Family History - tales around the tree

Names

Bradley - Suffolk & Essex Campleman - Hull & SE England Catt/Cattley - Kent & London Courtney - Wirral & Liverpool Coyne - Ireland & Chester De Normanville - France, London & South Australia Divall - Sussex & Lewisham Greenway - Sussex & London Griesel - Germany, London & Essex Grubb - Lewisham Holbrook - London & Essex Hopkins - North Shields, Wirral & Liverpool Ingersoll - USA, Norfolk & London Laird - Surrey & London Lovel - North Shields Milleman - Holland, Kent, London & USA Molnar - Hungary & London Murray - Kincardineshire, London & South Australia Paver - Hull & London Pearl - Suffolk & Essex Robson - Lewisham & London Skinner - Essex Smart - Essex, London, Canada & Seattle Starr - Norfolk & Westminster Still - Kent/Sussex, Essex

Saturday 22nd September 2018 George Watson Stacy Bush x 2 It seems unlikely that two men who share the same combination of names as above would be unrelated but so far I can’t find a link between the two who both give this as their name in the 1911 census. George Watson Bush of 137 Cassland Road, Homerton named his son born in 1910 George Watson Stacy Bush, and gave the name Stacy as a third christian name to all the children he had with his second wife Flora Isabel Bayliss. His father was the Henry James Bush who married Anna Maria Stacey in Holborn in 1839, and George Watson was born in Saxmundham in 1846, though he was baptised as George Walter. His name develops over the years from plain George in 1851 to George W. S. Bush in 1901. While he grew up in Norwich, and married his first wife, Caroline Barber, there in 1869, he spent much of his time working in Hackney, first as a Commercial traveller in hardware, then as a railway clerk, and finally as a registration clerk for voters. Caroline died in 1896, and he married the 22 year old Flora in Hackney in 1899; their eight children would join the three he already had from his first marriage. He died in 1920 in Hackney. The second George Watson Stacy Bush first appears with this full name on his enlistment into the RAMC on the 15th September 1884. Aged 21 and born in Norwich, he has been working as a Clerk presumably in Surrey as he has served with the Surrey militia and enlists at Kingston. He signs his full name with the good handwriting expected of a clerk. By the time he was discharged in 1905 he had served in Egypt, Malta and South Africa; he had also married Edith Mary Alexander in Hackney in 1892 - when he names his father as George William Bush, a Commercial traveller - and had three children, all of whom have the third christian name of Stacy. On his discharge the family went to live in Thornton Heath, but by 1918 they have moved to Enfield where he died in 1933. There is some confusion over the date of his birth: the Army List gives it as 16 September 1863, while for the Civil Service evidence of age he says it is 10 August 1864; unfortunately neither of these dates correspond to the birth or baptism of a George Bush in Norwich. Also unfortunately he doesn’t seem to appear in any censuses until after his discharge from the Army. The George Bush he is most often identified with in family trees on Ancestry was born in Garvestone in Norfolk and baptised there as George William Bush on the 30th March 1866 to parents George Bush and Mary Ann Soones. They had married in the Mitford registration district (which includes Yaxham and Garvestone) in 1853, and their daughter Ann Elizabeth was baptised in Yaxham on the 3rd October 1858 when George is described as a Farmer. By 1866 when George was baptised his father is an innkeeper in Garvestone, though newspaper reports of goings on at the White Horse say he is a farmer and innkeeper. In the 1871 census Mary Ann is in Norwich, described as an innkeeper and married, there’s no sign of George senior; she had another daughter, Harriet Ann, born on the 11th August 1875, and baptised with no father’s name on 20th September 1885. Mary Ann is a widow in the 1881 census, living with children George and Harriet; George by this time is 16 and a tinware manufacturer. I know three years is a long time but I find it hard to believe he went from this to living in Surrey, working as a clerk, joining the militia and extending his name. His father was not a commercial traveller, though the first George Watson Stacy Bush was in 1881, and it might be a coincidence that the second George Watson Stacy Bush married in Hackney where the first George Watson Stacy Bush worked from before 1881. The first George Watson Stacy Bush would have been 18 in 1864, and was living at home with his parents still in Norwich, working as a Collecting Clerk. You can probably guess what I’m thinking … The second George Watson Stacy Bush was possibly born with a different surname and though perhaps supported by his father’s family grew up away from Norwich. They must have maintained contact for him to take on his full father’s name by the time he enlisted; did he say his father’s name was George William Bush on his marriage to spare the blushes of the local registration clerk? Monday 17th September 2018 The Reverend George Anguish The Reverend George Anguish died on the 5th July 1843 aged 79. The Clergy database provides his clerical biography from Venn: Adm. pens. (age 17) at CAIUS, Dec. 23, 1781. S. of Thomas (1741), barrister. B. Feb. 7, 1764, in London. School, Eton. ' Matric. Michs. 1782; Scholar, 1782-9; B.A. 1786; M.A. 1789. Ord. deacon (Norwich) June 11, 1786; priest, May 18, 1788; C. of Spexhall, Suffolk, 1786. V. of Moulton, Norfolk, with Tunstall, 1788-1813. V. of Potter Heigham, 1789-1803. Preb. of Norwich, 1790-1820. R. of Gisleham, Suffolk, 1797-1833. R. of Ashby, 1803-10. R. of Lound, 1810-16. Succeeded to Somerleyton Hall, 1810. Brother of Thomas (next). Died unmarried July 5, 1843, in London. (Carthew, Launditch, III. 310; Venn, II. 106; Norfolk Official Lists.) As the heir to the not inconsiderable Somerleyton estate in Suffolk most of his will  with its three codicils is taken up with making sure it all passes safely to his nephew Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne. However one section is taken up with the provision of £20,000 in trust to provide annuities for two women and their four children. When his will was written on the 19th November 1837 Elizabeth Jeffries and her two natural daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, are living at 13 Lambs Conduit Street in Holborn, with Mary Ann Stacey, the daughter of Anna Maria Stacey. Elizabeth Jeffries’ natural son, George Jeffries is living in Phoenix Cottage in Walworth. Anna Maria Stacey is living in Norwich, and married to William Sussams, a grocer and tea dealer. The codicils reveal that Elizabeth Jeffries (the mother) had died in 1841, and that Mary Ann Stacey had married Henry Bush. George Jeffries was born on the 18th September 1799, and he was baptised as George Jafrys at St Mary Coslany in Norwich on the 22nd as the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Jafrys. Mary & Elizabeth were twins born on the 20th November 1802 and baptised the following day at St Lawrence in Norwich as the illegitimate children of Elizabeth Jeffries. Anna Maria Stacey (George got her name wrong in his will) was born in Norwich on the 29th August 1812 and baptised privately the following day at St Stephen’s, with only her mother, Anna Maria Stacey, named; she was publicly baptised on the 27th August 1827 at St Michael at Plea, Norwich, again with no father named. By this date however Anna Maria Stacey was already married to William Sussams, a citizen of Norwich, who was the recently bereaved father of a very young son when they married at St Benedict’s in Norwich on the 27th March 1825. Did George arrange this marriage, to provide support for both William and his (George’s) former mistress Anna Maria Stacey? And was William aware of the arrangement? In the subsequent marriages of Anna Maria Stacey (the daughter) to Henry James Bush in 1839 and Elizabeth Jeffries (the daughter) to John Semmens in 1851, they both name George Anguish, Clergyman or Clerk, as their father. None of George’s children with Elizabeth Jeffries had children of their own, but Anna Maria and Henry had a large family and many of their descendants had Stacy as part of their name. One grandson born in 1900 was given the name Norman Anguish Stacy Bush to show just how long family memories can last. Tuesday 28th August 2018 John Robson - Coachman? Between June 1841 and March 1843 Susannah Divall had a relationship that culminated in the birth of Louisa Frances Robson at the end of December 1843 in Lewisham Village. Louisa was baptised on the 31st January 1844 and her birth was registered on the 8th February 1844. On Louisa’s baptism her parents are named as John and Susannah Rosina Robson, and Susannah, who registered the birth, names herself as Susannah Rosina Robson formerly Divall. On both occasions it says that Louisa’s father is John Robson, a coachman. Which is all perfectly as it should be, except that there does not appear to be any marriage for Susannah and John. Read more … Friday 13th July 2018 What is it about men called Henry Armstrong? I was following up one Henry Armstrong who married into my Bradley family back in 1878. He was possibly born in Suffolk, and worked as a Coachman for a time. He married Jane Lewis two years after their first child was born, and two months before the next arrived. He was possibly strong-armed up the aisle - or to the Poplar Register Office - by her brother and sister. In the 1881 census he gives the wrong surname, and by about 1885 he vanishes, leaving Jane with five children, who all ended up in the Norwood Schools. Jane relied on the support of her sisters to keep herself out of the workhouse. The Henry Armstrong I think he probably was, was born near Stowmarket in 1854, and appears in the 1861 census as Harry, the son of James and Jane Armstrong, members of the family originally from Shelland. This Harry is not the one who went to Iowa, as some Ancestry family trees claim; that one was born in Australia, was back at a Reform School in north-east England in 1871, and working as coal-miner in Durham in 1881 before going to the States in 1882 where he continued his coal- mining. While he had two children born in the Sunderland registration district in 1880 and 1882 with the mother’s maiden name Parry, I can find no suitable marriage. So while looking at Armstrongs I thought I’d revisit others of that name in the family. This lot were descended from a family of Millwrights from Wooburn in Buckinghamshire. By the time we get to Henry John Armstrong, also known as John Armstrong, the family trade is plumbing. Thanks to the censuses we can see that he had children with two women (not at the same time!), the first called Elizabeth, and the second called Ellen. From the GRO online birth indexes their maiden names appear respectively as Freeman and Carter, unfortunately there don’t appear to be marriages listed for either of them. 15th May 2018 Alexander Robb and Eric Finlason and the Tailors of Aberdeen and the Murrays Cousin Alexander “Deacon” Robb was a famous local character in nineteenth century Aberdeen, a Deacon of the Tailors in the Incorporated Trades and a published poet - with perhaps more in common with William McGonagall than Robert Burns. His father, also Alexander Robb, married Isabel Murray, Andrew’s sister, on 14 July 1781 in Banchory Devenick. Read more … On the 6th February 1855 in the Free Presbyterian Church, Port Adelaide, Margaret Murray  married Eric Finlason. Sadly just over a year after her marriage, Margaret died. Her death certificate states that she died from natural causes in Forest Creek, and had lived three years in Adelaide, and one year in Victoria, which confirms her arrival in South Australia in 1852. Read more …

Back online. The Bradley and Murray links are now active and underlined. With family members from most of the counties of England (also Scotland, Ireland and continental Europe, and probably Wales and the Isle of Man) this is a collection of  stories about people whom I have found interesting. This page reflects my current research and the sidebar lists the main names already researched to a greater or lesser extent.