The House Husband

I have cracked the mysterious Sarah Jane Adlam story. I knew there had to be something odd about the Adlam -v- Cook thing and I was right.

Today I received a marriage certificate for Sarah Jane Cook and an Ernest Adlam from 1916. It is definitely my Great Grandmother – there’s just too many bits of evidence for it not to be her. They married ten years after my grandfather was born. Sarah married as a spinster so I’m assuming he was a bastard. As was Aunt Lilian (the woman who bought dad up) since she was born in 1902. It’s interesting that the Buttericks had a problem with children born outside of marriage but the Cooks didn’t seem to! I refer, of course, to dad’s sister he didn’t know he had, because she born out of wedlock.

Anyway, legitimacy aside, this information has enabled me to go back a long way. I know Sarah Jane’s parents and her mother’s side back to about 1700 now (thanks to a very generous chap who’s tree I have access to). I will now need to work on Sarah Jane’s father (William Thomas Cook) who was a railway signalman or a labourer, depending on the census you read.

Actually, when Sarah Jane married Ernest, her father, though dead, was a Foreman Shunter. I’m pretty certain this is a step up from signalman so I guess he climbed the ladder of the railways.

The Cook family, before moving to Kensal Road, lived in Battersea, which is where Sarah Jane was born along with her sister (Louisa) and brother (Albert). Poor old William was dead by 1901 so he never saw his daughter married (finally) at the grand old age of 41. I’m still searching for the mother’s death. All I know is that Sarah Jane’s sister, Louisa, was a witness at the marriage.

Charlotte, Sarah Jane’s mother, was born in Sussex and, bizarrely is descended from the Vitlers of Sussex. This is odd because Mirinda’s family goes back to the Vidlers of Sussex! I am hoping we’re not related.

This has all been very exciting (it still is as I dig deeper) and has kept me engaged ever since the sun started to go down. Sadly, however, I have yet to find a birth record for my grandfather. Or a death record. Still, Sarah Jane was a mystery I’ve now solved. Who knows what may come next.

Just a quick post for Bob.

I have had a query from Bob about Johanna Lee and how she fits into the family history. Here’s how it goes:

Johanna and Job Lee married and had Charlotte Lee
Charlotte married Thomas Anstiss and had Alice Charlotte
Alice Charlotte married Emerson George Craft and had Hilda Merelyn
Hilda Merelyn married Bob’s father and had Bob

That makes Job, Bob’s great great grandfather on his mother’s side.

The whole story can be found in the Ahnentafel report on the website here. Note that you will need a login and password to access the report.

In order to try and redress the balance a bit, today’s blog is dedicated to the other side of our family tree – Mirinda’s side.

Today I found a very handy resource. It’s a website which houses the contents of lots of Australian newspapers dating from 1803. It’s mostly the national papers but also has a few smaller, local publications. I was just fiddling around with it and decided to enter Job Lee, one of Mirinda’s ancestors who lived in Bathurst.

Job Lee was a convict who, convicted of stealing a bag, arrived in Australia in 1831. He managed to settle down in Bathurst and, as far as I know, did well for himself. In 1849, due to the fact that she was an Irish potato famine orphan, Johanna Flynn arrived in Sydney and was locked away in Parramatta hospital because they figured she was a bit mad.

Job popped down to Parramatta a-looking for a bride. For reasons no-one will ever know but which I’d like to think had something to do with love at first sight, he chose Johanna to be his bride. I assume the staff at the hospital were more than pleased and released her to be married.

All went well and Johanna had lots of kids, including Charlotte, who leads the historical and genetic path to Mirinda. When his time came in 1862, Job shuffled off his mortal coil and joined the choir invisible (I’d love to make claim to that phrase but it’s actually a Monty Python quote). Johanna was left, a widow with kids in George Street, Bathurst.

Enough background! I’d like to take you back to the night of 22 October 1863 at about 11:30pm. It was dark and Johanna was settled down for the night when there came a loud bashing at her door. Naturally she was a bit frightened as she asked who it was. A voice came back, gruff and insistent. It was a policeman who wanted to search her house.

Uncertain she sobbed that she was a widow, all alone but for her kids and a young person, and that it was an improper hour to call. In reply, the policeman thudded all the louder, claiming she was an improper lady, keeping an improper house! He had a warrant to search her premises. If she didn’t open the door directly, he would be forced to break it down. Johanna opened her front door and the policeman charged into the house, grabbed a candle and started searching the bedroom for someone he didn’t tell her about. Not finding the person, the man came back and started swearing at Johanna.

The young woman who was with Johanna rushed out into the street calling for help, followed by the intruder (who was drunk). She managed to attract the attention of a policeman on duty who came running. This was Constable Sewell. He confronted the other chap who, when confronted, punched the the constable in the face and kept running off up the road. Sewell dragged himself to his feet and started shouting for someone to stop the running man. I like to think he blew his whistle as well.

Three chaps stepped from the shadows outside a pub and grabbed the running man, holding him until constable Sewell caught up to them. Hopefully, Sewell gave the prisoner a bit of his own back, but the news report doesn’t elaborate.

According to the reporter for the Maitland Mercury, the fellow was not convicted and, presumably, was given a slap on the wrists. He demands an inquiry!

Wow. What a night that must have been in George Street!

I found out some more Drewe stuff today. It even includes Shakespeare! Sort of.

According to the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, after a boozy night at the Dolphin Inn in 1611, Edward Drewe and his brother John may have murdered their ‘friend’ William Peter. I say ‘may’ because I have yet to discover the outcome of the case brought before the city justices.

The story goes that the three of them visited the Dolphin on a January night having already visited the Mermaid and the Bear, so they were already pretty drunk. They joked around for an hour, playing a practical joke on the publican, and then went on to a few more pubs around the town.

The next bit was based on the evidence of Edward and John Drewe. Eventually they left the city and set out across the country, on the road to St Sidwell. At one point William Peter raced ahead of the Drewe boys and just vanished. The Drewe’s called for him but heard nothing.

They ended up at St Anne’s Chapel where they found William’s horse but no William. They rode towards the closest house and asked there but there was no sign of William. They went on to William’s home and woke up his servant, handing him the horse and saying his master would return soon. The Drewes then left.

The next day, the body of William Peter was found near the chapel and the Drewe brothers were arrested for murder.

The Shakespeare connection is interesting. Someone wrote a poem about the funeral of William Peter, signing it WS. Many people think it is by Bill but many think it was not. It seems there is a lot of debate over this poem. For instance, a piece by Donald Foster, goes into great detail about both the Drewes and Peter. It quotes a few siblings and Edward’s wife. All this is good information!

Note that I am still working feverishly on my dissertation…the genealogy stuff is in my spare time!

OK, it has taken me quite a while and lots of agricultural labourers but I have finally found an ancestor of some great note. And I’ve even (sort of) been to his house!

In 1542, in Killerton, Devon, Thomas Drewe Esq and his wife Elinore (nee Huckmore) had a son. They named him Edward. He was a lawyer and ended up being the Recorder of London. These days, that means the most senior permanent judge of the Central Criminal Court, and it was a pretty high position back then as well.

However, in 1592 he was only the lowly Recorder of Exeter (basically a circuit judge) but then he was promoted to Serjeant at Law to the Queen (that’s QEI, doncha know). When this happened, he decided he needed a bigger place so he sold off Killerton to the Aclands and bought The Grange, Broadhembury, also in Devon.

He had 12 children, most of whom died very young but one of them, Wearne, kept the genes going down the line. Through the generations, those genes just kept going. They went through the Drewes, the Dunstones and finally into the Pearce family. My grandfather’s father married two of them (not at the same time).

And so, Sir Edward Drewe (1542-1622) was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather! In a direct line!

I am in the process of going back further along the Drewe line (there are hints they came over with old Bill the Bastard in 1066) but I shall rest on my laurels for now.

Anyway, the house we visited was Killerton in 2001. Here’s a photo:

Killerton - the seat of the Aclands

Of course, this house was built by the Aclands. They pulled down the one the Drewe’s lived in. The amazing thing was that we went there! The thing is, we have to go again because Sir Edward has a rather impressive monument in the local parish church and I didn’t see it!!!

This post is really for dad. Something that has been a thorn in my genealogical side has been extracted and I am rejoicing!

A bit of background. Sarah Jane Adlam is dad’s grandmother on his father’s side. She is the only person I have a lot of information on from that side. Even so, although I have a death certificate, seen her grave and have a rough date of birth, I was still very much in the dark regarding her. Mostly this was because of the name. Dad’s aunt Lilian (nee Cook) was the witness on the death certificate.

Where did Adlam come from? Logically, she would have been ‘Cook’, unless she remarried before she died. And it has been impossible to find either a death or birth certificate for dad’s father, which may have given me some sort of clue.

What I do have is dad’s father’s marriage certificate on which he states that his father’s name was Ernest Cooke and he was a general dealer. This was in 1926. His age is 21 so it puts his birth at around 1905. And this was the dead end I was sat facing.

I would occasionally return to the Adlam/Cook(e) problem and always leave frustrated. It was sticky. I found plenty of Adlams…I even found a Sarah Jane Adlam. She was born in Wiltshire. I followed her family back a loooooooong way. All to no avail as it was not her.

And then…I struck gold! I accidentally discovered an Ernest Adlam marrying a Sarah Cook. This, in itself, is not that surprising. The names are not that uncommon but what was uncommon was the combination of names. They were transposed.

Their marriage was registered in Kensington, another coincidence, which is where the whole clan came from. I decided to bite the bullet and send off for the certificate. It arrived while we were in Brittany.

It shows that Ernest Adlam, 41 year old Bachelor, greengrocer married Sarah Cook, 41 year old spinster on April 25, 1916. Both their fathers were deceased. The real clincher, however, is the address. At the time of the marriage, they were both living at 159 Kensal Road. This is where Sarah Jane Adlam died. So it had to be the same person. Or the coincidences were just ridiculous!

Now there’s a problem. Ernest Cook(e), dad’s father, was born in around 1905 but his mother (Sarah) was a spinster up until 1916 when she married Ernest Adlam. I have searched for his birth certificate under Ernest Cook, Cooke and Adlam but to no avail. This could mean that it wasn’t registered at all, something that happened a lot with the working classes, especially with unmarried mothers. Which makes it next to impossible for me to find anything out about his father! Of course, I shall keep looking for his birth and death certificates.

Sarah, however, may have the following story: She met Ernest Adlam sometime around 1905. They had a fling and she fell pregnant. Either her father or his, did not want them to marry and made provision of some sort for the child. By 1916 both fathers had died and the pair married. They were already living at the same address so it was just a formality, really. Ernest Cook(e), dad’s father, retained the name ‘Cook’ because it was his mother’s maiden name, or because he was bought up by his grandfather, or for some other odd reason (maybe he didn’t like Adlam!).

This all leads me on to greater heights which I am now able to scale. I have Sarah’s father and his occupation and I have a ‘Louisa Cook’, witness on her marriage certificate who is clearly a relation of some sort. The Adlam connection is a bit more tenuous, however, and I may have to drop it unless I finds some hard evidence to confirm it.

Anyway…a red letter day!!!

Most nights, between dinner, dissertation and blog and then waiting for Mirinda to call, I have a bit of a tinker of the old family tree. For a while now, I’ve been in a bit of a hole, not finding anything but last night I struck gold.

Before writing about last night and the wonderful Rix family of Salem, Massachusetts, I also have some news on my father’s grandmother.

Sarah Jane Adlam has been a thorn in my side for a while now. I know when she died, I’ve visited her grave (actually, I visited her plaque as her grave has been reused) but I couldn’t find out anything else about her or her marriage to Ernest Cook (or Cooke) and their son, Ernest, my grandfather. A stroke of luck led me to a family tree which includes her and her ancestors going back to the 1600s! I’m pretty sure it’s her and, if so, will mean lots more lineage.

This led me to a marriage certificate from 1916 of an Ernest Adlam and a Sarah J Cook in Kensington. It sounds like an interesting coincidence so I sent off for it. I does mean that my grandfather (born in 1906) may have had a different mother though, which would banish Sarah Jane to the twig pile at the bottom of the tree.

Anyway, more on that another time. I want to tell you about the Rix family. I’m assuming everyone knows the story of the persecution of the Catholics and the Puritans back in the 17th century. When Charles became king after the Civil War, he decided to make any Christian worship, other than Anglican, a crime and set about ridding the land of them and their idolatrous ways. A bunch of them took off for America, to set up the Colony of Massachusetts (the Pilgrim Fathers aboard the Mayflower and a few other boats).

A few years after the first wave of settlers left, there were some dribs and drabs as the colony grew and more people were needed. One Thomas Rix of Norfolk decided (I assume because he was Catholic for I have found no other reason) to go and, in 1649, he settled in Salem.

Thomas is described as a barber/surgeon so I like to think of him as a Doc Halliday type of frontier guy. Barber’s chair on a wooden floor, just across from the saloon with a price list for teeth extraction, amputation, bullet removal and beard trim.

Thomas married a widow the same year he arrived in Salem. She was Margaret Ward nee Uggs (I’m pretty certain her family were not responsible for the boots) and had been in Salem for a while. From everything I’ve found so far, Thomas was pretty successful at first and his shop flourished. While lucky in business, his women didn’t fair quite so well. He outlived Margaret and another two wives before he died himself in 1718. Interestingly, he married one of them in Denmark! I’m still looking at this but it appears that there is a Rix presence in Denmark to this day!

Anyway, Thomas hit a bad patch with his shop (maybe he drank his money away or hit the pokies in the saloon every night) and had to sell up and move. He settled in Preston City, New London, Connecticut, where he eventually died.

Thomas had a son James (1657-1729) who had a son called Alexander in about 1690. Alexander, at some stage must have decided that America was not the place for him (perhaps he figured the persecution was over back in the Old Country) and he left, changing his name at some stage to Rake. He wound up in Alton, near us. This line eventually ends up with the Chaplins, the Everetts and, finally, Mum.

A while ago I went to the Hampshire Records Office and found a lot of stuff about the Rakes – marriages, births, deaths – but very little on Alexander apart from an estimated birth year. Now I know why. Because he was, actually, a second generation American!

Digging a bit deeper last night, I also found an amazing story. It was written (in a book about the Rix Family, published in 1904) that Thomas was descended from a Sir John Rix who was beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII alongside Ann Boleyn’s father. According to this account, he was the Earl of Offord and lord of Brancaster Castle in Essex. Turns out this was all bollocks. There never was a castle and the Earl of Offord wasn’t created until the 1800s.

Still, it was a nice story. I particularly liked the account of Sir John’s son, collecting the head from the tower, taking it back to the castle, climbing to the battlements and proclaiming revenge to anyone within hearing. The next bit sees him entertaining Henry VIII at the castle. It doesn’t say anything about him mentioning the beheading to Henry so I’m guessing he got over it.

Just goes to show how important research is. And, just so we know who we’re talking about, Thomas Rix was my 9th Great Grandfather. There are no photographs of him.

I had another uni result today. One of my essays was a purely philosophical one in that it was about the philosophy of information. Now, I always love to babble and this was the perfect opportunity. Naturally, by the time I’d finished and submitted it, I was convinced it wasn’t very good and I’d babbled far too much. I guess I didn’t. I managed 80%! Who’da thunk it? I am rather pleased. As well as surprised.

To be honest, uni wasn’t a lot of fun today. It started ok, though the weather was foul and I was damp for most of the day. We discussed a lot of information retrieval stuff and then it came time for the tutorial presentations. It was the usual long drawn out process of getting people to go out to the front to present their findings. As usual this was like pulling teeth.

It was, however, exacerbated by the lecturer filling in forms with each group’s results. This took an age – there are eight groups – and, quite frankly, was a huge waste of time. It would have been a lot better had he asked us to fill in the forms prior to class so the findings could just be discussed.

The results were interesting and we managed to discuss some of them but the time was running out and we had to abandon class before the final group entered their figures. The class finished just before the next class were due to take over the room.

I headed out to get some lunch. The day was still miserable and my mood wasn’t much better. I decided to ditch my second class and give myself an early mark. The notes are all on the uni website and I could study in the warmth and comfort at home. The poodles were very pleased. I was very pleased.

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Butterick Update!!
Following on from yesterdays post…After a bit more research into St Augustine’s, Kilburn, I discovered that it was only consecrated the year before the Butterick mass baptisms (1880). Apparently, the priest at the old parish church wasn’t too happy with the way things were going and decided to branch out on his own. He wanted a more Catholic approach and so opened his own church, with the bishop’s blessing, of course. This was St Augustine’s. Now, my assumption is that the Butterick family were all for this new brand of worship and so shifted allegiances from the church they knew and loved to the new one down the road which promised more in heavenly trading stamps. This belief is strengthened in that a few years later, another Butterick child was baptised at the new font. This one was also well past birth.