A Glemsford Family:
The Allens: another Diaspora?
A lot of the work I have done on Glemsford's history has focused on the 19th Century - for two reasons:
- it is a period that fascinates me
- there is a lot of material quite readily available.
The more I look, the more I notice just how far-spread Glemsford families became at this time. Surely this was the end of the period when people's horizons were limited to the village
in which they were born.
Often, I suspect, movement away was not a matter of free choice: economic, social necessity were key factors.
Although I wouldn't compare levels of suffering,
it frequently occurs to me that the migration that occurred from English rural society in the 18th and 19th Centuries was on a scale similar to that experienced in Scotland during the Clearances and
in Ireland during and after the Potato Famine.
First Enclosure, then the Mechanisation of Farming, then widescale Industrialisation (not just in the major, or new, or growing cities), to name but three factors, all played a part in creating a shifting population.
The family and descendants of Henry Allen (born 1803) will, I think, prove to be a case in point.
My findings about the Allen family - Henry and Susan and their descendants - are based largely on material available online: an analysis of the Census returns
from 1841 to 1901, with some support from the Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths, and the observations and material from Bernie Allen in New Zealand.
There are probably some inaccuracies; there are certainly some gaps; I apologise for those. In particular, the 1841 Census is notorious for its lack of accuracy about birth years and places.
That is a product of its time and intentions.
There is less excuse for inaccuracy with the 1891 Census, but I find it has often been very poorly transcribed, probably by people with
little or no knowledge or understanding of English personal names, place names or common abbreviations.
So, you need to read these pages bearing in mind this "health warning":
I have cross-checked and used my own logic to get as near as possible to the truth, but if you spot errors, please let me know, and if you don't, and my mistakes mess up your own
research, I'm sorry, but blame the transcribers, not me! |
Beginning Near The End: Wilfred
I promised Bernal (Bernie) Allen, in New Zealand, and myself, that I would try to avoid turning this set of pages into an interminable list centring on Who begat Whom.
It is proving difficult to keep to my promise, but I will try, honest.
I have focused on the available Censuses up to and including 1901. All the observations made here fall into the category of "best approximation" and I am happy to be corrected. Birth years certainly
are open for debate.
The 1911 Census is now available online: I didn't have access when I started this work, but now (Feb. 2010) do - I shall be setting up a "1911 page" to review what
I have found so far about the main players then.
Bernie told me at the outset:
My father, Wilfred Allen, left Glemsford some time in the late 1890s and went to work in Woolpit,
London and finally in 1902 travelled to New Zealand.
He returned to Glemsford once in 1908 to visit family and on a buying trip for his NZ employers and returned to NZ
where he lived for the rest of his life.
The photo (above) was taken on that return visit in 1908. I may be dreaming and/or fantasising, but the wall and shed behind him looks suspiciously like
the wall of The Angel yard, up Angel Lane!
Wilfred Allen was the seventh child of Alfred and Catherine (née Garwood). Wilfred was born in the last 1/4 of 1881. According to the Census,
Alfred was 45 that year, eight years older than his wife.
Alfred, the son of Henry Allen, was a Silk Weaver, his wife a Dressmaker, and the family lived in Angel House, which, according to details left
with Bernie, they rented (at some time) from Henry Cook, of the Melford Riot fame.
The family consisted, in birth order, of:
- Susanna
- Caroline
- Bernal
- Bartle
- Rupert
- Ida
- Wilfred
- Mabel
Apart from Catherine Garwood, who was born in Stanstead, the whole family were born in Glemsford.
The 1891 Census has Wilfred still at home with his parents, and sister Mabel. All the other siblings - of whom more later - were away from home.
Alfred died in 1900; the 1901 Census shows Catherine in the family home, accompanied only by Mabel, her youngest daughter. Frustratingly, although we know he had gone to work in Woolpit, Wilfred
refuses to reveal himself in the Census, thus far - but the search is on!
Wilfred's brothers and sisters
- Susanna(h)
(born 1864) is shown on the 1881 Census as a Domestic Servant at 1 North Street, in Sudbury, in the household of four sisters Brown, each of whom is recorded
as a "Land Owner".
Susanna then married Robert Stebben, a Police Constable, in the Wandsworth district of London in 1886. The 1891 Census shows
the family living in Eardley Road, Streatham (part of the Wandsworth registration district), with 2 children: Edith (3) and Alfred (1 month).
By 1901, the children are recorded as Alfred (10) and Mabel (7). I can't, for the present, locate Edith.
- Caroline
(born 1867) is slightly more elusive in the Censuses. In 1881, she was a Monitor in the School in the village - in other words, an older pupil
who was put in charge of a class
of pupils as the earliest stage of training, perhaps to become a teacher. Unfortunately, the 1891 Census is not, at present, telling me where she was in that year.
There could be several reasons for this, the most
likely of which is the appalling state of the transcription of that year's Census for the internet. It seems to have been carried out by people with hardly any
knowledge of British place- or family names.
It is certainly the most difficult database to search.
But enough of my problems; whatever she was doing in 1891, Caroline reappears in 1901, in Filey in East Yorkshire,
where she is recorded as
having been a Nurse in the household of Roderick Edward How Gwynne, and his wife Edith, who had two young boys to be looked after.
Mr Gwynne is recorded as "late Captain,
Royal Welsh Fusiliers".
- Bernal
(born 1870). Strangely, the transcribers coped admirably with Bernal. In 1881 he was, of course, a Scholar. Nothing grand - he went to school. In 1891,
he was part of a small army of
Draper's Assistants, who, along with domestic servants and suchlike, were occupying 6 Westgate Street, Ipswich. This is a strange Census sheet: there is no head of the
household mentioned.
In 1894, in the Wandsworth district, Bernal married Ada Lewis, born 1870 in Croydon. At the time of the 1901 Census, they lived at 38 Albert Road,
Croydon with two children - Ethel (5) and Wilfred (2) - both born in Croydon.
Bernal was a Furnishing Salesman.
I gather from his namesake that Bernal and
family emigrated to Australia, where he died in 1940.
- Bartle
(born 1873) is at once both a simple but also a difficult subject to pin down. It is he who returned to Glemsford, probably in 1940, to buy Angel House,the former
family home, and live there for the rest of his life.
But where had he been?
Naturally, the 1881 Census has him living at home as a Scholar.
By 1891, he had himself moved away from Glemsford and was lodging
in Brentford, Middlesex, in the house of Robert and Elizabeth Pickett. At that time, Bartle is described as an "Elementary School Teacher".
(Incidentally, I have a theory about Mr and Mrs Pickett
that I may return to in a few pages time!)
But the 1901 Census again refuses to divulge Bartle's whereabouts. What we know from other sources is that he went on to become Head Teacher
of a private school in Kent, from which he retired to Glemsford. We know that, in 1896, he married a Florence Buchanan, in Brentford, but where they were in 1901 is still a
mystery, to me, at least.
February 2010:
I am delighted to be able to report that I can now place Bartle and Florence, in 1901.
They were living in the School House in Sutton Valence, in Kent, where Bartle was a Schoolmaster, and Florence was an Assistant Schoolmistress. By then they already had two
children, Gwendoline (3) and Brian B. (1).
- Rupert
(born 1875), similarly, is proving a lttle frustrating, in that he appears as a child on the 1881 Census, and then seems to evaporate from the UK records,
except for his marriage, in 1912 to Maud Emily Sterry, in the Sudbury district. An entry on Ancestry.co.uk also shows his death, in Gisbourne Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, in 1924.
He and Maud, apparently, had 5 children, the oldest born in 1913 in New Zealand.
- Ida
(born 1879) appears on the 1881 Census, naturally enough, at home with her parents. In 1891 she is recorded as a "visitor", aged 12, in the house of her sister Susanna
, and Robert Stebben, in Streatham. In 1901, like her sister Caroline, Ida was part of the household of Captain Gwynne, in Filey. Ida was a 22 year old Parlour Maid.
The Sudbury registers for the last quarter of 1906 record her death, aged 27.
- Mabel
(born 1878) is recorded as being at home in 1891 and 1901. We know that she married Hugh Mayhew in 1913. She was the last survivor of Alfred's family
and was still living when Bernie from
New Zealand visited the village in the 1970s.
Thus, at the time of the 1901 Census, only Alfred's wife and youngest daughter remained in the village - the rest had all moved away.
Although some had occupations vaguely connected with their father's weaving trade, none of the
children were in any sense following in his footsteps.
Changes were happening fast.
Page created and copyright - © Steve Clarke - February 2010