Friday is market day here where we live. Each Friday, at 8.15am, we head for the glorious market at Ohoka -- 25 minutes drive away -- and stock up the pantry for the next week ... cucumbers, kale, cos lettuce, carrots, baby potatoes and beef tomato (one does me for a week!), classy avocados, broccolini, berries, fish, salami ... even a home made cottage pie ... not to forget the best rose bushes ever for $25, and every kind of vege seedling you could wish for for just $2 a big punnet .. Every week, we come home with the boot bulging ...
Of course, by the time we get home, put away out trophies, dive into some lunch ... with its obligatory post-prandial nap attached ... there's not much time left in the day to start on any serious work. And, anyway, at the moment I haven't got any serious work on. For a few weeks. So, I pull a weed, water an acre, and I play ... 'find the C19th folk'.
Today I pulled out three nice looking folk ...
My choices turned out to be, in one case, a well-documented and lofty personage, but I managed to avoid the clergy and the Indian army ...
So number One. Miss Bentley. 1887. But on the back it says Mrs Branagan, so that helped. Fine lookin' gal, ain't she! Black Irish? Jewish? Well, Irish it was ...
Sarah Joanna BENTLEY (b Liverpool 22 January 1869; d 10 Willow Avenue, Lytham October 1946) was apparently the daughter of William Bentley, a house painter from near Rochdale, and his wife Joanna or Anna née Leonard from Stockport. Both were of Irish families, both Catholics, and Sarah was duly christened in Latin ...
She seems to have had brothers William Henry (1866) and Richard (1876), but -- unless she is the 12yo Sarah working as assistant to and living with an earthenware-seller in Toxteth Park in 1881 -- I don't see the family until 1891, when Sarah is working as a housemaid and waitress for a Dr Wearing in the Wavertree High Street. On 14 July 1893, she became the wife of William Richard Branagan (b 21 March 1867; d 3a Fairfield Crescent, Newsham Park 10 May 1953). Mr Branagan was from a family of workers on the Merseyside Docks, but from a young age he took a job as an assistant to a bookseller. He would remain in the book trade for his whole working life. And Sarah bore him seven children.
There is no descendant of those seven children alive today. Four of them died as children, eldest son Ralph Reginald Bentley died in the Great War, aged 21 (12 October 1916), and daughter Ursula Marie (1904-1960) remained a spinster. Only Blanche Eveliune (1901-1998), who wed James Frederick Lindell (1906-1941), had issue. Lindell, a seaman, was killed in a shipboard accident. Their daughter Barbara Marie died in 2016, unmarried. Perhaps that's where the photo came from.
It look me a while to discover Sarah Joanna died. She and William can be seen in the 1939 census in Fairfield Crescent ... but I imagine she was the Sarah Branagan who died at 10 Willow Avenue, Lytham in October 1946, aged 77. She lies in the Yew Tree Catholic Cemetery, plot 4B 59, if there is a Liverpudlian who would like to visit her.
Number two. William Boyd DAWKINS (b 26 December 1837; d 15 January 1929). I hadn't heard of him, he just looked like a nice old gent. Well, he was a nice old knight: Sir William. Geologist and archeologist. And his impressive story has been told in the DNB and other reasonably reliable volumes. To which I refer you.
Number three. Carefully labelled 'Me aged 4', and Mrs Louisa Bailey née Janes.
Well, I have identified 'Me'. He is Arthur John Marson BAILEY (b Maidenhead 26 June 1913; d 45 Denham Crescent, Mitcham 15 June 1995). How do I know that? Dint of digging ...
Louisa JANES (b 15 Brydges Street, Drury Lane, c1848; d Uxbridge 15 July 1918) was a pure product of the public house system. Papa John [Webb] Janes was publican of licensed premises in Brydges Street, mama Harriett Marson (b 22 April 1821; d 7 February1877) was the daughter of a shell-fish monger. Their marriage had had a slight hiccough ..
Moses, on the left, was the eldest. Born 1852, christened 8 December, seemingly for his uncle, Moses D of Old Swan and a 'victualler' (a pubkeeper), like father Joseph. Moses was educated at 'Mr Botham's Boarding school' in Walton on the Hill before following, ar first, in the family footsteps as a publican. He later took up farming. He married 'of Chirkdale Street' in 1874 Annie Grant, and they would have three daughters (Catherine, Annie, Emma). He died in 1918, and lies in Livepool's Tosteth Park Cemetery, alongside his father and a number of members of the family who died in childhood.
Joseph Thomas must be the one on our right. Looks a bit fey. But he, after also passing by Mr Botham's establishment, took over the publican's role from his father, who died in 1880, and his mother, who died in 1896, most notably for many years at the Black Horse in Walton-on-the-Hill's Rice Lane ...
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