The Return of a Family Medal

I have written this post to thank the eagle-eyed reader (AP) who spotted my grandfather Hutton's Defence Medal for sale on ebay earlier this week.

Screen shot of ebay sale (after purchase) with price redacted

I wrote about my grandfather back in January 2013 after finding some of his WW2 Home Guard paperwork and mementos in a box at my mum's house. Later I found more information about his service and was sent a photo of him in the Home Guard by my second cousin. This formed a second blog post in June 2013.

At the time I did not know where my grandad's Defence Medal was, although the paperwork showed that he had claimed it in June/July 1946, so it was fantastic that AP had spotted the ebay entry and linked it to me via my grandfather's name and address. I have blanked out the asking price in the snip above to avoid embarrassment as I really, really wanted to buy it! Thankfully the OH agreed and it came in the post this morning.  I know that Second World War medals don't have the recipient's name engraved upon them like First World War medals and I already have my paternal grandfather's Defence Medal, so basically I now have two the same, but the box is special. 

I did message the seller to ask if he had anything else that might be linked to my family, and if he could tell me when he obtained the medal. He wrote back within a few hours saying that he thinks he bought it on ebay around 18 months ago, and that he was delighted that it would be returning to a family member. He had nothing else related and was selling the medal to concentrate his collection on First World War items
.

My grandfather's Defence Medal with original packaging

This is what came, and I am very happy. To think that I am holding an item my grandfather handled over 70 years ago is quite a feeling.  I have informed my mum about my purchase and look forward to showing her the medal and box when I see her next week.

So thank you AP for the heads up and 756Keith somewhere in Darlington (the seller) for the swift response and dispatch of my grandfather's medal.

 

Sarah Butterfield - discovering my distant cousin lived in Grimethorpe in 1901 !

It will be obvious from the title of my blog that I live in Barnsley, but you may have wondered why I have a sailing ship on the header as well as an old view of our street.  Many of my own ancestors, who were mostly from Sunderland, Newcastle, and parts of Cumbria were involved with ships and sailing in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  So when I discovered a new mariner in my extended family yesterday my interest was caught straight away.  It may take me more than one blog post to tell this story, so I'll start at the beginning.

I had been contacted by a reader of one of my blog posts who is 'kind of' related to me via marriage.  He had sent me some of his family information and hoped that it would be of use to me filling in a few more details about one of my family lines.  Back in April 2013 I wrote two posts about the Batemans and the Butterfields who were originally from the Bradford area but who moved up to Durham for a time in the mid 19th century.  One man, my 4x great grandfather William Bateman, stayed in Durham but the rest of his family seem to have drifted back to the Bradford and Huddersfield area over the following 20 years.

Draft tree for Sarah Butterfield's children

William's niece, Sarah Butterfield, was born in Bradford in 1836.  By the time the family moved up to Durham she already had one illegitimate son, William Henry Butterfield, also born in Bradford, and while living in North Bitchburn, Durham in 1859, she had a second child out of wedlock, John Thomas Butterfield.  That makes him my second cousin four times removed. Remember him, he is important for the story of the connection to the new mariner!

Sarah marries a William Fenton a few months later which suggests he could be John Thomas' father, or maybe just a chap who was kind enough to take on two step-sons and a wife of proven fertility. They have at least four more children together (see left) whose birthplaces seem to demonstrate the timeline and direction of Sarah's return to Yorkshire.

Joseph Fenton was born in Crook in Durham (the same place my own grandfather was born in 1905 which isn't surprising as Grandad Hutton was descended from William Bateman) in around 1867.  Herbert Enoch Fenton was born on the outskirts of Wakefield in 1870, and the last two children Priscilla and Ernest were born in Gildersome, which lies between Leeds and Bradford.

Oddly the census returns tell a slightly different story. In 1861 Sarah, although listed under her married name of Fenton, is living with her parents in Gildersome! Her two illegitimate sons are listed as the grandsons of Miles Butterfield, the head of the household and Sarah's father.  In 1871 Sarah and William Fenton are back together along with William, John, Joseph and Herbert, who are all listed as William's sons.  To my surprise the family is in Royston, just a few miles from Barnsley! William Fenton is a coal miner and the two older boys are both 'Labourer in coal mine'.  Somewhere along the line Sarah has returned to Durham, met up with William Fenton again and has their eldest son in Crook nearly seven years after their marriage. Then the family move down to Yorkshire together. I double checked on the new GRO online birth indexes which give mother's maiden name right back to the start of registration in 1837, but I can find no children born to the couple (I searched on Fenton, mmn Butterfield from 1858 to 1870) before Joseph in the third quarter of 1866.  

I can't imagine what was going on, it seems very strange to marry someone in 1859 and live apart for six or seven years ... maybe Sarah was just visiting her parents in 1861, but if that was the case why no children with William until 1866, it's not as if Sarah had any problem getting pregnant as far as we can tell!

Herbert Fenton's GRO birth index entry showing mmn Butterfield

Herbert Fenton was registered in the Hemsworth Registration District in 1870, which I expected, as his place of birth generally given as Nostell or Walton in Yorkshire. Priscilla Cassandra Emily (!) is registered in Bramley in 1873, this is the RD which covers Gildersome. Ernest is registered in Wakefield in 1876. I did have to tweek the dates on my family tree once I had confirmed these births as calculating the children's ages from the census returns had given me dates a year or so out.

As I had expected from what I already knew of the Butterfield family I can find no baptisms and only a couple of marriages for any of Sarah's children on Ancestry in the West Yorkshire Parish Records.  The Butterfields tended towards Non-Conformity in their worship and few of those vital records are available online yet.

The Fenton family in the 1881 census in Cumberland, from Ancestry

I was even more surprised at the address for the family in the 1881 census, the one with the slightly misleading ages for the children shown above.  They are living at Crosby Villas, Crosscannonby, near Cockermouth in Cumberland, which has taken us back to another area from which a branch of my own family originate.  This is about 150 miles from their last address in Royston, near Barnsley. William Fenton is still a Coal Miner, it says 'Do' for ditto here and I've cut off the family above, sorry.  Sarah's two older sons are no longer living with them.  

I knew that William Henry Butterfield had married in 1873 and that by 1881 he had at least two children with Elizabeth (nee Abbott).  When I searched for them in the census I found Elizabeth with the children in Gildersome living at the same address as a lady I assume is her widowed mother, Sarah Abbott aged 45.  William is not at home and I can't find him in the 1881 census at all. William and Elizabeth don't have another child together until late 1884 in Leeds which does make me a little suspicious, but in 1891 the family is all together again living in Hunslet, just south of Leeds.  Sadly following the births of three more children, making eight in total, Elizabeth dies in 1898.  The siblings are living together without parents in 1901, with sister Florence as the head of the household. William has vanished again but turns up in 1905 when he is buried at Gildersome alongside his wife. 

The widowed Sarah Fenton and family in Morley in 1891, from Ancestry

Meanwhile Sarah Fenton (nee Butterfield) is having her own turn of bad luck as William Fenton dies somewhere between 1881 and 1891.  She is living in Morley, near Leeds in 1891 as a widow with her three younger children, Herbert, Priscilla (who is now going by Emily) and Ernest. She has a Grocery and Confectionery shop, maybe at home, 16 Albert Road, and all three children are working and no doubt contributing money to the family income. I do like the idea of a little shop, I guess there might be some way of finding out how long she had the business, maybe from the Electoral Rolls or the rate books.  But I'd have to go to Morley to find out which might be a bit far for me these days. 

Snip from the 1929 Godfrey map of Grimethorpe

By 1901 Sarah has moved again and here is where she gets really local to me. She and a 12 year old grand-daughter, Ethel Butterfield, one of William Henry's brood, are living at Turners Row in Grimethorpe. This appears to have been next to the Grimethorpe Hotel (sadly now demolished) in the centre of the village.  They also have four lodgers living with them, all coal miners, reflecting the new development of the area as collieries were sunk. According to the blurb on the back of my copy of the 1929 Alan Godfrey map of Grimethorpe in 1901 the village was so new that three of the six streets were only known as 'One Street', 'Two Street' and 'Three Street'. The census runs from Joseph Street, past the Post Office and the Grimethorpe Hotel into Turners Row which runs for four pages before turning into Freeman's Square. Maybe someone more local than me can place the address more precisely? By 1929 the village was apparently four times the size and on my map I can see the new estates to the north and south of the area shown above.

Sarah's Fenton children have married by now, but most of the family seems to like to live near her and each other. In 1891 her eldest son Joseph, who married an Irish girl called Rosina in Cumberland in 1888, was living with his wife in Aspatria about five miles from where his parents had lived in 1881. However by 1901 the pair and their five children have moved to Kinsley, just north of Hemsworth, just five miles from his mum in Grimethorpe. Judging by the birthplaces of their children they passed through Morley along the way.

Herbert Enoch Fenton married Sarah Annie in 1900 somewhere in the Dewsbury area and is living on Shaftsbury Terrace in Hemsworth in 1901, half a mile nearer his mum than his brother! Priscilla or Emily married Percy Lumsden in 1893 in Morley in one of the few Church of England ceremonies the family seem to partake in. From the looks of the links on Ancestry Percy and Priscilla emigrate to New Zealand - sadly I only have a UK subscription so I can't look those records up. Finally Ernest who married Jane in Morley in 1898 is living in Manston near Leeds in 1901 but has moved to ... [de de, de duh! 'fanfare'] ... Grimethorpe by 1911!

In the most recent census we can access, 1911, now aged 75, my cousin Sarah, having enjoyed a brief marriage with a gentleman called Edwin Bashforth between October 1901 and his death in the second quarter of 1910, is living with her son Herbert in South Elmsall.  He is a Fish and Potato Fryer working on his own account at 207 Dearne Street.  He is sufficiently well off to have a domestic servant living in.

Burial record for Sarah Bashforth, formerly Fenton, nee Butterfield

Sarah dies on 25 February 1915 at Westfield Road, Hemsworth aged 78.  I was able to find her burial record on the Wakefield Council's brilliant website.  It might not be fully indexed but it is completely free!  

There must be Fentons still around here who are descended from Sarah and her children.  They will be my very distant cousins, what a strange thought!  One of Herbert's children, Clement Enoch Fenton, aged seven in the 1911 census, was even born in Cudworth where we now live.  It's a very, very small world.

Oh, and if you were wondering what had happened to John Thomas Butterfield, whom we left in 1871 in Royston, you'll have to wait for my next post, this one is quite long enough for now.

Thank you for reading.






 

Finding Matthew Taylor - using the new GRO Indexes

Three years ago I wrote about Matthew Taylor, the OH's 3x great grandfather.  My problem was that Matthew vanishes from Castleford, Yorkshire somewhere between 1852 and 1856.  By 1861 his widow is living with another man as a 'housekeeper' and appears to have had two more children since Matthew's disappearance.  I could not pin down Matthew's death as during that time there were 28 deaths of men named Mat*hew Taylor across the country,  none however in Castleford.  Matthew had been a sailor in his youth and could conceivably have died whilst on a voyage with his uncles who still ran boats between Leeds and Hull and beyond, although after his marriage in 1848 he had worked in the glassworks in Castleford. As age at death was not given for these early records I had no way of narrowing down the possibilities. 

A few weeks ago I heard via a newsletter from 'Lost Cousins' that the General Register Office (GRO) had updated their birth indexes to include mother's maiden name and death indexes to include age at death going right back to the start of registration in 1837.  Follow the link to the newsletter above to find a very useful explanation of the new indexes. 

Additionally, for just a few weeks, the GRO were offering .pdf versions of certificates for just £6 instead of the usual £9.25 for a certified paper copy (£10 if you order them from your local Register Office), and we were promised them within five working days.  By the time you read this the trial will probably be over as it was due to end on 30 November or when they had issued 45,000 certificates, whichever came first.  Of course you can still order paper certificates from the GRO website and they are promising some further pilots over the next few months.  More information can be found in the FAQs on their site.  What makes this even more fascinating for me is that Baroness Scott, who proposed the amendment to the government's Deregulation Bill in 2014 (see this helpful article on Lost Cousins) is a distant relative of mine via my Bradford born Batemans!

Results for Matthew Taylor (or similar) deaths 1854 +/- 2 years, age 25 +/- 10 years

I dusted off my certificate 'wish list' and immediately tried a search for men named Matthew (and derivative variations) Taylor who died between 1852 and 1856.  Only one was the right age to be the OH's 3x great grandfather who, as we know he had been born in 1829, would have been between 23 and 27 in that time period. Matthew Taylor aged 24 who died in Newcastle upon Tyne in the first quarter of 1854. I had cut 28 options down to just one and that's the certificate I sent for.

My certificates (I did order another, but I'll save that story for my next blog post) should have arrived by last Thursday, but the GRO site was experiencing a 'Period of High Demand' as the notice on their log in page explained.  Not surprising really as I am sure that thousands of family historians will have done the same as me and sent for some certificates immediately they found out about the trial. I had a busy weekend (it was the OH's 50th birthday weekend!) but I kept checking my email as I knew from further Lost Cousins posts that the GRO were working weekends to cope with the demand.  By the time I woke up today, very late after the long weekend, they had arrived in my inbox, time-stamped 12.33 and 12.34.  Hooray!
 

1854 Death Certificate for Matthew Taylor aged 24 (with thanks to the GRO)

Here is Matthew's certificate.  After such a long wait I am almost reluctant to accept that I have solved this genealogical 'brick wall' at last!  The year and age fit - well, yes of course they do, they are the criteria I used to find the certificate! But we know it is the only recorded death that fits the man (I'll try not to worry about the possibility of an unrecorded death or a death at sea). His occupation is given as Bottle Gatherer, which I know from my studies of the glass trade in Barnsley was the man who picked up the blob of molten glass from the furnace ready for the blower to form the bottle. We know Matthew worked in the glass trade in Castleford in 1851.  The name of his wife fits - Matthew married Susannah Rogers in 1848 in Sutton near Hull.  Matthew died of 'Menningitis' (which has extra n's in 1854!) which is a horrible and sudden way to die so young. 

So with so many points of correlation the only thing left to consider is what on earth Matthew and Susannah, with two young children (probably) were doing in what looks like Mill Quay, Hewith, Durham which I assume is Heworth, just south of the River Tyne.  Given the Taylor family connection to trade and transport they will have know that there were glassworks along the Tyne.  When Aaron Rogers Taylor, their second child, was born in Castleford in 1853 Matthew's occupation was noted as Labourer rather than Glass maker as he had been on the census two years earlier.  Maybe there were reduced opportunities for skilled work in Castleford so the family packed up and moved to Newcastle looking for better paid work.  Once Matthew was dead Susannah would have had little choice but to return to Castleford hoping the Taylor family there would help support her and her children.

A search on Durham Records Online for Matthew's burial (easy to do now I know the year!) brought back a hit which tallied with the death certificate (searches are free and often give enough detail for basic family history purposes, but in this case I paid £1.50 for the full transcription).

Burials, Gateshead District - Record Number: 658836.2
Location: Heworth
Church: St. Mary
Denomination: Anglican
15 Feb 1854 Matthew Taylor, of Bill Quay, age: 24

This makes it clear that Hewith is Heworth and that Mill Quay is actually Bill Quay.  The world is really getting smaller - I am sure that place name has cropped up in my own family tree, and it is a place the OH and I have visited on one of our holidays in the North East.

Thinking about the children I noticed I had no record of the marriage or death of Matthew and Susannah's eldest child, Mary Ann, who was born in Castleford in 1850. She appears in the 1851 census but not in the 1861 census (see my previous blog about the family as mentioned above).  I thought I'd try a search for Mary Taylor in the new GRO death indexes. Castleford fell within the Pontefract registration district until 1862 and there is one record that might match. Mary Ann Taylor aged 1 who died in the Pontefract district in the first quarter of 1852.  As she was 7 months old in March 1851 this age fits.  However there is also a Mary Ann Taylor aged 2 who died in Newcastle upon Tyne in the fourth quarter of 1853, and now we know the family were there in early 1854 I cannot rule this result out.  Something to come back to later I think.

That is quite enough for one day.  I have found the OH's 3x great grandfather and closed off his record satisfactorily.  The link with the North East is fascinating and I still have many other questions about Susannah, his widow and their daughter Mary to answer.  But for now I am very happy.

Thank you to the GRO for making my day!
 

The History of the Brig Euxine from Hartlepool

On our way back from our short break in Sunderland last month the OH and I stopped off in Middlesborough for a few hours so that I could call in at Teesside Archives.  

Since early 2013 I have been trying to trace the whereabouts of the ships' registration documents for Hartlepool which mention my 4x great uncle Robert Elstob Hutton. Despite them appearing online in several places attributed to Hartlepool museum, on both a site called Ookl and more recently on the Hartlepool History Then and Now site, when I contacted the museum they could not find the relevant documents.  However a random search on Google a few months ago turned up a reference to them in Teesside Archives - they must have been transferred to this regional Archives but no-one at Hartlepool can remember!  I immediately contacted Teeside and enquired about the documents - I received several helpful emails and made a booking to visit on the last day of our holiday.

I had been told by email that the books containing the ship's registration documents (NG/SR/H/1) were very large and could not be photocopied so the OH and I went prepared to pay for a day licence to photograph the pages I was interested in.  I knew of at least seven ships in which Robert Elstob Hutton owned shares and each registration appeared to cover two or more pages.  On our arrival, we were told that some of the books had been digitised and that we could browse indexed CDs, printing out the pages we required.  Of the four books I wanted to consult, three had been digitised but we did get the chance to handle and photograph one of these 160 year old volumes as we followed the histories of Robert's ships.  Many of our printouts had to be at A3 size in order to read the small handwritten details on the registration forms, and our total bill came to £12.50 for the visit.  But well worth it for the fascinating stories these documents tell.

This is the story of just one ship, the brig Euxine (pronounced yook-sin).

The header of the Euxine's registration (thanks to Teeside Archives)

Names of the owners of the Euxine from her registration (thanks to Teeside Archives)

"No 11 Port of Hartlepool dated 2 April 1855
Name Euxine  268 tons Burthen  Robert Hutton Master
When and where built or condemned as Prize, referring to Builder's Certificate, Judge's Certificate or last Registry:
Built at South Stockton in the County of York in the Year One Thousand eight hundred and Fifty Five as appears in the Certificate of William Turnbull the Builders, dated 24 March 1855."

The header of the registration gives us the date of construction for the Euxine and the place where it was built.  As there are only a few days between the certificate of the builder, William Turnbull, of Stockton on Tees, on 24 March 1855 and the registration at Hartlepool on 2 April 1855, we might assume the ship was built for the declared owners.  
Robert Elstob Hutton of Hartlepool owns 32 of the 64 shares in the Euxine and Thomas Belk, a Solicitor, also of Hartlepool, the remaining half of the ship.  Interesting to note that ships shares come in 64 parts - apparently this is still the case in English law.  

In the 1851 census Thomas Belk is listed as Town Clerk and Solicitor.  In one of those small world moments you get in family history I notice he was born in Pontefract in 1809 and married in Ackworth in 1837 - which is about 7 miles from where I am currently sat!

A similar ship to the Euxine (from an art auction website)

The Euxine is a small ship, 100 feet long and 23 feet wide with a hold depth of no more than 15 feet.  Her stern is square and her figure head is a female bust. She has two masts and is noted as snow rigged. Despite this description she appears in the newspapers and Lloyd's lists as a brig, which suggests a slightly different arrangement of sails (according to Wikipedia) although it seems the two terms were becoming interchangeable by this period.

The master of the ship at its registration is Robert Hutton, this is not my 4x great uncle, but rather his eldest son, born in 1829 in Sunderland.  

Extract from Robert Hutton's Mate's Claim (from Ancestry)

He had first gone to sea as an Apprentice in 1842 when he would have been 13 years old.  He had claimed his Mate's Certificate in 1855 when he was 21 after serving on several ships in which his father had shares, the Hotspur, the Ireby and the Acacia.  He appears to have travelled all over the world, from Australia to the Arctic Circle.

The Euxine's entry Lloyd's Register of Ships 1855 (note: two ships by the same name)

Lloyd's Register of Ships is shows us that there were two ships called Euxine in 1855, our ship, the brig Euxine, built in Stockton in 1855, owned by Hutton & co and voyaging under R. Hutton from Stockton to the Mediterranean and the other a larger ship, a barque, master W. Bell, voyaging from Dundee to Brazil.

It is possible to follow the voyages of a ship in the 19th century newspapers now they have been made available online with easily searchable text on websites like the British Newspaper Archive and Find My Past, which both require a subscription.  However you can also search a limited selection of 19th newspapers for free via a membership in some libraries - I am a member of Newcastle Library and can search the newspapers via the Internet from home.   

With two ships the same name in the same period the search becomes a little more diffcult, but as ship's masters are often mentioned as well a search for Euxine and Hutton limits the hits to four in the newspapers on Find My Past.  
 

North & South Shields Gazette and Northumberland and Durham Advertiser 30 August 1855 (from Find My Past)

On 27th August 1855 the Euxine arrived in Falmouth from Alexandria, Egypt.  Her cargo was probably grain, this seems to be usual from that port. A similar voyage is reported in the Liverpool Mercury in March 1856.  In June 1856 the Euxine sailed from Troon for Smyna,Turkey on the Aegean Sea.  The final hit tell us that in March 1857 she sails for Antwerp, Belgium.

My previous family history research had uncovered another clue to the voyages of the Euxine.  Robert Hutton is mentioned on his father's gravestone in Hartlepool Spion Kop Cemetery.

Inscription from Robert Elstob Hutton's grave (from Billion Graves)

(You will have to create a free account to see the images on Billion Graves now - this is a change since I wrote a blog post about finding this image on the site in 2013.)

As you can see from the inscription above Robert Hutton dies in Havana on 24 July 1857 aged 27 years.  As the last newspaper mention I could easily find has the Euxine sailing to Antwerp in March I did wonder if Robert was still on board her when he died in Havana four months later - as it is on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean!

There are over 400 hits for the Euxine on Find My Past in 1857, but many refer to the Euxine Sea, an older name for the Black Sea, and many others to a steam ship of the same name, however eventually I did find the entry that solved the mystery.

Newcastle Journal 05 September 1857 (from Find My Past)

The name Hutton had been indexed as Button, and the text is twisted as it wraps around the edge of the page which is why this entry had not come up on any of my previous searches.  Without knowing the name of the ship Robert was sailing on it is doubtful I would ever have found this little snippet of family information.

"At Havanna (sic), lately, of yellow fever, in his 27th year, Capt. Robert Hutton, of the brig, Euxine, of Hartlepool, eldest son of Mr. Robert Elstob Hutton, ship-owner, Hartlepool." (Newcastle Journal 5 September 1857)

Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser 25 September 1857 (from Find My Past)

The ship appears to have been sailed home by a man called Fairburn, as it is reported arriving off the Isles of Scilly from Havana on 18 September 1857 with a master of that name.  Maybe he had been the mate and had taken over after Robert died?   

Entries for Euxine in Lloyd's Register of Ships 1858

By 1858 there are four ships called Euxine registered in the Lloyd's List.  However by picking out the name of the new master, Robertson, from the list we can track our Euxine in the newspapers as we did before.  Note that in this entry the Euxine is still owned by Hutton & Co.  The owner has changed to T Belk by 1860.

We know that Robert Elstob Hutton dies in April 1858, his shares in the Euxine must pass into the possession of Thomas Belk, who now owns the whole of the ship. Robert dies intestate so I assume the proceeds from the sale of his various ships shares and other property were divided between his wife and children.  

The following spring and for several years afterwards the Euxine sails captained by Alexander Robertson.  The newspapers document her voyages from April 1858 with several trips to Alexandria, a mention of Table Bay which is Cape Town, South Africa and of Archangel, in the Arctic Circle. Then in 1861 disaster strikes. 

Newcastle Journal 16 November 1861
(from Find My Past)

It seems that the Euxine, master Alexander Robertson, was returning to Liverpool from Alexandria with a cargo of beans when a storm blew up and she got into difficulties off Lytham (between Blackpool and Southport) on Monday 11 November.  She was offered a tow by a steam tug, the Brother Jonathan, and Captain Robertson was sufficiently confident that this would get him out of trouble that he put a message in a bottle to the effect that the Euxine had been towed ashore and abandoned (Shields Daily Gazette 05 December 1861).

Unfortunately the tow cable broke and Captain Robertson apparently declined a second hawser, saying he would let go his anchor and ride out the storm (Reading Mercury 16 November 1861).  By the following morning the ship had been lost.

On 13 November a body is picked up by a fishing boat off Fleetwood.  It is identified as Alexander Robertson aged about 60 years. The papers in his pockets, according to this piece in the Newcastle Journal of 16 November, document his last fatal voyage.

There was a receipt for £220 which was paid into a bank in Newcastle upon Tyne to the credit of Alexander Robertson on 31 May 1861 and a bill of exchange for £75 drawn in Alexandria on 7 August by Alexander Robertson in favour of Thomas Belk.  Details of the documents were telegraphed to the bankers at Newcastle "in the hopes that through them the friends of the deceased may be found."
 

Final entry in the Euxine's ships' registration book (thanks to Teeside Archives)

The last entry for the Euxine we found in Teeside Archives was in the original volume dated 1855 to 1862 which we were allowed to photograph.  "Ship lost with all her papers the 11th Nov 1861 off Lytham."  The entry in the register was closed on 14 December 1861.

It took me most of a weekend to put together just these few details of the history of the Euxine, and I did not examine all the entries for her voyages with Alexander Robertson in detail.  However it was satisfying to see how her story fitted into my own family history, especially to see evidence of Robert Hutton junior's death from yellow fever - which I would never have found without knowing the name of the ship he had been sailing on.

Thank you for reading ... I still have another six ships owned by R E Hutton to research, so I'll be getting back to you soon!
 
 

Finding a Nurse in the Absent Voters' List for Barnsley in World War One

I have just added a page to the Barnsley War Memorials Project website that is like a blog post in itself.  So for all my followers on this blog here's a link.

An extract from the 1918 Absent Voters' List (thanks to Barnsley Archives)

I am transcribing the streets that make up the parish of St John the Baptist in the Barebones area of Barnsley.  There are 140 men on the war memorial for this church and I have been researching them on and off for the past year.  Many of the OH's ancestors and relatives lived in the area although none of them appear to be named on the memorial.  There was a streak of non-conformity in the OH's family and I think I need to track down more of the chapel memorials to find the missing names.

In the snip above I was pleased to see a nurse listed.  This won't be a very common occurrence as despite a universal franchise for men over 21 being brought in towards the end of the war women still had to be over 30 and fulfil certain property qualifications to have the vote.  And of course they had to be serving abroad to appear in this list.  That narrows it down rather a lot!

Katherine Sarah Blackburn was a doctor's wife living in the big house on Sheffield Road, Barnsley which is now the Warren House Dental Practice.  She was born in 1879 in Hartlepool, Co Durham and had been married to Vernon Kent Blackburn, a physician and surgeon, for six years by the time of the 1911 census.  They had two children, John Kent Hartley Blackburn aged 5 and Olga Mary Blackburn aged 3 in 1911.  They married in the September quarter (Jul, Aug, Sep) of 1904 in Newport in Wales and Katherine's maiden name was Shotton, a great northern name and one that features in my own family tree!

I look forward to researching her in more depth ... having found that link to Durham I won't let this one go in a hurry! I also want to know what took her to Salonica as a nurse in WW1, that will be a great story I'm sure.

Week 7 - Book of Me - Grandparents

This week's prompt for the Book of Me (an online writing project promoted by Julie Goucher of the Angler's Rest blog) is 'Grandparents'. 

We are now into Week 7 and despite looking forward to writing this post I've been putting it off until I had posted something for last week's tricky 'Journals and Diaries' prompt.  As I have never really kept a diary it was a bit difficult to find something to write about ... until my daughter came last weekend to have a poke around in my loft to reclaim some of her old books and DVDs.

The pictures I posted for Week 6 are of badges that I collected over an eight or nine year span from various rock concerts I attended.  It is noticeable that once I married and the children came along this stopped!  We found the strip of material on which I had saved the badges in a box with an old fringed suede jacket and some really fancy black leather and concho'd belts.  Mmm, yummmm! I don't think they fit me any more but it was nice to remember wearing them and having fun!

For the week 7 prompt Julie gave us some further additional questions:

Grandparents

What were their names?

Where were they from?

Were they related? – Cousins perhaps

Where were they born, another Country or state/area

Photos

What did they do?

Did you know them?

What was your relationship with them?

If you didn't know them have you researched about them?

  

My paternal grandparents were Edward Lawrence Hall and Janet Bunn.  If I remember aright my dad used to say his father was called Barney - he didn't know why.  My dad was Edward Lawrence as well and he was called Laurie ... rebelling against awkward family names must just run in the family as I am also known by my middle name!

 

They were born just a few miles away from each other and my grandmother was a smidgit older than my grandad.  He was born in 1904 in Witton Gilbert, Co Durham and she in 1903 in Langley Park, Co Durham 1.3 miles away according to Google Maps.  They were not related but my grandmother's cousin had married my grandfather's brother three years before my grandparents' married which might have something to do with them meeting - I really don't know.

 

Grandfather Hall was a coal miner, but the story goes that he left home to join the army after a bit of bother involving my grandmother - I will not go into the details in a public blog.  You can read more about his army career on a previous blog post.  There is also a nice picture of them with their youngest child, my aunt, on that post.

Back row: Arthur Bunn, Vera Bunn, Linda Bunn, Henry Bunn
Middle: Henry and Linda's son Peter
Seated: Clementina Bunn, Janet Hall (nee Bunn), E L Hall

I understand that my grandmother Janet or Jessie as she was known was in domestic service before she married.  She picked up a lot of tips about the 'proper' way of doing things that she tried to pass on to her family and children.  She came from a large family, her brothers and their wives and her mum Clementina appear in the picture above.  Grandfather and Jessie married in 1926.

She died before I was born, but my mum says that she knew I was 'on the way' so that's a nice thought.  Despite my grandfather not passing away until I was in my late teens I didn't really know him.  We had moved away when I was only a small child and we did not visit.  He stayed close to his daughter's family and my cousins and they have some fond memories of him which they passed on at a family gathering earlier this year.

 

My maternal grandparents were William Satchell Hutton and Doris Gibson.  I have written a couple of blog posts about my grandad, one about some of the treasures I found in an old tin box and one about his Home Guard service during the Second World War.   He was born in 1905 in Crook, Co Durham - I visited Crook with the OH some years ago now and walked from there to Witton le Wear searching out family history - you can find those posts here, here and here.  We also visited again this year as I had realised I had been looking in the wrong place for many years for his birth place and now I needed new photos.

My grandma Hutton was born in 1907 in Wallsend, Northumberland (now part of Tyne and Wear).  She hadn't worked - or maybe just a 'little job' in a local shop - I'm not sure about this.  She was the youngest of a large family and her next oldest sister had died in the flu epidemic in 1918, my mum thinks grandma was a bit spoilt by her parents as a result of this.  She met my grandfather when he moved to Wallsend to work in the late 1920s.  I remember her telling me that they used to go to the same tennis club, and I think they may have attended the same church too.  They married in 1931.

Doris and William's Wedding Day
Back row: Jim Hutton, Doris Hutton (nee Gibson), William Hutton
Front row: Jean Hutton, little Irene Nelson, her mum Lily Nelson (nee Gibson)

I knew my Hutton grandparents very well, we actually lived with them for a few months when my father changed jobs - I wrote about their last house, one of my childhood homes, a few weeks ago.  Even after we moved away from the North East we visited them regularly and usually spent Christmas with them and my mum's brother, sister and their families.  I am convinced families are usually matriarchies, with husbands joining their wives families and socialising more with them than their own relatives after marriage.  Note I did say 'usually' I'm not claiming this as an unbreakable rule of course!

Doris and William Hutton enjoying their retirement

Grandad passed away in 1983 - he died of 'Chronic obstructive airway disease', a legacy of his lifelong career down the pits.  Grandma moved to live near my mum and enjoyed another 20 years with her grandchildren and great grandchildren visiting, gadding about on foreign holidays with my parents and generally being everything you might expect of a great grandma!  Their ashes are buried together in the cemetery in the village where my mum still lives.