34/52 TIme Line: Florence Annie Jackson: 1870 - 1949

 34: Timeline: Florence Annie Jackson; 1870 -1949

Most of my blogs have been timelines, beginning with the birth and ending with the death of the subject. So this one is more of the same. I have chosen my great aunt Florrie because it is time to do another of the Jackson great aunts. How I regret that I never even knew of their existence. Their little brother, my grandfather, migrated to Australia in 1914 and died in 1951 the year before I was born. My father never spoke about his English aunts, although I understand my grandmother send Christmas cakes to them. 

Florence was the third child of Francis Jackson and Annie Eliza née Jackson, 

https://sowheel.blogspot.com/2022/02/652-maps-annie-eliza-jackson.html cousins who married. She was born in 1870 in Hull, joining Louisa https://sowheel.blogspot.com/2022/10/3052-team-louisa-kate-jackson-1862-1949.html

and Edith -https://sowheel.blogspot.com/2022/06/2252-mistake-edith-frances-jackson-1867.html

So the first date on our Time line is 1870. Louisa was eight and Edith was 3. It was January, mid winter in Hull.

By the following year the family had moved to Sheffield.. They all appeared in the 1871 census, living in Vine Street, above the Grocery/Draper shop in Ecclesall Bierlow. Sheffield.  Florrie’s parents were both 35 and employed two boys to help with the shop. Her Uncle John William worked there as an assistant grocer  and there was a servant girl, Piety Unwin who I guess looked after the baby while mum was busy with the shop and managing the household. Florrie’s cousin, five years old, Fred Craft, was also there and no doubt Piety looked after him, and three year old Edith too. Perhaps they were in the ‘nursery’. In October of 1871, after the census had been done, Emily Blanche was born. 

In 1874 Gertrude Alice came along and four years later in 1878, Francis Arthur, or Frank as he was called. That made up Florrie’s family. five sisters and one brother. 

In 1881 they were all still living in Vine Street, above the shop. By now Louisa was 19 and working in the shop, Edith had been sent away to school and Florrie was 11, going to school locally.  

By the time Florrie was 21 she had left home and gone to live in Hull with her aunt Mary (née Jackson) and Uncle William Craft. They had a draper’s shop and Florrie was a draper’s assistant. Her cousin Fred was now grown up into a draper. All Florrie’s sisters had stayed at home to work as draper’s assistants so I guess Florrie could be spared. The Crafts didn’t have any daughters so she was needed in Hull.  The shop was between 152 and 154 Beverley Road so it was a big concern. This is 152 Beverley Road today, probably not the same house.

   

Rifts can occur in families which are not recorded in the documents. I wonder about Florrie moving away from Sheffield and establishing herself with other branches of her family - her mother’s sister and then the family of her mother’s brother. After 1891 she never lived in Sheffield again. My speculation that she moved to help the Craft family in their business is plausible but perhaps there are other explanations for her move to Hull. Did she have a falling out with her parents, her siblings?  We can never know the answer but nevertheless, I raise it. My grandfather Frank also seems to have had some kind of break and  migrated to the other side of the world. 

In 1895 Florrie got married. She married 30 year old Ted Warden, who was a Merchant seaman. He was apprenticed in 1882, at the age of 17 and in 1894 was awarded his Master certificate, perhaps enabling him to marry. Florrie was 25. They got married in Islington. He was at sea most of the time, so Florrie must have travelled down to marry him. I wonder if she travelled to other ports to meet up with him.

In 1900 there was the tragic death in Sheffield, of Florrie’s sister, Edith. She died by suicide. I guess the Jackson sisters mourned together, trying to understand and to console their parents and Edith’s husband and son. 

By 1901 Florrie was still in Hull, now Mrs Florence Burden, and living with a different aunt Mary. This was not Mary née Jackson, Craft, her mother’s sister but the wife of her mother’s brother, William. He had been a railway clerk and by 1901 had left Mary a 71 year old widow. Also living with them was their youngest son, Walter Herbert, an officer in the Merchant Navy. and his wife, Helen.  Perhaps he was connected to Captain Ted Warden, perhaps ship mates. 

In 1911 Florrie was recorded as living with Ethel Brinham, a dressmaker, who is the daughter of Ada Jackson, Florrie’s cousin, another daughter of the aunt Mary who Florrie was living with in 1901. Florrie seems to have made quite a connection with this family. 

  

The war years passed and Ted continued to work at sea. He survived. The caption next to the photo above,  harvested from Ancestry, reads: ‘This photo was supposed to have been taken in Russia on one of his seafaring escapades.’ It makes me very curious about what these escapades might have been. The Jacksons did suffer a war death. Tragic Edith’s only son was killed  when their ship blew up in the Hebrides, taking Lord Kitchener to meet the Russian Czar. All the other nephews survived, although Louisa had two sons on the front and Emily’s oldest went. 

By 1939 Ted was described as a ‘retired sea captain’ and they were living together in Vermont Villas in Hull.   

They survived the bombing of Hull during the second world war. Florrie outlived her sisters Louisa and Emily who died in '45 and ’43. She died in September of ’49, leaving Ted to live another two years. They left no children so Ted left his estate to Ethel Brinham, the dressmaker who Florrie had been living with in 1911. This suggests that this had been a significant relationship in their old age. 

 

Here is Florrie as an old woman.