The Lees of West Hill, Brampton or, Saving a Cumberland family's archive.

It's happened again. I was going quietly along, tidying up my story about the lovely Saxtons of Matlock Bath, and just very vaguely thinking about starting on work the next book, when I some how made an écart into e-bay and saw another family album in the process of being torn apart ... what's a day in the life of an old hayfeverish man, locked in his dark study ... I have to save the Lees of Brampton from the depredations of Mr/Ms legitlibrum!

Here is the photo that first caught my eye

If only they hadn't been labelled! But they are. In pencil, and seemingly later than the date of taking of the photograph, which is apparently late 1860s. We have two lasses, Alice and Annie, surnamed Shield, and two named Lee. I like the look of the Shield girls, so I chased them first. But no confirmable luck, so far. So, on to the Lees. Yes, the two lasses who look as though Julie Andrews has made their frocks out of the curtain material. That's Mabel Jane seated, and 'Lillie' standing. And it is their family which is the heart and soul of this collection.

Once upon a time there was a lawyer by name John Lee (d 25 March 1880), who came from Nether Denton, in Cumberland, and settled, not far away, in the village of Brampton (now gobbled up by the metropolis of Carlisle) where he plied his trade in partnership (eventually) with the established Mr John Carrick. Here he is, clerking, in 1834.

Mr Lee married Miss Mary Ann Blacklock 'of Cumwhitton' 15 October 1836. And I think that, among the huge collection of photographs, we may actually have pictures of them

This, I am sure, is Mary Ann

And this John? Playing soldiers with the Volunteers, or taking time off from practising law to kill someone?

And, dated 1862 ...

I will follow that up another time, but in the 60s, John sr was in his 60s, and John jr only in his twenties, so I think we are safe saying this is John sr.

Right. Skip on. Facts. Not counting several episodes of infant mortality, John (d 1880) and Mary (d 1875) had for offspring (1) James Blacklock Lee (2) Mary Ann Lee (3) Elizabeth Lowther Lee (4) John Joseph Lee (5) Mabel Jane Lee (6) Emma Henrietta Lee (7) William Carrick Lee, and (8) Percy Thomas Lee. So, I think we can safely say that our curtain-material girls are Elizabeth (1842-1927) and Mabel (1848-1916). Both remained spinsters, as did William (1856-1913) and Emma (1853-?1936). Mary Ann became Mrs Dickinson, and died at the age of 47. Percy became, fate of youngest brother, a Rev. I lose J J.

I see that Mabel could brush up with a bit of Gok-styling

This seems to be Emma, from two different points of view

This is Percy... future Vicar of Garrigil then Shilbottle

And this is John Joseph (b 1845), educated at Parkgate Road Technical College, Chester, who seems to have ended up in Scotland ... though he must have been in Brampton for this photo session.

Which leaves James B, and that is exactly where we want to be.

James became a solicitor (and coroner), like his father. 11 August 1863, he married a Miss Emily Clay (yayy! there are Clay photos in that jewel of a collection!) and ...

But! Pause for the Clays! The Clays of Nether Denton. Robert and his wife Sarah Ann née Laing. Daughters Emily (1842) ... Annie Elizabeth (1856), Laura Cecilia (1859) ..  here we are! Or are we?

Cecilia and Annie ... but, hang on, the age is way out! This looks like the Annie (1814-1879) and Cecilia [Margaret] (1827-1888) who can both be seen ('annuitant') in Newcastle .. daughters of Robert Clay, master mariner, and his wife, Elizabeth ... Emily Lee's maiden aunts! 

And, why! Emily herself ...?

So, Emily married Mr J B Lee (b Brampton 1837; d The White House, Brampton 1 October 1903) 

and here we are ...

So. Then we have the next gen. Harry James (solicitor and !!!theatrical manager?, b Brampton 11 October 1864), Arthur (solicitor), Emily Ethel, Hubert John, Robert Clifton, Francis Blacklock, William Frederick, Laura Eliza .. Well, round about this time the labelling got sloppy: if it was Emily's collection she, obviously, didn't need to label her children, unless the photo was being sent to someone else. However, I can decipher some ..

Harry James ..  aged two ...

and older

Here's Hubert. Thrice!

Hubert became a bank clerk, married, bred ...

Francis Blacklock Lee. He was in the New Zealand army in the Great War, worked as a secretary of the Herekino Dairy Company, and died in Whangarei 7 September 1948, aged 73. He married Miss Gertrude Emily Dysart, but left no children. One dead branch.

Fred Lee ie William Frederick

That's three of the nine children: no Harry, Arthur, Emily, Robert, Laura or Septimus Joseph. Yet. 

Postscriptum: well, I've kept an eye on Mr Legitlibrum, and sure enough, a couple of months later, who should surface but JB and Emily's two firstborn: Harry and Arthur

and little daughter Emily ..

and here little Em'ly is again, with brothers Hubert and [Robert] Clifton

More Hubert/Herberts

Here's Frank

Alas, many of the other photos are unlabelled, but we can tell they belong to the collection. So is this John (1) or John (2)? That hideous beard ... it must be John (1) ..

Is this a younger version of the beard? The frogging on the sleeves ..

And well, we can be pretty certain about this one. Alice and Annie Shield. And Lillie Lee.

There are heaps more. They should all be enshrined in the Brampton Museum. But no. History has no chance against e-bay ...

Mr/Ms Legitlibrum. Before you break up another collection ... just think. You may sell a few of these photos, singly, for two or three quid. But if you keep them all together, a museum or a benefactor (such as I) will buy the whole lot for a hundred or two or even three. But the collection needs to be COMPLETE.

Oh dear, look! More ... he's fun. From the days when beards were a Male thing rather than a gay style ..

And dammit! Here's another photo of Alice Squire! Distant relation? Friend? Or have I missed something? Dated 1864 .. Well, I see and Alice (b 1836) and an Annie (b 1841) in Houghton, Stanwix. Father is a cotton weaver and mother (née Thornton) a bobbin-winder. The gowns look a bit rich ...

And these, unlabelled ..

Here are the curtains again..

Oh! Here's a later one 'Dorothy Lee and/or Daisy'. Dorothy? Daughter of Hubert John and born 2 November 1899 at Brampton? ... someone else has revived the photo album, thirty, forty years on? I see there was a Dorothy Lee in Brampton back in the early part of the century ... isn't it a nuisance when folk keep using the same forenames over and over ...

This one isn't named, but I'll bet it's the Lees .. yes, Mary Ann and Percy ..

Or is it!  This has just surfaced. months later. Mary Ann Dickinson née Lee. It is surely the same lady...

And this

Well, now that I've salvaged the best of the pictorial bunch, let's see what else I can discover...

And still they come! Here is little Emily Ethel Lee. 

And here is Emily Ethel Symington d 15 August 1959 .. in Brampton's churchyard ... along with three 18th century Lees ... Where are the rest, I wonder. They seem to have been a church-going family.

Enough. The Lee family honour is saved ... time to get back to work on that book. I'm sure that there is much more to be found, but ...

Hang on, who is this Laura C Clay ... 1880? Why! Its our Laura Cecilia (1859-1953) ...!  Married 1883. To William Henry Victor Vincent Bradley (ouf!), Bank of England clerk. Sons Cecil Vincent, Guy Laing ... Died 15 June 1953 at Hexham.

And sister Annie Elizabeth seems to have married an Arthur Hugh Sutherland ...

I know, I'm going on and on .. but so does this family! And I'm still hoping to spot a Shield in there somewhere!

Goodness, Mr J B Lee even had the servants photographed! Annie Grisdale and Maggie Little. Annie is with them in the 1891 census, 'aged 39', born Castlesowerby, daughter of a shoemaker ... soon after this photo, she married (so it seems) a widowed railway porter, Robert Lamonby, with three children, had a legitimate daughter of her own, to add to what seems like a youthful illegitimate one, lost her husband ... she died aged 70 in 1920.

The next day: I don't know whether my blog started something (I did alert the local paper and historical societies at Brampton) or not, but someone has bid for a number of the photos. Mabel Jane in her hunting gear has 16 bids and is up to 26 quid. Little Dorothy is up to thirteen. But nobody has latched on to my favourite ... and no-one seems interested in the Shields!

The day after: Rule of Thumb. ALWAYS revisit the scene of the crime!  Here is a little trove of Shields!

Annie Shield

Annie and ... Hugh!

Aunt Lizzie and Arthur

Got 'em!!!!!!! 1861 census. George Robertson Shield (49) woollen cloth merchant, 10 Claremont Place, St Andrew, Newcastle. Wife Elizabeth Alice (39). Children: Alice (13), Annie (11), George (9), Hugh Walter (7), Frederick (5), Arthur (2 months). I see Mrs Shield got a sabbatical year between children, but they nevertheless employed 2 nurses as well as the usual cook and housemaid. And guess what? Elizabeth Alice, Mrs Shield, was born ... Miss Clay! I knew there had to be a family connection! Alas, Elizabeth Alice died at Framlington Place 2 January 1864 ...


Oh, no sabbatical in 1850. Daughter, Kate, died 31 December 1854 aged 4 1/4 .... and oh, died 31 March 1858 Isabella, infant daughter ... No sabbatical at all ...

Oh dear. Here is papa's gravestone. Died 1894. Oh dear. A hecatomb among his sons: Hugh was lost at sea in the steamer Vanguard between London and Lisbon in 1882, aged 28 ... Frederick died 22 January 1881 aged 24, George born 1 March 1852, died 7 January 1884 aged 31... and baby Arthur (b 27 February 1861) is on there, too. But Annie and Alice ... ? Alice, where art thou?

And, here are Alice Lee (Mrs Hubert J, née Alice Plues), Dorothy and Gordon and ... Daisy the dog!  Well, we've had Dorothy and Daisy the dog before, and 'Gordon' is Hubert Gordon Lee born 1901 ...

Watch this space!  I knew it! Days later up pops a bit more Clay .... Annie Clay, dated 1880.

William Clay 1862

Robert Clifton Lee in 1882

And here is another branch of the family. Miss Fannie Blacklock 1886 ...

And there are more. 

Well, the right people notified, it has been ascertained that these photos, and more, came from a known collection owned by a descendant of the Lee family who died in February 2020. So who junked the family photos, even when they had already been recognised as an historical item in Brampton ... (censored)?

Lucy Saxton: a woman of Canterbury. The latest story!

A couple of years ago, I had one of my periodic coups de coeur. I saw the picture of a lovely young lady from Christchurch, NZ, on e-bay and decided to investigate just who she had been. I didn't do too bad a job either. And I went so far as to visit her grave, and then to spend a few week's pension money on having it restored. Well, I told you: coup de coeur. We all do things on the spur of the moment. I, more than most folk! And I rounded off the story with a bloglet ..

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-woman-of-canterbury-end-of-story.html

The end of the story? Not at all. This week I received a wonderful note from a present day member of little Lucy's family! A descendant of one of the nephews and nieces ...

When you do history, it is all too easy to get 'facts' right, but the colour wrong. It is all too easy, also, to make mistakes if you are not very very careful. I try to be punctilious. I try very hard. But ... so, here is my original article (version two) with a few explanations, some colour, and some corrections

SAXTON, Lucy Harriet (b Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire 21 January 1843; d Harewood Road, Papanui, Christchurch 8 October 1926).

Lucy photographed in Matlock circa 1860

Lucy Saxton was not a notable. She was merely a woman who, like so many others, came from Britain, to the colonies, in the 1870s, and there made a life for herself, of a rather different kind than that to which she had been accustomed. She came, it seems, alone. But she came to join her elder brother, in the unlikely purlieus of Robinson’s Bay, Akaroa, where he had settled a decade earlier and established himself as a farmer, sawmiller, landowner and one of those worthies who seem to be on every local board and committee. In his case, from the Duvauchelles School Committee, as chairman of the local library and the Ratepayers’ Association, to the Akaroa and Wainui Road Board, as Licensing officer for Okain’s Bay and Akaroa, a Justice of the Peace, e tutti quanti. Lucy would become one of the schoolteachers in Duvauchelles (adjoining Robinson’s Bay), and otherwise seems to have occupied herself with charity works. She’d had practice.

Lucy, brother George Henry (b Darley 14 Sept 1836; d Karori, Wellington 18 September 1914), and sisters Ann Elizabeth (b Darley 29 December 1837; d 10 April 1869) and Mary (b Darley 19 May 1839; d Matlock 29 July 1876) were the children of the Reverend Solomon Cadman Saxton, formerly curate of Darley north and south, and then perpetual curate of St James’s, Hill, Sutton Coldfield (b Matlock 17 April 1796; d Hill Parsonage 28 August 1859). Yes, a minor provincial clergyman of the type so dear to Mrs Gaskell. Solomon, educated at Cambridge, doesn’t seem to have been of any noteable lineage. His brother, George, was the Matlock pub keeper, his four sisters, three, at least, eternal virgins, lived long lives as ‘fundholders’ until, latterly, obliged to take in the odd paying guest. Solomon, of course, being a clergyman, married (Elizabeth Cardwell) and bred, though rather less exaggeratedly than most Victorian clergymen: just four surviving children, before Elizabeth died (24 December 1874 aged 36), when Lucy was only months old.

The Matlock pub keeper? There are, my friend, pubs and pubs! 

"The Hotel, known as the Saxton Hotel and also known as the New Bath Hotel, was at Matlock Bath - a busy spa town. At the (Saxton family reunion 2016) reunion we saw several silver spoons with his name engraved, that were from the hotel, and lace cuffs that the waiting staff wore as part of their costume working in the dining room. 

In 1841 it was considered by Granville's book 'The Spas of England' to be the best of the the biggest hotels for well-to-do visitors, its decorated ball room being a main attraction. George the grandfather died 1844, and a son George Withers Saxton, an uncle to Lucy and George, became head of the household.  When the hotel was sold about 1855 the Saxton family made their home at Woodland House "a commodious detached freehold residence with ten bedrooms''. in the adjoining grounds, where they still catered to holiday makers by providing lodgings." 

Solomon, as his position demanded, remarried. His bride (13 December 1848) was one Mary Knott (née Abbey), daughter of Richard of Northamptonshire, a widow lady (of another clergyman), rising 50. I suspect she fulfilled most of the duties of a curate’s wife, principally the housekeeping ones, without producing any more children.

And then, in 1859, Solomon died. In 1861, Ann is working as a governess and Mary can be seen with her two younger stepdaughters, living in Leamington Priors. Or rather, not seen: ‘mother absent’ noted the census. Mary did at Long Buckley, Northants in 1882.

Four ‘orphans’. George moved first. From his education at Christ’s Hospital, and whatever he had done since, he emigrated. When? I first see him in Akaroa in 1865. Nearly 30 years of age. And a sheep farmer! Do they teach drenching and dagging at Christ’s Hospital?

Clarification. George had to leave at age 15 as he was a charity case at that Blue Coat School. Between 1851 and 57 he worked for the Midland Railway, Derbyshire, which placed him very close to the Hotel family in Matlock Bath.  

Ann moved next. She got married. The gentleman was an Irishman by name Henry Crawford, and of him I know nothing. But the family does "He died in 1883 but Ann did not die until 1917, in Dublin.  She had four children, the last born 1880". 

So, by the time of the 1871 census, we have just Mary (30) and Lucy (27), helping the elderly aunts with their genteel lodging house in Matlock. But then, all that fell apart. Sister Mary died at 35, auntie Alice had died in 1869, now auntie Mary Ann died at 84, and auntie Harriet in 1877 …

I imagine that, some time around now, as the last Saxton standing in Matlock, Lucy decided to join brother George. As maiden sisters did. I hope, after the parsonage at Hill, she was prepared for Akaroa. ‘Miss Saxton and the Misses Williams have thirty pupils at Robinson’s Bay’ wrote the local paper in 1881 …

Lucy in Akaroa days

I see, in 1896, Miss Saxton still in Robinson’s Bay ..

George at Akaroa

Well, in 1902, George got into the usual farmer troubles, a host of dead and stolen sheep, and he ended up filing for bankruptcy. His main debt was to … his sister, who had obviously been filling his monetary gaps for some years. I wonder where her money came from. ("We presume the funds that Lucy had lent him came from her share of the sale of the lodging house in Matlock Bath") Anyway, he may have been looking after her, but she had also been looking after him. So, now, after nearly four decades, the Saxtons left Akaroa …

In 1911, Lucy is recorded as living at Geraldine ‘Waihi Terrace, spinster’ ("with her nephew George Cadman Saxton"), by 1914 she is back in the city, at 299 Tuam Street, where she stayed for a number of years, seemingly sometime in the company of Miss ?Mary Kiver, who took ‘decorative classes’ for the Horticultural Society … I see the two of them donating regularly a pound or a guinea to various war and patriotic charities (Sailor’s Day, Navy War Fund Appeal, British and Foreign Sailors Society, Soldier’s Christmas Fund, Prisoners of War Appeal, Jubilee Memorial and Queen’s Statue Fund ..). ("she was actually living with the Kiver family - a widowed mother and three daughters")

So, I don’t imagine Lucy was entirely alone. Or was she? George, who died in 1914 (18 September, The Terrace, Karori) had had a number of a not very durable wives ("the first two died of post partum infection"), and a number of children therefrom, but oddly, when she herself died, in 1926, Lucy named as her executor Mr Harry Anderson, engineer, Christchurch agent for the firm of Reid & Gray, of Dunedin, manufacturers of farm implements …

Lucy’s ashes lie in the graveyard of St Paul’s Church, Papanui. In the same road as her last home.

t’s a long way from St James’s, Hill, Sutton Coldfield. But papa’s 1835 church, described in its time as a brick building of no particular architectural interest,  has been rebuilt a couple of times since her day. And this one looks more appealing, anyway … oh! It’s Grade 2 listed …! And nestled in the shadows of a mega-Mitre and the Northlands Shopping centre .. well, I shall visit her when I get back to town. Your tombstone, as seen on the billiongraves website, looks as if it could do with a bit of tlc …

The family has a lovely memento of Lucy ... "My mother has a hip flask that was Lucy's, crystal cut glass with a fitted silver cup and silver stopper.  It appears to have been given to Lucy as a 'welcome to NZ gift' potentially by Samuel Farr, a friend of brother George and recognised as an architect in early Christchurch.  The cup has her initials LHS on one side and SF on the other. He was married so there is no suggestion there was any romantic attachment, and there is no record of any other suitors either".

So, there we are. Lucy has another dimension. Thank you Rosalyn and Ross for all the red bits of text, I am very glad indeed that I picked on Lucy for my gut-reaction researches, and delighted that my pension was so very well-spent!