+++ UPDATED 9 April 2016 +++
Next is the Canadian branch, this cute photo was where I started. As mentioned in a previous post I now know that ‘Lily’ was actually Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Cuthbert Holmes Fetherstonhaugh (not the one in the photo) and his wife Eliza neé Hirst/Hurst. So I turned to Canadian records & newspapers and came up trumps, all sources will be at the end of this post if I haven’t used them in the story.
These two children, Cuthbert Holmes & Mabel Rowe, were the two eldest children of Cuthbert Holmes Fetherstonhaugh and his wife Rachel neé James. I was able to find a baptism in the Zion Congregational Church in Montreal for Mabel which then led me to her parents marriage on the 31 Mar 1880 in the same church. On this marriage Cuthbert’s parents were listed as Cuthbert Holmes & Eliza and that reminded me of the Cuthbert H who was listed as the father of Sarah Clibborn Fetherstonhaugh on her marriage to Francis Simeon Eland in Ireland, that was when I realised I had the wrong parents for Sarah (see previous post).
I haven’t found a birth/baptism for Cuthbert Holmes as yet, he’s just listed on the Featherstone Genealogy website as being born after 1812 (when his parents were married) and he’s not listed with his middle name of Holmes on there either. He doesn’t seem to have used it much and in the newspaper reports of when he was living in Dublin in the 1830s/40s - he was on the Grand Jury at the Mullinger Assizes appertaining to the fiscal business of the County - he’s only listed as Cuthbert - of course that could be another Cuthbert Fetherstonehaugh altogether I suppose!
However, after saying that I did find final proof of who his parents were, his father was the late Rev’d Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh, the rector of Hacketstown, and whoever reported his son’s death in the Irish newspapers knew his full name:-
At first I didn’t realise that the son of the above Cuthbert Holmes was also named Cuthbert Holmes until today, before that I was looking for just Cuthbert. I had found a 9 yr old C Fetherstonhaugh in the 1861 census living at a boarding school in England by the name of Christ’s Hospital in Hertfordshire, but how to find out if he was a Cuthbert and if so the right Cuthbert? I googled the name of the school and found that they have excellent archives with volunteers who help with the research into past pupils, it was my lucky day! Two emails I received from them are at the end of the article. It was encouraging to note that father Cuthbert Holmes had died sometime between 1859 & 1863 according to the school records, that date fitted in perfectly with the burial above.
Cuthbert Holmes (the son) had a younger brother Richard who also attended the same school, his details are in the letters also.
After that the rest of my sources I found on ancestry where they have the Canadian ‘Drouin Collection’ of parish records in Quebec from 1621 to 1968, the first one is the marriage in the Zion Congregational Church in Montréal of son Cuthbert Holmes (bn 1851) to Rachel James, it lists his parents as Cuthbert & Eliza (neither father or son have a middle name listed):-
Then the burial for son Cuthbert in 1903 aged 51 which fitted in perfectly with the birthdate from the school records, one of the witnesses was Ellen N James, probably related to his wife:-
Note that neither of these two records show that Cuthbert has a middle name!
Now we come to the Fetherstonhaugh Family Album photographs, firstly these two:-
The first photo I think was taken after 1870 because of the rounded corners, the second one has no photographer’s logo on it but it does have non-rounded corners which usually means before 1870 when the rounded corners became popular. I was also able to ascertain that the photographers on the first one - Notman & Sandham - were only business partners for a period of 5 years from 1877 to 1882.
The Aunt Sarah whom Cuthbert sent his photo to would have been Sarah Clibborn Fetherstonhaugh, the sister of Lily the (supposed) owner of the Album. If that is the case then this photo is the Cuthbert Holmes born 1851 & died 1903. However, is it just me or does he look a lot older than the 30 years he would have been if this photo was taken say 1881? If it is him then his wife, Rachel neé James, would have been only about 11 years of age as she was born in 1859, so either her photo was taken long after 1870 or it isn’t her (they were sitting next to each other in the album)! Her face does look quite young but I would have said more like in her 30s, but what do I know, I’m in my 70s and starting to lose the plot I’m sure!
Update: Thanks to Maureen I realise I had a bit of a brain freeze in the above paragraph, the photo that Cuthbert sent to his Aunt Sarah was his father’s sister, Sarah who married the Rev Nangle and not Sarah Clibborn Fh who was Cuthbert’s sister!! After Aunt Sarah died in 1895 that photo was probably passed onto Lily who was another sister of Cuthbert’s who I think owned the album, along with all the photos of Aunt Sarah’s four children, grandchildren and step-children that are in the album.
We also think the photo above of ‘Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh’s Wife’ is actually that Cuthbert’s mother (Eliza Hirst) who was also the wife of a Cuthbert, but I’m not sure about her age in the photo, she was born in 1824 and looks to be a lot younger than the about 50 years of age she would be in the photo. I think she is just going to have to remain a mystery.
So let’s get to the other photos that I have been able to place (more or less).
Cuthbert Holmes Fetherstonhaugh and Eliza neé Hirst/Hurst had the following children:-
Sarah Clibborn 1844-1927 m Francis Simeon Eland (divorced)
Annie Florence 1845-? m William Francis Cardwell
Emily Mabel 1850-1916 m Sydney John Perrin
Cuthbert Holmes 1851-1903 m Rachel James
Elizabeth (Lily) 1854-1934 unmarried
Richard (Dick) 1855-1924 m Caroline Alice Bishop
The two children would be William & Annie’s two eldest, Emily Rebecca Alice bn 1870 and John Francis William born 1872, there was another daughter between them, Laura Evelyn bn 1871 died 1872, and two more after John, Mary Elizabeth bn 1878 and Edythe bn 1884.
Dick above looks to be the young man on the right below, same suit but not taken on the same day as he has a different tie on, so the date would be around 1870, Emily is the eldest of the three above so she’d be about 20 and Lily would be about 16 and Dick about 14. Perhaps the first one below was taken just before he left for boarding school, a few months before his 8th birthday.
As I was adding these last few photos all of a sudden it came to me that Richard, known as Dick, could be the same person as the two D F h photos I posted a few days ago about the Grouse Lodge family and on further peering through the magnifying glass (and trying to work out the dates the photographers were in business, that in itself is fraught with all sorts of anomalies!) I think that these photos of R F h and the following two of D F h are the same person, anyone else agree?
Note the same suit in the two photos above and the photo on the left below.
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Sitting next to one of the above DFh photos in the album was this one named CFh and as there is no female with a name starting with C in this family I thought she had to be a wife and Richard/Dick was married to Caroline Alice neé Bishop. Both Dick and Caroline are buried in Devon and as the photographer was in Exeter which is in Devon I took her to be Dick’s wife, I could be totally wrong of course, time will tell.
The next photo taken in 1863 would be the album owner Lily, she would have been about 9 in this photo, looks about right.
The baby is probably Cuthbert Holmes, a younger version of the one in the first photo of this post with his younger sister Mabel.
These last two are Sydney John Perrin, husband of Emily Mabel Fetherstonhaugh, and their youngest child, Mina Albina Perrin who was born in New Zealand in 1889, she married Richard Charles Bernard Coffy in NZ in 1917. She could be the link to why the album ended up in NZ, it may have been passed onto her when Lily died and she then passed it onto her daughter, Theodora Ruth Coffy who died in NZ in 1974. All supposition on my part, the one little anomaly is that her photo was taken in Dublin, so either she visited Ireland at some stage or the photo in the album has been mixed up with another one (don’t forget the names are written on the actual album and not on the photos, in most cases).
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All Sources not already shown:
Details from the Archives Of Christ’s Hospital Boarding School:
These two letters may be too small to read easily, click on them and you should get a larger copy otherwise I’m happy to send them via email to anyone upon request.
Fetherstonhaugh - Bishop Marriage 1894:
Richard & Caroline’s Headstone in St Paul's Churchyard, Starcross, Teignbridge, Devon, England:
Nelson, NZ Cemetery Records for Emily Mabel & Sydney John Perrin:
Baptism for Mabel Rowe Fetherstonhaugh, Montreal, Canada:
References: ancestry.com.au; The Peerage; Google; Featherstone Genealogy; FMP; NZBDM; FreeBMD; Christ’s Hospital School
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Whew! I think that’s it for this branch of the family, hope I’ve remembered everything, there’s been a lot of head scratching in the last few days! It’s not the end of the photos by any means though, still lots to go.
Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz
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