Boxing clever
I read Monique Monroe’s letter in the April issue of WDYTYA? Magazinee regarding the box of family photos and ephemera seen at an indoor market. In March, I purchased a collection from a dealer at an antiques fair, which sounds very similar. Over the last two months I have researched the extended family, built a family tree, attached the photos (140 and rising) to the individuals (259 and rising) and put it alll on Ancestry as a Public Tree so that people who are interested could have access. It is still a work in progress.
The families mainly originated in Nottingham as lace weavers but there are members who moved to London (Silvertown, Plumstead and West Ham), Essex, Canada and the United States following trades such as farmers, bakers, innkeepers, coal miners, drapers, grocers, clerks, draughtsmen and butchers etc. Some became successful – one was Lord Mayor of Ilkeston twice – and some endured spells in the workhouse.
I have attached some photographs (see above right). The ladies in the first one are Esther Jackson (née Maltby) born in Nottinghamshire in 1790 and died in 1872, with her daughter Eliza Ann Cresswell born in Nottinghamshire in 1825 and died in 1900, and Eliza’s daughters Esther Ann (b1860) and Elizabeth (b1867).
The two gentlemen in the second photograph are Godber Jackson, born in 1819 in Nottinghamshire (Esther senior’s son) and his son Godber born in 1864 in Plumstead, South London. They emigrated to Canada in about 1879. The group in the third photograph is Godber (b1864) and his family all born in Canada, wife Mary and children Stonewall (b1892), Cathie (b1894), Allie (b1897), George (b1899), Margaret (b1901), and yet another Godber (b1904). On the Ontario 1911 census there is another child, Harry, who was born in 1910, so we can date the picture to about 1909. If any readers have interests in the Maltby, Renshaw, Jackson, Shaw and Marsh family names, my tree can be accessed on Ancestry and is called ‘Maltby Shaw Jackson Families’.
Enjoy – I only wish they were my family! Wendy Ford, by email Editor replies: What wonderful pictures, Wendy – a big thankyou from us for sending them in. I’m sure descendants of the families you mention will thank you, too, for rescuing these invaluable and irreplaceable records of their heritage and sharing them. I know from my own experience that it’s a great feeling when a generous stranger sends you a picture of a long- dead ancestor that you have researched in depth but never before clapped eyes on. I hope someone reading this spots some members of their family.