Caroline Augusta Milleman, was probably born in Margate in
Kent in 1821, as she was baptised there at St John the Baptist
on the 29th July 1821. Her parents were William Milleman and
his second wife Hannah Copping, and she joined a brother
Frederic who had been baptised on the 11th July 1813. There
had been another daughter, Cordelia Hannah, who had been
born in 1819 and died that same year. Also living with them or
nearby were the surviving children from William’s first marriage
to Sarah Twyman: William born in 1802 who married Martha
Ansell in Margate on the 28th February 1824, and Alfred born in
1809, who was to marry Sarah Ann Marshall on the 19th
November 1834 in St Botolph’s, Aldersgate.
Milleman, as a name, seems to be very local to Kent. The origin
is probably Dutch from the family of Aaron Milleman of
Canterbury who married Joane Holmes there at St. Mildred's
Church on January 12, 1670. The marriage licence states that
Aaron was a hollandweaver, bachelor, age 20, "whose parents
did dwell in Flanders, and have been dead some years, and he is come to dwell in these parts, and liveth of
himself and is under no man's government". His signature appears to be "Adraen Meulmans". They had
several children, whose descendants can be traced to Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, Axbridge and Bristol,
and Rhode Island. Certainly some stayed in Kent, and one of Aaron’s sons, Peter, moved out to the village
of Herne. For more on the Millemans …
Peter was baptised in Canterbury on the 25th January 1685/86; and when he married Sarah Ewell in
Canterbury on the 4th June 1711, he is described in the licence application as a butcher in Herne. He
possibly served his apprenticeship with his much older brother-in-law, Thomas Smith, a butcher in Dover,
who had married his sister Alice Milleman in 1689. Peter’s son Peter married Sarah Keem in Herne in 1739,
and their son John Milleman, a great grandson of Aaron, was born in 1744 in Herne. He married Sarah
Philpot in Margate in 1768 and their son William was born in Margate on the 8th August 1774. Baptised as
William Philpot Milleman on the 21st August, he married first Sarah Twyman on the 14th August 1796, and
they had at least six children. In the year that Sarah died, 1811, a William Milliman is listed as a Sheriff’s
Officer, High Street, in Holden’s directory for Margate. He married Hannah Copping on the 9th August
1812, and they had three children. William died in February 1835, and his widow, Hannah, married William
Edwards on the 23rd October 1836 in St George Hanover Square. As William Milleman didn’t live to the
1841 census, I can’t be sure what his occupation was: when Caroline married in 1841, she said he was a
Ropemaker. Her brother Frederic married twice, once in 1840 and again in 1869, and on both occasions he
gave his father’s occupation as Bricklayer. Perhaps William was a man with several skills, or perhaps his
children pulled an occupation for him out of thin air to fill in the marriage register, but at least Frederic
was consistent.
At the time of the 1841 census Caroline, aged 19, is living with her mother and stepfather at 20 Zion Place,
Margate. William is a fruiterer, and they have five lodgers living with them. Also living with them is a Sarah
Milleman, aged 15, while she may be a younger sister to Caroline, she is probably her niece, the daughter
of Caroline’s half-brother William and his wife Martha, who would go on to marry James Starr, an engineer
(or colourman), in Westminster in 1850. Theirs is another tragic story to be told elsewhere.
On the 27th December 1841 Caroline married Charles Henry Murray, my great great grandfather, in St
John’s church, Margate. It is one of the frustrations of family research that it is very rarely clear how people
met to get married! In the 1841 census Charles Henry is living in King Street, Deptford New Town and
working as an engineer, and Caroline’s half-brother Alfred and his family are living in Lucas Street just
round the corner. Alfred’s daughter Caroline Elizabeth was born fairly nearby in Morden Road, Greenwich
in 1840. Is it too far fetched to think Caroline helped her sister-in-law with her new baby, or that she was at
least her godmother - especially with the shared name? And that while living in Greenwich she met her
future husband? Caroline and Charles Henry spent the early days of their marriage living in Greenwich, at
2 Blackheath Hill, 15 College Place East and 1 Blissett Street, so I wonder if he was working for John Penn &
Sons, the firm of engineers.
Caroline’s brother Frederic married Elizabeth Goff on the 14th May 1840 in Chiswick and he spent his
working life variously as a decorator, plumber and glazier in Westminster and Surrey. He consistently uses
the surname Millman, and the family, now including a daughter Hannah who is three months old, are
living in Paris Street, Lambeth in 1841. In 1851 they are living at 50½, Westbourne Street, Pimlico, and in
addition to Hannah, they have Caroline aged 7 and Alice aged 10 months.
Between 1841 and 1851 they moved to James Street in St Pancras, and then to John Street in Marylebone,
and in that time two children had been born and died: Mary Ann, born in 1843, and Frederick Alfred, born
in 1848. They were both buried in the St Martin in the Fields burial ground in Camden within a month of
each other in early 1849. Frederic’s sister Caroline Murray had buried her six year old son William there
just a month earlier, and in October that year she buried her daughter Caroline at less than a month old.
The Murrays returned to this burial ground on the 7th January 1852, when Charles Henry Murray and
Caroline, and Charles Henry’s brother William both buried young children. All in all a very sad time and
place for the families.
Another five children were born to Frederic and Elizabeth in Pimlico between 1851 and 1861, of these, two
died before their first birthdays. I can’t find the family in 1861, though when their daughter Esther Louisa
was baptised at St Barnabas in Pimlico on 7th March 1861 their address is given as 12 Ranelagh Grove. At
this time the family should have consisted of Hannah Jane (born in 1841), Caroline Rosina (b. 1844), Alice
Mary (b. 1850), Emily Augusta (b. 1852), Charles William (b. 1854) and Esther Louisa (b. 1860). The two
oldest girls could have left home to work; Alice is living with her aunt Caroline Murray and her family in
Camberwell.
It was probably all too much for Elizabeth who had given birth to ten children over the space of twenty
years, and when another son, George, was born in Battersea in 1863, tragically, two weeks later, Elizabeth
died. George died the following year, and Esther died in 1866. Even by the standards of Victorian times the
mortality rate of the Millman children - only three definitely survived into adulthood - is unusual; could
Frederic’s job involving paints and lead have played a part? Frederic married again on the 28th April 1869
in Lambeth; his new wife was the widowed Elizabeth Rodon, whose father was John Martin, a Carpenter.
According to the 1871 census she was born in Tavistock in Devon in 1823; this seems to be the last census
to include Frederic and Elizabeth.
Emily and Charles both married and raised families of their own. Alice kept up her links with the Murray
family: she was the only family member to keep the Milleman spelling of her name as her aunt Caroline
did. She married John Bryce in 1881, the brother of George Bryce, the husband of her cousin Margaret
Hannah Murray.
Caroline’s half-brother William, born in 1803, went to London with his family and by Christmas 1837 he
had joined the police in Westminster with the number 95 B. In February 1838 as witness in a case of theft
he is described in the Morning Advertiser as “a very active constable.” His exploits made it into the
newspapers many times and he appeared at the Old Bailey on more than eighty occasions between 1839
and 1859 both as a witness and a victim. Probably a book could be written about him, and around policing
in London in the 1840s and 50s.
Caroline’s other half-brother Alfred moved with his family to Swansea and I’ve told his story here.
Murray families: the Millemans
