One of my ancestresses, Jane Harding née Young, of Camberwell, was a 'monthly nurse', which referred to a live in helper for young mothers and their newborns, generally being for affluent families. Both Jane and her spinster daughter Sarah worked for rich families, both in consequence living in grand homes in the distinguished Grove Lane. The old lady Sarah cared for, Caroline Hilton, was so grateful that upon dying she even left Sarah her home, at 22 Queens Row, Grove Lane, and enough means by which to no longer need to work. It can be seen that serving the trés riche got one out of the slums and into elegant environments. One ancestress, Elizabeth Moulds alias Moules, I discovered to have been born in Wapping in 1774, her mother being Elizabeth née King and her father John Moulds being a mariner, the family living at Milk Alley, near to the infamous execution block, at the rivers edge, where mutineers were regularly hung, all to large audiences which would crowd along the riverside and upon boats in the river to view the morbid spectacle. As for Jane the monthly nurses father, Nathaniel Young of Lambeth, I now found out he had been a waterman on the Thames river, who had apprenticed three of his sons to also be watermen. Not only therefore did I have watermen and lightermen in my family further along at Greenwich, but also at Lambeth too. Nathaniel had done his own apprenticeship in Fulham, from the ages of 10 till 18 under the tutorage of his uncle Robert Lewis (married to Nathaniel aunt Mary), who in all those years would have provided training in boating skills, food, clothes and lodging, according to the contract dates from 1768 to 1776. Generally lads would be apprenticed at the age of 18, unless a father or uncle was the tutor, in which case the apprentice could be taken on at a younger age. Robert Lewis himself had done his own apprenticeship in Fulham with his father, also called Robert Lewis. Another find, at last, something I'd never been able to suss before, was the 1830 baptism in Windsor for my ancestress Sarah Green. Like wow, what a super find (even though the record was merely a transcription and not the original). This gave an address in Windsor, Sheet Street, and what's more I discovered another Green, an older Henry, had been living at the same address, dying there just two years earlier. This may well have been Sarah's grandfather, or even great grandfather, for him having born as far back as 1747. Maybe Sarah's parents, Henry Green and Elizabeth née Harding, had inherited the house, or had taken over the rental, staying a couple of years before returning to Lambeth. So many Greens there were from way back in Windsor, a place I myself had once enjoyed to visit, swimming in the river there.
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![]() I have another genealogical breakthrough, hurray, this being finding out why my ancestor, John William Harrison, was put in prison for half a year back in 1871. Oh, how so long to find this. But there it was. Being a waterman/bargeman John had crossed the Thames from Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs, whereon he began loading his barge with iron from the Samuda wharf at Blackwall. Half a ton he got into his barge when he was spotted by a man who he then set to wrestling with. As it is said, he tried to throw the fellow in the water and would have succeeded if not for another person spotting the fracas. He was given six months hard labour in prison, hence his daughter, my great great grandmother Maria, having to go into the workhouse at the age of 11, her mother already having died from tuberculosis. And for Maria's deceased mother, Eleanor Caroline Barton, who'd been raised in an orphanage, I found newspaper clips about the Sailors Female Orphan Home where she grew up, of her singing along with the other girls for the public 'Oh Where is the Guide of my Infant Years'. Even back then, when Eleanor was 7, it was reported that one of the other girls of the orphanage had died of consumption (tuberculosis). I researched more, looking at where in London my people lived and what those areas were like. When my ancestors lived at Cock Lane, beside St Sepulchre church, I do think that unlike now this was a colourful and stimulating place to be. St 'Pulchre, as it was known, was right by a prison, the Old Bailey, and the cells of those condemned to die. It was inseparable from those surrounds, tolling the bells and praying for the souls of all those condemned ones who would stop there on the way to the gallows, having a gift of flowers presented to them. But a walk away from there were other homes for my family, in more notorious areas, Field Lane with its plethora of resold stolen handkerchiefs, Plum Tree Court which was an escape route for thieves, and its neighbouring Shoe Lane, being by St Andrews Church, where priests needed bodyguards for this being such a rough place. My ancestress Sarah Bunney died in the workhouse just by there, though of a good old age. She was a survivor, and her daughter Hannah Bunney had by now long gone to Greenwich. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. I buried myself into some genealogy, my quest being to try and find out at last what are the origins of my Greenwich waterman great great grandfather Thomas Seagrove. And although I have many times looked into this to no avail, this time I made the breakthrough, which was really quite amazing. My granny Isabelle did once tell me that the Seagrove surname may have been changed from something sounding like Shugrue. Previously I had looked at one character of the right time, name and place, Bartholomew Sugrue, who did indeed have a son called Thomas. But, on Thomas's marriage certificate he had written his fathers name was James Seagrove and that he was a fisherman, not a match then for this Bartholomew who was a labourer. I decided now, regardless of the contrary detail, to look again at this figure, Bartholomew Sugrue. He was an Irish immigrant from County Kerry, who had married another Irish immigrant, Catherine Sheehan. In later years he was in and out of the workhouse, every time being transferred from Greenwich to Poplar to do hard labour, a frequent way to get a small financial means to then send to his family. It was in looking up his workhouse admissions that I then saw it, the defining proof, the missing link. There it was, written on record that his next of kin was a son who lived at 9 Kitsons Terrace, exactly the time that I knew my ancestor Thomas Seagrove had been living there. In another workhouse entry I then saw the sons actual first name recorded, not with a surname: Thomas. So it is that I now know I have Irish ancestry, not only of Westmeath, but of County Kerry too, that part of the country famed for its friendly dolphin at Dingle. This was most exciting and I spent much of the rest of the day researching Bartholomew Sugrue. He lived on the marshy peninsula where now sits the Millenium Dome. It was his son then, Thomas, who married Maria Harrison, and their daughter Mary Ann who married D'Auvergne Bane, who had granny Isabelle, who had my mother, who had me. Returning to look at my newfound Irish Sugrue family, I discovered that not only was Bartholomew continually in and out of the workhouse, but that at one time his children were too, including his son Thomas, my great great grandfather, who at that time was 11 years old and still a Sugrue. And I discover why. At that time their mother, my very ancestress Catherine (neé Sheehan) had been put in prison for a year for stealing from someone. Her daughter Ann had helped her in this theft and had also been found guilty, punished with 14 days of prison followed by four years in a reformatory school. This was interesting to discover as I myself went through a phase of stealing as a child, and there it is in our family history. They lived in such desperate times, in which Bartholomew frequently subjected himself to stints of hard labour away from his family, to enable their survival. I do feel upset for these sentences imposed on Catherine and her daughter, who simply needed to survive and feed a whole brood of children, to keep all alive and healthy, in times of no modern social support system. Bartholomew died in the Greenwich workhouse. It was as much a home to him as anywhere else. He had been married to someone before Catherine, another Irish girl, Ellen Sullivan, but within three years of being together she had died. Maybe Thomas took the name Seagrove to distance himself from the sorry degradation of his Irish immigrant status; maybe Maria his wife had wished that. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
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