How do you solve a problem like Maria? - Sepia Saturday

"Portraits" is the theme for this month's Sepia Saturday posts  and I am beginning with a profile of my great grandmother Maria Rawclilffe (1859-1919). 

 

 

I find it difficult to date this photograph - could she be around 40, so taken around 1909?  I would welcome any other thoughts.

Researching the Rawcliffe family  was my first venture into family history and I was puzzled  by a number of issues relating to Maria.

 Mystery One

Maria's two granddaughters (who are still alive)   always referred to her as "Granny Maria" and her baptismal entry just gives the single Christian name. But there was a puzzle in that many official records, such as Maria's  1877 marriage certificate, the 1881 census entry, her 1919 burial record and my grandfather's  1907 birth certificate  all gave her Christian names  as "Martha Maria".   I sent away  to the local Registrar for Maria's birth certificate c.1859 and outlined my confusion over her Christian name.

To my great surprise the result was two certificates - for Maria, daughter of Robert Rawcliffe and Jane Carr of Hambletlon, Lancashire born 15th January 1859 and another daughter Martha, born to Robert and Jane on  20th January 1863. 

Four months later baby Martha died.  Maria would only have been four  years old then, so could hardly have remembered  her youngest sister.   Moreover their mother Jane died two years later, so could not have kept the memory alive of baby Martha for very long for  her other daughters. So why did Maria adopt her name along with her own?  We shall never know

                    
Mystery Two   

Early on in my ancestral trail, I turned to Family Search and was delighted to find entries for my  Rawcliffe family, including the name of "Martha Septima" .  This intrigued me  - seventh daughter  after Anne, Jane,  Margaret, Alice, Jennet and Maria.  

But how did her Ag. Lab. father  and mother who only could make their  marks on their  1846 marriage certificate, come to know this Latin tag?    On Maria's birth certificate of 1859,  Jane again is noted only for making her mark, but there is no such indication  on  Martha's entry. 

These were the days on Family Search when the name was given of the submitter of the information  - an American address and  I suspect a descendant of Maria's sister Alice who emigrated to USA.  I did write  but the letter came back "unknown", so very frustrating.  Many years later I traced the American connection, but no-one has come up with any clue to the "Septima" name.  

The only other record I have found mentioning "Septima" was  on Ancestry in the Lancashire, Church of England Births and Baptism.1813-1911.   

 
Mystery 3

The puzzle does not end there, as both the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Project (OPC) and Family Search record the baptism of a Peggy Rawcliffe, born 1861 to Robert and Jane, which means Martha would not be the seventh  child but the eighth.   Sadly Peggy survived only 16 days.  

So baby Martha may have had only a very short life, but her legacy lived on in the name of my great grandmother.  

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Bull Street, Poulton-le-Fylde, just off the Market Square  was the  home of my great grandparents James Danson and Maria Rawcliffe and their large family of eight sons, one daughter and later orphaned granddaughter Annie.  In their early married life, my grandparent also lived in the same  block.  In the 1960s, Bull Street was demolished to make way for a small shopping mall.

 

 Maria with her only daughter Jennie (1897-1986) and in front her granddaughter Annie Maria, who following the death of her young mother, made her home with Maria. 

  

Maria here with her eldest granddaughter Annie Maria Danson, born 1905. Annie looks  to be about 13 years . So this photograph can be dated to around 1916 when Maria would be 57. 

The early 20th century was a sad time for Maria, with her death of her husband, eldest son, daughter in law (mother of Annie above) and two sons,   killed in the First World War.  Maria died aged 60 in 1919. 

But the family still have memorabilia  from Maria's life  - her kettle, and her teaset and some jewellery. 

 

Complementing the kettle was a tea set which is now with Maria's granddaughter. Maria was very proud of the teaset which she got from collecting coupons from a newspaper offer.

 

Below - a necklace & brooch sent by son Frank who was in hospital in Malta during the First World War

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity to share 
their family history and memories through photographs.

 

 

Click HERE to see portraits from other Sepia Saturday bloggers

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Last School Photograph - Sepia Saturday

I began this month’s Sepia Saturday prompt with my first school photograph and will end here with my final photograph.

 

 I moved on from Infants to Juniors, where the boys and girls were in separate classes - When I was  there   boys were on the ground floor,  with playground to the back, whilst girls were upstairs with our own assembly hall, and our playground was at the front of the red brick building - and "never the twain should meet"!   I think we were the last council junior school to go co=ed in Blackpool, following the death of the headmistress.

 Here I am the prim little girl second from the right on the front row of seats.  My photograph is so like the prompt picture (see below).  Hair styles are much the same, but see the popularity of peter pan collars, and still a large class - of 43 - all very regimented with crossed hands in our laps and crossed ankles in our Clark sandals.  Another feature missing from the group  - no signs of any obesity crisis amongst us  here, as we were growing up when rationing was still in force. It only came to an end in July 1954  -  9 years after the end of the war.

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We didn't seem to get  individual or class photographs at my secondary school (girls only)  but I remember two occasions when the whole school (about 500  of us I think) gathered on the playing fields for a massive group photograph.  The first year pupils sat cross legged on the grass, with the staff in their academic gowns seated  on chairs, and the rest of the school grouped behind, either standing or  balanced on gym forms.  The result was a large rolled photograph in a scroll box.  Unfortunately I did not see fit to keep these and threw them out when I was having a major sort-out, prior to getting married.   I regret that now. 

My recollection of my teachers  (all female)  is they all seemed quite elderly (though this probably was not the case) and hardly any were married - most would fit the now old fashioned description of "spinster". 

Miss Robinson (English) was a great mimic at adopting dialects and accents.  She brought to life the characters in such plays as "Midsummer's Night's Dream", "The Rivals" and "She Stoops to Conquer". 

I liked Miss Jones (Latin).  Unusually for me, one day I was brave enough to write on the blackboard the jingle "Latin is a language as dead as dead can be.  It killed off all the Romans and now it's killing me!"  Fortunately when she walked into the classroom she saw the humorous side of it - though she got me  to  clean the blackboard. 

Another Welsh teacher was Miss Edwards who more than anyone made me want to study history - my first love.  It is amazing what facts I learnt many many years ago that come back to me when answering quiz questions on TV.

Miss Mutch (German) scared me.  She was from the Shetland Isles, bit of a bean pole, with cropped grey hair and given to wearing viyella checked blouses and v-necked pullovers.  She was burdened with the schoolgirl ditty of "If you miss Miss Mutch, you don't miss much".  I felt doomed from my first German lesson  when my attempt (in front of the class)  to pronounce a lovely German "Ich" came out as "Ick".   Still I persevered.  She was a good teacher, her lessons stuck with me, and I can still get-by in tourist German when abroad. 

From my first term at grammar school, science bored me stiff.    Our science teacher went by the unfortunate name of Miss Smedley, which was far to easy to change to Miss Smelly.  I could not work up any enthusiasm for learning about microscopic creatures such as the amoeba and hydra, nor get  fired up over a Bunsen burner. My  science knowledge is  poor, which is an awful admission to make in the modern world, though I have learned more from watching the quiz show Pointless on TV.  The irony is I went on to marry a physics teacher!  

We moved to Edinburgh where I finished secondary education at a co-ed school and for  the first time in my school life  I was  taught by men   Mr Scott-Allan continued  to develop  my interests in the past with a new dimension to it now of Scottish history, and Mr Ironsides (known as Tin Ribs) kept  Latin alive for me. 

So I have nothing but my memories to remind me of my High School days and University days where I was unaware of any group  photographs ever being taken.  I envy the American tradition of School Year Books - a great resource for family historians. 

I did toy with the idea of becoming a teacher myself, but my Aunt Edith (right)  was not encouraging.  She won  a scholarship to Fleetwood Grammar School , in Lancashire, riding the four miles on her bike in all weathers.  She became a teacher at Burn Naze School in Thornton Clevelys (a poor area of town in the 1920's and 30's)  and had a keen memory for past pupils (particularly black sheep)  and humorous incidents such as excuse notes, written  for absences.  Unfortunately her memorabilia from her teaching days must have been thrown out at some stage as I never came across it following her death - such a pity. 

But a few years ago I had a delightful find, when the school was celebrating its 100th anniversary and featured on its Facebook page fond pupil memories of Miss Danson as their infant teacher.

My student days ended on graduation from Edinburgh University in History - followed four years later by my brother (Science degree) - and look at his 1970's sideburns!  Both our parents left school at 14 years old - our  mother was apprenticed to a local tailor, and was still making her own clothes in her 80s, whilst our  father went to work in a local grocer's shop as the errand boy, later becoming a commercial traveller (salesman)  and rose to the position of sales director.  

 

 My  brother and I were the first generation to go to university - something our parents were very proud of.

I feel I went through education at the best of times, inspired by some dedicated teachers.  

School days were happy days.   

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity to share 
their family history and memories through photographs

 

 

Click HERE  to  read  the memories of other Sepia Saturday bloggers. 

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1889 - First Sight of a Car on the High Street: Sepia Saturday

"Old Cars" is the theme of this month's Sepia Saturday posts.  I have added several posts over the years of   cars, both vintage and more modern.  This time I turned to my local heritage group, Auld Earlston,  for inspiration and feature photographs of traffic in the  early days of the motor car, plus entertaining memories of   childhood escapades involving cars. 

 

Earlston Market Square - a quiet street for traffic  in the early  1920s.

Here is a snippet on Earlston life in  “The Southern Reporter” newspaper of 24th March 1898.

"MOTOR CAR - A motor car passed through the village on Sunday morning.  The two gentlemen who were driving it left Newcastle-on-Tyne the previous day en route for Edinburgh. In this neighbourhood one of the tyres got damaged  and it was resolved to put up at the Red Lion. 

This was done and the  car when it reached the hotel, being stopped for a little while was quickly surrounded  and examined with no small degree of curiosity, this being the first time  such a machine  has been seen  in operation here. "

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Childhood Memories of John Moffat  (1919-2016) 

John spent his early childhood in Earlston in the 1920's  where his father Peter, opened the village’s first garage.  .   John was an adventurous little boy, always getting into scrapes, which he recalled in his autobiography.

 

"There was almost no motor traffic in Earlston, and the roads were covered in layers of stone chip spread over hot tar. The Council road workers came every year to renew the surface.  Piles of grit and barrels of tar were left by the side of the road, ready to be used.  Somehow I managed to get into one of these barrels and cried for help.  My father rescued me and  and dragged  me into the garage where he cleaned me up with paraffin.

My father's business prospered .  The garage was usually busy, as cars and  buses were starting to replace horse drawn vehicles. I enjoyed loitering in the area and became fascinated by engines and anything mechanical.   My father bought a chassis from Albion, lorry manufacturer in Glasgow,  and had the local  joiner  build a charabanc body on it. It was the first  bus to operate in Earlston  and was often hired out to  local clubs and church groups for excursions or picnics.  The wheels still had wooden spokes and rims, like the horse drawn carts,   On very hot days, the wood would dry out and shrink, so the driver had to carry a bucket of water  to keep the wood wet and prevent the wheels collapsing."

Crashing the  Doctor's  Car  

"About 1925, my father sold Dr. Young a new car a Model T. Ford,   It  had been fitted with what was then a very modern invention  - an electric  starter button as an alternative to cranking the engine  over by hand with a starting handle.   Motor cars were still a novelty in those days, and I was fascinated by the concept of the electric  starter button.

One day the doctor's pristine black Ford was parked outside the big grocer's shop in the Square.  I took the opportunity to clamber up into it and pressed firmly on the starter button. To my utter surprise,  the car  leapt forward and smashed into the plate glass windows of the grocer's shop.  There was utter chaos.   The shop assistants were screaming, people all around rushed to see what had happened - all this accompanied by my shock and tears  at the realisation of the trouble I was in. Then the doctor and my father added to the tumult. My father treated me very sternly.  I was forbidden treats and was told I must stay indoors. "

 [With grateful thanks to the Moffat family for allowing me to quote from John's book]

 

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Below  advertisements from the  "AA Illustrated Motoring Annual and Motorist Year Book. 1904", held by reader whose grandfather had a car hire business in Edinburgh.  

 

 

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More motor car photographs from the Auld Earlston Collection 

 

Ten years on from this the first sighting of a car in the village,  this is the official car used by Prime Minister Asquith when he visited Earlston in 1908.

 

 A vintage  car on Thorn Street at the west end of the village, c.1920's.

 

 

Driving down  the middle of the road on the now busy A68, linking Edinburgh and Newcastle through the central Scottish Borders  - here in the early 1930s. 

And what was likely to be the biggest danger facing motorists in the early days of the motor car?  ?  Children playing on the road - Earlston High Street, c.1910.

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Sepia Saturday gives bloggers an opportunity  

to share their family history through photographs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click  HERE to find out what other bloggers have found

in this week's prompt photograph.  

 

 

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Musical Moments - Sepia Saturday

A girl singing her heart out into a microphone is this week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph.  None of my family had any pretensions to be solo singers, but we had our musical moments, as I take a nostalgic  look back here, 

"I am in an  all singing/dancing chorus, swirling my skirts,  in a  London West End show  - such as Carousel, Oklahoma, West Side Story or 42nd Street .......

But It Was All One of My Wildest Dreams! 

Back to reality! 

  One of my earliest memories was  taking part in a my primary school (girls only) nativity play, singing solo the first verse of  "We Three Kings of Orient Are" and wearing a cardboard crown with jewels made from fancy sweetie papers. I have never wanted to sing solo since.

My next stage performance  was at a Brownie's concert when, clutching our teddies,  we sang "The Teddy Bear's Picnic". 

In my primary school days,  every Wednesday afternoon we gathered in the hall for community singing and I learnt such patriotic songs as The British Grenadiers, Hearts of Oak, The Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, Bluebells of Scotland and my favourite Men of Harlech, sung with much gusto.  Sea shanties were also popular as we swung from side to side to sing What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?   Are these now all forgotten,  as I doubt that children are familiar with them today? 

 

We weren't a particularly musical family, in terms of playing instruments, but wherever we lived , my mother, a lovely alto voice, joined a local,choir, and my father, a rare tenor, sang in church choirs from the age of seven.   

 

 

 Mum, Dad, brother Chris and myself c.1954

 

Am amusing musical tale. 

One Christmas family get-together, after the meal, we children did our party pieces, with mine  on the piano.  My young brother Chris  decided to plough his way through all 12 verses of "The Twelve Days of Christmas".  He developed hiccups and his long socks kept falling down - this was the days of lads in short trousers, despite the weather.  But he was determined to finish singing the carol, kept pulling his socks up and by the end,  we were all falling about laughing and we never allowed him to forget this occasion. He did sing in the junior school choir at the Blackpool Music Festival - but that was the end of his singing interest.  

 

 

Singing in a choir (school, church, community)  has been a key activity throughout my life from primary school days onwards, whether it was folk songs from round the world, spirituals, carols, sacred music, opera and operetta choruses,   or songs from the shows - musical tastes that still mean a lot to me today. I was a member of Edinburgh Choral Union and then in the Scottish Borders, where I now live, a member of the Roxburgh Singers for over 30 years.  I was very happy to be a chorus girl  - I knew my limitations!  

 

I was once in a group called "Melody Makers". We joined High School musical productions sitting at the side of the stage as an additional chorus and we dressed the part i.e. men in checked shirts, jeans & cowboy hats, women in flouncy skirts for " Calamity Jane". One year I took part in a "Come and Sing" event for "My Fair Lady" where there was a prize for the Best "Ascot" stye hat - but sadly I have no photographs of these occasions.

 

High school introduced me to Gilbert & Sullivan (another of my mother's favourites)   and I was hooked, singing in most of the operas over the years.  At University, I joined the  Savoy Opera Group and the annual G & S performances were the highlight of my years there - I loved taking part, the dressing up (the girls made their own costumes) - plus of course the singing. 

 Hi 

Here I am in a school performance  of "Patience" which is a skit on Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic  movement. I am one of the  "Twenty lovesick maidens we" - second standing figure  on the right, plucking my cardboard lyre.

 

In the public gallery in "Trial By Jury" 

 

 In "HMS PInafore" - I am second on the right, twirling my pink parasol. 

 

 

In Yeoman of the Gusrd. 

My other musical highlight was when I  was  one of over a 1000 singers, plus orchestra and organ  in a "Come and Sing" performance of "The Messiah"  in the iconic Royal Albert Hall in London - an exhilarating,  moving  and unforgettable experience in front of a packed 4000 audience.  I was on a high,  walking back to our hotel.   

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 Royal Albert Hall, London. Photograph courtesy of Pixabay

 

I have now decided to "retire" my voice, but music still plays an important part in my life.  Joining a choir is a marvellous form of music making, whatever your age, a great creator of the "feel good factor",  and there is nothing to beat singing with the full blooded accompaniment of an orchestra or organ - I  recommended it !

A posts  adapted from earlier posts first written in 2012.

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers 

       to share their family history through photographs.

 

     

               

 Click HERE  to read other bloggers' take on this week's prompt. 

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Men at Work - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph features a group of workmen emerging from a tunnel, with bloggers  being asked to follow a theme of "Down".

Down tools for these  Greek workmen,   taking a break  - my husband encountered this group  whilst on holiday in 1971 and when he took a photograph, they wanted some money!

 

 

Arthur Stuart Ingram Smith (1908-1979) was my cousin's father,  here  emerging from down under a manhole cover,  during his work as a linesman for the General Post Office in Blackpool, Lancashire. 

 

 

 Sitting down is my grandfather William Danson (1885-1962) of Poulton-e-Fylde, Lancashire.  He worked as a general labourer at the ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) Works  at nearby Thornton,.  Was there  a reason why he was given pride of place here?  

 

 

Quite a contrast, but more sitting down  - by this costumed city guide in Vienna. Austria.

Bending down -  men working with the heavy machinery  in the textile mill in Earlston in the Scottish Borders.   From the mid -19th century through to 1969, the mill was the chief employer and main stay  of the local economy.

Coming down -   Steeplejacks climbing the mill chimney at Simpson and Fairbairn Textile Mill in Earlston, Scottish Borders - early 1900s. 

 

More bending  down by these sheep shearers, hard at work in Earlston in th Scottish Borders  where I live. 

Staff and visitors at Earlston Railway Station, c.1920, posed in front of, not a tunnel, but  the station footbridge.  The Berwickshire Railway reached Earlston in the Scottish Borders  in 1863, but following severe flooding in 1948,  the line only continued with freight traffic not passengers and was finally closed  in 1965. 

Earlston photographs courtesy of the Auld Earlsotn Heritage Group 

 

 

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Sepia Saturday  gives bloggers an opportunity
   to share their family history through photograph

 

 

Click HERE

 to read more tales  from other  Sepia Saturday bloggers