terry's great granddaughter Kate Palmer - my birth grandmother - was also living there with her grandmother Elizabeth Ashby in 1891.

Ancestry has a suggestion that Elizabeth Terry's mother was Ann West from the neighbouring village of Plaxtol but I cannot prove that.

The mitochondrial DNA extends down another two generations from me, since my sister's daughter also has a daughter.  I shall probably not live to see if it goes any further since my gorgeous little grandniece is only eight years old.  Unless customs change dramatically, she won't think about having children for another twenty to thirty years.

Landed: Week 7 - John Tucker Jr of Landford

Landford St Andrews church

As I began researching my Tucker ancestors in Hampshire and Wiltshire in the 19th-century census and baptismal records, I found that all of them were described as either labourers of some sort or agricultural labourers. Many of the widows were laundresses and their daughters were domestic servants.  Some were even described as paupers. Additionally, many of them were illiterate, especially the women.

My 3x great grandfather George Tucker (1802-1886) and his wife Hannah were living on the Downton Common by 1871.  Most of the common land in Landford and Hamptworth where they worked and probably lived as tenanted labourers were enclosed by 1861.  They could no longer supplement their labouring wages with grazing their stock and foraging for food or timber in these now private properties.

By 1881, George - now a widower - was living in the region's Poor House at Alderbury.  This often served as an aged care facility for the few people like him who lived into old age.  I often wonder why neither of his locally married daughters could not take him in.  Maybe they too lived in crowded housing with too many children.

Extending my search to siblings of these 19th-century ancestors, I found them most of them also were described as agricultural labourers.  It was only when some of them moved to towns and cities and compulsory education became the norm that their offspring were able to gain a middle-class standard of living. By the Edwardian period, my Tucker great grandparents in Southampton were sending their sons to private schools and their wives were well-educated.  They moved to better areas of town and built or bought property.

However, once I began researching 18th-century records, mostly through the Wiltshire Archives, I discovered that my Tucker ancestors had a higher standard of living, if not a more comfortable life.  The earliest records I could find were at Minstead, Hampshire. Some of them were yeoman farmers - generally leasing land from the landed gentry.  Some held copyhold title ie the lease was passed on to them by their father or other relatives.

Some did very well, better than their yeoman farming ancestors.  John Tucker 1799-1773 was first a blacksmith with apprentices in Bramshaw on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border but by 1735 he had moved to Landford, Wiltshire where he was a very successful farmer, able to leave his daughter Mary 500 pounds and his son John all his other freehold property and assets.  He was not the oldest son, so whether he married particularly well or was an excellent blacksmith, I do not know.

Whilst studying the Pharos Tutors Family History Skills & Strategies (Intermediate) Certificate in 2013, I researched and wrote about a will of my ancestor's first cousin John Tucker (1736-1811).  He was not "landed gentry" but he was certainly a gentleman farmer.  I doubt he got his hands particularly dirty.

Will of John Tucker, proved 1812 at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury

The will

This document from the Wills Register at the National Archives PROB 11/1538/130 (Catalogue Reference) is the Will of John Tucker, gentleman of Landford,  proved 14^th October 1812 at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.  The will was dated 3^rd July 1811.

The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of Monday, May 25^th, 1812 announced:

“On Sunday the 17^th instant died, Mr. John Tucker, of Landford, in this county, aged 76 years; a truly honest and upright character.”

Summary of the will

After stating his good health and mental state, he desires that all his just debts and financial exposure be settled, as well as the expenses relating to proving the will and discharging his debts.

He gives powers to settle his debts and money owing to him, to sell or auction his property and possessions to his executors, John Hicks (yeoman of Landford), Thomas Wilmot (solicitor and gentleman of Salisbury) and John Saunders the younger, gentleman of Broughton in the County of Southampton.

He leaves his plate and china to three female friends, Sarah Doyley of Fisherton Anger (near Salisbury) and Ann and Sarah Burke, daughters of Nathaniel Burke of Ipswich, surgeon.

His property consisting of a “freehold messuage, tenement or dwelling house wherein I now live with the garden, orchard, barn backside and one piece of Meadow” situated at Landford, and also other properties, freehold, lifehold, leasehold and copyhold, various acreages, a blacksmith’s shop;  freehold, leasehold, copyhold pieces or parcels of meadow bushy or arable land which he holds under Corpus Christi Oxford College[i] which he holds in his own life and the life of William Bishop situated living and being in Landford; and all his books, furniture, silver and other possessions of whatever quality are to be sold in whatever way the .

The monies raised are to be used in the following ways:

·       to invest £500, the interest from which is to be used to educate and maintain until the age of 21, a child Thomas Jeffrey Bumstead, the son of the late Rev James Hewett Bumstead, and after the age of 21 to give him the principal sum for his own use.

·       To provide annuities for some cousins (first and second) with legacies- James Winter £15 per annum; William Bishop, a servant of Fritham and George Tucker of Hamptworth (a second cousin) £8/10/- per annum, paid quarterly.  George Tucker was the older brother of my direct ancestor William Tucker.

·       To provide legacies for a large number of first and second cousins of between £30 and £50.  Most of them were labourers.  He also left his second cousin Sarah Maury (nee Tucker) £100 and another £50 if she was living with him at the time of his death.  He also left the previously mentioned friends Sarah Doyley (£100) and Sarah and Ann Burke (£300 between them) and the relatives of his late wife Sarah Moulton (£200).

Any additional monies raised from the sale of his properties was to be shared amongst all his first and second cousins.

Death duties

These were recorded in 1812 at the Canterbury PC, with John Hicks and others paying the duties[ii].

Genealogy

John Tucker’s will was crucial for my family history research, since it, and his father, another John Tucker’s 1773 will provided me with information that connected my direct ancestor William Tucker (1764-1843) born in Hamptworth, back to William Tucker of Fritham near Bramshaw, Wilts whose will was proved in 1712[iii] and his wife Mary whose will was proved in 1724. 

The testator’s father John Tucker senior (c1700-1773) was the younger brother of my 6^th great-grandfather William Tucker (1697-?) born in Bramshaw, Wilts who was a yeoman of Hale near Downton, and was a grantee for the administration of his mother-in-law Mary Henbest’s estate in 1745. William married Christian Henbest from Bramshaw in 1724.  In succeeding generations, the Tucker families were baptised, married, lived, worked and died in the parishes of Downton, Landford and the district of Hamptworth, a corn and sheep raising community within walking distance of both villages.

The Parish of Landford and its surrounding districts

Nowadays, Landford is a scattered commuter community divided by the A36, but in 1801, 12 years before John Tucker died, it was a thriving agricultural village of 186 people, 97 males and 89 females with 37 families living in 32 households. Nearly everyone was employed in agriculture, 148 people, with only 13 employed in trade, manufacturers or handicrafts. [iv]

It had grown from 80 people in 1675[v].  Landford and its near neighbours Bramshaw, Downton, and Hamptworth were agricultural parishes which in the early 1800s were undergoing great changes, both through the continuing enclosure of lands, and the mechanisation of farm machinery.  It is likely that the Tuckers were beneficiaries of these changes, unlike some of their relative who became agricultural labourers by the 19the century.  Downton would continue to grow, particularly after the coming of the railways by 1844, but not before its population and that of nearby towns was poverty stricken through famine and changing economic times.

Our testator John Tucker died during the Napoleonic wars, and the parish records show that he was a churchwarden, handing out alms to soldiers who were passing through the village, probably on their way home from the ports. The old road from Salisbury to Totton went through Landford and Bramshaw. But otherwise, it is unlikely the war affected the village much.  Landford was a mixed agricultural village, with arable land and pastures, and on the edge of the New Forest where doubtless some villagers would have been employed as woodsmen.  Common areas were reducing rapidly, and many fields were enclosed.

A man of substance

During the visitation of the Bishop in 1783[vi], John Tucker was described in the Glebe terrier as a gentleman farmer who occupied Whitehouse Farm and had several other small holdings.  He also owned Landford Cottage, and farmed on a substantial scale.  The UK Land Tax Redemption record of 1798[vii] shows he leased four land-holdings from John Eyre, Esq. one of two of the large landowners in the area.  He also had copyhold of another property owned by the other, Robert Dumcom Shafto, to which he added the oldest son of my 4^th great grandfather as a third party.[viii]

It is obvious from the will that John Tucker was a man of substantial means, doing well from his freehold, lifehold, leasehold and copyhold properties.  He had a good start in life.  There was evidence of Tucker holdings in Landford from 1708[ix].  His father, John was a blacksmith in Bramshaw in 1730[x] (Apprenticeship record for John Hatch, indentured to John Tucker) but by 1735 he was listed as a constable in Landford[xi]. He would have been an experienced farmer as well, working for his father William Tucker, a farmer of Bramshaw.  But as a younger son he didn’t inherit property, and would have had to start out on his own, opening a blacksmith’s shop in Landford. He died in 1773, a yeoman farmer leaving his son property and a blacksmith’s shop.  John Snr may have been a beneficiary of the land enclosure, and as a blacksmith in a village with a rising population, he may have done well.  He would have educated his son John, and even his own father William Tucker of Bramshaw could sign his name.

John Jr did not leave any of his estate to the parish, which seems unusual for the 19^th century, but he was very loyal to his own extended family, particularly those who were not as prosperous as he was.  Many of them were labourers, including my ancestor William Tucker, his second cousin (more correctly in genealogical rules his first cousin once removed), who was left £50.  William’s older brother George, a labourer who was involved in settling his estate and earlier described as a yeoman was left an annuity of £8/10/-.  He was to live another 20 years.  Like John Jr, George had no children.

Being a gentleman farmer, John Tucker would have had the leisure to keep up a circle of distant friends.  No family connection can be found with the Bumstead family.  Thomas Jeffrey Bumstead, the legatee was born in Broughton Gifford in 1799 and became a minister.  He died in 1883 with a personal estate of £10,397 2s 9d[xii], so he was given a good start through this legacy.

John Tucker Jnr had married Sarah Moulton in Landford in 1789, the daughter of William Moulton of Boxford, Suffolk and she died in 1809.  He remembered her relatives with a legacy.  He also had a soft spot for spinster friends with china and legacies being left to three women, presumably all family friends.

Winding up the estate

His administrators were kept busy, with advertisements appearing in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal:

·       Monday June 8^th, 1812 – calling for persons indebted to the estate to pay their debts; and all those who have demands on the estate to present their accounts;

·       Monday 15^th June, 1812 – notice of an auction of “seven clever draft horses… fit for wagon masters or brewers; three narrow-wheel wagons, two broad-wheel dung cart carts and much more; farming utensils, free hold and leasehold estates, dwelling house, furniture, crops of corn on ground on different farms, dairy cows, young beasts.

·       Monday September 28^th, 1812 – notice of auction on late Mr Tucker’s premises of remaining property – with description of furniture, animals, brewing and animal utensils.

Summary

The will therefore not only gave us information about John Tucker’s status, lifestyle, his date of death, an indication of where to look for advertisements of property sale, but also a list of relations and their relationships to him.

---

[i] I could find no reference to explain this.  Did he hold a lease for land owned by Corpus Christi College, Oxford?  Or was it a form of lease?

[ii] www.findmypast.co.uk Index to death duty registers 1796 – 1903, 1812 (image from National Archives)

[iii] http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk Wills P24/693 Probate records of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury

[iv]   http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk Landford page

[v] Ings, Stephen Landford: a Wiltshire village in the New Forest.  Landford, Wilts, Laneford Books, 2005 p 54.

[vi], Ibid, p 64

[vii] www.ancestry.co.uk UK, Land Tax Redemption, 1798

[viii] www.history.wiltshire.gov.uk/archives/  Wiltshire and Swindon Archives Catalogue Item 610/24 Lease and counterpart inserting a third life into a lease for two lives (19 December 1770) Consideration money £200.

[ix] www.history.wiltshire.gov.uk/archives/ Wiltshire and Swindon Archives Catalogue Item 610/18-22 Tucker property.

[x] www.ancestry.co.uk UK, Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices' Indentures, 1710-1811

[xi] Ings, Stephen, ibid., page 57

[xii] www.ancestry.co.uk England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966 Record for Thomas Jeffery Bumpsted

Maps - Week 6: 52 Ancestors: The Southampton Blitz

Bombing of Southampton in November 1940

In 1940, my father Bob Tucker was still smarting over his rejection by the Army on medical grounds a year earlier.  He could have been in Egypt with some of his workmates, defending Britain, his country of birth.

It wasn’t until 1941 that he was required to sign up.  Wearing spectacles didn’t matter by the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

Meanwhile, his mother Edith Annie Tucker was probably thankful - for the first time - that she no longer lived in her hometown Southampton where two of her sisters, Harriet and Kate still lived or indeed in London where two more sisters - Alice and Minnie - lived.

In 1940, Germany commenced bombing raids on London and other English towns.  As England’s premier military port and the home of the spitfire manufacturing, Southampton was a sitting duck for the German air raids. Starting in 1939, many children were evacuated to inland towns in neighbouring counties.

In June 1940, the anticipated air raids began. Many of the attacks were during the day, targeting manufacturing plants such as the Supermarine factory in the suburb of Bitterne where the Spitfires were manufactured.  The work was later spread throughout Southampton and environs but the Germans obviously had good information since these locations were subject to attacks as were air-raid shelters to which the workers would flee.

Later that year on November 30 and December 1, 700 bombs rained down on the docks and the commercial city areas.  This became known as the Southampton Blitz.  In 2016, the Ordnance Survey created a map that shows where each of those 700 bombs fell on those two dreadful nights. The National Archives and the Southampton City Council provided significant assistance to the Ordnance Office to produce the map, shown above.

My great aunt Harriet, a teacher and my great aunt Kate, formerly a bookbinder and by that time both in their 50s and 60s, must have been terrified. Although both were married, neither of them had children.  They remained in Southampton, doing what they could and later writing and sending care packages to my father in New Guinea.  Both of them remembered my father fondly, having assisted my grandmother feed and cloth him after she was widowed in 1919.

Two decades earlier, my father’s Reed grandmother, mother and aunts had been running a tea room and confectionery business in East Street, trading out of the debt left after their master baker father had died prematurely in 1915.  It had closed, debt-free after their mother died in 1924.  But nevertheless, they would have grieved the devastation of East Street, a thriving commercial centre in1940. Their Rose grandfather, George Henry, a butcher had died at 19-20 East Street in 1901 with his Reed family by his side.

Rose and Roger descendants were busily running their pork butchery in Upper Canal Walk, as was still-young widow Edith Tucker, my great grandfather’s second wife in the Canal Walk music dealership she inherited in 1924. The Blitz saw the end of those businesses. Eventually, East Street was renewed as a shopping centre but the area around Upper Canal Walk is now an ugly car park.

St Michael's steeple in middle of photo

Many of the churches they attended in the 19th century became smoking ruins, except for St Michael’s at the end of Vyse Lane where John Rose’s large family lived for three decades in the mid-19th century.  It has been said that the German pilots used its steeple as a landmark, enabling them to target specific buildings including the Civic Centre.

A family tale is that John Rose would take sanctuary in St Michael’s for hours or sometimes days whilst he was bringing in favours to pay his various fines and gambling debts.

The large church of St Mary’s, where many of my father’s ancestors were baptised was restored, but many other churches were not.  In fact, the Old Town within and Below the Walls on its perimeter is now a sad mixture of 1960’s residential Council flats, what remains of the old Town Walls and heritage buildings which somehow missed the severe damage or were able to be restored.

One benefit of the bombing is that the reparation effort after the war accelerated the housing renewal program.  Many of my ancestors endured extremely insanitary,  otherwise unhealthy and crowded housing, whilst others who could afford it - successful small business people - moved further out to London Road to the north and Fremantle, a new suburb in the Edwardian period.  Many of the poorer townsfolk had been living in long-condemned houses.

Altogether, more than 30,000 incendiaries and 2,300 bombs were dropped on homes, shops and factories, as well as port and military installations in Southampton and 631 people, were killed.  A further 898 were seriously injured and 1,000 houses were destroyed.

No wonder the Southampton my father left in 1924 was no longer recognisable and the street map had completely changed by the time I first visited in 1974.

References

 

Southampton Blitz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southampton_Blitz#  accessed 22/1/21

Mapped, the horror of the Blitz  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3339431/Map-shows-locations-700-Nazi-bombs-fell-Southampton-height-Blitz.html, accessed 22/1/22

Mapping the Southampton Blitz  https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/mapping-the-southampton-blitz-70-years-on

Branching out: Week 5: 52 Ancestors

Agricultural labourers 

In 2011, in another blog about my Tucker ancestors, I wrote about my 3x great grandfather George Tucker 1802-1886, calling him the ancestor I felt most sorry for.  He was born in the wrong county, in the wrong era, and at the wrong end of his family.  By the time he was of working age, drought had overtaken Wiltshire, farmers were reducing manpower through the use of machinery and the parish of Downton had organised a shipload of parishioners to migrate to Canada.  George Tucker was not amongst them.  He eeked out a living as an agricultural labourer and woodsman, unlike his Tucker ancestors, many of whom were men of substance. By 1881, he was livng in the Union Poor House at Alderbury and died there in 1886.

He and his wife Hannah (nee Isaac) had four children, two sons George (b. 1832) and William (b. 1834), and two daughters (Ann b. 1829) and Mary (b.1840). They lived in the rural district of Hamptworth where there was a pub but no church.  Whilst the two girls married local lads, neither son could see a future for himself on the land and there cannot have been many opportunities for illiterate young men in either Downton or Landford, the two closest villages they could walk to. In 1841, the family was split up with father George, his pauper mother, and two sons living on the land whilst his wife and two daughters lived at Landford Lodge, no doubt working as servants and sheltering from the cold. Mary was still an infant.

By 1851, the Tucker family was reunited in Hamptworth, except for younger son William. He was working as a farm servant for distant relatives in West Wellow, Hampshire.  By the mid 1860s, William had moved to London where he was a fireman and later a stoker for the railways.  He married a widow, Emma Garnett with three daughters and they had two more daughters together.  By 1881, he had died, probably due to occupational hazards and poor living conditions in West Ham where they lived.

Meanwhile his older brother, George had moved to Southampton where there were abundant, if poorly paid, opportunities for work in the ever growing port.  He married another immigrant to the town, one Sophia Jefferis from Fordingbridge in Hampshire.

George and Sophia Tucker were my great great grandparents and were the first of my Tuckers to live in Southampton.  Another three generations did so until my father left for Australia in 1925 and his Uncle Bert Tucker moved to London a decade earlier.

George worked on the docks as a coal porter and stevedore.  No doubt the coal arrived from  all over England and Wales via the railways.  In those days, the Southampton terminus, completed by 1840, was at the docks.  His working conditions would also have been poor but no doubt Southampton was a much healthier place to live than London because he lived until 1914.

Upper Canal Walk aka The Ditches

Sometime before 1861, George and Sophia moved to 9 Bell Street, adjacent to the thriving Upper Canal Walk, also known as the Ditches. They produced a son, George William (1856-1924) and two daughters Louisa (1860-1879) and Ellen Jane (1869-1948).  After George’s death in 1914, Sophia remained living there until her death in 1922.  So she was there for over 60 years, looked after in her later years by her daughter Nellie McInnes.  They would not have owned the house but could have had a long term lease.

This generation of Tuckers had truly branched out, leaving behind their rural lives and personified the industrial revolution which continued to build great wealth for the British empire, if not for themselves.

However, George and Sophia Tucker lived long enough to see their only son become a very successful music dealer and give his own boys a good education and sporting life.

Curious: the case of the retired news vendor

John Rose 1804-1884

“Are you still working, Mr Rose?” asked the census collector.  It was 3^rd April, 1881 and John Rose was at home, 4 Anspach Place, in Southampton Old Town. In fact, Anspach Place houses were built into the old town walls.

“Not these days,” John Rose replied. “But put me down as a retired newsagent.”

I can imagine daughter Hannah, one of 20 children, looking up sharply.  She knew her pa had been a carpet-beater, and earlier, a licensed porter, but a news agent?  Now that was a surprise.

Only 20, Hannah was not interested in her father’s early days, although she’d heard the tale of the tenth son often enough.

Aged 21 in 1825, John had married Isabella Sievewright at St Michael’s church, and by 1838, she’d delivered her tenth child.

Being a practical joker, but at the same time, deeply into radical politics, John decided to make a point about tithing.  He waited till the absentee rector of St Mary’s, Frederick North, soon to be Earl of Guilford, arrived to deliver a sermon and collect his dues.

John handed the baby to the Earl, who admired his chubby cheeks.

“Here is my tithe, my Lord – my tenth son,” John Rose said.

“No, no!” replied the rector, quickly relinquishing the child, who was later baptised Guilford North Rose.

The incident was retold with mirth around the beer houses of Southampton whenever the discussion turned to the unfairness of the annual tithe.

With 19 children born between 1826 and 1864 to his two wives, the Rose household was often crowded.   John wished his work paid better, enabling the family to move away from the dark, dank back lanes of the Old Town.  With so many people arriving from the rural areas, rents were constantly rising.

Indeed, the population of Southampton was exploding, with the expansion of the docks in the 1830s and the railway opening in 1840.  The town was a magnet for agricultural workers seeking employment after years of drought and mechanisation of farming.

Newspaper reports show that John Rose had been a barrowman in the late 1840s, prior to becoming a porter; but there in the 1841 census, was Isabella Rose, a news agent’s wife at 35 College Street, together with an infant daughter and many sons.

But what of John?  I finally found him listed amongst prisoners in the Southampton House of Correction.  He’d been found guilty of libel in 1840.

If he hadn’t been a newsagent for 35 years, why state that occupation in 1881?

Could it be that only that occupation had given him true satisfaction, feeling proud of trying to make his contemporaries aware of social and political injustice?

Newspaper reports of public meetings and his court appearances, whether as a defendant, plaintiff, grieving father or witness, show John holding strong convictions, arguing forcefully and often theatrically.   He certainly believed that working men deserved to have a voice in political decision making and everyday matters.  Daily, he challenged injustice.

As a literate young man, he would have been aware of the Six Acts introduced to Parliament in 1819, aimed at keeping the working classes quiet and ill-informed and at suppressing riots and revolt.  Laws were made to suit the wealthy and well-born, not men like him.

John Rose’s father Simon, of Misterton in Somerset had, by 1795, established himself as a wool comber in Southampton.  This trade was amongst the first to become organised, so I like to think John gained his political consciousness by sitting at his father’s feet in winter, or at the beer shop, where men escaped their crowded housing, telling tales, reading newspapers and discussing politics over a pint of ale.

By 1832 John Rose had established a newsagency in College Street, near the bustling retail area Canal Walk, selling newspapers and tobacco products.  He also set up a printing press, creating posters, almanacs and his own political tracts and humorous ditties.

Like so many other working men and their champions, he’d been disappointed when the 1832 Reform Act dashed his expectations of gaining the vote: only men of property did so.

He became known as the Opposition Town Crier, dressed in a crimson coat with white sleeves and a gold hat, with a bell, announcing the headlines from the radical papers and tracts he sold.   He was a tall man of imposing physique, a consummate showman, not averse to a scuffle or to drown out the opposition with his loud voice.  The Town Corporation tried to shut him down but had no legal grounds to do so.  John was what we’d call a bush lawyer, and had plenty of supporters amongst the poorer town folk and intellectuals.

However, the authorities constantly monitored his activities and, by using the laws enacted in 1819, brought him before the Police Court, fining him for selling unstamped newspapers.  The tax was often four times the unstamped price, putting the papers out of the reach of poorer folk.  After the congregating laws were relaxed, the first working men’s literary or mechanics institutions were born and subscriptions taken out, with better educated men reading the newspapers and tracts to others.  Earlier, beer houses were a place to gather for discussions.

Throughout the 1830s and 40s, John Rose struggled to pay his fines, and sometimes found himself in the God’s House Tower, at that time used as a debtor’s prison, until he could find the money.  Other times, he was fined a small amount, and let go with a surety of £20 or more to keep the peace.  His impetuosity often got the better of him.

The Chartists tried time and time again until 1848 to get their petitions taken seriously by Parliament, but gave up after the third attempt.  It was not until 1867 that the franchise was further extended and the qualifications for seeking parliamentary office extended beyond wealthy landowners and leaseholders.  Universal franchise was instituted in 1928.

Meanwhile, sometime after his libel case, John Rose had closed down his news agency.  I often wonder whether he’d burnt out politically, had a newsagent’s license suspended, or if Isabella had put her foot down and suggested he earn a better living for his fast growing family.

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Note:  John Rose (1804-1884) was one of my 3x great grandfathers.

This post was written as an assignment for the UTas Diploma of Family History in 2017.

Bibliography

http://sotonopedia.wikidot.com/ Articles on John Rose, Anspach Place, God’s House Tower, radicals.

http://www.plimsoll.org/Southampton/streetdirectories/directory1836/default.asp#2 Kelly’s Directory, Southampton, 1836

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Acts

The Man: a rational advocate. Sunday November 24, 1833

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/group/ukicen UK census records 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881

www.ancestry.co.uk England and Wales. Birth, marriages, and death, including parishes.

www.findmypast.co.uk.  British newspapers.  Many articles from the Hampshire Advertiser, between 1829-1884.

www.localhistories.org/southampton.html Southampton in the 18th century.

www.south-central-media.co.uk/tuppenny_press.html The Tuppenny Press and the birth of the English newspaper.
 

Favourite photo: cousins in Southampton

I’m guessing that this photo was taken about 1918 when high-waisted dresses became fashionable for a short time. It is obviously a studio photo and was captured in Southampton, England.  Then again, I wonder if the dresses are black, meaning the photo was taken the following year and the girls would be in mourning.

Jessie, Molly, and Cecily

The young girls in this photo had no inkling that within one or two years, their lives would be much different.  Already war had impacted two of them - their father Sydney George Tucker was in the Parkhurst hospital on the Isle of Wight during the whole of 1918, recovering from serious war injuries sustained on the Western Front. The other’s father, Alexander Stuart Kennedy was playing cricket for Hampshire as one of the top English wicket-takers, taking on coaching engagements in South Africa and hoping to play test cricket for England.

My dad, Bob Tucker had two older sisters - Jessie Agnes, born 1908 and Cecily Mary, born 1910, both in Southampton.  They were lucky enough to have a cousin, Mary Stuart Kennedy, also born in 1910 and also living in Southampton.  Mary was always known as Molly.  The two sisters are standing on either side of Molly, seated.

The girls’ mothers were two of six Reed sisters, Edith Annie Tucker, fifth born child and fourth daughter of Robert Henry Reed, and Jessie Kennedy, the sixth daughter, and youngest child of Robert Henry Reed (1856-1915).

In 1919, Jessie (junior) and Cecily’s father returned home from the Isle of Wight but it was evident to his family that he was seriously disturbed with shell-shock. He fell off the City Walls, maybe deliberately, injuring himself, and was taken to the Southampton War Hospital where he committed suicide, three days after being officially demobbed.  This wasn’t recognised as a consequence of war until much later so Edith Annie Tucker did not receive a war widow’s pension at first.  Her civilian widow’s pension, based only on his pre-war cash wage (not the in-kind support from his employer father) was not enough to sustain three children.

Seeking relief from her parish, Edith was encouraged by the vicar to put the girls into care at St Paul’s Home in Chelsea, London.  This home closed so by 1922, the girls were taken in by The Dr. Barnardo’s Home for Girls in Barking. Meanwhile, Edith Annie kept my father with her and during the 1921 census, she was described as a confectionary business manager, working with her widowed mother to trade out of debt after their master baker father died suddenly in 1915 owing a large debt to the bank.  I’m told by my second cousins that their grandmother Jessie Kennedy was a talented cake decorator.

Meanwhile Molly’s father Alec Kennedy was successfully becoming an all-round top cricketer and by 1920 he, his wife Jessie, and Molly sailed to Cape Town where he coached and played one series of five Tests for England against South Africa.  Although a highly successful medium-speed bowler and a good batsman, his style was somewhat unorthodox and controversial and this was probably the reason for his not playing more Tests for England.

I found a postcard amongst my father’s memorabilia addressed to him aged 6 from his Aunty Jessie.  Here it is:

Sadly, by 1923, although another daughter, Jean was born in Cape Town, Jessie and Alec’s marriage disintegrated. As the wronged partner, Alec was entitled to custody of both girls but left baby Jean with her mother.  By 1926, Molly sailed for England with her father who resurrected his cricket and coaching career and didn’t return to South Africa until 1947 by which time Molly was raising her first son with her husband John Priestley Palmer.

Meanwhile, Jessie and Cecily Tucker were encouraged by Dr. Barnardos to migrate to Australia in 1924.  They were followed to Sydney in 1925 by their mother and 10-year-old brother (my dad) the following year.  I know my father remembers his Aunt Jessie and her girls meeting him when the ship arrived in Cape Town on their way to Australia.  Apart from Cecily about 1978, the Tucker family were never to see England again.

And as far as I know, Molly never saw her mother again after she resettled with her father in Southampton in 1926, aged 15.  My second cousin - another Alexander who was Molly's son - showed me a photo that I could identify as a farewell keepsake from Mother Jessie to her daughter.  Here it is.

It is inscribed "To Molly with heaps of love from Mum and Baby" 26-3-25, and a verse: 

"Be good sweet Maid

And let who will be clever

Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long."

Mum

The quote was originally from the poem A farewell by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875).

Favourite find: my maternal grandfather

Freda with George and Alice

What a wild goose chase that was!   Family stories, handed down third hand can do that.

My mother, Freda learned at age 18 that she was adopted.  Well, sort of adopted.  There was no such process in New South Wales until 1931. However, as a six-week-old baby she was taken by her birth mother Kitty to the small country town of Dunedoo in the Central West to be brought up by an impulsive woman called Alice Smith and her much steadier husband George, a small farm holder. 

Kate (Kitty) in England

Alice and Kitty had met when Alice had given birth to a stillborn child in the Paddington Woman’s Hospital run by the Benevolent Society. Kitty had been referred to the Society when a kindly old gentleman found her crying in Belmore Park, obviously pregnant.  Kitty was a stranger in town.  She had arrived in Sydney in late February, having been gifted a passage on the Freidrich der Grosse from Antwerp.  She had been escorted there by ferry, possibly by the father of her child.  She told my mother that he had promised to follow her out after tying up his business affairs.

The baby had been conceived in Seal, Kent where Kitty had been working as a parlourmaid - the senior female servant - in a stockbroker’s house where staff were required to live-in.  Her mother, stepfather, and four half-siblings lived in the same village.

In her late 80s, Freda had told me that she wished she knew who her father was but had been too embarrassed to ask her birth mother who had kept in touch with the Smiths.  Kitty had been known to us our whole lives as a family friend.  

Kate Palmer's marriage 1918

In 1918 after working for the family of a footwear manufacturer, Kitty married a returned soldier who was a shoemaker and like her, came from Kent.  In 1922 a second daughter, Peggy was born.  Kitty died in 1970 aged 89, before I knew that she was my grandmother.

In semi retirement, about 2005, I commenced researching my father’s ancestry.   So it was 2008, planning an overseas trip, before I started researching Kitty’s life, building on the research my mother had commenced years earlier.  I presented my aunt Peggy with a 12-page story with the facts, based on records

found on Ancestry, Find My Past, and the North West Kent Family History Society.  I don’t think she was much impressed to find that not only was her half sister illegitimate but so was her mother and maternal grandmother Annie (Ashby) Palmer 1855-1935.  In fact, her mother Kitty was the product of a liaison between Annie and her half nephew!  A bit too close for comfort.

Peggy’s reaction, just months before her own death was to write thanking me in a roundabout way, saying well, it must be so since I was a qualified researcher, and passing on the information from her English aunts that my mother’s father was the “young man of the house”.

So I was keenly awaiting the arrival of the 1911 census which was for some reason made available in 2009, knowing Kate’s full name and place of birth.

1911 census at Godden Green

And bingo.  I thought I had my answer straight away.  Kate, aged 29 was working for a family called Forbes in Godden Green, a hamlet just one mile from the village of Seal.  And for whatever reason, the stockbroker’s son Nevill, aged 28 and a reader in Russian at Oxford University was at home with his parents on census night.

A Google search for Nevill was very productive.  He had written books on topics as diverse as an English-Russian dictionary, Russian textbooks, a book of Russian fairy tales, and scholarly tomes on the history of the Balkans.  He was listed in the Oxford Dictionary of Biography which included the information that he had studied a Ph.D. in Leipzig, Germany, and was the second Professor of Russian at Oxford from 1922.  He was also a well-known homosexual and dressed colourfully.  One could be a homosexual without fearing the consequences in the intellectual circles of Oxford and Cambridge.

Was that a possibility?  That he might father a child?  Why not, I thought.  His sister’s husband, a Cambridge-educated architect was also one but produced four daughters before he gave up all pretense of hiding his sexual preferences.

That same day, I entered his name into Genes Reunited, a popular database in 2009.    Immediately I found an exact match.  I wrote a very circumspect email stating that I thought we might be related.  Within two hours I received a response from an English-born New Zealander saying he thought Nevill was his grandfather.  His grandmother, a widow had been the longtime charwoman in Nevill’s University-leased house in Oxford.  His mother Rhoda had told him one day whilst walking past that she had lived there as a child.  Nevill had bequeathed Mike's grandmother £50 and some paintings when he died in 1929.

To Mike in New Zealand and myself, this seemed to be more than a coincidence.  Mike had been in touch with Nevill’s sister’s descendants and one was happy to reach out to us. Mike and I kept corresponding and eventually met up four times both in New Zealand and Australia over the years since.

The house post WW1

The English “second cousin”, on hearing I was planning an English solo trip wrote to the current owner of the house at Godden Green and arranged for both of us to visit.  She kindly picked me up at my second cousin Linda's house in Horsham and drove me to Godden Green.

Post 1940

In 1940 after Nevill's sister inherited the house, her architect husband removed the Gothic features including the roof.

In the meantime, I had found that Nevill's private papers had been bequeathed to the Taylor Institute at the University by his niece Felicity in 2008.

So Olivia and I caught the train from Guildford to Oxford where we examined the papers and found some of them oddly disturbing.  It included his suicide note and distressed letters between his friends and sister. He had been found bleeding in the bathtub by his servant and the summoned doctor decided not to keep him alive.  Distressing indeed.

By 2015, many family historians were taking an interest in DNA for genealogy.  Although AncestryDNA was the biggest company it had not yet rolled out its service to English or Australian clients.  So I tested with Family Tree DNA’s family finder.  Not much success there but I encouraged Mike to do a test, and paid for Olivia to test.

Guess what?  Neither of them matched me and Mike didn’t match Olivia. DNA experts state that second cousins always match, but not necessarily more distant cousins, even third cousins.  Mike and I should have had Russian cousins like Olivia did because Nevill’s grandmother was born in Russia to Scottish parents but his uncle William married a Russian journalist and had offspring.

So despite the similar stories from 1911, it was simply a coincidence. Had my birth grandmother led her sisters deliberately astray?  Neither was it beyond the realm of possibility that she thought it was Nevill.  Someone had escorted her to Antwerp at four months pregnant and had given her a travel trunk with her initials inscribed. 

So now I had to start again. I decided to look at every potential young man in the village.  The house in Godden Green was opposite a large pub so I thought she might have met a likely lad there.  Not that she was a young maid anymore.  She was 29.

I found a family with three sons of the right age.  They lived in Godden Green where their father was a bailiff but had been born at Lamberhurst, also in Kent. By this time I had uploaded my DNA to Gedmatch and found plenty of matches with ancestry from Lamberhurst.  However, although I built a mirror tree, nothing stood out to confirm a relationship.  Both my mother and grandmother were deceased, as well as my aunt so I had no one to ask.

I also built a mirror tree for the household butler who was the right age but married but because he had the highly common name Jones, I discounted that.  It didn’t occur to me to research matches with his mother’s far less common surname Windebank.

By 2017 I had tested with AncestryDNA and proved many records on my father’s side with DNA matches.  I also found many cousins on my birth grandmother’s side. Although I had only one first cousin who died childless in 2007, previous generations were well-stocked with siblings.

I have many second and third cousins on four continents and we have exchanged photos and other information to create a much more rounded picture of our ancestors' personalities, migration histories, and occupations.

It was not until 2020 that my mystery was solved.  A match popped up with 139cM in common.  It had no other common matches, unusual for that close a match.  Could it be on my maternal grandfather’s side?  However, there was no tree attached.

I sent her a message on AncestryDNA asking her if she would let me know the details of her most recently deceased ancestors on both sides of her family and giving her my email address and Facebook name.  After what seemed like an eternity, she responded with the details.

Within five minutes. I realised that her great grandfather was the butler, Henry Edward Jones, a married man, aged 28 and a father of two including a newly born daughter.  His pregnant wife and older son were living in Seal when the 1911 census was taken.  It would have been just as great a scandal in the village as it would have been for a socially mismatched pregnancy.

No wonder Kitty was persuaded to travel to Sydney, boarding the Friedrich der Grosse on Christmas Eve 1911.

It didn’t please me to find that the culprit was a married man with a young family who didn’t take much if any responsibility for Kate’s predicament.  Mind you, she would have known he was married. I later found from my newly found half first cousin once removed, Catherine that he had banished his own daughter to another county when she got pregnant outside marriage. Her son, born in Somerset was Catherine’s father.

So a hypocrite at well!  I think I would have preferred a homosexual Reader of Russian at Oxford or an unmarried banking clerk son of a bailiff as my ancestor.

Cousin Alyssa with John and me

However, my new DNA match who although English lives in the United States is a very interesting and friendly person.  I hope to meet her post-pandemic because her American-born daughter Alyssa lives here in Sydney with her Australian partner and is a part-owner of a bookshop.  We met Alyssa for lunch at Barangaroo - here is a photo.

At last I have completed my major four branches of my family and have completely filled out at least five generations of my ancestors.  However, with Jones being such a common name in Liverpool in Lancashire, I am having trouble finding my sister’s Welsh connection.  Ancestry allocates her 2% from Wales but me, not a skerrick.

So whilst Henry was not my favourite person, his tree branch is definitely my favourite find.