George Jennings Collis: from Boston to Berwick-upon-Tweed (1894-97)

November 9, 2015George Jennings Collis, Writing Family Historygrahamauntiemabel

Sunday 16th December 1894. It’s a chill winter’s day in Newcastle. George Jennings Collis is preparing for his ordination at the Cathedral. It’s a big move, in a grand building, yet George is certain this is the pathway determined for him; he’s rock steady in his Christian faith.

The Bishop of Newcastle – Ernest Wilberforce – officiates at the proceedings. Having taken holy orders, George is ready to start his new life as a curate in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland. Prayers are said to bless him in his work. George’s fiancé Florence Ingamells smiles over to him from the front pew. The choir sings heartily as the procession parades out of the Cathedral.

Being a curate is not George’s first job after graduating from Clare College; two newspaper snippets from the Stamford Mercury reveal that he’d spent some time – a couple of years – as a master at Boston Grammar School. A cutting from November 1894 records his move from the school:

Continue reading George Jennings Collis: from Boston to Berwick-upon-Tweed (1894-97) →

Trading Stories, Working Lives: Joseph Taylor, lime worker

November 1, 2015Trading Stories, Working Livesgrahamauntiemabel

Sometimes in family history research you discover a document or an object that hints at an intriguing story; something that compels you to investigate further. Such was the case when I discovered a gravestone at Barrow Upon Soar, inscribed with:

“Two fellow workmen in this grave do lie

Both in a well at Barley Hill did die

The unwholesome damp the fatal stroke did give”

Here was a gravestone with a story: Joseph Taylor and his workmate Henry Barsby had been buried together after perishing in a well on 11^th June 1824, both aged 25 years.

Many of us have labourers amongst our ancestors – men who grafted in the fields or on the roads. Despite long years of toil, labourers generally leave a sparse paper trail; theirs were not jobs that brought about apprenticeship records, trade directory listings or wills. It can be tricky to get more than a general sense of their working lives. So here – starting with the gravestone inscription – was an opportunity to find out rather more than usual.

Joseph Taylor’s life as a lime worker is the focus in our latest article in the Trading Stories, Working Lives series: click to download

As well as uncovering Taylor’s tragic story, the article suggests ways in which you might enrich your own ancestral research by drawing upon newspaper snippets, trade directories, industrial histories and local studies. Which of your ancestors might have a working history to investigate further?

Take a look too at the other articles in our Trading Stories, Working Lives series:

John and George Firn, monumental masons

Polkey boatmen of Loughborough

The Harrisons: gardeners, nurserymen and seeds merchants

George Robinson, Victorian letter carrier

George Jennings Collis: going up to Cambridge (1889-92)

November 1, 2015George Jennings Collis, Writing Family Historygrahamauntiemabel

We last saw George Jennings Collis in the summer of 1889, being cheered by his fellow pupils at Wyggeston School prize day for gaining a place to study at Cambridge. And so it is, on a Saturday in autumn of that year, that he goes up to Clare College at the start of Michaelmas term. Having taken a train from Leicester, he arrives at Clare with his trunk of books, clothes and other belongings. He stands in Trinity Hall Lane, with the chapel towering above to the right. A few steps on and he’s through the gatehouse into the central quad, the Old Court.

Established in 1326, Clare is the second oldest college in Cambridge. It’s a prestigious place for George to have earned a scholarship. A few students stride purposefully through the courtyard – freshmen like him, settling into their new life – but otherwise it’s a hushed enclave, a home of learning for the bookish, bright and privileged.

Continue reading George Jennings Collis: going up to Cambridge (1889-92) →

George Jennings Collis: a summer of cricket with Wyggeston Boys (1889)

August 16, 2015George Jennings Collis, Writing Family Historygrahamauntiemabel

After seven years at boarding school in Ardingly, George Jennings Collis is back in Leicester. It’s Thursday morning, 25th July 1889 and he approaches the stage at Wyggeston Boys’ School. It’s school prize day and he – along with Atkins [the son of the science master], Berridge and Forth – is being cheered by his fellow Wyggeston pupils for being one of “four of our number going to the Universities this year”. In October, he’ll be going up to Clare College, Cambridge.

As headmaster the Rev James Went points out, “Though Collis has not been here a long time, he has done excellent service, more especially in connection with the cricket team, and has been an efficient captain during the year. We shall be sorry to lose his services in the cricket field, but the University of Cambridge shall have the benefit of them, and we shall all feel that Collis has too much sense to go to Cambridge and devote all his time to cricket.”

Continue reading George Jennings Collis: a summer of cricket with Wyggeston Boys (1889) →

George Jennings Collis: servitors and soxing at Ardingly (1881)

August 6, 2015George Jennings Collis, Writing Family Historygrahamauntiemabel

Fast forward a few years and it’s time for the 1881 census. The Collis family has moved from the North Bridge Inn to the Hinckley Road Brewery. It’s a fine-looking place, standing at the junction of Hinckley Road and Great Holme Street, a spectacle for those approaching town along the Narborough Road.

Almost everyone is there on the night of 3rd April 1881: father John George Collis, mother Emmeline and children Cary (16), Emmeline (12), Walter (5) and Amy (2). But George Jennings Collis is missing; he’s not tucked up in bed at home like his siblings or staying with relatives elsewhere in Leicester. He’s 150 miles away, trying to sleep in a dormitory at St Saviour’s School near Ardingly, Sussex.

Unique amongst his siblings and cousins, George appears to be the only Collis sent away to school. Maybe his parents had particular aspirations for him as the eldest son? His mother Emmeline had been a pupil teacher for several years before she married, so perhaps she’d spotted signs of early promise in his academic studies? There were many other independent schools closer to hand, so why choose St Saviour’s so far away?

Continue reading George Jennings Collis: servitors and soxing at Ardingly (1881) →

Trading Stories, Working Lives: John and George Firn, monumental masons

August 4, 2015Trading Stories, Working Livesgrahamauntiemabel

As you track John Firn through successive census returns on Ancestry you get some sense of his progress in life; he’s first described as ‘Mason’ (1851), then ‘Builder employing 46 men and 9 boys’ (1861) and finally ‘Master builder employing 50 men and 4 boys’ (1871). Over a period of some twenty years – living and working from premises in Midland Street, Leicester – John Firn became a builder and monumental mason of some substance.

In the latest article in our Trading Stories, Working Lives series we take a closer look at John Firn’s working life. It starts with the discovery of one of his notebooks at the bottom of a family tool chest, and ends with the business floundering in the hands of his wayward son, George. In between, there are churches, temperance hotels and cemetery monuments popping up, shaping the local landscape.

As for all of our Trading Stories, Working Lives articles, the Firn family story showcases how some resourceful searching of records can help build a picture of our ancestors’ occupations. Using records from Ancestry, London Gazette, the British Newspaper Archive, and local history materials, it pieces together the rollercoaster story of a Victorian family firm.

Meet John and George Firn, church builders and monumental masons: click to download.

Click here to see other articles in the series of Trading Stories, Working Lives occupational histories. Using a similar approach, could you research and write about the working life of one of your own ancestors?

In the news: the Opera Hotel is auctioned (1893)

July 31, 2015In the News, Writing Family Historygrahamauntiemabel

A story inspired by an 1893 newspaper clipping

Mr Tarratt steps up to the lectern, the hum in the auction mart subsides, and on the strike of seven o’clock the business commences. Martin Collis stands at the back, surveying the crowd; it’s a full house tonight at the Market Street auction rooms.

On his way here, this mild October evening, Martin detoured to take one last look at the Opera Hotel in Town Hall Lane. Nestling in the shadow of St Martin’s Church, it’s just the kind of opportunity that he’s seeking. He leafs through the sales particulars:

“…two entrances on front, well-lighted and spacious vaults, smoke-room, bar, tap-room, with cooking range; excellent billiard-room, bagatelle-room, large sitting room, three bed-rooms, stock-room, small yard with opening for barrels; wash-house and coal-place, kitchen, and three splendid brick arched cellars”

The auction room buzz reminds him of some three years earlier – he’d been selling their first pub, the Fox and Hounds on Humberstone Road. He still has the Chronicle clipping: “The lot was started at £2,000 and, after a spirited bidding, was knocked down for £4,690.” Good times. Now – after brief stints at the Royal Oak and Cross Keys Inn – he’s looking for a new venture. The Opera Hotel fits the bill.

“Gentlemen, who will start me at £3,000?” And so the bidding bats around the room. There are many speculators, but Martin is an experienced hand; he nods discreetly and keeps his nerve. “Going once, going twice… sold to Mr Collis.” The gavel whacks down and Martin breaks into a smile. He’s the new owner of the Opera Hotel.

Take a look at other examples of ‘In the News’ articles and suggestions for writing one yourself.

Readers’ stories: Searching for Uncle Reg

July 22, 2015Readers' Storiesgrahamauntiemabel

Thank you to John Wills for sharing the story of his family history quest…

As a small boy my father told me of family members who had emigrated to America and Canada; indeed, letters and postcards would arrive periodically from across the Atlantic, causing great excitement. My father also hinted that we had cousins in Australia, but then later denied this. Was there was a skeleton in the cupboard, I wondered? I resolved to investigate.

During a Google search for my paternal grandfather’s name, my grandmother Florence appeared on a family tree of her maiden name. Nothing out of the ordinary there, I thought, but to my astonishment this tree claimed that she had been married to another man before my grandfather and had had a son born in 1909. I rather indignantly contacted the site’s owner and told him that this wasn’t the case. An explosion of e-mails from Australia and America followed, revealing the hidden story of my grandmother’s early years.

With help from my Australian correspondent, I pieced together the story. In rural Somerset in late 1908, Florence conceived a baby out of wedlock. The father – whose identity we shall never know – refused to marry her. Some two years later, Florence married my grandfather and my father was their firstborn in 1912. He remembers playing with a little boy three years his senior – cousin Reg, he was told.

Despite marrying Florence, my grandfather apparently would not accept his stepson into his new and growing family. Young Reg – after time in the care of his maternal grandfather, was handed over to the local Dr Barnardo’s Home at the age of 11. It was the end of our family links with him, until now.

“Life in the home was not a happy experience,” writes Reg’s son “and all through his life the memories of it were with him. There seemed to be a lot he never spoke about.” In 1923 Reg – along with eighteen other boys aged 12-16, was sent to Australia; such enforced emigration is shocking by today’s standards, but as the Barnardo’s website reports, child migration “was born from the idea of offering children an opportunity of a new start in life, in a new country. This was a widely accepted policy at the time, and was supported by both British and overseas governments.” And so Reg sails on the SS Largs Bay, arriving in Sydney on 2^nd April 1923 to start a new life in Australia.

My father would have been oblivious to these events. He didn’t discover Reg was in fact his half brother, rather than his cousin, until just before he died and he and Reg never made contact. Oddly enough they died within months of one another in 1992.

I, however, am now in regular contact with Reg’s son, my first cousin in Australia. He has shared his fascinating discoveries about my grandmother’s family and in turn I have been able to supply him with information and photos of the woman he never knew. Most recently, I’ve sent him a more tangible link to his UK family: a silver badge engraved ‘HMS Pembroke, January 1919’ that belonged to our mutual great uncle Herbert. But that, as they say, is another story.

Book Club: Common People

July 18, 2015Book Clubgrahamauntiemabel

As its title suggests, Common People: The History of An English Family is the story of everyday folk. We don’t meet any kings of industry or aristocrats here; instead, author Alison Light introduces us to needle makers in Alcester, builders and Baptist preachers in Portsmouth, and sailors setting sail to Newfoundland. These are lives that at first sight might seem unremarkable, yet Light uses her creative touch to ensure they merit a closer look. She is working with the kind of family history material that most of us discover in our tree – yet she nimbly interprets the family storylines, enriches the narrative with local and social history, and reflects upon her role as the family historian along the way.

The book falls into four extended chapters, each one based around a grandparent and their ancestry. Thus, we hop around the country following Light’s quest for documentary records and other family traces. We spend time with grandmother Evelyn Whitlock in the Women’s Forage Corps, get locked inside the Netherne Asylum with Sarah Hill, and head out to sea with ‘Captains’ Giles and John Hosier. It’s ambitious in its scope – spanning five or six generations on all sides – but it’s skillfully handled, a sign of Light’s talent as an ‘historian of forgotten people’.

Every now and then, she steps aside from the storyline to reflect upon the joys and challenges of being a family historian:

“Family history, like all historical work, is messy and loose-ended, full of false starts, red herrings and wild goose chases, discoveries which are sheer serendipity and might so easily have been missed. Far from being dead ends or time wasters, these detours are part of historical work. They reveal our misconceptions and dislodge our assumptions about the past.”

Continue reading Book Club: Common People →

George Jennings Collis: foul floods and four lost brothers (1870s)

July 18, 2015George Jennings Collis, Writing Family Historygrahamauntiemabel

“Leicester had a child mortality rate which was twice the national average and on a par with London, Manchester and Liverpool”, explains Ned Hewitt in his excellent book ‘The Slums of Leicester’. Each summer, an annual epidemic of diarrhoea killed many of the elderly and very young. “By 1871 this yearly scourge was killing one in four Leicester children before their first birthday.”

Statistics can often feel rather dry; put them in the context of a particular family, however, and they become more meaningful. George Jennings Collis was one of ten children, four of whom died in infancy. It’s a reality that’s unimaginable by today’s standards, but in 1870s Leicester it was the norm.

Ned Hewitt continues, “The cause of this annual [diarrhoea] epidemic was hotly debated. Summer heat, gas from the sewers and lack of ‘mothercraft’ on the part of women working in factories were all blamed. However, the real reason was the town’s inadequate sewers and the resultant insanitary conditions.”

To be exactly sure of the cause of the Collis boys’ deaths would require ordering four death certificates – an expensive business – and so at this stage I’m surmising that the lack of clean water and poor sanitation were contributory factors, if not directly the cause of their death; the Collis family home at the North Bridge Inn was sandwiched between the River Soar and the Leicester Canal, in the thick of it. What is clear is how precarious life was when George Jennings Collis was an infant in the 1870s. He was lucky to survive, with four brothers dying either side of him.

Continue reading George Jennings Collis: foul floods and four lost brothers (1870s) →

Auntie Mabel

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