Boastfully Yours!

After last week's confession about overstating things, I hesitated somewhat about today's title but it seems to fit.  Earlier this week I watched a video on YouTube about the famous Mitford sisters, whose fame - or notoriety - dominated the first half of the twentieth century.  They were a family of six girls and one boy, born between 1904 and 1920, and their relevance to this tale is incidental, but will be apparent later.

In recent weeks, I've been polishing my records of the family of a distant cousin on my father's side, whose origins were to be found on both sides of the Norfolk-Suffolk border, near the town of Harleston.  This week I continued tracing the family of her great-grand-parents, Robert Warnes and his wife Martha, née Botwright.  Their third daughter, Mary Ann had married Charles Leftley in 1875, and by 1901 Charles and Mary Ann's son James was no longer at the family home in the village of Rushall.  I found him, aged 27, living in Harleston, with wife Eliza and daughter Lottie.

So far, so good, but was there some mistake in Lottie's age?  She was shown as 12 years old, and in 1891 James had already been found with the rest of his family.  His wife was a few years older and the obvious conclusion was that she had been married before.  I checked out their marriage, in the Suffolk district of Hoxne, in the June quarter of 1894, and found that she had been Eliza Francis.   Problem solved, I looked for Lottie's birth as Lottie Francis.  It didn't exist.

Step by step, the story of a whole afternoon's research could become boring, so I'll skip a few bits and tell you that I eventually discovered that Lottie was illegitimate, born Lottie Boast in 1888, Eliza had married James Francis about eighteen months later and was widowed towards the end of 1890.  Eliza and Lottie were found in 1891 living in Harleston, visitors at the home of farm labourer, 49-year-old William Gardner.  William had three young children and Eliza was described as 'nurse' on the census.  Why would she be there, and so soon after the death of her husband?  Could there be a clue in the fact that William's wife Kate was only 25?  Could she be a sister of Eliza?

That did prove to be the case, but there were more puzzles - those three children were named on the census as Edward W, (born in Mendham, aged 5; and Jessie, 3, and Herbert W. 2, both born in Redenhall (in other words Harleston, which was still at that time a part of the parish of Redenhall).  When I eventually traced their births with some confidence, I found that George Edward Boast had been registered, illegitimate in 1885, in Hoxne district,  Jessie Alice Boast had been registered, illegitimate in 1888 in the Depwade district of Norfolk, and Ernest William Gardener had been registered with mother's maiden name Boast in Depwade in 1889.  I later discovered the marriage of William Gardener and Kate Boast in the December quarter of 1888.

So, what of those sisters, Eliza and Kate Boast?  Eliza's birth was registered in Hoxne district in 1869, and it seemed that Kate was actually younger than William Gardener (or Gardner) had thought, for she was registered in the March quarter of 1868, meaning that in 1891 she would have been only 23!  The 1881 census revealed that they were the two eldest daughters of George and Emma Boast and were all living with siblings Rosetta, William, Ellen, Florence and Lottie in Mendham, Norfolk.  

I might add here that Mendham in those days was a village divided by the river that ran through the middle, between Norfolk on the left bank and Suffolk on the right, although all within the Hoxne registration district.  This is illustrated by the 1881 census record of the Boast family, who had obviously moved house within the village during the previous ten years, for the birthplaces of Kate, Eliza, Rosetta and William were shown as Mendham, Suffolk, and of Ellen, Florence and Lottie, as Mendham, Norfolk.  In 1885, the northern part was transferred to Redenhall, and this fact is underlined by a later note neatly added to the census page ... although no doubt the inhabitants would have still regarded themselves as being in Mendham.

Finally, I'll spoil the romantic idea of a parallel with the Mitfords by adding that the 1871 census revealed the existence of an elder daughter Rosanna, a year older than Kate.  I didn't follow up to see what happened to her; I decided that I gone into this genealogical rabbit-hole quite far enough.  As it is, I still have to decide what to include in my tree and what to leave out!