Ann Lilly Arkle 1870-1933

This one took a bit of working out but I think I have it sorted now. All I had to go on were the names signed at the end of the postcard – Auntie Lill who I presumed was also Mrs H A Nicholson.

As the photo had been taken in either Auckland (or Wellington) I checked the NZ BMD website and found only ONE marriage for a Mr NIcholson with the initials H A, Henry Angus Nicholson married Ann Lilly Arkle in 1917.

It seems Ann was better known as Lill or Lily/Lilly which was her mother’s maiden name. First I found this document on the familysearch.org website which I found very interesting as I didn’t really know what it referred to at the time:-

It was found listed with the name of a ship in the passenger lists but it didn’t look like a passenger list to me so with a little help from the members of the NZSG mailing list we finally worked out that it was a list of marriages of men who were leaving NZ to fight in WWI. So now I know, Ann Lilly Arkle, was part of the Arkle family of Arkles Bay that I already knew about because one of my mother’s friends years ago was Alick Arkle and he told me at the time about his family settling in Arkles Bay although I had nil interest in genealogy in those days!

I was also contacted by one of the mailing list members who had done research in Whangaparaoa and she sent me copies of photos from a calendar that she had (with many thanks Elizabeth) and eventually I found similar photos on the NZ Photographic Archives website plus a lot more information on the Arkles.

Caption reads: George and Jane Arkle (seated) and their five daughters. The boys are probably the three sons of Andrew Arkle. A large two storey addition to the house, which is probably that originally built by William Thorburn the first European explorer of the bay in the 1850s, was made when the Arkles decided to concentrate on guests rather than farming. Andrew Arkle and his sons later opened a rival guest house at the other end of the beach.

Arkle's Bay House, Arkles Bay, Auckland. Price, William Archer, 1866-1948 :Collection of post card negatives. Ref: 1/2-000479-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22861370

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The two brothers, George and Andrew, had arrived in Lyttelton, NZ on board the vessel ‘Chrysolite’ in 1861 with their parents, Christopher & Margaret Arkle and nine other siblings, from Northumberland in England. The youngest child, Christiana, was born in 1861 but there is no mention of her in the passenger list nor can I find a birth registration for her in NZ so not sure if she arrived with them or was born later.

The family settled north of Christchurch in the Happy Valley area in a place called Motonau (now Motunau).

At some time in the years after arriving in NZ George & Andrew moved to Auckland (see George’s obituary). They both married, George & wife Jane nee Lilly had five daughters and Andrew & wife Matilda nee Garlick had three sons. At a later date George & Andrew fell out with each other and Andrew built another guest house at the other end of Arkle’s Bay.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Getting back to Ann Lilly Arkle – she was born in 1870, the daughter of George & Jane (nee Lilly) who was obviously better known as Lill. Lill was aged 47 when she married, as far as I know she had no children. Soon after her marrige to Henry (Harry) Angus Nicholson they moved to America where she died in Los Angeles in 1933 aged 62. However, she seems to have come back to NZ at various times, she was living in Ponsonby in Auckland in 1922 according to her mother’s obituary.

 

View of Arkles Bay, Auckland. Price, William Archer, 1866-1948 :Collection of post card negatives. Ref: 1/2-001410-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22680892

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the ARKLE families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Robert Morpeth

Today’s photo is unusual in that Robert Morpeth was known by two names.

There were a few Robert Morpeths to choose from but after finding the right one, living at the same address as on the back of the photo, in the 1911 census, I followed him backwards to the earlier census. I found him living at 12 Murray St, Stanley, Durham in 1901 also and in Tanfield, Durham in 1891 & 1881.

In 1861 there was a Robert Morpeth of the right age living in Usworth, Durham & his parents were William & Elizabeth but after that I just could not find him in the 1851 when he should have been at home with them aged about 3. According to the age of his eldest child I ascertained that he had married his wife Jane in or about 1869 but there was no marriage registered for them either.

I kept getting mixed up with another Robert Morpeth who was about the same age but his parents were William & Mary so I needed to go back one or more generations to work it out.

I couldn’t find a marriage for Robert’s parents either which was very frustrating but I soldiered on! I found a William Morpeth of the right age (17) in the 1841 census living in Walker, Northumberland (where he said he’d been born in a later census) with a Mary Morpeth aged 37 and two other Morpeth children:- Jane aged 9 & Nicholas aged 4. Also living in the same house was a John Vest aged 32.

After further investigation I found five Morpeth baptisms for parents Robinson & Mary Morpeth at Longbenton, Northumberland, two of them being Jane & Nicholas, there was also Margaret, Sarah & Mary. If this was the right family where were the three other girls in 1841? Luckily the Longbenton parish records are available on FindMyPast so I was able to find two burials, for Margaret & Sarah, both on the same day, Margaret aged 1 and Sarah aged 5. Mary had been born/baptised in 1828 so she was probably old enough to have been living away from home as a servant.

So that left son William, but where was his baptism, nowhere that I could find!! After finding the marriage of Robinson Morpeth to Mary Vest at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1827 it all started falling into place – remember the John Vest living with Mary Morpeth and her three children in 1841? He was her brother and subsequently I found that husband Robinson had died in 1838.

When I noticed that William had been born about 1824, before his mother was married, I then looked for a William Vest baptism and found it on familysearch.org but strangely he was the son of John & Mary Vest instead of just Mary as I was expecting. Luckily, most of the original Durham & Northumberland parish registers are available to search on familysearch.org and this is what I found (Wallsend is where William said he was born in the 1861 census):-

This was the EXACT same baptism that was on familysearch.org except they had given him a father! How that happened I’ll never know because none of the father’s names on the baptisms on that page were John so the transcriber hadn’t made the mistake of looking at the wrong baptism when transcribing it.

So now I was able to find them all in the census plus marriages etc under the name of Vest when I couldn’t find them under Morpeth. I do know that children who were born illegitimately were more often known as the name they were baptised with, what I don’t understand is why they used both names variously throughout their lives, probably just to confuse us!

Here we have the baptism of Robert Vest son of William & Elizabeth Vest, baptised at Walker, on the same day as his cousin Sarah Morpeth the illegitimate daughter of William’s sister Mary Morpeth – or  half-sister as I don’t know if Robinson Morpeth was William’s father or not, I suspect not, but who knows as William did use both surnames during his married life:-

William Vest had married Elizabeth Parkinson in the 4qtr of 1845, and Robert married Jane Atkinson in the 4qtr of 1869, both at Newcastle upon Tyne, Robert was married as Robert Vest. Robert & Jane had four children, one of them also named Robert born in 1890 – which begs the question ‘which Robert is the one in the photo’? I think he’s the father but others may have a different opinion.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the VEST or MORPETH families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Ada Mary Fletcher 1870-1948

Today’s photo is one I picked up from TradeMe last year, it’s somewhat the worse for wear unfortunately, but if she was my ancestor I’d still love to have the photo if I didn’t already know what she looked like, wouldn’t you? I wondered why it had turned up in NZ when I realised the person selling it had said it came from the UK, she didn’t say why.

After I had checked FreeBMD I groaned inwardly when I saw there were a total of 22 people with that name whose births were registered in England between 1845 & 1907! However, seeing that the photo was taken in Maidstone (Kent) I searched again just in Kent and luckily there was only one:-

Births Dec 1870
Fletcher     Ada Mary   N. Aylesford  2a  403

There was also only one marriage between an Ada Mary Fletcher and someone named Watson and it was in Kent:-

Marriages Mar 1903
Fletcher     Ada Mary   Malling     2a  937
Watson     Ernest William   Malling  2a  937

In the photo Ada is wearing what looks like a sort of nurses uniform and when I found Ada in the 1891 census she was listed as a ‘housemaid domestic’ servant which didn’t quite fit until I saw she was living in the same house as two ‘registered General Medical Practitioners’, so perhaps she was their assistant around ‘The Surgery’ (the name of the house).

Ada Mary was born in Cobham, Kent in 1870 and baptised at Wrotham on 18 Dec 1870, daughter of Frederick & Lydia Fletcher of Sole St in Cobham. Frederick was a wheelwright & carpenter born in Ash next Ridley who married Lydia Bennett from Wrotham in 1870, they had seven children including Ada.

Ada & Ernest Watson had four children, one daughter Florence Elizabeth 1903-1983, and three sons – Ernest Robert 1905-1985, Charles Henry 1908-1976 and Harold Theodore 1912-1994.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the FLETCHER or WATSON families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

The Woodroffe Girls

Today’s photo I picked up on eBay a few months ago, three pretty ladies who lived in Birmingham in the later part of the 19th century with the younger one being born soon after the turn of the 20th century.

The mother was Elizabeth Scriven, better known as Bessie, she was born in Foxley, Wiltshire abt 1864, the second wife of James Woodroffe who was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire about 1866. His first wife, Emily Lawrence, was the mother of the older girl in the photo, she was Bessie Emilie Woodroffe born 1895, her birth name was registered as Bessie. The younger girl is the daughter of James’ second wife, she was Dorothy Helen Woodroffe born 19 Oct 1904 in Kings Heath, Worcestershire.

So we have Bessie the mother with Bessie her step-daughter and Dorothy her daughter:-

There were also two other children to James & first wife Emily, they were Eveline Jessie born 1892 and Lawrence Ernest born 1893. As the Woodroffe family were living in Hartshill, Atherstone, Warwickshire in the 1911 census I presume they moved to Beaumont Rd in Bournville soon after that, the reason they moved became obvious when I noticed that James was listed as a ‘missionary with the Society of Friends’ in the census.

Bournville was founded by the Cadbury brothers of Cadbury Chocolate & Bournville Cocoa fame, they were Quakers and interestingly Dorothy Helen Woodroffe was married in the Bournville Quaker Meeting House in 1930 to Ronald Gower Salter.

I would say the above photo was taken about 1916 give or take a few years. I’ve had a look in Google Maps and here is what Beaumont Rd looks like today, #63 is the second house from the right:-

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the WOODROFFE family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Albert Tunner & his mother Alice Whatmough

Today’s photos are of two people with quite unusual surnames, one of which I had originally mistaken for a rather more common name. First we have Bert Tunner:-

On turning to FreeBMD for help I found there were only ever THREE births registered in the whole of England & Wales from 1837 for an Albert Tunner:-

Births Dec 1870
Tunner     Albert                   Bury 8c 467
Births Jun 1894
Tunner     Albert John           W. Ham 4a 291
Births Sep 1909
Tunner     Albert Edward      Birkenhead 8a 456

Only one of them being in Lancashire, so I went with Albert born 1870 and found him in the 1891 census with the birthplace of Radcliffe, which was in the Bury registration district. But, was he the right one? Luckily there was another photo that came with Bert’s and this one had written on the back ‘mother of Alice Tunner’:-

This photo was taken in London but to me the writing was in the same hand as the one on Bert’s photo. So did Bert have a sister named Alice – I searched earlier census and found he did, she was born about 1862 & was at home with her parents & other siblings including Bert in 1871 & 1881.

Their mother turned out to be Alice Whatmough, born 26 Dec 1828 (bap 8 Nov 1829), daughter of Robert & Alice Whatmough of Pilkington near Radcliffe. She married James Tunner (Tunnah) at St Mary’s Church, Prestwich on 20 Dec 1846, a week before her 18th birthday. So far I’ve found 8 children for them but there may be more.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the TUNNER/TUNNAH or WHATMOUGH families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Rupert Allan Carter 1893-1970

 

The last person from the Catlow Collection I haven’t mentioned before is Rupert Allan Carter, listed on the back of the wedding photo (previously posted) of his friend James Wilkinson to Connie Catlow in 1920.

Rupert was born in the 4qtr 1893 in Nelson, Lancashire, the son of Frank Carter & Mary Alice nee Spencer. In 1911 they were living at 40 Chapel House Rd, Nelson along with two other children Rose Lilian & Irvine Carter. In 1926 Rupert married Lily Stansfield, it seems they didn’t have any children and after Lily died in 1941 Rupert married Amelia Howarth nee Heys in 1951. Amelia died in Plymouth in 1962 and Rupert in 1970 also in Plymouth.

-------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the CARTER family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

The Dugdale Family of Nelson, Lancashire

Today’s photos start off with this unusual gathering, three Dugdale siblings plus Annie Catlow and her friend Cissie Burrows, and one unknown woman. I wonder what the reason was that a group of girl friends plus a brother went along to the professional photographers to have their photo taken? I guess I’ll never know! Annie & Cissie I’ve written about before so now it’s the turn of the Dugdales, mainly Polly who there are two more lovely photos of.

 

Polly is usually a nickname for Mary so I wasn’t too hopeful of finding this family straight away but as it turned out her brother Squire’s name was more unusual.

Ellen (Nellie) 1883, Squire 1884 & Mary 1886 were three of the five children of Joseph Dugdale & Martha Ann nee Haworth of Nelson, Lancashire.

Squire later emigrated to Philadelphia in America in 1909, married Anna Nichols in 1914 there and they had four children. He seems to have gone backwards and fowards between each country over the years and on one passenger list he gives his address as c/- Mrs Duerden, I then found a marriage for Ellen Dugdale to Herbert Duerden in 1911 but so far Polly has eluded me after the 1911 census as there are too many Mary Dugdale marriages to be sure which one might be her. Their other two siblings are Hartley Dugdale and Sarah Alice Haworth who was born just a few months before her mother married Joseph Dugdale.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the DUGDALE family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Stanley Fielding and Susie Moore

More photographs that came with the ‘Catlow Collection’, on the back is written that Stanley Fielding is a friend of Jim Wilkinson, Jim was the husband of Connie Catlow. Although I haven’t yet worked out which James Wilkinson married Connie I believe Stanley Fielding might be the son of William & Sarah Fielding, his birth was registered in the 4qtr of 1889 in Oldham (Lancashire) and that’s where he says he was born in the two census I found him in. In 1891 they are living at 42 Clyde St, Oldham and in 1911 they are at 45 Milton St, Nelson, not far from where the Catlows lived.

It looks like he might have been a swimming champion with that medal on his chest but I haven’t been able to find anything on him in the newspapers apart from this joke he sent to the Burnley Express for the Prize Joke Competition in 1906:-  

I haven’t been able to ascertain if Stanley married after the 1911 census or not. However, in this collection of photographs was one of a Susie Moore which was taken sitting at the same table with the same backdrop in the above photo, and taken by the same J. Harrison studio, so perhaps there is some sort of connection between them. One of the Catlow sisters, Annie, married Edward Dean Moore so I thought perhaps Susie was his sister but no she wasn’t.

On the back of another photo of Susie is written ‘farm up Barkerhouse Rd’ and for awhile I couldn’t find a Moore family living there in a census until I searched in Google and found that the Moore family who were living at ‘Higher Town House Farm, Nelson’ in the 1911 census were the right ones. It turns out that ‘Higher Town House Farm’ is situated in or just off Barkerhouse Rd, I found this photo online:-

©  is owned by Kevin Rushton and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Susannah Moore was the daughter of Ellis Nutter Moore & Betsy nee Crowther, her birth was registered in the 2qtr of 1887 in the Burnley RD. I think now that it is just a co-incidence the two photos were taken in the same studio because it seems that Susie later married Christopher Peck in 1921.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to either the FIELDING or MOORE families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Cissie Burrows

It wasn’t until I posted the last article about the Burrows Family that I noticed the one of Cissie looked almost identical to the person in the photo of the Catlow sisters who I thought must have been their mother. I’ve only just received the Catlow sisters photo recently and so I hadn’t compared it with any of the other photos in my possession. But now I’m quite sure that is Cissie Burrows in the photo with the Catlow sisters – what do you think?

The Burrows Family of Wickworth St in Nelson, Lancashire

Here we have four more photos from the Catlow Collection. In the first one is Cissie Burrows standing on the right, the second one is Cissie by herself; the third one is Harold Burrows and the last one is Mrs Burrows with her two grand daughters, the names are taken from the details written on the back of each photo.

I started off by trying to pinpoint Harold Burrows in a census, as it turned out there was more than one Harold of the right age in the area surrounding Nelson where the Catlows lived. In the first photo Annie Catlow is sitting in front of Cissie Burrows so they were obviously friends. However, the name Cissie is usually a nickname for something else so I thought Harold would be easier. After days of researching this family I’m no further on than when I started! Harold had two sisters, Mary Martha & Edith Annie, so ‘Cissie’ could have been either of them! There were also two brothers, Herbert & Ernest.

If this is the Harold Burrows I think it is then his birth was registered in the 4qtr of 1896 in the Burnley RD of Lancashire, Nelson is included in the Burnley registration district. He was the son of Thomas Burrows & Mary Jane Chadwick and in the 1901 and 1911 census he is living at home with them and his four siblings at 38 Wickworth St, Nelson. After that there are just too many entries on FreeBMD for a Harold Burrows to be certain that any of them are him. NB Cissie Catlow was living at 27 Wickworth St in 1911, which was soon after she married Harry Hartley who had also been living at 16 Wickworth St before he married.

So far I haven’t found TWO grand-daughters for Mrs Burrows so if anyone knows this family do get in touch with me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one.

The others in the group photo are the Dugdale family who I’ll mention next time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the BURROWS family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

The Catlow Sisters

You may remember I mentioned Julie who is a descendant of Nellie Catlow and who has been a mine of information on them all, well, she recently sent me three photos including one of the triplets that I didn’t have originally. And finally I have one of their mother Millicent who was missing in all of the photos I had. However, there is just one last question – who is the extra girl in the group of eight – not their mother surely? Not counting the triplets there should only be seven of them. There is nothing written on the back of the group photo so I’m just presuming that one of them is their mother, probably the one on the right with the large buttons on her skirt, if so then I’m coveting her tiny waist and trim figure after having ten babies! Thank you Julie for all your help, it has been great.

                          *** Lily – Rose – Violet – not necessarily in that order – 1900-1901 ***

                                     Millicent Catlow with her triplets at 8 weeks old – Oct 1900.

Addendum: we now know who the extra person is in this photo – Cissie Burrows (standing right with large buttons on her skirt) – was a friend of the Catlow sisters.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Richard Dobson 1869-1948

Further to the above photograph published here, I have further information on Uncle Dick & Aunt Sarah Ann. Uncle Dick was Richard Dobson, he was the brother of Millicent Dobson who was married to Thomas Watson Catlow, the parents of the ten Catlow girls featured in previous pages on this blog.

Richard & Millicent were the children of James Dobson of Halifax in Yorkshire and his wife Elizabeth Ashworth of Bacup in Lancashire. Richard was the youngest of five children, born about 1869 in Bacup. He married Sarah Annie Clegg in the Hyndburn Registry Office, Lancashire in 1895. Richard & Sarah Ann had two sons, Harry & Fred and they are the two young boys in the above photo.

                                     Sarah Annie Clegg

These two photos of Richard Dobson & his son Harry were in the Catlow Collection of photographs I found on eBay. In the course of my research I found Ruth, a Dobson descendant, who has in her possession a photograph of a family with no identification on it. After she saw the above group photograph she finally knew who they were – a younger version of Richard & Saran Ann Dobson & their two sons, along with an older woman, we can’t say for sure who she is yet but she is most probably the mother of either Richard or Sarah Ann. And yes that is a little boy! There is also another photo with Harry Dobson, aged about 21, in an army uniform, previously published here.

Richard Dobson died in 1948 aged 79 in Nelson, Lancashire, his wife Sarah Ann, died in 1954 aged 81, also in Nelson. Nothing more is known of their two sons.

References: FreeBMD; ancestry.com.au; familysearch.org; Google; FindMyPast

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to this DOBSON family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

The Four Youngest Catlow Daughters

I have no photos of the triplets because sadly they didn’t survive to adulthood. They were born on the 6 Aug 1900 - Lily passed away on 26 Apr 1901, Violet on 6 May 1901 and Rose on 6 Nov 1901. They were all buried together, along with their sister Mary Elizabeth, in grave 134I in St John’s Churchyard, Nelson, Lancashire.

The youngest was Winifred, known as Winnie, she was born in the 3qtr of 1903. Winnie was living with her parents in the 1911 census in Temple St, Nelson, she never married and in the 4qtr of 1968 she died aged 65. Nothing more is known about Winnie apart from these two photos of her.

References: FreeBMD; ancestry.com.au; familysearch.org; Google; FindMyPast

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If anyone knows anything about or is connected to this CATLOW family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photos onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz