Inevitably,
documenting the lives of women in a family history project can often provide a
challenge, especially prior to the 20th century. In my forty-odd
years of genealogical research, I have come across many women whose tales
either have already been told or should be. This post is simply a collection of
vignettes of some of these, whether genetically related or not. Fuller accounts
of some of them can also be found in my other genealogical reports.
Lady Jane Fisher (née
Lane; circa 1626 –1689)
Jane Lane
played a heroic role in the escape of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester
in 1651. Both were exiled in France until the Restoration after which Jane was
granted £1,000 a year for life. Jane was married to Sir Clement Fisher of Great
Packington, Warwickshire in 1663 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In later life
she lived rather extravagantly and became deeply in debt. When she died, her
estate was valued at only £10. Sir
Clement was a cousin of Sir Edward Fisher of Mickleton who a direct ancestor of
the Anglo-Irish Quaker branch of my maternal grandmother’s family.
Anne Spencer, Countess
of Sunderland (born Lady Anne Churchill; 1683–1716)
With our Hudson
family’s recurring middle name of Spencer and origins in Wolfhampcote,
Warwickshire, speculation about a family connection to the Spencer-Churchill
family was inevitable. Lady Anne Churchill was the second daughter of John and
Sarah Churchill, Duke & Duchess of Marlborough. In 1700, Anne married,
Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland whose family was originally from
Wormleighton, also in Warwickshire. Wolfhampcote and Wormleighton are only
about ten miles apart and there is at least one intriguing connection with the
Althorp family. The transcript of the earlier parish registers for Wolfhampcote
make three references to the sponsorship of vicars in 1596, 1603 and 1606 by
Thomas Spencer Esquire, 2nd son of Sir John Spencer of Althorp. So maybe Lady
Di and I truly are cousins?
Elizabeth (Betsy)
Early (née Waine; 1782 – 1864)
One of my
father’s Oxfordshire ancestral families are the Waines, blanket weavers of
Witney. There were several Waine
marriages into another of the leading weaving family, the Earlys, the most
significant of these unions being that between Elizabeth Waine and John Early
in 1808. Betsy Waine was a partner of
her husband John Early in the complete sense of the word. From their letters
that survive, it is clear that she actively participated in the running of the
business in addition to being a wife and a mother to their nine children.
Several paintings of John and Elizabeth survive and are illustrated in “The Blanket Makers” by Plummer and
Early.
Jane Fisher (née Moor;
1789 – 1877)
Jane Moor
whose father was from a Yorkshire Quaker family, married Abraham Fisher of
Youghal. She was very active in all Quaker social causes and “supported the Temperance campaign when it
was neither popular nor very safe to do in Ireland”.
Jane vigourously
participated in the running of the Women’s’ Meeting in Youghal and frequently
attended the Quarterly Meetings in Cork. She was a zealous supporter of the
West Indian anti-slavery movement, boycotting sugar that was produced by slave
labour.
Sarah Goble (1820 –
1837)
Monday 30th
October 1837 was a sad day for the Goble family. For it was then that Sarah
Goble was buried at St Egbert’s parish church in Bicester at the tragically young
age of seventeen. The silver lining was
the baptism of her infant son, William who miraculously survived her. This was
a good thing as he was my father’s grandfather. The fact that the time of birth
was recorded on William’s birth certificate is an indication that this was
probably a multiple birth. His twin, if indeed
he/she existed, was presumably stillborn.
The “inflammation” that Sarah
died from was most likely serious hemorrhaging or massive infection after
childbirth. Multiple births dramatically increased the risk not only to the
mother but also to the children.
Anna Haslam (née
Fisher; 1829–1922)
Anna Maria
Fisher was an aunt of my maternal great-grandfather. She was a committed advocate of women’s
rights in Ireland and was also very involved both in famine relief and in the
international peace movement. Anna was
able to offer valuable help to Marie Stopes with her research on the history of
birth control but was not given much credit in Stope’s subsequent books on the
subject. In later years, however, Stopes did acknowledge Anna’s important role.
In her 2009 essay on Anna Maria Haslam, Mary Cullen writes: “Anna
Haslam's contribution to the development of Irish feminist activism was
enormous, as was that of the suffrage association she founded. She combined
strong and effective leadership with an ability to win the respect and
admiration of many who disagreed with her on various issues”.
Martha Clapham (née
Handley; 1830 – 1921)
Martha
Clapham came from sound Yorkshire farming stock. Her obituaries said that she
had been of great interest to students of the Yorkshire dialect, as she “spoke it pure and simple”. Apparently Martha was also able to play a
good many tunes on the mouth organ! When
she died in 1921 she was the oldest inhabitant of North Rigton (near Harrogate).
Marie Fisher (née Clapham;
1863 – 1950)
Marie
Fisher, my great-grandmother was radical for her time and was an active member
of the women's suffragette movement. She
was a frequent speaker at the Women's Social and Political Union. According to
her obituaries; she was stoned by a hostile crowd during a meeting in Leeds
while supporting the most prominent member of the movement, Emmeline
Pankhurst. As a secularist and
freethinker, Marie attended the Rome International Freethought Congress of 1904
as a delegate of the British Secular League. She was elected as the first woman
president of the Leeds Philatelic Society in 1923 and in 1926 she sat on the
committee of the prestigious Yorkshire Naturalists’ Society.
In spite of
her espoused liberal views, Marie does not appear to have been a particularly
tolerant woman, castigating most members of her family at various times. She had a high intellect and great strength
of character but these qualities were often used to further her own agenda,
sometimes at a cost to others.
Annie Wilhelmina
Hudson (née Goble; 1866 - 1954)
Annie
Wilhelmina Goble became the wife of Robert Spencer Hudson in 1894. Thus when he
was elected Mayor of Rugby in 1935, she assumed the role and responsibilities
of Mayoress. Endless official functions, including the royal visit of Princess
Mary, daughter of King George V, would have required her active participation
and inevitably she was also expected to fill the role of mother to their six
children.
Flora Jane Thompson
(née Timms; 1876 – 1947)
William Wain
Goble, my father’s maternal grandfather and Flora Jane Thompson, author of the
Oxford trilogy, Lark Rise to Candleford
have no shared ancestry but they do have several Waine cousins in common,
several of whom were used as models for characters in her hugely successful
books. Flora probably traveled to Bicester while working for Fringford Post
Office and it was there that she visited with these Waine cousins.
Lester Rowntree (born
Gertrude Ellen Lester; 1879-1979)
Gertrude
Ellen Lester was born in northern England to a Quaker family. In 1889, when
Nellie was ten, her father decided to give up his grocery store and bought,
sight unseen, a farm in Kansas in the United States. His farming venture failed
and Mr. Lester and two of his children died of typhoid from contaminated well
water. A Mrs. Charlotte Rowntree, my great-grandfather’s second wife, read of
the family's plight in a Quaker newspaper, felt compassion for the family and
offered them a home in her Kansas City house. It was here that Nellie first met
Charlotte's son, Bernard Rowntree. They married in 1908 when she assumed the
name Lester Rowntree. After their subsequent divorce, Lester achieved fame as a
pioneering botanist in California, becoming a passionate advocate for the
preservation of the state’s native flora.
