14th February 1994
Dear Stephen
Auntie Barbara has asked me to type up these intriguing ‘snippets’ of family
history. I am so glad all this information is now on paper to be preserved for
us and future generations. I only regret that I did not start gathering some
information much earlier when my grandpa (George Francis Gadd) and mother
(Muriel Jessie Gay) were alive. My Grandpa was the only grandparent I ever knew,but I knew him very well. He
used to come and spend Saturday and Sunday with us when we lived at Brislington (1940 -- 1950). On Saturday evening I would
often go back with him and spend the night at 8 Park Row, where he lived above
his Dental Depot. It was a Sunday morning ritual to go up the road to the
newsagents to buy the papers and, always, 4 packets of Rowntrees
fruit gums (those in tubes) for me, before setting out for Brislington
on the bus.
In those days there was a wonderful view from
the office at the back of the shop at Park Row - you could see right across the
Centre, out to St. Mary Redcliffe and Bedminster beyond.
I remember my brother being there when the Bristol Hippodrome was burning - he
had a grandstand view.
My grandfather always came to visit at weekends
until he died in 1965, aged 87. We lived in Redland Rd. (1950 - 1959) and then at Brentry, Bristol
(1959 - 1973). He lived at Park Row all this time, though he sold the business
at some time (I can’t remember when), but continued to live in the flat above.
Several years ago my brother reported that he had walked down Park Row and
noticed the metal number 8 that my grandfather had fixed to the side door,
leading to the flat, was still there. I suspect it will have gone now.
My brother and I have ‘unearthed’ some
interesting family photographs, which I am hoping I can get copied to send you.
There is one which we think must be old George Gadd (my great grandfather).
Auntie Barbara will be able to confirm this. There is also one of my grandpa as a young man. Both of these are studio portraits
and very clear. There is also a very good one of my grandpa and my grandmother
(Jessie Hartshorne) with, I think, my mother as a baby. There is also a very
good photograph of Eva Hartshorne - I should think it was taken when she was in
her twenties or thirties. Auntie Barbara will help here. It has an interesting
newspaper cutting on the back about her being presented with a ‘handsome’ cheque (I wonder what ‘handsome’ was in those days?) for
her singing services to Cotham Wesleyan Chapel. There
are also a couple of pictures with your grandfather (my Uncle John) in them.
I hope you will be able to make more progress
with tracing the family history - particularly the Hartshorne-Hemus branch. I also find the Cafferies
interesting. Anyway I think our family has been quite fun and it is interesting
to be able to identify talents and characteristics in the present generation
which have come down from the past.
All this has set me off now and I have got my
Auntie Mary Gay (now 83), my father’s sister, tracing their family
history and recording her memories onto a dictaphone
for me to type up.
I hope all this is helpful to you. I shall be
interested to hear how you are progressing. With my best wishes to you and
Linda
Love
[PENNY]
( I think we must be cousins, once removed. I know
your dad is my cousin. We were born in the same year (1940) - I in February and
he in October).
____________
To Stephen Gadd
Re your family tree:
I am puzzled that you give Alice Hemus as born in Shrewsbury.
It is not impossible, but people didn’t move about a great deal in those days,
and Mother always said that her mother came from “the Malvern area.” The date
c. 1849 is roughly right - she died in 1900 of external breast cancer (caused
by an accidental blow), when she was “in her early fifties.” I once asked my
mother (I was about 5, I think) what her mother looked like. She said, “She was
a little woman with a merry laugh - you are like her.” I have never heard that
she was a dressmaker. y mother served a full
apprenticeship as a dressmaker and tailoress at a
firm called Cordieux in Clifton (they also had a shop in the Horsefair before the 2nd World War - drapers and clothing -
they had their own workshop.) Mother walked to Clifton daily from Totterdown
- she was a good walker and enjoyed walking - my father didn’t. He had flat
feet. However, my mother did not practise as a
dressmaker after her marriage, except in the family. In those days husbands
were expected to support wives, and a working wife reflected on his earning
ability.
In 1956 I helped with a holiday for girls at a
prep school near Tewkesbury (west or
north-west of it). At the village church there was a memorial tablet on the
outside wall with the name Hemus on it - I think more
than one Hemus. I can’t remember the name of the
church - it was in a hamlet rather than a village - I have looked at my
Motoring Atlas and it might have been Naunton,
but I really can’t remember. I asked the vicar if there were any Hemuses left there, and he said the last survivor was an
old lady in a nursing home in Cheltenham and
gave me her address. I wrote what I hoped was a very careful, tactful letter to
her, explaining why I was trying to trace my grandmother’s family, but had no
answer. She y have been too old. Also, people aren’t
always keen on such enquiries in case one is a fortune-hunters
If you ever have the time, I would suggest exploring the area between Tewkesbury and Malvern. The distance isn’t great.
My mother’s second name wasn’t Jessica - it was
Jessie - I have a copy of her birth certificate. This gives her name as Flora
Jessie, but she was always called Jessie. On the birth certificate it gives her
mother’s name as Alice Hannah Hartshorne (formerly Hemus)
- so the Hannah may narrow down the search for her. Their address is given as Montgomery St., Bristol.
Grandpa Hartshorne (Frederick) was born about 1820. Your 1838 is
wrong - probably Northfield
is wrong also. (Is this Northfield a district
now in S. Birmingham?) He
y have been born or lived in Birmingham - we
simply don’t know - but he definitely spent time in or near Manchester
as he talked about the Halle
concerts he went to. He died in 1904 - exact age not known, but he was a very
old man. The doctor estimated his age at 84 or so. (He
was too old to give my mother away at her wedding in Sept. 1903.) He was
much older than Alice.
My parents took him to live with them when they married - they lived first in
the Triangle opposite whatever the multiple store is now called - it has been
Bobby’s and Bright’s and I don’t know what. (?Now Dingles).
We have known for some time that he and Alice
probably weren’t married. I tried to trace their marriage certificate at
Somerset House in the early Sixties. I had a search from about 1876 (Auntie Eva
was born in 1877) for 5 years. The man who replied that there was no record
told me not to ask for a further search. He said that the names Hartshorne and Hemus were so unusual that he had done this of his own
accord. i.e. they weren’t married unless they had
married abroad or at sea. Father and I agreed that the latter were unlikely and
he said they obviously had some secret to hide. He tried repeatedly when Frederick was old (and
wandering a bit) to get information, but the old boy always shut him up with,
“What do you want to know for?” Both Fredreick and
Alice were active Christian people, probably Nonconformists, so we did not
suspect any criminal activity. Father said that Frederick said he had been brought up by
grandparents after he was orphaned as a child. The grandmother was a singer,
and sang by royal command before the then Queen. This was probably
Charlotte-Sophia of Mecklenburg Strelitz - the wife
of George III, who reigned from 1760 - 1820. His son, George TV the Prince
Regent married Caroline of Brunswick. I don’t know when she died - my encyclopaedia says “his married life was unfortunate.”
Anyway there is a nice bit of research for you.
Frederick
was bronchial. (This passed to Auntie Eva and to some
extent to my brother - your grandfather.) He was very musical. The whole family
sang - they went round ‘Bright Sunday Afternoons’ singing together - I don’t
know how, with only one man. Aunt was a soprano, my mother a contralto. He
could play several instruments - organ, piano, violin.
Mother used to say that on Sundays he got up first to get breakfast for the
family. First there arose the smell of bacon frying, then came the sound of the
organ being played, then the smell of bacon burning, and the sudden cessation
of the organ. My father said that it was plain that boot-making etc. wasn’t his
original occupation. He guessed that he had taken it up when something else
failed. My father’s impression was that at some stage he had left home after
some disagreement or frustration that he didn’t want to talk about. I have a
hazy idea that I was told he may in his youth have wanted to enter the ministry
and been foiled, but I may be wrong here. Anyway there is still a mystery
because - assuming that he took up with Alice Hemus
about 1875 or 76, he was already then well into his fifties and must have been
earning his living for a long time. Of course, he may have had a wife and
family that he left for Alice - or before he met
Alice. It might
be as well not to go searching for their descendants!
When you were at The Royal Northern College I
thought of asking you to search the Manchester
record office in case he was born there, but felt we hadn’t really enough data
to go on.
I thought Auntie Minnie’s birthday was
April 13, same as Harold’s. We used to remark on the three children (don’t know
Sydney’s month)
all being born in April, the last two, with 18 years between then on the
same day. Her son Stuart will know if it’s important.
The Gadd Side of the Family
James Milliner
Lived at or near Melksham in Wiltshire. My father
said there was some land in the Box area (father thought near the Box G.W.R.
tunnel) belonging to the Milliners which was lost to the family because the
deeds were lost. I don’t know whether he was a farmer or minor land-owner, but
I get the impression that they were passably well-off. At some stage in the
19th century he took his family by coach to Plymouth
and they took ship to Jamaica.
One of the sons married a Jamaican woman (coloured)
and settled there. (If this ws George, the eldest, I
know nothing about the Colorado
bit). James later returned to England
with the rest of the family. I had forgotten there were so many Revs. I think
they were probably Nonconformist because Everes was (ie Mrs. Caffery), and so, of
course, was my grandmother Gadd - I am not sure what denomination, though at
some point she and my grandfather settled at Old King Street Baptist Church in
Bristol (pulled down in Broadmead shopping area
development. A British Home Store is on the site), possibly after the Rev. Mof fat Logan
became minister. He drew large congregations and was very attractive to young
people. I think that is where my parents met when they were about 18 (ie George Francis Gadd and Jessie Hartshorne).
I remember Great great
aunt Sarah when she was a very old lady. She lived in a cottage near the Green
at Westbury, Wilts. The cottage backed on to the church (we went up the tower
one day through the bell-chamber), and had fresh white spotted muslin curtains
at the windows. I think I was 3½. Great great aunt
Sarah was a gentle old lady - I think she wore a small white cap on her head. I
was astonished when a little older to be told (by father) that in her girl-hood
she tried to run away to Gretna Green with her lover, but father Milliner went
after them (on horseback? in some wheeled carriage?) and brought her back. In
pique, she married Mr. Scull, who was an illiterate farmer or farm-worker. I
don’t remember meeting him - he probably predeceased his wife. My impression
from hearsay is of a quiet, possibly rather sad sort of man, who used to talk
to his animals when he wanted sympathy. I well remember their son, Uncle
Arthur. He used to visit us and was kind and jolly. My sister once disgraced
herself when a toddler, because Uncle Arthur came to tea, and my sister kept
saying: “I don’t like that man. He’s got a face like a monkey!” (He had,
but a nice one. He was small-built.) Mother and Aunt (Auntie Eva) were trying
to distract her, when Father (unconscious of the childish chatter) said to
Uncle Arthur, “What are you going to do tomorrow? What about a visit to the
Zoo?” Uncle Arthur’s sister Louie (Everes Louise) we
thought rather mouldy - she looked like a repressed,
sad spinster, and her clothes were rather frumpy. On
Christopher’s family tree he has pencilled in ‘nurse’
under her name. I can’t confirm this - she didn’t seem like a nurse. I
am wondering if he has confused her with my great aunt Louie (Louise Brown,
Grandma’s sister.) She was a nurse - she was matron of one of the big London
Hospitals. I remember her as an old lady. She visited us when we lived at 65A Park Street
(1916 - 1926) - I must have been 3- 5. She was stoutish,
and wore black satin and had an ear trumpet, because she was deaf. This was
rather daunting, though I think she was a cheerful and kindly woman. (An
ear-trumpet was like the tubing of a barrel vacuum cleaner - one end held to
the ear, the other held out to be spoken through - each end suitably shaped, of
course). We each had to speak to her through this, but I don’t recall
attempting any lengthy conversation. I hardly knew her and was probably rather
shy. Her husband, Uncle Jamie, gave me a lovely animal book.
My impression is that there were some clever and
forceful women on the Milliner side of the family. There used to be a
photograph album in my father’s family, with some of the women in it - they had
long, rather horsey faces. Uncle Harold had this
album - his daughter, Jenifer Manners y still have it, though the photographs
may well be faded.
Caffery
The eldest Milliner daughter, Everes, married William Caffery,
an Irishman from Cork, in Bristol. According to their eldest
daughter (my Grandma Gadd) he was rather a mistake. The story was that my Great
grandmother and a friend, both in service, went to a dance with their
respective young men (modern ‘boy-friends’). Caffery
was the other girl’s friend. For fun, they swapped boyfriends for the evening,
and never swapped back. (Thus is family history made!)
Grandma thought the other chap was a loss - they all remained friends
and she knew him - he seems to have been a conventionally respectable, decent
sort of man. (Grandma Gadd seems to have had a ‘thing’ about respectability - she
pushed my father into the drapery business when he left the Merchant Venturers’ School at 15 - she thought a shop-walker was at
the height of gentlemanly respectability. A shop-walker wore a frock coat,
welcomed customers and led ladies to a chair, and called up an assistant to
assist ‘Moddam’ . In the
year he stuck it, Father learnt to roll an umbrella neatly and to be tactful
with ladies buying corsets who liked to think their waist was smaller than it
was - can’t think how he came to be selling corsets at 15!) Great grandfather Caffery was an Irishman from Cork and a Roman Catholic - excommunicated
because he married a Protestant and did not have the children brought up R.C.
He seems to have been a casual, happy-go-lucky sort of chap - he had a shop,
but I don’t know what he sold. Presumably he was able to support his wife and
eight children, if they all grew up. He used to say: “No-one ever says, ‘Take
your time, Caffery. There’s no hurry, Caffery.’ It’s always ‘Come on, Caffery.
Hurry up, Caffery.” When family life got too much for
Everes she would retire to bed for a day or so. Grandma
Gadd had been educated, better than her husband George, who left school at the
age of 10 - no compulsory, free schooling until 1872 or 3, though I
think denominational schools were free before that - not sure. According to my
father, Grandpa Gadd loved reading aloud to his family from the newspaper. If
he came to a word he didn’t know, he ignored it and went on regardless - much
to his wife’s exasperation.
Benjamin Caffery
Became a
sailor in the Merchant Navy. He once missed his ship at Marseilles,
and as he knew no French, walked up and down the quay singing, “Johnny come
home to your uncle,” till someone took him to the British consul. He used to
visit Grandma when on leave - or when his ship docked at Bristol. Father said if he came late he
climbed in through a window and there he was in bed in the morning. He seems to
have been popular with the children.
My feeling is that
Great grandfather Caffery’s Irish imagination and humour ‘leavened the lump’ of the Milliner genes. He
was probably the source of ‘the sight’ or psychic gifts. Grandma Gadd had it.
When her father died, her children (Father and Auntie Minnie) were still young.
Grandpa stayed at the house, but she had to return to be with the children.
(Grandpa Gadd did not like being with the dying, but enjoyed laying out the
body etc.). When he arrived home quite late in the evening, he said to Grandma,
“Well, he’s gone.” “I know,” she said, “he died at 9.30.” “How do you know?” he
asked. “Oh,” she said, “he put his head round the door and said, ‘Goodnight,
(using his pet Irish name for her.)” I don’t think any of her children were
psychic - they were all rather down-to-earth in some ways, though my father had
imagination. But we three - Muriel, John and I - I especially - all got the
psychic bit, and so has Penny Gay, but not Tim. My father said that as a child
I had a way of saying, “Wouldn’t it be funny if so and so came
to call?” naming someone not seen for some time, and, behold, they did. Father
took this calmly because he was used to his mother. My more hair-raising
experiences I kept to myself, but took them remarkably calmly. My sister
experienced flying round the bedroom ceiling when going to sleep (astral
travel). I don’t remember Grandma Gadd (died in Bristol General Hospital
in the Spring of 1916) though I can recall some things
before that. I think Auntie Minnie probably took after her, and the images may
have blurred in my mind. We had a framed photograph of Auntie Minnie’s wedding
to Uncle Willie (Jones) on Boxing Day 1906, standing or sitting on upright
chairs rather stiffly in the snow! Our copy perished long since, but Harold may
have had one - he was probably a page boy, and Jenifer Manners might have
a copy. My cousin, Stuart may have one, though not very likely. Grandpa and
Grandma Gadd must have been in it. Stuart (Auntie Minnie’s son) is still living
in Bristol, and
y have some photos, or may not. Women tend to keep old
photos more than men. Harold was more interested in the family history than my father, and he and Auntie Minnie kept more links with the
Milliner side.
Kate Caffery
married William Gunn
Daughter Everes Elizabeth (known as Cissie).
I think Cissie’s parents must have died when she was
young because she was brought up by her Aunt Louise (Louie — my Grandma’s
sister) and her husband James Brown (Uncle Jamie). They lived in London. I remember Father
telling us in the 1st World War that Aunt Louie insisted on their sleeping with
a chair (?armchair) over their heads as a protection against zeppelin raids I
We thought this was very funny. Cissie used to stay
with Auntie Minnie from time to time.
The Jamaican Milliners
I do not recall any links with them in my young days.
Hannah Milliner married
? Urch and they
emigrated to Australia.
Hannah was (according to Christopher’s family
tree) the fifth child of James and Elizabeth Milliner. When we were on holiday
in Bournemouth in 1920 (my father was
attending a dental exhibition. Stuart was there, so presumably Uncle Willie and
Auntie Minnie were there) we met two Urch girls (in
their early twenties, I should think). They were fair-haired and jolly. One of
them - I recall her as plump - went into the sea wearing her gold wrist watch
(by mistake, of course) and treated it as a huge joke. (Perhaps the Urches got rich in Australia). This is just an
isolated memory. On the family tree there are two girls called Gladys and
Millie, grand-daughters of Hannah, but no dates are given. Their mother Millie
married a man called McIntyre. (Some Mclntyres are
northern Irish).
The Gadds
My grandfather George Gadd married the eldest Caffery, Mary Ellen Nora. According to my father, George’s
father, John Gadd, moved to Bristol
from Gloucestershire and learnt the upholstery and mattress business from a man
he met in a pub. who taught him (or possibly inspired
him) to learn the business, in exchange for a pint of beer - maybe several.
I have no idea of dates. If your note
(on my birthday card) is correct, and I expect it is, George was born after
they settled in Bristol.
If they only moved from St. George, they didn’t have far to go! I have found
Bragg’s Lane - it runs from the junction of West Street (a continuation of Old Markey Street)
and Clarence Street. to Lawford St. and
Redcross
St. Do we know when John or George moved to Elibroad St?
Certainly the impression I got from my father was that John Gadd lived in the
same area. As John appears to have died in December 1879, my father - born in
April 1878, would hardly have remembered him, except from hearsay. This was
that John Gadd was a very big man, tall and broad and weighing something
like 18 or 20 stone. His death was accidental. He stopped in the street one day
to talk to a friend, and was standing with one foot on the pavement and one in
the gutter, when a small boy could not resist the temptation to run through the
archway thus formed. Unfortunately, in doing so he threw John Gadd off balance
and the fall killed him. (I suppose he fractured his skull on the kerb.) John Gadd would not have his photo taken when alive,
so his relatives got a photographer to photograph him as he lay
dead on his bed, and then touch it up to make him look alive. This was not very
successful. This photo was in the family album (ref. Jenifer Manners). It was
clear that his son George resembled him quite a lot facially. George was of
average height and stockily built - a thick-set man.
He had typhoid fever when he was 17, and was ill for 4 months (I think in
hospital), but was never ill again till his death in 1923 (he died in the
B.R.I. after an operation for bowel cancer, which seemed to strike quite
suddenly.) Part of his work was ‘purifying’ bedding - of bed bugs or after
infectious illness. He had a large oven for this purpose at Ellbroad St.
His wife predicted that he or his family would catch some fatal infection, but
that didn’t happen. (When I was abroad as a missionary, it was accepted
experience that anyone who had typhoid and survived was immune from infection
for the rest of their lives. It certainly seemed to be so in his case).
Grandpa Gadd was an impulsive man.
Apparently, when he and Nora (Mary Ellen Nora Caffery)
married (they must have been young if they married in 1872 - he 22 and she 17)
they lived in rooms. One day he arrived home and told his wife they were moving
- at once. While she was twittering, he piled their things on a handcart and
trundled off. When she caught up with him at the new place, everything was in
order and the kettle boiling on the hob. Grandpa was an early riser. One
morning when Grandma got up she found that the lower part of the staircase had
vanished and she was expected to complete her descent down a step-ladder. When
she protested, Grandpa thought she was making an unnecessary fuss. He was very
gregarious and loved chatting to all and sundry. One of his favourite
pastimes was going by train to wherever he fancied - maybe starting early and
returning late. It was the trains he enjoyed. Sometimes he took the family. One
of his expressions was, “Cannum get up when they be going anywhere?” (cannum
= can’t they). I suspect his speech may have been country style, not just Bristol. Father had a
tale of how, aged about 15 and self-conscious, he was once sent to meet a woman
relative from a bus. Who she was or where from, I don’t know, but on arriving
at Ellbroad
St., she said to my grandmother: “I says to him, ‘Gie yer yarm, Jarge.’
So he gied us his yarm. And, no sooner had he gied us his yarm, than he
wanted to blaw his nawse.”
My father didn’t want to be seen arming a stout countrywoman through the
streets.
I did not get to know Grandpa Gadd
very well, because after Grandma died in 1916 he became rather quiet and
introverted, I think. He was kind to us in a distant way. We went to Ellbroad St.
sometimes on a Saturday afternoon - the living room was upstairs. I don’t think
we went up much. He kept 3 horses in the stables. There was a speaking-tube
between the living room and the office area downstairs which we thought fun.
One blew a whistle to attract attention. (I kept away from the horses. I was
afraid they would kick). They had a parrot upstairs when my father was a boy - probably
a present from sailor uncle Ben Caffery.
They also had a dog, which was not allowed upstairs. The parrot would whistle
the dog up, then when it appeared say sternly, “Go
down, sir. Go down.” No sooner did the dog reach the bottom stair, than the
parrot would whistle him up again. This would go on, till someone threw a cloth
over the parrot’s cage. Either this dog - or another - had the trick of letting
any visitor enter without objection, but when they rose to leave, he got
between them and the door and wouldn’t let them go till ordered off. Grandpa
had a trap for his own use, and used to drive it round Bristol. When he died in January 1923, I was
home from school with a cold. On the day of the funeral, Auntie Eva took me (we
were in Park St.)
to Park Row to see the cortege pass from Old King St. Baptist Church to Canford
Cemetery. Apparently I
said (but do not recall it - I was just 9), “Mustn’t it be fun to sit on a
cloud and watch your own funeral?”
When my father was a small boy, he
developed a rash on his head, and his mother took him to the doctor - Dr. W.G.
Grace, the cricketer. He said, she thought in some disgust, “Mother, your child
has ringworm.” She felt very ashamed, though he probably picked it up from
other children. He went to Redcross St. School, till
he went, between the ages 11 - 15, to the Merchant Venturers School,
just behind College Green (Orchard
St./Denmark St.) When he
left school, he had a drapery job for a year, and then moved into the dental
trade. He enjoyed the medical-scientific side, but said the safest jobs were
either in the food trade or in undertaking, (as everyone has to eat and die).
Auntie Minnie’s husband, Willie
Jones, was a dentist, as was his father before him, and so were his brothers.
They married on Boxing Day, 1906. Stuart was the only child, because Auntie
Minnie had an abnormally long vagina. Stuart was a pleasant surprise when he
arrived in May 1913. Auntie Minnie was very stout and subject to epileptic-like
fits - though I don’t think they were actual epilepsy. The cause was being
dropped on her head by a maid when she was a baby. This caused thickening of
the skull which set up pressure on the brain. The problems started when she was
18 - the fits were controlled by tablets.. She was
offered an operation, but it would have been very risky in those days, so she
refused. It was unfortunate, because she loved people and social activities - she
always said she would love to have managed a hotel.
May Menefie
Going back to Chris’s family tree - May
Menefie was a granddaughter of Rev. James Milliner.
She was Hannah Milliner’s daughter, but her father’s name isn’t given. Hannah
was Grandma Gadd’s cousin. I remember May Menefie - she lived at Brislington,
and mother and I visited her sometimes. (I think Harold kept in touch with her
later). She was a widow, and - rather oddly, I thought - kept her husband’s
ashes in an urn on the mantlepiece.
Auntie Eva (Eva
Hilda Hartshorne, born 6.2.77. died Feb. 1932)
Married (i)
Bertram Clapp - I don’t know the date. (It was after my parents married.) They
lived in a flat near Clifton Gate. The marriage did not last long, because Bert
died of heart disease. I don’t think he had any connection with the musical
world. No children. So she was Mrs. Clapp until 1929, but professionally used
her single name with the title Madam ie Madam Eva
Hartshorne. She had a beautiful - and rather unusual - soprano voice - a pity
it was not recorded. She was trained to be a performer. I don’t know who her
teacher was. Aunt (as we called her) had no ‘bump of location’ whatsoever. She
used to say that once she was a soloist in an oratorio at Weston-super-Mare.
Returning to her lodgings after rehearsal she couldn’t remember the address or
where it was, and wasted time getting there. This subsequently made her late
for the performance, and, rather embarrassed, she had to walk on to the
platform and sit down at the front with the other soloists after the choir had
started. When she went to her lesson the following week, her teacher greeted
her with, “My dear, what did you do at Weston?” She was getting up
courage to explain her gaffe, when he went on to say he had received glowing
reports on her performance. Unfortunately she had inherited from her father a
bronchial tendency, and at some point it was found that she had had a T.B. spot
on her lung, though it had healed. This put paid to her career as a
professional singer, though she continued to perform intermittently. She took
up teaching singing and the piano - this was all right at first, especially
while she was well-known in Bristol,
but after we moved fron Park St. in 1926, she had
fewer pupils, probably mainly because by then people were demanding paper
qualifications (L.R.A.M. etc.), and she had not acquired these because she was
trained as a performer. I am not sure when Aunt started living with my parents.
She was there at 13 Hartington Park (nr. Redland Green),
where I was born, and on till her marriage in 1929. I know her
bronchitis seemed to get worse when we lived at 44 Zetland Rd.
(Sept. 1926 - May 1929 - this house belonged to Uncle Willie who practised dentistry there twice a week - it was quite a big
house and he had a waiting room and surgery). In April 1929 Aunt married Thomas
Neale (your great grandfather). They lived in Guinea St. I think
Don and Tommy were still at home, but your grandmother Mary was working as a
children’s nurse part of the time, at Melksham. Aunt
had bronchitis early in 1932 - it turned into pneumonia with other
complications and she died in Southmead Hospital.
My mother had already had one attack from the intestinal cancer from which she
died in August that year, so Aunt’s death was a great shock to her. So it was a
sad time. I remember my parents coming back from the hospital the evening she
died. A voice on radio sang, “Oh for the wings of a dove,” and father
remembered Aunt singing it.
So that is how your grandmother Mary
met my brother. Their courtship lasted till their marriage at St. Michael’s and
All Angels Church at Horfield in Bristol in 1936. (That is why your dad is
called Michael; and Stephen because he was christened on Boxing Day, having
been born in an air-raid in Oct. 1940 - a large chunk of shrapnel fell in the
garden of the nursing home which was somewhere near the bottom of Cotham Brow.
My mother learnt to play the violin
as a girl. She brought two rather decrepit violins with her when she married.
My brother resurrected the better of these when he was about 10, and quietly,
without a word to anyone, set about repairing it (using his pocket money).
Eventually, he got a bow, and taking violin and bow to my mother asked her to
show him the fingering. He had learnt the piano, because Aunt taught us all,
but the violin became his passion. When he had taught himself to play, he asked
to have lessons, and was sent to a very good teacher. I think John may have
borne some physical likeness to Grandpa Hartshorne. I think Aunt took after her
father and mother took after her mother (see photo of Eva and Jessie in their
late teens). NB. My brother got the nickname ‘Jack’, because when little he was
a child of few words. Grandma Gadd was playing with him one day and said,”What’s your name?” He said, “Dack
Gadd.” She was delighted because she had wanted him to be called John after his
Great grandfather. So we called him Jack at home, till he was 12, when Mother
thought we should drop the baby nick-name and call him Kenneth. However,
instead - for no clear reason - we called him John, which remained his family
name ever afterwards. Outside the family he was called Kenneth.
(My father was Frank to the family and friends, but George to Business
associates).
Barbara Gadd
3 . 2 . 94
Re photographs February
1994
I expect my Gadd grandparents had a
family Bible - or that Grandma Gadd did. If so, it probably ended up with
Harold, and his daughter Jenifer may have it:
Mrs. Jenifer Manners
52 Honey Hill Road
Kingswood
Bristol BS15
4HN Tel. 0272 608302
She became a nurse specialising in optical work - she may have gone back to it
once her husband died - am not sure. I had a Christmas card from her.
There was an old family photograph album which I saw as a child. Harold had
this. There was a photo in it, touched up, of old John Gadd taken after he died
- he refused to be photographed when alive. Jenifer y have
this, though the early photographs may well have faded long since.
I did not have a card from my cousin
Stuart this Christmas - he is 8 months older than I, but he seemed perfectly
compos mentis and OK when he wrote to me for Xmas ‘92.
Some years ago, there was published
in Bristol a small book (about the size of an
exercise book) - a set of old photographs of Bristol - one of these showed George Gadd
standing outside his shop in Ellbroad St. I had a
copy, but had to get rid of a lot of books when I moved here. Penny hasn’t got
one, but said she would ask Tim. (Tim remembers it, but has so much stuff in
boxes from when they moved to Cornwall
that he hasn’t finished looking!) George’s bookshop sold them (top of Park St.). Jill
(Webb) has remembered they were compiled by a man called Reece-Winstone. There were later books in the same series - this
was the first one. I know R.A. Gilbert (Bob) who has a bookshop in North View,
and might be able to help if you can’t track one in the family.
Re the photographs I have already
sent you
Group photograph of Gadds with their partners and off-spring in the Spring of 1949, taken on the steps in Auntie Minnie’s back
garden at Downend, Bristol. (Tim is there so must have been on
holiday from boarding school.) (I have a similar version of this, taken about
three years earlier - Penny.)
Group photograph taken at Tim’s
wedding to Katharine Baker in July 1962. (Your parents were married a few weeks
later (Sept.)
Group photo
of me with my brother (your grandfather) and sister taken in 1916.
My sister enjoyed being photographed, my brother hated
it and tended to look long-suffering. I don’t suppose I had any opinion, but
either then or later I was puzzled to be told to ‘watch the dickey-bird.’
In ‘Customer’s Original envelope’ are 3 copies you may keep.
Barbara