Where Dove and Trent Collide

I've had an interesting week ... or put it another way, the week has been busy and it's unearthed an interesting story.  As you will be aware, for several months now - as time has permitted - I've been researching the families of two of my aunts, the wives of my father's two eldest brothers.  The elder of these uncles lived for many years in Derbyshire and I never met his wife, who died when I was only two.  It's her trail that led to this week's discoveries.

Let me take you to the village of Marston Montgomery.  As the ninteenth-century crow would have flown, it lies about one third of the way from Uttoxeter to Ashbourne.  There, in the late summer of 1842, 29-year old Alice Nash presented her husband, nearly twenty years her senior, with their first son, Henry, the 'good guy' in my story.  By 1871, he was one of a team of five farm servants at Eaton Dovedale, a large farm in Doveridge.  Three years later, Henry married Elizabeth Gotheridge from nearby Church Broughton, and settled there.  Soon she was expecting their first child and all seemed to be rosy for Henry.  Their euphoria didn't last, however, for Elizabeth died during or soon after the birth of little William.  She was 29 (as his mother had been when he was born) and Henry was clearly distraught, for he gave the little boy his mother's maiden name in tribute.

Meanwhile, in Egginton, just a few miles down the Dove valley, Ann Britton (or Brittan) had been growing up, the fifth child and third daughter of John and Elizabeth's family of ten.  The last of her siblings was born when she was eleven in 1859 and, at some point in the next ten years, Ann struck out on her own.  In 1871 she was some 70 miles away, on the far side of what is now known as the Peak District National Park, at Heckmondwike, where she was the general servant of Edmund John Dent, an iron and metal agent. Mr. Dent's household consisted of his wife and himself, three sons and a daughter, his mother-in-law and two sisters-in-law, so Ann was probably kept very busy.

Whether as a result of willing diversion or unwelcome attention, of course remains unknown, but the following summer found Ann the mother of a little girl, and during the next few years she made her way back to her native Derbyshire.  She and the mourning widower Henry met and were married in the spring of 1876.  At the next census in 1881, they were living in Egginton with their two children, Ann's daughter Priscilla Britton and Henry's son William Gotheridge Nash.  They also had Ann's five-year-old niece Lizzie Britton living with them; Lizzie, too, was born out of wedlock and at that time her mother, Eliza, was a housemaid at a farm in the next village, Marston-upon-Dove.  I've been unable to trace Eliza any further.

Our attention now turns to Priscilla.  Did she inherit her mother's taste for travel?  I found her in 1891 the servant to the harbour master in Morecombe, Lancs.   It was perhaps after this adventure, or maybe during a visit home, that she met George Fern.  In 1881, George had been a brewer's labourer in his native Burton upon Trent, where he lived with his family in the area known as Stapenhill.  Perhaps he had been impressed by her stories of Lancashire; maybe she was attracted by the contrast, as it may have seemed, of returning to the normal pattern of village life.  They were married in the summer of 1897 and when the new King came to the throne, they were living in Egginton with their eighteen-month-old son William.  George was still travelling to Burton for work.

Priscilla's entry in the 1911 census was something of a mystery.  By then Henry, 'our hero', had died and Priscilla was living with her widowed mother in Egginton.  They were both employed by the Burton-upon-Trent corporation, earning a living as osier-peelers, in other words they stripped the bark from willow-wands for use in basketry.  This was probably something they could do at home, for Priscilla was now accompanied by her 9-year-old daughter, also called Priscilla, as well as William, now 11.  The mystery was that Priscilla described herself on the census form as 'married for 13 years', although there was no sign of George (about to be revealed as 'the bad guy' of the tale).

After some effort I found a George Edward Fern living in Coventry.  His birthplace, Burton-upon-Trent, was good enough to correspond to what had earlier been described as Stapenhill (the part of Burton sitting in Derbyshire), and his age was now two years more.  I couldn't believe what I thought I'd found, so I looked for this George in 1901.  The only candidate was a coal-hewer living in Rosliston and born in Coton-in-the-Elms, these being neighbouring villages to the south of Burton, but he was in the same place, and doing the same job, in 1911.  

George had moved some 45 miles away, and formed a new relationship.  He had married Emily Holloway - rather precipitantly, we must disclose - in the June quarter of 1903, just weeks before she gave birth to their daughter, whom they called Annie Rosa, to be followed in 1905 by a son George Herbert.  However George had explained himself, it seems that he was acceptd by Emily's folks.  She was the eldest daughter in a family of ten; in 1911 her father was a cycle and motor filer.  When Emily was born he was already a cycle fitter and, at 15, she was working as a plater in the cycle trade.  By 1911, one of her brothers was making cycle wheels, another was a cycle builder, and two sisters were making leather bags for cycles.  Little surprise then, that George had been found a job as 'stores clerk, cycle industry'.

And what links these events to me?  That five-year-old Lizzie, living with Ann and Henry in 1881 was my aunt's mother.  After her own exciting life, which I may relate here one day, Lizzie's daughter married my uncle in 1921.