Fearless Females 2012: A tribute to Brenda Prendergast

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

The theme of today’s Fearless Females post is ‘best friends’, and so I am taking the opportunity to write a small post in recognition of Brenda Prendergast.

When I first began researching my father’s family tree, I wasn’t getting very far. Both of his parents are dead, and my dad and his siblings’ memories of family stories were muddled. I had names and stories, but was finding it impossible to make any kind of order out of it. Then my dad suggested we ask Brenda.

Brenda had been a neighbour of my dad’s family when he was a child, and became friends with my dad’s mum, Fay Rayner. In difficult times, Brenda was there to support Fay, and also often took care of her children. Fay introduced Brenda to her mother, Victorine Rayner (née Hayward) and the two hit it off. From then on, Brenda herself was almost like a daughter to Victorine and her husband Les. For much of this later part of her life Victorine was confined to a wheelchair, and so Brenda would help out around the house. After Victorine’s death and when Les was too frail to take care of himself, it was Brenda who shouldered much of the burden. Brenda also knew Victorine’s mother Mabel Jones née Hall and Aunt Mona May (née Hall) quite well for a few years before they both died.

Meeting Brenda was a turning point in my research on my father’s side. She was able to give me the vital facts I needed to get going (surprisingly accurately as well, given that it was more than twenty years since Victorine had died). More importantly though, she brought this entire family to life in a way that my father’s hazy childhood memories never could. From Brenda I learnt all sorts of things that no genealogical research could ever have revealed, about personalities, family relationships and personal secrets.

It was with Brenda’s help that I was able to track down Victorine’s long-lost son Brian Fox, and I know that she was just as overwhelmed to meet him as I was.

Brenda Prendergast – a friend to me, my father, my grandmother, my great grandmother and my great-great-grandmother.

L x

Fearless Females 2012: My brick walls

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

I like to differentiate between a brick wall and a small hurdle – quite often I’ve come to a halt because I know what I need to do to make the next step, but that involves ordering certificates. Unfortunately given the expense I can’t do that many at a time – I think I need to start a waiting list! So, here are some of my current female ‘hurdles’.  Where possible I’m sharing my thoughts on where to go next. If you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to offer them!

Elizabeth Robinson was born in 1877 in North Yorkshire, and married Bertie James Newby in 1899. I found Elizabeth on the 1881 and 1891 censuses living with her grandmother Mary Ann Robinson. In my indexing I have tentatively assumed that Mary Ann is her paternal grandmother, on the basis of her surname, but I’ve as yet failed to trace her parents. Unfortunately Elizabeth Robinson and Mary Ann Robinson are rather too common as names to be able to make educated guesses to fill in the gaps. The next step surely has to be to order Elizabeth and Bertie’s marriage certificate and see what that can tell me.  

The mother of Mary Ann Birchall is proving equally untraceable. Mary Ann is born somewhere between 1833 and 1836 depending on which census record you believe. By the 1851 census she is living alone with her father John, so I assume her mother has died in the intervening years. Once again, John Birchall and Mary Ann Birchall are too common in Lancashire to easily identify, and the issue is complicated even more in this case because I am searching pre-1837. Without siblings to cross-reference, I am struggling a bit. I think the only way to progress will be to narrow down the area to search and then going to the parish records, and hoping that John Birchall’s profession as a professor of music crops up in either a christening or marriage record, though the Lancashire Online Parish Clerks and FamilySearch have thus far turned up nothing.

Amy Hall is the sister of my 2x great-grandmother Mabel. Amy was born in 1880, but I’ve been unable to trace her beyond the 1891 census. There is a possible census entry for her in 1901, but the name given is Emma rather than Amy, and as yet I haven’t been able to eliminate possible Emma Halls for this record. Also, there is the possibility that she might have married already and thus I don’t know what name to search for. Though she continues to perform under her maiden name, so did her sister Mona after her marriage. I know Amy is alive until 1922, because her name appears on an obituary tribute to her father – unfortunately it is only her first name! I have managed to trace her career quite fully, as I explained in yesterday’s Shining Star post. But despite having a pretty good idea where she was located in both 1901 and 1911 at the time of the censuses, I still can’t find her, or indeed any of the people she was touring with at the time, using the search function. This means that my only way forward is to browse the entire census for the area and try to pinpoint them that way. Hopefully I’ll then be able to verify whether she was married or had any children, to help me trace her life further.

The last one is a slightly different brick wall. My mum’s first name is Ceredwyn, and she was always told that she was named after an aunt of her father’s. Thus far I’ve had no luck identifying who this might be. Despite living in Wales, most of my ancestors tend to have rather English names, and where the 1911 census tells you whether they spoke English, Welsh or both, my ancestors are overwhelmingly English-only speakers with very English names. This might have something to do with the fact that quite a lot of them actually hailed from over the border in the Forest of Dean. However, I have still got a few Hancock and Webb brothers for whom I haven’t identified a spouse yet, so I my mum’s namesake might turn up eventually!

L x

Fearless Females 2012: Shining stars

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

The stars in my tree are plentiful! However, I’m going to concentrate on Amy Hall.

She was born in July 1879. She appears on the 1881 census with her parents at the age of 1. However, by 1891 she is no longer living with her family. I eventually found her recorded as a visitor in the household of James and Agnes Edwards in Grimsby, some 38 miles away from her parents’ home in Lincoln. Surprisingly, at the age of just 11, she is recorded as an actress.

Also visiting the same household are James and Mary Lampard, actor and actress respectively, both of whom were born in Lancashire, like Amy and her mother. Their daughter, Mary Ann (aged 3) was born in Stoke on Trent, where Amy’s grandfather Joseph Bryan Geoghegan had run a music hall for a short time before his death in 1889, and where Amy’s father Matt Hall would soon move to run his own theatre. Though such evidence suggests a family connection, I haven’t yet proved anything. Nearby households also serve as lodgings to actors, suggesting that the theatre is close by.

Amy Hall then becomes rather harder to trace – as do all her family, in fact. There is a possible census record (but under the name Emma) as a dancer in London in 1901, but I’m not entirely convinced it is her. There is the possibility that she marries, but continues to perform under her maiden name, as I know her sister Mona does.

While I have failed to track her personal life, her theatre career is fairly well documented in the Stage archives.

In May 1889, when ‘little Amy Hall’ is just 9 years old and staring in a drama, Saved from the Streets at the Queen’s in Birmingham. The same production has moved to Blackburn by August.

By 1893 she is performing as part of the Rass Chaliss Company in Liverpool, in a production called Parson Thorne. There is an interesting response by this company to criticism that many actors have a private income and pay to join theatre companies, not having any real talent. The critic seems to have used the Rass Chaliss company as an example of this. The response by Rass Chaliss states ‘not one of these good folks ever dreams of paying to be allowed to act (I only wish they would)’. It also lists the members of the company and how long they have been involved in the business. Amy Hall is said to have been ‘born in the profession’ – a fair description given that her father, her maternal grandparents and many of her aunts and uncles were all on the stage!

Sometime between 1893 and 1895 Amy joins the Leopold Brothers’ Company, with whom she stays for the remainder of her career. She takes the part of Polly in their pantomime of Robinson Crusoe (which strikes me as an odd story to make a pantomime from!), plays Ninette in The Bear, Baron and Sentinel, and, most frequently, as Lucy Buckwheat in Frivolity and New Frivolity (which I think is a later version of the same production).

Frivolity was a very successful stage act, being performed for many years. The Leopold Brothers had even taken it to New York in 1884 (not with Amy though, as she was only 5 at that point!).

Amy gets generally positive reviews, often complimenting the quality of her singing. She also seems to be the eye candy of the company, with descriptions like:

‘Miss Amy Hall is a lively Polly, looking exceedingly tasteful in her gaily-coloured frocks’

‘A pretty and dainty Lucy Buckwheat’

‘Sparkling and attractive’

While Amy seems to be performing around London a lot in 1900 and 1901, the names of her fellow performers don’t match up with those listed nearby on the 1901 census return, so while I can’t completely discount it, nor can I confirm it. On the other hand, Amy is almost certainly in Brighouse at the time of the 1911 census – the list of the week’s productions from 30^th March, just two days before the census is taken, gives her company and Amy herself as performing there – and yet I have still been unable to locate her.

Amy appears to be working up until at least the 1920s, with performances in The Wife and the Other Woman and Babes in the Wood, but I don’t know anything about the end of her career, or what she did afterwards.

One other tantalizing clue I have is this entry, from the Charles Taylor Collection, held at the University of Sheffield.

178R14.220        

Town Hall Cleckheaton

Week commencing Mon 20 Sep c. 1910s/20s

Excelsior Animated Pictures

Latest Dramatic Sensation ‘A Reckless Life’ and other pictures intersperse with high-class vaudeville

Amy Hall – the pocket Vesta Tilley

Edward Stream, comedian

Printed: Will Jones of Liverpool, Cable Street

Red and blue. 285mm x 885mm

NFA Collection

I suspect this gives us some idea of the kind of act Amy was performing in the later 1910s. Find out a bit more about Vesta Tilley here. 

There’s still a lot of research to be done here, and excitingly for me, there are lots of other family members’ careers to be traced in a similar way – both male and female!

L x

Fearless Females 2012: Working girls

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

The author Stan Barstow, who was born and raised in the area, said that Horbury (my home town) and neighbouring Ossett were the 'border country' where the north-west of the coalfield merged with the south-east of the wool towns. This is borne out in the occupations given for many of my ancestors on the censuses – the vast majority were either miners or textile mill workers.

The women tend to be employed in the mills – presumably considered more suited to female labour. Job titles include ‘Rag sorter’, ‘Piecer’, ‘Spinner’, ‘Rover’ or ‘Reeler’. By contrast, the older men at least are more often listed as labourers or miners – jobs which sound much more physically demanding or dangerous.

I need to do much more research on this subject, as I know that there were many different types of textile milling going on in the area at this period – wool, cotton, worsted, silk and ‘shoddy’ (woollen rag sorting) – and I have no idea which industry many of ancestors were employed in, or where they were likely to have worked.

My parents now live in part of a converted mill building, so it would be nice to think my ancestors might even have worked there once.

I did look into the history of this building when we moved into it, and it’s really quite interesting. For one thing, at one time the business there was owned by a man named Hampshire, which is one of my family surnames – not a direct ancestor, sadly, but almost certainly a distant relative! In later years the building had various uses, most recently as an engineering works. At one time it was also the only place in the country that manufactured the ticket machines used by bus conductors – a fact my mum loved, because her mum used to be a clippy!

L x

Fearless Females 2012: Heirlooms

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

My family ‘heirlooms’ are mostly jewellery. I have my nana Margaret’s signet ring and the wedding ring of her sister, my Auntie Mary. I also have a beautiful silver locket and a gold crucifix that belonged to my nana as well. I wear all of these pieces quite regularly, and take pride in their heritage when I do so. My mum also has her mum’s wedding ring, which is a beautiful heavy, chunky piece of gold. It was engraved with moons and stars, but these have all but worn away now. I hope to have it re-engraved or even re-made into my own wedding ring when I get married.

Another heirloom I have is a necklace that belonged to my mum’s father’s first wife, Doris. It’s only costume jewellery, thirties or forties I think, but it’s beautiful and still in wonderful condition. I wear it a lot. They didn’t have any children, and so I think it’s rather nice that her jewellery has passed into her husband’s second family and lives on as a memory of her. I know very little about her or their marriage.

Generally speaking my mum is not a hoarder, and neither am I. It can be rather frustrating though. I love fashion, and so often I see a picture of some dress or shoes or bag I like, only for my mum to say that she, or her mum, once had one just like it. I despair that she didn’t keep any of it! I did receive as a present a couple of years ago a square silk scarf that my mum found in a vintage clothing shop that she said was just like on her mum had. It’s beautiful, and sort of feels like an heirloom even though it isn’t really.

One of my favourite heirlooms came as part of a Christmas gift this year. I’ve recently taken up sewing (badly, so far!) and I saw a gorgeous vintage-style sewing basket that I asked my mum to buy for me. It came filled with all sorts of sewing goodies, but the best bits were the hand-me-downs – a thimble that had belonged to my Auntie Mary, a darning ‘mushroom’ that was my nana’s, and from my mum’s own sewing kit, Wonderweb!

L x

Fearless Females 2012: Meeting and marrying

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

I actually know very little about how my grandparents and great-grandparents met and married, except for one story. This is part of the story of Victorine Hayward, as I remember it told to me by family friend Brenda Prendergast.

Victorine met my great grandfather, Leslie Gordon Hayward, at the age of about twenty, in a café somewhere in London. The year was about 1932/33. He was with a friend, whom Victorine took a bit of a shine to.

The three of them got chatting, and Victorine told them her story. She had run away from home (we have no idea where this ‘home’ was) at the age of about 16 when she discovered that her George Jones, the man she had been brought up by, was not in fact her father.

Victorine’s mother Mabel had left her husband William Philip Hayward, an alcoholic actor, when her daughter was young. She subsequently met and set up home with George, who had treated Victorine as his own daughter. It was only on the death of her real father that Victorine found out, by overhearing a conversation between George and Mabel, and upset by the revelation left home. (Mabel and George later married.)

In London, while living with one of her aunts, Victorine had met a man named Fox. They married on Victorine’s eighteenth birthday in February 1931. They had a son, born on Christmas day that year. When the marriage broke down, she left him, taking her baby son with her, and lived for a short time in some sort of bed-and-breakfast or lodging house. But she had little money and conditions were poor. She had no choice but to return her son to the care of his father, where he would be properly looked after. Following this, her husband had deprived her of access to her child, and when Victorine met Leslie she was in despair at ever getting him back.

Leslie’s friend was incredulous and dismissed the story, but Leslie, it turns out, believed her and was sympathetic. The pair fell in love and Victorine was soon pregnant. Her husband divorced her on the grounds of adultery. Once the divorce was finalised, Leslie and Victorine married and Victorine gave birth to a son shortly afterwards, followed by my grandmother a few years later, just after the couple had relocated to Yorkshire. Victorine never saw her other son again.

L x

Fearless Females 2012: Names

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

(I’m playing catch-up, so you’ll be getting a couple of these a day for the next few days!)

My name shares a direct connection to two of my female ancestors.

My first name, Lauren, came at the suggestion of my mum’s mum Margaret Goulding. She was a bit of a film buff, and her favourite actress was the beautiful 1940s starlet Lauren Bacall, and so it was after her that I was named. My mum liked it because it’s hard to shorten. It was quite an unusual choice at the time, though it’s far more common now.

My middle name, Fay, was my dad’s mum’s name – Fay Rayner. However, I never heard her called that. She was always known in the family as Pat. Apparently her father gave her the nickname – she was, although beautiful, rather a dumpy figure, and so he thought Fay, coming as it does from the French for fairy, didn’t really suit her. This always makes me feel a little sorry for her. Fay is also used by an aunt and a younger cousin as a middle name as well.

Generally speaking though, there aren’t traditional family naming patterns for the females in my family – at least not ones that endure today. There are some that seem to have been used across generations earlier in my tree. Amy, Marion and Ellen were popular in one branch and Honor is an unusual one that crops up a few times on another branch. There are an awful lot of Marys and Mary Anns as well, but I suspect that isn’t confined to my family!

There are some beautiful female names in my tree. I hope to use some of them for my own daughters one day. These are my favourites:  Amelia, Bess, Comfort, Edith, Hannah, Isabella, Louisa, Marion, Matilda, Miriam, Nellie, Phoebe, Stella, Violet and Victorine. I might have to whittle them down a bit though – I don’t intend on having fifteen children!

L x

Fearless Females 2012: My favourite female ancestors (and a photograph)

Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

I’ve touched on women and their place in genealogy and history a couple of times already, so when I came across this blogging prompt I decided I wanted to get involved.

I’ve chosen two favourite female ancestors for you today – one from my maternal ancestry and one from my paternal ancestry. They both happen to be great-grandmothers.

First up, Annie Louisa Hampshire (1887–1975), my mum’s maternal grandmother.

She’s a favourite because I heard my mum, my nana and my great aunt talk about her and their family a lot as I was growing up. She was the starting point for my family tree and I suppose that sort of makes her my ‘inspiration’.

From my mum’s stories I have the impression of a witty character – gossipy and sharp-tongued with a youthful spirit even in her old age, and a bit of a man-eater! She provides an interesting contrast with her daughters – my nana and great auntie Mary – who were, I think, altogether more down-to-earth and reserved. But, she also has her stories, including a ‘skeleton in the closet’ mystery that is truly impossible to solve!

My other favourite is Victorine Hayward (1913–1987), my dad’s maternal grandmother.

A rather more complex choice. I love her because she is an equally vibrant character. A striking-looking woman (in the photograph she is aged about 22) with a cut-glass accent and a beautiful singing voice, she was well educated and apparently spoke brilliant French – an aptitude I seem to have inherited! In later life she was confined to a wheelchair, and was the first person in our village to get a motorised one! My parents both attended the same schools, but didn’t really know one another at that point. Regardless, my mother clearly remembers this imposing figure rolling up in her wheelchair and parking herself right at the front of queues and crowds at school events!

I also love her because she was for a long time my biggest challenge! Victorine, also known as Renee, was impossible to track down. I first found her marriage record to my great grandfather, in which her name was Renee V Fox or Hayward. Still more baffling, on the birth records of her two children she gave her maiden name as Jones. With no clue, initially, as to why she had three surnames (four if you count her married name), or which I should be searching for, I floundered hopelessly, going down several wrong leads before I got some help from an old friend of hers and my grandmother’s. The story that unfolded was astonishing – and so Victorine is responsible for and led me to one of my most incredible ancestry discoveries ever…

L x

On WDYTYA Live 2012: Must-see workshops – Sunday:

Wow, Fantasy WDYTYA Live is exhausting – so much to think about already and still Sunday to get through. Here we go...

What’s in a name? (11 a.m.) – I find names an extremely interesting subject.  It would be incredibly useful for my research to know a little bit more about localised names, for example.  This talk also touches on the one-name study concept, which I would like to know more about, and hopefully I might learn some basic methodology that I could then apply to my own research.

The plan: Find a book. Maybe I could find a one-name researcher and ask them for some general advice on some of my projects where their methodology might help? (If anyone reading can help, I’d love to hear from you!)

Harnessing the Facebook Generation (2 p.m.) – a talk looking at the ways in which genealogy is changing and the ways in which it can appeal to the ‘Facebook Generation’. I suppose I would almost count as a member of it, so I’d be interested to see how others, and perhaps older genealogists, see things...

The plan: Keep doing it, and keep talking about it...!

Charts to Visualise Your Family Tree (3 p.m.) – as I mentioned in On writing it all down 2. Paper family trees, I like a visual layout, and I’ve recently begun experimenting with new formats for presenting information, so I’d be looking for new ideas and tips for improving those charts I already have.

The plan: Maybe some online research could yield some interesting examples I could try?

‘By her labour’: finding female forebears (4 p.m.) – regular readers will know that this is a topic I’ve discussed a couple of times. Women are notoriously more difficult to find, because their maiden names are easily lost and there is less occupation information available for them. I’d be most interested to see what this talk could suggest.

The plan: Keep muddling through, I suppose! Make notes of what has worked for me and others to refer to as needed. Maybe I’ll write a post on it once I’m confident!

So, plenty to be getting on with then! Reminds me why WDYDTYA Live is so important. Next year I will definitely be there!

L x

On women’s football

A very quick post. I loved this article. I’d like to think some of my female ancestors had this much bravado – although if they did, I obviously haven’t inherited their sporting prowess!

 It’s unlikely I’ll ever know, unless they happen to have been particularly instrumental in their chosen activity, like Nettie Honeyball.

Genealogists will probably agree, finding out about your female ancestors can be much harder. They’re much less likely to have held the kinds of social positions men did. Their occupations are not always recorded, though I’m sure that, in working class families at least, many of them had to. In fact, as you get further back, even finding a surname can be hard in the parish records!

I wouldn’t consider myself a hardcore feminist, but it makes me so thankful for our relative freedom and equality in the 21^st century!

L x

Next time: why do we do family history?