IN SEARCH OF JAMES ERNEST'S OLDER SISTER

by Alan D. Craxford and Brenda K Eldridge

Our mystery lady

Introduction

I have noted before in these pages that I had little first hand knowledge of the history of the Craxford family before Brenda started the laborious charting of the family tree. The elder relations of childhood were all maternal and although James Ernest Craxford, my grandfather, did live with us for a couple of years after the death of his wife, my father (George William) did little to maintain links with the places of the family’s past. We did know that there was an ancestry in the Northamptonshire village of Cottingham (near Rockingham Castle) and that my great grandmother’s name was Sarah Anne Claypole.

James Ernest Craxford

Father did occasionally mention his uncle William, who had been a policeman in Leicester, and also thought that he had two aunts – one of whom was called Elizabeth. We traced the family of John and Sarah Anne Craxford through the census returns of 1871 to 1891. We were able to follow several of their sons and daughters, including James Ernest (although at times his surname was spelled Croxford). We were however unable to find a daughter Elizabeth.

The quest for Elizabeth Craxford

Henrietta Craxford

During our early explorations Brenda found some correspondence which had taken place between Father and Iris Snow (William Craxford’s daughter).Those letters, written in the late 1980s, have been reproduced in these pages at TWO LETTERS TO GEORGE WILLIAM CRAXFORD The particular references of interest there are to her Aunt Lizzie who married a man named Hobbs and had a daughter after moving to Kent. Iris also noted that Aunt Lizzie was Sarah Anne’s oldest daughter. We enquired further on this point when we made our visit to Cottingham in 2005 where we met two of Sarah Anne’s grandchildren (from her daughter Louisa) and several of the great grandchildren. We were able to fill in many of the gaps in our genealogical knowledge but of Elizabeth there was no memory. As best we could tell, we counted two sons and five daughters.

Louisa Craxford

The quest stalled for some months until Brenda started to look at her husband Richard’s family tree. His family haled originally from Sussex and then moved into Kent. (THE BROWN PAGES) We discovered that his great grandmother on his father’s side was named Mercy Hobbs (born 1849). That led us to investigate the possibility that there was a family connection to the Hobbs mentioned by Iris Snow. We were helped (albeit with a negative result) by scrutiny of the archives pages of “The Weald of Kent, Surrey and Sussex” web site (1) and by Mike Groome who holds a large database of Hobbs in the south east of England. We determined that there were historically two large families of that name but a direct communication between them had never been made.

William Craxford

Iris’ letter suggested that Aunt Lizzie’s son was aged 95 years and that his sister was 90 in 1987. We only had the name Kenneth to work on and so we made a concerted attack on the Indexes of Births Marriages and Deaths at freeBMD.org There indeed we found Kenneth A Hobbs registered in Elham, Kent in 1903. On the strength of that we obtained a copy of his birth certificate. This presented us with our first surprise: his father was a farmer William Robert Hobbs and his mother was registered as Lizzie Alice Hobbs formerly Claypole.

Kenneth Hobbs - born September 1903.

From there it was no great problem to their wedding. The certificate told us that the marriage took place at the parish church in Cottingham in October 1890. Lizzie Alice was aged 23 years. Entered as her father was John Claypole, Blacksmith. Witnesses at the service were John and Henrietta Claypole which we have come to believe were her uncle (born 1851) and aunt (born 1854).

Birth index (part): 1867 (2)

The next step was to find Lizzie’s birth certificate. We were being directed to the vicinity of 1867 and sure enough in the June Quarter in Kettering, Northampton was registered Elizabeth Hollis Claypole. We wondered whether this was either a mis-spelling of her second name Alice or whether it referred to a missing father - someone called Hollis. We asked Jane Smith at the Cottingham Village website (3) who confirmed that Hollis was not a surname connected with the area. We then obtained a copy of the actual certificate which confirmed that Elizabeth Hollis Claypole had been born to Sarah Ann Claypole on March 12th 1867 in the village of Cottingham.

Water Lane, Cottingham (4)

Elizabeth Claypole - born March 1867.

We found Elizabeth, by then a child of 4, on the 1871 census. She was living with her grandfather, John Claypole – a blacksmith – and family in Barrack Yard, cottages in Blind Lane, in Cottingham. By this time her mother, Sarah Anne, was living with John Craxford in the neighbouring village of Middleton. They were married in August 1871. The couple returned to Cottingham with their young family and lived in a cottage in Water Lane in 1881. By that time Elizabeth had moved away and was in the service of Amelia Walton in Bringhurst in Leicestershire.

Cottingham Census (part) 1871 (4)

What became of Lizzie Alice Claypole?

Wedding group: Kenneth Hobbs to Gwendolen May. 1928

Lizzie Alice’s union with William Hobbs was particularly fruitful and she had ten children. We have also found one of her great grandchildren who has been actively exploring the Hobbs family line. We have been able to compare notes and the Hobbs tree can searched on these pages.

Lizzie died in Folkestone, Kent in 1941 (6) at the age of 74, ironically outliving all of her brothers and sisters except James Ernest. We now know that Lizzie Alice was James Ernest’s half sister – and – Brenda’s and my half grand aunt. The wedding photograph shown here is of her son Kenneth to Gwendolen May which was taken at St Peter's Church, Swingfield, Kent on June 16th 1928. Although not identified it is assumed that Lizzie is one of the guests. We look forward to the time when we can replace the silhouette in our gallery with her portrait.

REFERENCES

Added - April 14th 2006