Tom, Dick or Harry?

Edith May Langworthy, nee MORGAN, seems to have been a prolific cook. In the family papers are the disassembled pages of a recipe book, mainly for sweet things.

One recipe is entitled 'Old Sir Harry' and is pictured above. That looks like 'Spotted Dick' to me. Perhaps Granny Langworthy was a little prudish?

Messiah at Christmas

House-clearing continues, and in an otherwise unremarkable case-bound Novello’s edition of Handel’s Messiah we find an inscription: “With fondest love to Father from Susie and Alf. Xmas 1897”. The ‘Susie and Alf’ of the inscription appear to be Susanna Lilian PHILLIPSON (nee LUCAS) and her husband Alfred. Susanna’s sister was Evelyn Eva LUCAS, a direct family ancestor of the Littlejohn sisters including Sara. ‘Father’ is therefore most likely to be William LUCAS, as Susanna’s name is first on the inscription and the book probably came down through the LITTLEJOHN line rather than that of the PHILLIPSONs.

Clearly, around Christmas 1897 Susie and Alf were living in Alf’s home town (and mine), for the shop sticker on the frontispiece is from William Lea’s shop ‘The Liver’ in Church Street, Liverpool. William Lea was a piano maker, and his shop would at the time have been close to the then parish church of Liverpool. In 1977 when I last looked, the site of the church was marked with a simple brass cross set in the pavement, but the area is now redeveloped several times over since the Luftwaffe paid many visits during WWII! Susie and Alf’s son Alfred Stanley was 2 years old this Christmas.

In April 1901 Susie, Alf and little Alfred were living at 15 Cedar Road, Walton on the Hill. That’s a mile and a half from where I grew up, and who knows: they may have bought their bread from the shop where my grandfather was later to become an assistant.

Jack

From death to birth to death again. It would be easy to think that the little note from Edith May Morgan came out of a depression. In fact there are far more births (13 of them) than deaths (only 2) recorded in Edith's hand. Yet the second death reads rather sad.

"Jack died Feb 26, 1918, Hereford Hospital. Buried mansel Lacy."

Lower down the page begins a list of births, starting with Edith and her siblings, which continue until page 3. I mentioned that Edith was one of 6 children in the last post, but the count is now 8 excluding Edith's niece and nephew Inez Rose and Richard Griffiths Lunn. Anyhow, 4th in the list of births is:

"John & William, Westmoor Mansel Lacy, Nr Hereford June 20th 1903."

John is, I believe, the 'Jack' who died in 1918 when he was still 14 years old. His older sister Edith would have been 19, and she and Jack's twin William probably took the loss quite hard.

At this point, we have no idea how Jack died. One day no doubt we may obtain his death certificate, but I'd rather have a diary entry or letter from those who survived him. In the grand scheme of things, William did not survive his twin very long: he died in July of 1939, just 36 years old.

Mansel Who?

It was just another piece of paper, handwritten, and prepared by someone who assumed that everyone would know who had written it and about whom they had written. It began: "Mother died Aug 31st 1926. Buried Mansel Lacy Sep 14th, 4.30". I guess within me there's an archivist who would rather people always signed and dated primary source material, but there's also someone who enjoys a challenge.

Much of the rest of the note consists of names and dates, some of which were familiar (both names and dates). The key was in the first of them: "Inez Rose Morgan born June 11st [sic] 1923" and on the second line: "S.A.Home" to the left and "Northlands North Rd Cardiff" to the right.

Inez Rose's surname written in black ink is hatched out in pencil, indicating a later correction. 'Inez Rose' was a name familiar to my wife, but with a maiden name of 'Lunn'. A look at the family tree showed that Inez Rose's mother's maiden name was Alice Mary Morgan.

Northlands is still a Salvation Army Hostel, though developed and possibly at a slightly different location. How Inez Rose came to be born there is worth investigating in itself (I've emailed the hostel manager). Meanwhile, the link to Alice Mary Morgan showed a gap in the family tree. We already knew Alice Mary's father was Richard Morgan - game keeper at Bedstone, Herefordshire. However for Alice's mother all we had was 'Annie' and a date of birth around 1871.

We use Family Tree Maker software and Ancestry.co.uk and above Annie's name was a tag showing that there was an online hint waiting. Sure enough, the link gave not only Annie's maiden name of Griffiths, but also a date for her death - 31 August 1926, the date that "Mother died."

I'm not sure that parish records will confirm that Annie's burial took place at 4.30, but at least we're spared a trip to Mansell Lacy (as it now appears on the map) to scour headstones looking for the date in order to get the surname.

As far as we know, Annie and Richard had 6 children. One of them we've already met in this story, Alice, but one of Alice's sisters was Edith May Morgan. She was Sara's maternal grandmother, and therefore the most likely author of the note, and she lived until 1969, aged 70. From that starting point, I will begin investigating some of the other names that appear.

Incidentally, Inez Rose died in 1998 aged 74. This photograph, from the Williams Family Tree and titled 'Aberavon' shows Inez as Sara remembers her.



Inez Rose Williams nee Lunn with her husband Stephen, from the Williams Family Tree.

 

"Mother died ..." - about this blog

Among the detritus of a house-clearance – both my parents-in-law died within 6 months of each other – was a folded piece of lined blue paper. On the paper: handwritten notes, mostly but not exclusively in the same hand, began "Mother died Aug 31st 1926."

But whose mother?

This blog is about family history, but leaning towards the written notes of some of my and my wife’s ancestors as much as official records. It begins with Edith May Morgan, principal author of that little blue note, but may range far and wide before we're ended. My aim is that through the collected, so nearly discarded, detritus of a house crammed with many lives, my wife and her sisters may learn more about their family, and perhaps I about mine.