Family history

  9/52 Female: Annie Wibberley I have chosen to write my 9th post about Auntie Annie Wibberley. The prompt is ‘female’. I have chosen Annie because I haven’t written anything so far about the Wibberley family, my grandfather’s family, and she was the only girl in her family.   I first developed an interest in Annie when I was transcribing my great grandmother’s letters. She, my great grandmother Maria Hunt,   was married to Brian Wibberley, Annie’s brother. In a letter to her daughter-in-law she wrote referring to her son, Will, who was in England during the first world war:   ‘…for by last mail we received word that his Uncle George, (husband of Mr Wibberley’s only sister) had passed away very suddenly. The mail previous we had had a letter from his Aunt Annie ……saying how they were all looking forward to his next visit in March. This was written on the 11th of Jan and on the 14th this great sorrow came suddenly upon her. He went out apparently quite well and returned home sooner than

  8/52 Courting: Norah Godlee   This week I am writing about   an event in the life of Norah, the younger sister of Hazel Mary Godlee who appeared in this blog in week 3.  Norah Lucy Godlee was in born in Adelaide in 1900, three years after Mary. The prompt ‘Courting’ brings this story to mind, a small, probably unimportant tale in her bigger life story. Norkie didn’t marry but that’s not to say she wasn’t courted.   Known as Norkie or Norks, she was the fifth child of Charlotte and Theodore Godlee. Her childhood was marred by the death of her father a month before her 8th birthday. Besides that, her childhood was passed swinging in the hammock, playing in the garden, reading, attending East Adelaide Primary School, Methodist Ladies College and  Kent Town Methodist Sunday School. As teenagers she and her sisters also taught at the Sunday School and were active in the YWCA. At sixteen they were thrown into tragedy again when their older brother, John, was killed in France in 1916. He h

6/52 Landed: Ann Stevens     I knew hardly anything about Ann Stevens, my 3x great grandmother. According to her 1875 death notice in the Adelaide papers, she was born in 1802, aged 73 when she died. But she was 35 in 1841 according to the Census, so born in 1806. Possibly she didn’t know exactly how old she was.     Her marriage certificate to Thomas Hobbs in 1830 says that she was from Rushall, which is a tiny village near North Newnton and Hillcott, Wiltshire, where she and Thomas lived and raised their children before they came to Australia. She could   sign her name but Thomas signed with a cross. He never learned to write.   In 2019 on a hot day in June, I caught the train from London to Pewsey, the bus to North Newnton and walked the road to Hilcott. There are still old farm houses with thatched roofs and I even saw a thatcher working on replacing the thatch. The road follows the creek, lush, green grass, hedgerows, fields of corn, lowing Hereford cattle.   In 1841 the populatio

  6/52 Maps : Annie Eliza Jackson.   Annie Eliza Jackson lived in three different towns in Yorkshire. She was born in Bridlington in the north east, by the sea. As a child her family moved to Hull and then she, her husband and children lived in Sheffield.   The main source of my information about Annie and her family is the census, every ten years from 1841 to 1901. In the census you can learn the address, who was living in the house, their ages, where they were born and their   occupations. It is possible to build a picture of their lives. Add the google maps and access to historical maps. They begin to come alive.   The pink bit on this map, on the east coast of the UK, is Yorkshire. The bit that sticks out half way down, just under that, lies Bridlington. It is too small to be marked on this map.    This enlarged 1840 map of southern Yorkshire, shows Bridlington,Kingston on Hull and Sheffield   Annie's father was John Jackson and her mother was Frances née Nightingale. Annie was