THE POOLE FAMILY OF DAWLEY

 

As I mentioned before I think, its not really the names and dates and how far back I can get that really is what interests me so much in my study of my family tree, but its the stories behind the names. Sometimes of course there is no family story thats been passed down, or no newspaper account of an event to help tell the story so its up to the records to tell the story for me. And with the POOLE family of Dawley the story is told quite nicely by the census records.

As Im a visual person I found it easier to tell this story in a layout ( be it all mainly journalling)

I borrowed the photo from the very interesting Dawley Heritage website .

After looking at all the census records I do believe that this photo was taken from very near where Richard Glazebrook POOLE lived and worked.

The address is described differently  in each census but its clear it was near the Elephant and Castle Hotel, in High Street and perhaps on the corner of Burton Street, which if my study of google maps and old photos is correct – is exactly where this photo is taken from.

 

 

The journalling on this layout reads as follows :

The Dawley and Ironbridge areas were the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Its rich seams of coal clay and ironstone meant that almost overnight its agriculturally based economy was transformed by vast additions of industrial settlements. From a small market down developed a thriving and busy town centre around Dawley Green which became the new town commercial centre. Dawley was home to the second largest Iron works in Great Britain and one of the first roller mills in the world. Half of all the furnaces and forges operating in East Shropshire were located within the Dawley Parish.
By the late 19th century though, with the iron industry in decline, the population had dropped markedly and there was considerable poverty. It remained an area notable for its areas of of abandoned industrial waste until the mid 20th century when it was redesignated and conglomerated and with other towns to become Telford.
It appears the POOLE Family have a long history in the Dawley area . Thomas POOLE(born 1730)my 6x great grandfather and his son John( born 1759) lived in nearby Brosely . John and wife Mary PARKER’s son Thomas Parker POOLE was at first a china painter in Madeley. He married Isabella GLAZEBROOK and by the time of the 1841 census aged 56 he was a hairdresser. This started a long family career in hairdressing, although by 1851 he was also the Dawley Town Crier, and at least 2 of his sons carried on with the family hairdressing business. Thomas died in 1853 and his son Richard Glazebrook POOLE ( my 3x great grandfather continued hairdressing from High Street Dawley.
I imagine one of the buildings in this photo may even have been his residence and business place. In 1901 at age 78 Richard is still listed as a hairdresser in the High street area.
By 1881 his son Ralph had set up his own Barber and Hairdressing business In Bridge Street quite near his fathers business, but by 1891 he appears to have left the business and is listed as a labourer (This would have been about the time of a severe decline in the economy in the Dawley area - perhaps not enough business for both in the area - but by 1901 Ralph is again back hairdressing but he has moved from Dawley to the larger more populated city of Derby where the history of the POOLE family continues.

An easy to use 6x4 album for your genealogy

 

  It doesn’t get much simpler than this – create your own 6x4 album to display your family history.
Simply open in a photo editor such as Photoshop Elements, drag a photo under the hole and resize to fit.
Add your text on top – save and print!!.

This easy to use 6x4 sized mini album is perfect for scrapbooking your family history. With pages suitable for journalling, and photos of both landscape and portrait orientations, beautifully embellished. Simply add your photo and text and print for a wonderful and inexpensive gift.
This album includes 8 separate pages and a bonus family tree page.

 

...More Information

Long Marriages

It seems I have in my family history many very long marriages.
My Great grandparents Phillip and Ellen Goodwin were married for more than 70 years!

The Journalling on this layout reads:
Just about to celebrate 70 years of marriage, Mr Phillip Goodwin says the secret lies in the old cliche, “early to bed, early to rise”.He is aged 96 and his wife Ellen is aged 91. They had a quite wedding in a country church near Matamata on January 6 “way back in 1909”.
In their Mt Albert unit, Mr and Mrs Goodwin still have fresh vegetables from their own garden. There are no meals on wheels for this couple. Mrs Goodwin still cooks and sews. And with eight grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren, there are plenty to sew for.
On Saturday the Goodwins will celebrate with a family get together for afternoon tea. No alcohol for the couple - they would like to get to their 75th anniversary. Retirement to Auckland in 1945 did not mean a life of leisure for Mr Goodwin. Until he was 90 he helped his youngest sun in business.
sadly they did not make 75 years of marriage.
Nanna slipped and fell breaking her hip the
following year and died soon after .
Phillip, known to everyone as Da lived until
1986, aged an incredible 103.
 
and another set of Great Grandparents were married more than 50 years.

Journalling here reads:
Mr and Mrs W McClellan, Newton, who celebrate their golden wedding today, have lived in Wellington for most of the fifty years of their marriage which took place in Newtown on November 7 1900.Mrs McClellan was formerly Mrs Annie Elizabeth Grant.
Mr McClellan was well known in the newspaper printing trade being assicated with the "New Zealand Times" as a linotype operator: later he joined the "Hawera Star" and "Taihape Daily Times". On returning to Wellington he joined the staff of Henry Tombs Lt. being with this firm for approximately 25 years until his retirement.
Both in Wellington and Taranaki, Mr McClellan has taken a deep interest in music, He was one of the earliest members of the Brooklyn Glee Club which became the Wellington Harmonic Society and was an early conductor of the Central Mission Band in Wellington, of the Hawera Band , and both the men’s and women's choirs in Hawera. He was choirmaster of the Trinity Church Choir, Newtown for 20 years. Mr and Mrs McClellan have four children and seven grandchildren. There was a large gathering of friends and relatives in the Rio Grande Hall Mirimar, last night, to celebrate the wedding
My journalling - I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at this event, the Golden wedding anniversary of my Great Grandparents William and Annie McClellan. They were married at the turn of the last century in 1900, so this event must have been in 1950. Annie died not long after this, in 1953, and William survived another 12 years dying in 1965, after i was born, though i never met him.
 
I recently found a newspaper article from 1928 which mentions the diamond wedding anniversary of another set of ancestors, Elizabeth Middlebrook and George Douglas Hardy.

 
It seems that George was at one time chief attendant for the Whau Lunatic Asylum in Avondale Auckland, in the  late years of the 19th century.He later became a tea trader.  Clearly a very interesting man I believe I must do some more research on him soon!!

A Clown in the Family

 

Yes, Indeed I do have a clown in the family. He is my 1st cousin 3x removed. – Russell MIDDLEBROOK, otherwise known as Byko the Clown and often as Madame Fifi, to name just a couple of his alternative personalities.

Russell was born Charles Russell MIDDLEBROOK in 1908 , youngest son of James Thompson and Julia Ann MIDDLEBROOK.

(James Thompson is the younger brother of my 2x Great grandfather Samuel MIDDLEBROOK.

I know James Thompson was a carpenter  based in Matakohe for some time at the turn of the century, and Russell was born in the Northland area.

I found 2 articles about Russell in my Great Grandparents scrapbook

A wonderful clown Russell must have been because in 1983 he was awarded with a “Benny”. This is a recognition award from the  Variety Artists Club of New Zealand.

On their website they describe it as the highest honour that can be awarded to an entertainer in New Zealand ,

 

 

In my search for a little more information on Russell I came across these wonderful videos narrated by Russell himself

 

 

He performed in circuses in New Zealand and Australia and apparently was part of a group who entertained the American and local troops during WW2 .

There are quite a few home videos on youtube all narrated by Russell, they are a huge treasure – This one look like he is performing at Takapuna beach which is only a few minutes drive from where I live now!

 

You can see more of Russell’s home movies on you tube by searching either  his name or Byko.

They are a  real treasure trove for the amateur genealogist. How I wish I had known we were related when he was still alive.

Louisa Mary and William Grant

 

I made a layout using a photo I had of Louisa Mary and William Grant. I’m not sure that this is in fact a wedding photo, but she looks very young in this photo and so if it wasn’t a wedding photo it must be not much afterward.

 

I used my Lives Remembered Kit with a few pieces from Yesteryears Promise to complete this layout

The journalling reads :

Louisa Mary ABBOTT was just 16 when she married 22 year old William GRANT, a Scotsman from Fenwick, Ayrshire on July 21st 1876 at St Pauls Church Oamaru. They would go on to have 7 children, and she would be left a widow in 1906 when William would be killed in a tragic accident .

I’ve seen my Grandfather for the first time.

Growing up as a child I never knew my paternal Grandfather. My Dad had emigrated from England in his 20s and really never spoke at all of his childhood . I knew a few things. I knew my Grandparents were divorced. I knew my Grandfather was an engineer or a scientist. I knew they lived in a big house.  I knew my Dad felt pressured by him to follow his career path and I knew my father rebelled against that.

I’m my early 20s I met my paternal Grandmother when she came to visit and I subsequently visited her in England and met other relatives there.

At the time I  didn’t have the same interest in my family history that i do now, mores the pity because I could have learned a LOT more.

In any case – I didn’t know what my Grandfather looked like, but now I do!

Early in this genealogy process I discovered my Grandfather had a sister who was still alive living in the US. I made contact and that  been one of the most exciting parts of this journey. Learning about a whole new part of my family that  I’ve never met.

 

Yesterday she sent me a few photos and included in them was one that has my Grandfather in it. That’s him on the far right

I certainly know now where I got my lack of height from!!- he wasn’t a tall man!!-

Interestingly I can see my father in him though not as much as I thought I would I can see my brother in him too.

This photo also includes my Great Grandparents Samuel and Edith POOLE. ( he is the older man in the middle and she is the woman in front of him.

There is another photo of them below. Meet Samuel Richard POOLE( 1882-1962), and Edith POOLE nee BENNETT(1885-1952)

 

As soon as I saw this photo I realised I already had a photo of Samuel. In the small bag of photos and documents I have of my fathers there was a photo of a man with 2 small children on his back . I had wondered if this was my grandfather but now I know it was in fact my Great Grandfather Samuel.

This line of my family is the line I really know the least about so its very exciting to be able to have these great photos.

Ill have to do some work on restoring these photos as  much as I can as they are quite precious to me.

Another name conundrum!

Oh my goodness – what is with all the name changes in my family. Today I have yet another name conundrum – and this one is NOT so easy to explain away with transcription errors .

 

You may recall my layout and post a while back on Mary Ann Goodwin ( nee Gleeson) .

Gleeson being a fairly common Irish name , and my  mother being most interested in Mary Ann’s history, my first step was to get a copy of the marriage certificate.  From August 1880 in NZ parents names were to be listed on the Marriage certificate, and I had found that James and Mary Ann were married in 1880 so I hoped I would get the information there, but as you can see below Mary Ann and James were married before August and so I didnt get much further in my quest for her parents with the marriage certificate.

 

However as you can see it clearly says Mary Ann Gleeson here. – and her obituary states she came out on the Brodick Castle from Ireland after spending her early life in Dublin.

The Brodick Castle arrived in Auckland in 1876.

The passenger list has in the list of single women passengers a Mary Gleeson aged 17 .  - There is no mention of anyone on the passenger list with the name Lester.

Why Lester you may ask.. well, in order to get more information on Mary Anns parents, I had to order her death certificate, and this arrived this morning

 

Check out the names of her parents… James and Mary LESTER … Oh my goodness, where on earth does Gleeson come from then??

One mystery is solved here though. Lester is a family name. My Great Grandfathers middle name is Lester, my grandfathers elder brother who died as a child had the name of Lester, and my mothers middle name is Lester. So now we know where that came from.. but where does the Gleeson come from .. How will I find out, and will I ever know??