Look what I found on online! A Golden Wedding Announcement for a wedding 110 years ago!

 

From The Daily Item, Lynn, Massachusetts, Tuesday, February 18, 1964, page 15

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The Item Salutes Today

Ex-Stiles St. Couple Note 50th Anniversary

Marking Golden Anniversary are former West Lynn residents, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Pogson. The couple is celebrating 50 years of marriage today at their home, 738 54th Ave. North, St. Petersburg, Fla.  Mr. Pogson retired from General Electric Co. River Works in 1952.

(This is the 1360th Greater Lynn couple to be saluted by The Item for having attained a half centry or more of married life.  A handsom illuminated scroll suitable for framing, with the name and marriage date of the couple will be present to them by The Item.  Greater Lynn residents are invited to submit the names of other couples about to observe their golden wedding day.)

A former West Lynn couple, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Pogson, now residing at 738 54th Ave. North, St. Petersburg, Fla., are today celebrating their gold wedding anniversary.

Mr. and Mrs. Pogson, who lived 40 years at 31 Stiles St., West Lynn, were married in All Soul's Church in England, Feb. 18, 1914.  Natives of Leeds, England, they came to this country shortly after their marriage.

They have been residing in Folorida since Mr. Pogson's retirement in 1952 from the General Electric Co. River Works, where he had been employed 37 years as a tool and die maker.  Now they return annually to visit their family and spend the Summer at Alton Bay, N.H.

There are four children, Mrs. George Davis and Arthur Pogson, both of Saugus; Miss Beatrice Pogson, who resides with them in St. Petersburg; Mrs. Ernest Tarbox of Millbury and four grandchildren. 

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My great aunt Hilda Mary Pogson was my grandmother's sister.  She was the eldest of three children of John Peter Bawden Roberts (1865 - 1925) and Emma Frances Warren (1865 - 1927).  Hilda was born 14 May 1891 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, and she died 1 July 1990 in Marlborough, Massachusetts.  Hilda and Herbert Pogson were first cousins.  Herbert's mother, Sarah Anne Roberts was the sister to John Roberts.  Herbert was born 6 August 1889 in Leeds, and died 11 January 1971 in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

This is the All Soul's Hood Memorial Church where they were married.  My grandmother wrote about this church in her diary.  She loved the church and all its social events including Sunday school, the "Needle Brigade" which made things to sell in the church bazaar, and the Girls Friendly Society. This church is still standing in Leeds. 

All Soul's Church 1907

Herbert's parents owned a drapery store in Armsley, a section of Leeds.  In my grandmother's diary she wrote "I remember going over there when I was a little girl.  We used to visit them.  And I loved to go in the store and my uncle would let me measure the ribbons and I thought that wonderful.  It was quite a nice store and they sold a lot of lovely things and they had five girls and just this one boy, Herbert."  Herbert came to Boston in 1911 aboard the ship Franconia, and on the ship manifest he listed his occupation as "mechanic", his father as "Mr. Pogson" and his address as "Ramsey House, Hill Lane, Armsley, Leeds". He also appeared on the ships manifest of the Bohemian on 18 March 1914 (one month after his marriage) with his wife Hilda, and the port of arrival was Boston. 

Some time before 1915 Hilda and Herbert came to Massachusetts and lived at 60 Colon Street in Beverly, Massachusetts.  In 1915 Hilda's parents, brother and sister all came to the United States and lived at 7 Dearborn Avenue, a few blocks from Hilda and Herbert's house.  In 1917 the Pogson family removed to nearby Saugus, Massachusetts. 

I have found several other ship's manifests showing Herbert visiting England in 1920 (with his wife and two small children- Dorothy age 4, and Hilda age 2), 1949, 1957 and 1960.  

Herbert died in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1971and is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery.  When she was widowed Hilda moved from St. Petersburg back to Massachusetts where she lived at her daughter's house until she went to the Bolton Manor Nursing Home in Marlborough.  She died there in 1990 and is buried next to Herbert in St. Petersburg.  I remember visiting with Herbert and Hilda when I was a small child, and I loved to hear them talking in their Yorkshire accents, like my grandmother.    

Photo from the 1970s - from left to right

Hilda (looking at the camera), her eldest daughter Dorothy May, her daughter Hilda Bertha, my grandmother Bertha Louise, and in front is Hilda's youngest daughter Beatrice. 

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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Look what I found on online!  A Golden Wedding Announcement for a wedding 110 years ago!", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 4, 2024, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2024/03/look-what-i-found-on-online-golden.html:  accessed [access date]). 

Samuel Roberts, buried 1881, Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom - Tombstone Tuesday

 It's Tombstone Tuesday! Today's tombstone was photographed by Laura Cleaver for the Find A Grave website, at the Leeds General Cemetery in Leeds, Yorkshire England. 

"SAMUEL ROBERTS, WHO DIED JULY 4th 1881

AGED 52 YEARS"

I was surprised to find my 2nd great grandfather's gravestone on the Find A Grave website, and it is the first overseas tombstone I have found.  Samuel Roberts, the son of John Roberts and Hannah Westerman, was born about 1829 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.  He married Mary Anne Stott on 21 March 1853 in Leeds.  She was the daughter of James Stott and Sarah Heseltine, born 29 October 1831 in Leeds and died in March 1912 in Settle, Yorkshire.  Samuel and Mary Anne had ten children, three went to the United States including my great grandfather John Peter Bawden Roberts (1865 - 1925) who immigrated to Beverly, Massachusetts in 1915 via Ellis Island.

Samuel raised his family in the slums of Yorkshire. He worked as a laborer in factories, and according to several census records he was described as an "engine man" or "engineer".  This means he operated machinery in the factory.  He lived in the Woodhouse section of Leeds, in 1871 his residence was 25 Woodhouse Street, and in 1881 his residence was 17 Rhodes Buildings.   His death record lists his occupation as "engine tender".  

Samuel died on 3 July 1881 (according to the death record) and was buried on July 6th.  His gravestone lists the death on July 4th.  The informant was his son Arthur.  There are 14 people listed on the gravestone, all unrelated (I checked).  That seemed strange to me, so I did some investigating online.  What I found was surprising to me as an American, but not so strange to Europeans.   

Leeds in the 19th and early 20th century was a factory town.  The slums were horrific.  I have an oral history recorded on a cassette tape, and narrated by my grandmother, Bertha Roberts (1897 - 1990).  Her stories reminded me of books like Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. The city was overcrowded with laborers and their families. The cemeteries were overcrowded, too.  

Samuel was buried in a "guinea grave" at the Leeds General Cemetery, also known as Woodhouse Cemetery or Woodhouse Lane Cemetery.   A guinea grave was a grave for 12 - 20 people, and the family paid one "guinea" for this priviledge.  According to a Facebook forum for "Leeds Family History" a guinea was 21 shillings or a little more than a pound in today's money.  Paupers would be buried in a common grave for free.  Thank goodness for these informal genealogy groups on Facebook!  Through this group I was referred to another group "Friends of Woodhouse Cemetery", where I learned more history of this burial ground.  Members of these groups gave me a great history of the guinea graves, and of the slums in the Woodhouse neighborhood. 

UPDATE:  After this blog post was published online on March 12, a woman named Yvonne Sutton and her sister Linda Goodwin read the post and then took more photos of Samuel's gravesite.  Scroll to the bottom to see what she posted on the "Friends of Woodhouse Cemetery" Facebook group!  

The sad thing about the Leeds General Cemetery is that it belongs to the University of Leeds, who removed almost all the gravestones to create a greenspace for their campus known as St. George's Field.  Most of the surrounding area known as Woodhouse is part of the university, too, and the addresses I have from census records for Samuel are now new university housing.  Originally there were over 80,000 burials in this cemetery, most without memorial stones in guinea graves. Very few stones are still there, and the chapel is still standing, so it is a miracle that this stone with Samuel Robert's name survives.

As an American we are not accustomed to the practice of cemeteries without "perpetual care".  I have seen in Spain that bodies are placed in rented niches for a few years, which are later cleaned out and then the niche is rented to another family.  In England the graves are not "perpetual" either, and especially paupers' graves or common graves such as these guinea graves.  

I have not visited the city of Leeds.  I'm hoping to someday see the church where the Roberts family worshipped (All Soul's Hook Memorial), the streets, and this cemetery.  I can find records of other family members in this cemetery, but this is the only one with a photograph of a surviving tombstone. 

This house stood on Rhodes Buildings where Samuel Roberts lived in Leeds, around the time of his death.  Thank you to the Leeds Libraries Leodis website  https://www.leodis.net/   

Updated photos, with kind permission from Yvonne Sutton and Linda Goodwin:

This photo and the maps below will help me to locate the gravesite. The gravestones were all moved, and many buried, to another location, to form the university parkland. 

For the truly curious:

Samuel Roberts at Find A Grave:  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/226194619/samuel-roberts  

"Friends of Woodhouse Cemetery" at Facebook:    https://www.facebook.com/groups/1765932953450945  

The University of Leeds maintains a website with a database of burials at the Leeds General Cemetery.  Here is a link to the record for Samuel Roberts:   https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/546233/roberts_samuel?selection=Leeds%20General%20Cemetery%20Burial%20Registers%20Index&archiveLocationOfOriginals=433&resultLength=60&resultOffset=7&fbclid=IwAR3f7Jdc43AcKSycGhOQBGoQ1MQfW_Zgi9BvHM-jS_zYEwycpr1iWnaoEn4 

Surname Saturday blog post for the ROBERTS family:   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/surname-saturday-roberts-of-leeds.html  

This link is part four of a transcription my grandmother's audio tape, describing her childhood in Leeds:   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/05/amanuensis-monday-berthas-audio-tape.html  

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Samuel Roberts, buried 1881, Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom - Tombstone Tuesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 14, 2023, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2023/03/samuel-roberts-buried-1881-leeds.html: accessed [access date].

Exploring British Records from America

John Peter Bawden Roberts and his wife,

Emma Frances Warren, and children, Hilda,

Horace and Bertha (the baby) circa 1898

Leeds, Yorkshire, England

(My great grandparents, and my grandmother (Bertha) )

A few weeks ago in the US Ancestry.com offered a weekend of free access to the UK record collection.  The last time I noticed one of these offers we were on vacation, so I couldn’t take advantage.  This time we were snowed in for a long duration blizzard, so I had lots of time to peruse the collection.

Note: If it weren't for social media, I wouldn't have been notified about this sale.  Many of my genealogist friends were sharing the post about free access to the UK records on Facebook and Twitter or on their blogs.  There was probably an email from Ancestry, but I have a tendency to clear out my e-mail box of advertising without reading any of the unsolicited offers.  I almost lost out on this deal!

My grandmother was born on 30 September 1897 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.  She, her parents and siblings came to America in 1915 via Ellis Island, traveling in steerage on board the SS Orduna from Liverpool.  My cousin and I had already found the passenger lists, which listed the entire family, and my grandmother as a 21 years old.  I remember her stories, and her brother and sister’s stories (my great Auntie Hilda and great Uncle Horace).   I've written about them HERE and HERE in previous blog posts.

And so I began my search for my grandmother’s family roots via the vital records and UK census records on Ancestry.  I had used this collection a few years back and had a copy my grandmother’s family listed in the 1901 British Census.   Now I could look for them in the 1911 census, and perhaps work backwards in time to previous generations. .    The British census is conducted on years ending in “one”, and online the records are available from 1841 – 1911.  This would be the last British census for the Roberts family before leaving for America in 1915.

The Ancestry collection was very easy to use, and even though I was working with very commonplace surnames I was able to pinpoint the records easily.  

Above is the 1911 census of the Robert Family in Leeds, Yorkshire.  I was excited to see that it was the original census form with my great grandfather's signature.  I was not excited to see that my 13 year old grandmother, Bertha, was missing.  However, I remembered that she had been "in service" as a undernurse in a vicarage since she was age 12, so by searching for her own name (I had previously searched under her father's name) I found her enumerated in the vicar's household.  See below, Bertha is listed on line 11 as a servant:

Previous to this weekend, my only copy of my great grandparent's marriage record was a photocopy given to me by an uncle.  He only had access to an 8" x 12" photo copying machine, so I had never seen the entire certificate before, just a partial view. This was a terrific find for me!

This image has two marriage records, my great grand parents are on the top:

"1890 Marriage solemnized at Sheepscar in the Parish of St. Clements in the County of Leeds

No. 401  

When married:  May 24th, 1890

Name and Surname:  John Peter Bawden Roberts  and Emma Frances Warren

Age:  25 and 25

Condition:  Bachelor and Spinster

Rank or Profession:  Engine Tender

Residence at the time of marriage:  1 Henbury Terrace Bistol Street and 45 Benson Street

Father's Name and Surname:   Samuel Roberts and Oben Warren

Rank or Profession of Father:   Engine Tender and Miller

Married in the Parish Church according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Established Church

by --------- or after Banns by me, Henry A. Prem

This Marriage was solemnized between us:

John P. B. Roberts and Emma F. Warren  

in the Presence of us

Arthur Roberts and Ellen Roberts"  [John's siblings]

Again, I was thrilled to see that these were my great grandparent's signatures! 

Here is the 1853 marriage of Samuel Roberts and Mary Anne Stott, parents of John Peter Bawden Roberts and my 2nd great grandparents.  This image is slightly cut off, but you can see the dates, information and signatures, including the names of my 3rd great grandfathers:

I was not able to trace the Roberts family further back in time, nor the Warren family, but I had very good luck with the Stott family.  I found the marriage records for Mary Anne Stott's parents, grand parents and great grandparents.  This is the 1796 marriage of Jonathan Stott and Mary Brunyet, my 4th great grandparents, married in Leeds, Yorkshire. 

"No. 386   Jonathan Stott sawyer of this parish and Mary Brunyet of this parish spinster were married in this church by Banns this twenty ninth Day of September in the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and ninety six by me Edward Watson, clerk.  

This marriage was solemnized between us Jonathan Stott and Marey Brunyet

in the presence of John Hardaker and Tho. Atkinsone"

With all the information I gleaned from the UK collection (mainly census and marriage records) I was able to start a pedigree chart for my grandmother Bertha Roberts. These are my roots in Yorkshire, England.  See below:

This was very exciting to me.  I have an audio tape made in the 1970s of my uncle interviewing my grandmother about her family in England.  Grammy Bertha had forgotten a lot of names, and also had the names of some of her grandparents incorrect.  These documents fill in the holes and extend her family back to the late 1700s!  And I didn't even have to cross the pond to find these ancestors.

After learning these new ancestor's names I joined a few Facebook groups on UK and Yorkshire genealogy.  I immediately had some help from genealogists living in some of the towns in Yorkshire where my grandmothers ancestors lived - Leeds, Dewsbury and Pontefract.  I also learned about a website called Curious Fox.  If you have UK ancestry, it is worth checking out with a free registration http://www.curiousfox.com/    

This blog post was also published at the Worldwide Genealogy blog on 7 March 2015

www.worldwidegenealogy.blogspot.com 

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The URL for this post is

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/03/exploring-british-records-from-america.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Tombstone Tuesday ~ My great grandparents John Roberts and Emma Warren from Leeds, England

JOHN P. B. ROBERTS

1863 - 1925

EMMA FRANCES   WIFE

1865 - 1927

This gravestone was photographed at the North Beverly Cemetery, located at 685 Cabot Street in Beverly, Massachusetts.  It is located beside the Second Congregational Church at 35 Conant Street (on the corner of Cabot Street).  This is a municipal cemetery run by the City of Beverly.

Just as I described in last week's "Tombstone Tuesday" post, where we wandered around Central Cemetery in Beverly and couldn't find our ancestor's gravesites, this also happened to us at the North Beverly Cemetery.  I underestimated the size of the cemetery, and we couldn't find our great grandparents John Peter Bowden Roberts and Emma Frances Warren.  I contacted the Cemetery Department and Kerrin Cotter sent me these maps to find the gravesite.  This is absolutely essential in large urban cemeteries, especially for flat stones like this one.

Ms. Cotter marked the grave with #5 and purple highlighter

When I was a child, this grave was marked with a simple, wooden cross painted white, with the names painted on in black paint.  When I was about ten or twelve years old my Dad and his brother replaced the wooden marker with this gravestone.  I remember going to visit the new gravestone, and my Dad removed the cross and put it in the back seat with my little sister and me for the ride home.  We were a little scared to be riding with a grave marker!

John Peter Bowden Roberts, son of Samuel Roberts and Mary Anne Stott, was born in August 1865 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.  He married on 24 May 1890 in St. Clement's church, Sheepscar, Leeds, to Emma Frances Warren, the daughter of Obed Warren and Betsey Hannah Stinson.  She was born about 1865 in Peterborough, Northamptonshire.  They had four children, one died young.   Their daughter Hilda, my great aunt, married a first cousin, Herbert Pogson, and came to Beverly, Massachusetts to live.  She encouraged the rest of the family to join her in the United States.

In 1915 John, Emma, and their two other children, Horace, aged 20, and Bertha, aged 18 (my grandmother),  left Liverpool on board the Orduna for New York.  They came through Ellis Island and took the train to Beverly, Massachusetts.  John worked in the United Shoe Corporation factory, and they bought a house at 7 Dearborn Avenue.  This is the same house where my father and his brothers grew up, and where I lived until I was about seven years old.

John Peter Bowden Roberts died on 23 August 1925, at home, of colon cancer. My grandmother was married at the house on Dearborn Avenue on Thanksgiving Day, 26 November 1926, to my grandfather, Donald Munroe Wilkinson.  The following year, 1927, my great grandmother, Emma Frances (Warren) Roberts, died in Lynn, Massachusetts.  John and Emma were buried in this double plot at the North Beverly Cemetery.

Beverly, Massachusetts Cemetery Department:
http://www.beverlyma.gov/departments/cemetery-department/ 

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The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/10/tombstone-tuesday-my-great-grandparents.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Surname Saturday ~ ROBERTS of Leeds, Yorkshire, England and Beverly, Massachusetts

The John Peter Bowden Roberts Family
circa 1897 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England
My grandmother, Bertha, is the baby in this photograph

ROBERTS is my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.  She arrived in the United States, through Ellis Island, in 1915 when she was a teenager with her brother and parents.  Her father, John Peter Bowden Roberts, was one of ten children born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.  He was a stationary engineer in a brewery in Leeds, and married my great grandmother in 1890.  They had three children, and they all removed to Massachusetts to follow several relatives who had come to America for jobs in the first decade of the twentieth century.

I was able to trace the Roberts family back several generations to Samuel Roberts, born about 1775 in Leeds, Yorkshire, my 4^th great grandfather.  I used census records and several vital records from Leeds to trace this family, but I’ve hit a brickwall.  To continue this research I will have to “cross the pond” to do some research in Leeds.

I have several extensive oral histories on tape of my grandmother telling about her family and her childhood in Leeds. Her father received his unusual name because a gentleman named “John Peter Bowden” rescued him from a pond when he was a little boy.  Every year the gentleman would visit the Roberts family and gave the other children a shilling, but my great grandfather would receive a gold crown.  He changed his name to “John Peter Bowden Roberts”, even though he had a brother named “John William Roberts”.   I don’t know his original name, so I haven’t found his original birth record.

Another brother, Harry Roberts, came to Beverly, Massachusetts, along with some cousins. They wrote back to the Roberts family about the job opportunities.  My grandmother’s sister, Hilda, had already married a cousin who had come to Massachusetts and she emigrated sometime before 1915.  Her parents, and her siblings (including Bertha, my grandmother) decided to come to Beverly, too.  They left Leeds and boarded the steamship Orduna in Liverpool in and arrived at Ellis Island on 16 August 1915.  They lived at 7 Dearborn Avenue in Beverly, the same house where my Dad grew up, and where I lived until I was about seven years old.

My Roberts genealogy:

Generation 1:  Samuel Roberts, born about 1775 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England

Generation 2:  John Roberts, born 24 December 1803 in Leeds, died after 1851; married on 22 October 1832 in Leeds to Hannah Westerman, daughter of Samuel Westerman and Elizabet Fearnley.   She was born about 1811 at Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England and died after 1881. Six children.

Generation 3:  Samuel Roberts, born about 1829 in Leeds, died before 1891; married on 21 March 1853 in Holbeck, Yorkshire to Mary Anne Stott, daughter of James Stott and Sarah Heseltone.  She was born 7 October 1835 in Leeds, and died after 1911 in Settle, Yorkshire.  Ten children.

Generation 4:  John Peter Bowden Roberts, born August 1865 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, died 23 August 1925 in Beverly, Massachusetts; married on 24 May 1890 at St. Clement’s church, in the Sheepscar neighborhood of Leeds to Emma Frances Warren.  She was the daughter of Obed Thomas Warren and Betsey Hannah Stimson, born about 1870 in Peterborough, Northamptonshire, England, and died 1927 in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Four children.

Generation 5: Bertha Louise Roberts, born 30 September 1897 in Leeds, died 17 March 1990 at Long Beach, California; married 26 November 1926 at 7 Dearborn Avenue, Beverly, Massachusetts to Donald Munroe Wilkinson, son of Albert Munroe Wilkinson and Isabella Lyons Bill.  He was born 23 October 1895 in Salem, Massachusetts, and died 24 July 1977 in Long Beach, California.  Three sons, including my father, John Warren Wilkinson.

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Surname Saturday ~ ROBERTS of Leeds, Yorkshire, England and Beverly, Massachusetts", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 29, 2014, ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/surname-saturday-roberts-of-leeds.html, accessed [access date]). 

Copyright © 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

She lived “between the stairs”: reminiscing about my Grandmother’s stories during the “Downton Abbey” premiere….

For most people, their knowledge of the stratified world of household service in Edwardian England comes from film and TV.  The PBS series “Upstairs Downstairs” introduced the whole idea of the upstairs servants versus the downstairs servants.  “Downton Abbey” confirmed to us that life of the servants downstairs was completely different from the life of the aristocrats upstairs.  Movies like “Mary Poppins” showed us Edwardian England, an era that was completely different from modern life, even though that movie was made only about fifty years after the events supposedly happened.

 

I learned about the usually hidden life of those who were “in service” in Edwardian England long before I saw the mini-series “Upstairs Downstairs”.  My grandmother, Bertha Louise Roberts, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England in 1897.  At age 12 she had to go to work.  That means that in 1909 she left school and was placed to work six days a week at the local vicarage.  She had to live there, and was allowed to come home to visit only on Sunday mornings.  Can you imagine sending your child to live that sort of life?  Grammy's stories about her childhood were endlessly fascinating to me when I was a girl. 

Fortunately, she was in training as an under-nurse, and was not a scullery maid.  That means she was a an assistant to a Nanny.  The household in which she worked was huge.  There was an under-nurse, a nanny, and a governess for four boys.  The middle two boys were twins.  There was a large downstairs staff, and also the upstairs servants.   The nursery staff were “between the stairs”.  As the under-nurse,  Bertha had to run all the errands to the kitchen, such as getting the food, scuttling the coal and cleaning the children’s silver service.

Apparently there was a dispute between the kitchen staff and the upstairs staff, and Bertha was caught in the middle.  It sounds like a story line for TV, doesn't it?  But it was miserable for a twelve year old girl.  Luckily, my uncle was interested in genealogy and he taped his mother reminiscing about her childhood in Leeds.  This tape was made in the 1970s, and she said “The nurse and the cook didn’t get along with each other and it made it difficult for me.  I would go down and chop great big hunks of coal and cook didn't give me the newspapers that I needed for the fire and we didn't have any nice things sent up to us.  We got the food, but we didn't have any cakes or anything nice sent up to us.  I was really very homesick and I would run all the way home and my mother would say “if you’re not happy, Bertha, you don’t have to stay there.”  But I just felt that I had to…”

I have a postcard from Bertha’s sister, Hilda, which she sent to the vicarage.  From this postcard I was able to see that the Holy Trinity vicarage was located at Hyde Terrace, Claredon Road, in Leeds, but there was no house number.   I googled the words “Holy Trinity” Leeds “Hyde Terrace” and found a link to a page on a website called British Listed Buildings http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-465894-38-hyde-terrace-  and according to this page the vicarage was listed at 38 Hyde Terrace.  There is also a great description of the house, and a link to the street view at  https://maps.google.com/.   The Victorian style brick home was built in 1857 and looks like a grand mansion.   It also says that the building is now flats (apartments).   It is located in the current neighborhood of the Leeds University.    From the Google Street view I was able to grab a screen shot for the photograph below. 

38 Hyde Terrace, Leeds, Yorkshire, England from Google Streetview
This was the Holy Trinity Vicarage 100 years ago, built in 1857

I could also see from the Google maps application that Hyde Terrace was about one mile from where Bertha's family lived.  Her street, Northwest View, no longer exists due to urban renewal and the Leeds University expansion.  In her audio tape of her life story, her description of life in these slums rivals the scenes in the book Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.  Bertha said " I was allowed to go home on Sunday afternoons so I could go to Sunday school and I would have supper with my family and then my father would take me back because the vicarage was in a very isolated part of the city.  And I always had a lot of newspapers and a cake that Mother had made for me.  Then I had half a day once a month that I could go home."

An old photo of the Woodhouse neighborhood of Leeds
This section of the city no longer exists, and it was where Bertha lived as a child

More from Bertha  "There was quite a class distinction over there and the vicar's wife was really very snobbish.  I was just a little servant girl and there was lots of things I couldn't do...  I wasn't allowed to do…... And lots of times they would have parties for the children and some of the children were probably just as old as I was.  But if we played games I had to go outside of the nursery and then go back in again.  I had to be the last one to go in.  It gave me sort of an inferiority complex but finally I had big rosy cheeks and the nurse was very nice to me.  But after she left I wasn't too happy there so I came home again."

Every time I watch "Downton Abbey" or read a historical novel about life in upper crust households in Edwardian England, I think about my grandmother.  The nicest thing about "Downton Abbey" is that some of the downstairs staff in the show use the same Yorkshire accent as my grandmother.  It really is nice to hear that again!  I would love to find some non-fiction books or documentaries about the life of servants in England during this time period.  Relying on fictional television and movies for information is not very authentic research, is it?  But it certainly is fun! 

I previously blogged about Bertha’s audio tape, and you can read the part about her life at the vicarage at this link: http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/04/amanuensis-monday-berthas-audio-tape_26.html   It was a six part series to transcribe the entire tape, and if you are truly interested in her early life in the slums of Leeds and her 1915 immigration to America you might want to read all six blog posts.

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Genealogy tidbit about Bertha Louise Roberts (my grandmother):

My great grandfather was John Peter Bowden Roberts, born August 1865 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, and died 23 August 1925 in Beverly, Massachusetts; married on 24 May 1890 at St. Clement's church, in Sheepscar, Leeds to Emma Frances Warren, daughter of Obed Thomas Warren and Betsey Hannah Stimson.  She was born about 1870 in Peterborough, Northampton, England and died in August 1925 in Beverly, Massachusetts.  Four children:

1.)  Hilda Mary Roberts, born 14 May 1891 in Leeds, died 1 July 1990 in Marlborough, Massachusetts; married in 1914 in Leeds to her first cousin, Herbert Pogson.  Four children born in Massachusetts

2)  Horace Warren Roberts, born 5 September 1895 in Leeds, died 2 November 1969 in Beverly; married on 20 June 1920 to Katherine Bella MacDermid.  Three children born in Beverly, Massachusetts.

3.) Bertha Louise Roberts, my grandmother, born 30 September 1897 in Leeds, died 17 March 1990 in Long Beach, California; married on 26 November 1926 in Beverly to Donald Munroe Wilkinson.   Three sons born in Beverly, Massachusetts.

4.) Infant son, born before 1900 in Leeds, died young.

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To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "She lived “between the stairs”: reminiscing about my Grandmother’s stories during the “Downton Abbey” premiere….", Nutfield Genealogy, posted October 1, 2013, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/01/she-lived-between-stairs-reminiscing.html: accessed [access date]). 

Roberts- Pogson Family Photo

This was actually an old family slide I found in my father's collection of family slides.  I don't know who photographed this image, since my parents aren't in this, nor any of my Dad's brothers.  It was possibly taken by one of his cousins and given to him.  The date appears to be the late 1950s or early 1960s, and the color is still great on the image even though most of the other slides in this box have faded or deteriorated.

I received this box of slides after my Dad and his brother had passed away.  Most of the people in this photo have already passed away, too.  When my Dad's surviving brother, my Uncle Richard, came to visit a few weeks ago, we tried to identify most of the people.  He took a copy of the image up to Alton Bay, New Hampshire to share with distant Pogson cousins, and we were able to learn the names of some of the rest of the folks.

This appears to be a gathering of my grandmother's extended family.  Her maiden name was Roberts, and she and her brother and sister were born in Leeds, England.

Kneeling in front (as if he were petting the dog that is escaping out of the frame...) is my grandfather Donald Munroe Wilkinson (1895 - 1977)

.... And next to my grandfather in the red skirt is Beatrice Pogson (1929 - 2005), daughter of my grandmother's sister Hilda Mary (Roberts) Pogson (1891 - 1990), who is standing behind her.  To Hilda's left is Marian (Hurd) Pogson, wife of Arthur William Pogson (1920 - 1993) (to Hilda's right, her son).  To the right of Arthur is my grandmother, Bertha Louise (Roberts) Wilkinson (1897- 1990).  Next to the right is Dorothy Pogson Davis (still living!) and then Bertha Pogson Tarbox (1917 - 2002) both daughters of Auntie Hilda.  To the far right are Ella May Townsend Tarbox (b. 1879), mother-in-law of Bertha, and her daughter Mildred Tarbox.  Missing from the photo is Ernest Tarbox (1915 - 1995), who probably took the photo since in includes all his family including wive's family and his mother and sister.

Family Tree Information:

Generation 1:  Samuel Roberts, son of John Roberts and Hannah Westeman, born about 1829 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, died before 1891; married on 21 March 1853 in Holbeck, Yorkshire to Mary Anne Stott, daughter of James Stott and Sarah Hesseltone.  Ten children including:

Generation 2:  2nd child: Sarah Anne Roberts, b. about 1855 in Leeds, died 1911 in Leeds; married in June 1872 in Leeds to William Pogson, son of John Pogson and Mary Unknown. Seven children including:

Generation 3:  Sixth child: Herbert Pogson, born 6 August 1889 in Leeds, died January 1971 in Saint Petersburg, Florida; married in 1914 in Leeds to Hilda Mary Roberts, daughter of John Peter Bowden Roberts and Emma Frances Warren, his first cousin (see below).  Four children  (all in the photo above)

1. Dorothy M.  Pogson, born 1916 in Massachusetts; married George Kenneth Davis, son of John Davis and Susie Parsons,  born 2 February 1907 in Lynn, Massachusetts, died in January 1982 in Alton, New Hampshire.

2. Hilda Bertha Pogson,, born 8 October 1917 in Beverly, Massachusetts, died 5 September 2002 in Milbury, Massachusetts; married to Ernest T. Tarbox, son of Ernest Frederick Tarbox and Ella May Townsend, born 9 October 1915, died on 16 October 1995 in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Two children.

3. Arthur William Pogson, born 21 December 1920 in Beverly, Massachusetts, died on 10 November 1993 in Melrose, Massachusetts; married first to Marion L. Hurd, two children.  Married second to Natalie Unknown.

4. Beatrice C. Pogson, born 14 October 1929 in Lynn, Massachusetts; died on 20 January 2005 in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.  Unmarried.

Generation 2: Sixth child: John Peter Bowden Roberts, born in August 1865 in Leeds, died 23 August 1925 in Beverly, Massachusetts; married on 24 May 1890 in Leeds to Emma Frances Warren, daughter of Obed Thomas Warren and Betsey Hannah Stimson, born about 1870 in Peterborough, Northamptonshire, England, died in August 1925 in Beverly, Massachusetts.  Four children.

1.  Hilda Mary Roberts (see above, married to Herbert Pogson, her first cousin)

2.  Horace Warren Roberts, born 5 September 1895 in Leeds, died 2 November 1969 in Beverly, Massachusetts; married 23 June 1920 in Beverly to Katherine Bella MacDermid, daughter of Charles Colt MacDermid and Mary Ross, born 23 March 1896 in Marsboro, Quebec, died 30 December 1978 in Beverly.  Three children.

3. Bertha Louise Roberts, my grandmother, born 30 September 1897 in Leeds, died 17 March 1990 in Long Beach, California; married on 26 November 1926 in Beverly to Donald Munroe Wilkinson, son of Albert Munroe Wilkinson and Isabella Lyons Bill, born 23 October 1895, died on 24 July 1977 in Long Beach California.  Three sons.

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

A 1910 Postcard - Amanuensis Monday

Dear Bertha,
   I am
at the Bazaar
Ma and Auntie too
the pound stall
is doing well
with best love
Hilda

[at the top]
pleased you like
it   LOVE

Miss B. Roberts
Holy Trinity
Vicarage
Hyde Terrace
Clarendon Rd
Leeds

My grandmother never told me the story behind this postcard, but from her memoirs and an audio tape she made in the 1970s I can piece together what was happening.

Bertha Roberts, my grandmother, was born on 30 September 1897 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.  I know that age 12 she had to go to work, and she became the "undernurse" at the Bishop's home in Leeds.  Imagine being wealthy enough to have a staff of servants that included a governess, a nurse and an undernurse!  In the 1970s there was a British TV show called "Upstairs Downstairs" about Edwardian England and it was one of the first programs that focused on the life of the staff, not just the wealthy people of the house.  I think of my grandmother whenever I see re-runs of that TV show.  Bertha was allowed only one half day a month to go home to see her family!

My grandmother had lots of memories of growing up in Leeds, and most of them centered around the church.  The Roberts family went to the All Soul's Hood Memorial Church.  This church is still standing and the current vicar sent me a nice letter describing the building and its history.  Bertha belonged to the Girl's Friendly Society, and the Needle Brigade, which made items for the charity bazaar.  The pound stall mentioned in the post card was the table at the fair which sold items for one pound (there was a penny stall, a shilling stall, etc.). 

Hilda, who penciled the message on the postcard, was Bertha's older sister, born in 1891.  She was apprenticed to a seamstress, and in 1914 she married at All Soul's Church and came to America with her husband to start a new life and family in Beverly, Massachusetts, where another Roberts relative had come about a dozen years earlier.  In 1915 the rest of the family, their parents, Bertha and her brother Horace, came to Beverly, too, via Liverpool and Ellis Island.

To read a transcription of Bertha's tape telling about life as an "undernurse" please click on this link http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/04/amanuensis-monday-berthas-audio-tape_26.html

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Wordless Wednesday- Great Grandfather's Engineering Certificate

The front of the certificate for John Peter Bowden Roberts, dated June 6, 1918 in Beverly, Massachusetts.

The back of the certificate has his birthday in Leeds, England as May 12, 1864. In England he worked as a stationary engineer in a brewery, like his father before him. After coming to America he worked at the United Shoe Machinery Corporation in Beverly.

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Post Update!

The first person to comment on this post this morning sent me the following link to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Safety website. He said that in 1918 it was only an oral exam. Today it is both an oral and written exam.

http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=eopsagencylanding&L=3&L0=Home&L1=Public+Safety+Agencies&L2=Massachusetts+Department+of+Public+Safety&sid=Eeops

"Brief Description of License:
This license allows the holder to have charge of and operate a boiler or boilers not exceeding, in the aggregate, one hundred and fifty horsepower when solid fuel is burned or not exceeding, in the aggregate, five hundred horsepower based uon the relieving capacity of the safety valves when steam is generated by the use of liquid, or gaseous fuel, electric or atomic energy or any other source of heat, and an engine or engines not exceeding fifty (50) horsepower each.

Who should have one?
Anyone who is in actual authority as the "Engineer-in-charge", of any boilers or boilers not exceeding, in the aggregate, one hundred and fifty horsepower when solid fuel is burned or not exceeding, in the aggregate, five hundred horsepower based uon the relieving capacity of the safety valves when steam is generated by the use of liquid, or gaseous fuel, electric or atomic energy or any other source of heat, or engines and turbines not exceeding 50 horsepower each, who is held responsible by the owners as well as the proper authorities for the daily operation and maintenance of the steam boiler, engines, and/or turbines. This person is also the person responsible for all persons operating these boilers, engines, and/or turbines.

What are the prerequisites?
To be eligible for examination for a Third Class Engineer’s License a person must be a citizen or furnish proof of having filed a declaration of his intent to become a citizen of the United States; must furnish evidence as to his previous training and experience and must have been employed in a boiler or steam power plant as a steam engineer, fireman, control room operator, water tender, auxilairy operator or engineer’s assistant for not less than one and one half years, or held and used an equivalent license in the United States Merchant Marine for one (1) year or held and used a equivalent license from another state for one (1) year, or held and used a First Class Fireman’s License for not less than one year. A strenuous written and oral exam must be passed."

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Amanuensis Monday- Bertha's Audio Tape- Part 6

I read about Amanuensis Monday in Randy Seaver’s blog “GeneaMusings” and Randy read about it on John Newmark’s genealogy blog “TransylvanianDutch”. Amanuensis: A person employed to take dictation or copy manuscripts.

Bertha and Donald Wilkinson
Circa 1925
7 Dearborn Avenue, Beverly, Massachusetts

This is an ongoing series of Monday posts to transcribe an audio cassette tape my Grandmother, Bertha Louise (Roberts) Wilkinson (1897 – 1990), made in the 1970s. She was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England, and came to America with her family in 1915 via 1915. She describes her childhood, immigration, and youth in the previous transcriptions of this audio tape. In this last part of the tape Bertha describes her marriage, in Beverly, Massachusetts, and her three sons. The story ends suddenly, as if she just ran out of tape. I’m sure that she would have kept going if the tape allowed, Grammy loved to talk and tell stories!

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“I married Don and his people were very nice to us. And when we got married we just had a quiet family wedding. I still kept on working for a while. And of course we were married on a Thanksgiving Day 1926. I think the date was November 25th, 1926. I remember that day was quite hectic but we had the family, and an Episcopalian minister married us. We went to Boston for just a couple of days. My sister stayed with my mother and then I kept on working. Oh, when we went away for our honeymoon Don's sister tried to pull away his suitcase for him. And he kept hanging on to it and he got a black eye from the door banging into his eye. So he had a black eye on our honeymoon and people joked about that but he really didn't feel a bit good. And Don's cousin gave us tickets to see "The Student Prince" and then we went to the "Miracle" while we were in Boston.

So then time went along and I wanted a baby in the worst way and my mother couldn't understand why I would want a baby when she was so sick. But finally I did get pregnant and I kept on working just the same and I worked really longer than I thought because I didn't expect my baby to com until the latter part of January. He came New Year's Day 1927. We were going to a party at Don's aunt's the night before but I landed in the hospital. My baby was the first baby born in Beverly that year. But they didn't do anything about it then. But I saw him born and my doctor... I thought he was ... It was just wonderful. Don saw him born, too. He stayed in the room with me and so when the baby was born he looked just like he had a haircut. He had auburn colored hair. It was so pretty. But he cried an awful lot. I think it perhaps was because of the sadness I had in my home. I tried to keep going and it was sad. Anyway, I loved my baby and we went over to... before he was born I went over to Don's people because I was exhaused and my mother went over to my sister's house and my mother passed away over there. And my baby was six weeks old when my mother died. I took the baby over there to show her the baby and then she was buried from the house on Dearborn Avenue. My baby....

Then I had a pregnancy and I had a miscarriage and then I named my first baby Robert Munroe and my second baby Richard Albert. He was born May the 9th, 1934. He lives in Long Beach California. Then I had my youngest son John Warren Wilkinson. He was born January the 3rd, 1932. No, Richard was born in 32 and Jack was born in 34. January the 3rd.

So I enjoyed my children very much and my husband didn't make too much money and we went through the Depression and of course he worked on short time for quite a while. But, we didn't… we managed and I did some things to help out. We boarded some children for a while. And then I had a young lady live with me for a long time, about eight years. And she was like a daughter or a younger sister. I had a little boy live with me for four years. So I did things to help out. And I did quite a bit of babysitting, too, when the children got older. Then when the children got older I went to work at the General Electric. Because there was a war going on and I had to go in as a matron, and I worked as a matron for a while and then I got transfered down to the sheet metal department. I worked there on the night shift. It wasn't too easy though because I would work from eleven to seven in the morning. I got a ride bck and forth but it wasn't too good for me healthwise and I was sick after a while. I had my veins stripped in my legs and …... they were stripped. And I had to walk as soon as I could after they were stripped. So I went back to work soon after that and my boss let me go to the tool department and do errands for him so I could walk. But my legs have been pretty bad. I had them stripped twice and then...

I will have to tell you about coming to this country… All the things that I have said up to this point were all in this country of course. I became a citizen and married my husband. He was a citizen of this country and had my children and now they went to high school. The high school was very near where we lived. And when my oldest boy graduated, he wanted to get in the service. His eyes were quite bad but he did finally get into the infantry but he got into the paratroopers. Of course, he went to Japan and while he was on the way there they transferred him to the paratroopers medical corps. He was in Japan. The war was over then but really, I think he enjoyed his stay over there in Japan. He should have, he really should have studied to be a doctor because while he was in high school he would go to the hospital as an orderly with another boy. And, but, he didn't want to study hard enough for that. He had a high IQ but he really didn't care too much about being indoors and when he first went to school he used to ask if he could stand near the window 'cause he was outdoors so much before he went there.

Then my second son, he went... After he finished high school he went to Northeastern College for a while. Oh, he went into the service and he was in Japan. But he was in the intelligence and he was in Kyoto, a beautiful place. It used to be the capital city. He would write, send tapes to us about the life over there and we would sent tapes back and he would write. He used to write beautiful letters telling all about the life in Japan. Some of his companions were just helling around with the girls but he wrote these letters and said for me to send his music. He had studied the piano. He started when he was about 8 years old and he wanted his music. They had told him at the hotel in Kyoto that he could play whenever he wanted to. He said he wanted to be as good as the girl he married. He came home, but he wanted, too, before he went to Japan, he and some of his companions thought they would like to go to UCLA. Richard was interested in studying foreign languages so when he came home after a while he was really... was undecided about what to do. He really wanted to come back to California. He had an opportunity to chauffeur two elderly ladies. He came earlier than he intended and he was homesick though for quite a while. But he worked for a year, then he went to City College and then he went to state university and he's been teaching a long time. He teaches junior high. He also teaches piano and while he was here he got interested in the Mormon Church. We didn't know what it was all about and he wanted to be married to this girl, Louanne Miller. She was in the church. And he studied it and finally decided to join. Then he told us about it. The missionaries came to explain things to us. And we knew we couldn't see him married unless we were members. But we did come the following year for a month. And so we studied the church, too..." End of tape

Donald and Bertha, My grandparents
In the 1970s, as I remembered them!

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Amanuensis Monday - Bertha’s Audio Tape- Part 5

Bertha Louise (Roberts) Wilkinson
(1897-1990)
This photo was taken about the time of her arrival in America in 1915

I read about Amanuensis Monday in Randy Seaver’s blog “GeneaMusings” and Randy read about it on John Newmark’s genealogy blog “TransylvanianDutch”. Amanuensis: A person employed to take dictation or copy manuscripts.This is an ongoing series of Monday posts to transcribe an audio cassette tape my Grandmother, Bertha Louise (Roberts) Wilkinson (1897 – 1990), made in the 1970s. In this section of the tape she describes the extended family and their trip to America via Ellis Island in 1915.
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“We had lots of good times with the family. I remember my grandma coming and visiting, my father's mother. She was a sweet little old lady and she wore a jet bonnet and a jet cape and she would come and visit us and when she came we used to tease her and play games with her. And then I had, I don't remember my other grandma, but she did bring me into the world. And at the time my mother said I had thick black hair when I was born and her other children were all very light, not much hair. My other grandma lived with my mother and Dad but I don't remember her because I was quite..., just a baby when she died.

My aunts and uncles would come and visit us. My father had five brothers and two sisters. One of his brothers came to this country when he was 18 years old. And he had, there was Edward, Frank, Jim and Sam were twins, and my father. The twins were Jim and Sam and one of the sisters was the mother to the one that married my sister. She was my father's sister and they had a drapery store in Armley (?) not too far away from Leeds. And I remember going over there when I was a little girl. We used to visit them. And I loved to go in the store and my uncle would let me measure the ribbons and I thought that wonderful. It was quite a nice store and they sold a lot of lovely things and they had five girls and just this one boy, Herbert.

My sister... my mother had four sisters and two brothers. The sisters were Betsy, Liza, Mary, Hetty and my mother. My mother's name was Emma Frances. The two boys left home and went to New Zealand when they were just young boys and it was very sad because my mother didn't hear from them. My grandma never heard from them for years and years and they never wrote and we never heard from them until after I was married even, and we heard from one of the widows saying that this George had passed away and was always talking about home. He was blind for quite a while and she sent news, but we never heard from Arthur the other boy.

So my father was just a young child and there was this girl taking care of him and he fell in this pond wherever it was, and this man saved his life, and brought him home to my mother and he said "Has this child been christened?" Well, he had been … He was named John, but his man's name was Peter Bowden, and he said, "Will you give him my name, too?" So my mother called him John Peter Bowden Roberts. Now this man was a very wealthy man and he lived in London. Once in a great while he would come up to Leeds and he would visit. And he would tell my father to be a good boy and to learn all he could and he would give him a gold piece. He would give all the other children a silver piece. My, I think that they thought he would take care of my Dad but he left his money without a will. So when that happens it goes to Chancellery.

Anyway, Dad started working very early because my people were just well they didn't have much to do with really. And so he started working half days when he was 10 years old. And his father was an engineer and he showed him, told him all about trade, being an engineer. Before my father married he took care of his mother for quite a while and they lived nearby. And my mother took care of her mother. My mother worked in a shoe shop and she would bring home her work so that she could stitch at home and make extra money. Many times my father would go to walk to… they worked in the same factory, and he would walk there to…. And look through the window and my mother would be asleep at the sewing machine. So she really neglected herself and didn't get enough rest. And she wasn't too well. Even when they got married she was wasn't too well. She had a cough and I remember one time she went away to the hospital for quite a while. And I remember going to visit her. But she did work hard, all her life and….

I think I told you all I can remember about my childhood. Then when we came to this country we were treated very good. Of course, we had to come third class. The captain was very nice. My mother and I shared a room and my father and brother shared another room. But we ate at the table together and I enjoyed the voyage very much, although it was really risky because it was during the war. In fact when we were booked to go on this Orduna Cunard liner and the voyage before the Germans had almost torpedoed it. The torpedo had just missed the boat. So they were yelling out the news that this had happened. So when we went to Liverpool to go on this boat, everybody was looking at me saying they didn't think it would make it. They thought that it would be torpedoed. Well, they had a life belt drill. Oh, we waited until the middle of the night. We went down the river Mersey and it stopped there and then in the middle of the night it started up. And the only ones who know which way we were going was the pilot and the Captain. And they had a life belt drill to tell us what to do if the siren sounded. We had a life belt. Each one of us had a life belt and they were looking out all the time for submarines.

My father wrote a diary and I gave it to my granddaughter. He had very little schooling but he was a wonderful writer and he was a smart man. Well, we enjoyed the voyage and we got there safely. And when we got here my sister had decided to meet us with a cousin of hers and the baby. But she missed us, so the guide put us on the train to Beverly, Mass. from Boston and we got off at Montserrat station. Now Beverly at that time was a beautiful city. It was called a garden city, and I thought it was just beautiful. We didn't know exactly where 60 Colon Street was, but we took a taxi and my mother was quite sick. Well, we got to the house and a neighbor came out and she had the key to the house and she said that my sister would be back again. And my sister had everything ready for us to have a nice dinner. And my uncle, the one who came when he was 18 lived in Beverly, Mass. And, of course, he and his wife and children came up to see us. Well, that night the older people talked all night, they had a lot to catch up with.

And this young cousin I had, the next morning we went for a lovely walk to the Beverly country lanes. Now since then it's all been built up and Beverly isn't as pretty as it used to be. It's deteriorated like lots of cities do, but it was beautiful then. [I’d love to tell her that Beverly, Massachusetts is again a beautiful seaside city!]

My father got work at the United Shoe. I worked as a ladies tailor. I didn't care for that kind of work and finally I got work in the United Shoe. And I worked there for 10 years. And we lived with my mother and father. But my father had to start work as a fireman and work his way up to be an engineer. But it wasn't too long and he started to get sick. Well, we finally found out he had a large cancer in the rectum and he was a very sick man. He had an operation and a colostomy, and was sick a long time. And my mother wasn't a bit well. So for quite a while my mother was upstairs sick and my father was downstairs sick. Well, I had an aunt come during the week to take care of them. And then weekends I stayed home and well... when I met my husband in a church in Salem through a friend, and then my father died. Don would come over all the time to see me and of course we couldn't go anywhere but he would shave my father and we would sit on the porch in the summertime like that, and then my father passed away.”

Click here to see my blog post from July 2009 with a transcription of my great grandfather’s journal during their trip from England to America via Ellis Island http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/07/ellis-island-immigration-journal-john.html

Click here to see Part One of this series on the audio tape by Bertha http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/04/amanuensis-monday-berthas-audio-tape.html


More about the SS Orduna at this link:
http://maritimemoments.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/the-ss-orduna-warrior-troop-ship-and-stage-for-human-drama/ 

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Amanuensis Monday - Bertha’s Audio Tape- Part 5", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 10, 2010, ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/05/amanuensis-monday-berthas-audio-tape_10.html: accessed [access date]). 

Amanuensis Monday- Bertha's Audio Tape Part 4

The Roberts Family, Leeds, England
Bertha, the baby, was born in 1897
so the photo must date from near that year

I read about Amanuensis Monday in Randy Seaver’s blog “GeneaMusings” and Randy read about it on John Newmark’s genealogy blog “TransylvanianDutch”. Amanuensis: A person employed to take dictation or copy manuscripts.

This is a transcription of an audio cassette tape my grandmother, Bertha Louise (Roberts) Wilkinson made in the 1970s. Bertha’s story is continued from the last Amanuensis Monday. In the last post she was reminiscing about her beginning to work at age thirteen as an undernurse, and then as a seamstress. In this episode she begins to tell us about the family’s emigration to Massachusetts in America, but she gets sidetracked and starts to tell us about the extended family in Leeds, Yorkshire, England! These few paragraphs about her aunts and cousins were great genealogical clues.

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“Well, during that time my sister was writing to her cousin. He was in this country. That's another story because when he was learning his trade as a tool maker he went to China with another man and borrowed a lot of money from his father and he wasn't under contract so when after working just a short time he was out of work and had to come home again. And he had this debt to pay back. So he had an uncle in this country and he wrote and asked if he could come out then. Which he did and then he was writing these letters to my sister. Well, they turned out to be more than cousinly letters. And when he came home he came back home to decide whether to stay in England or come back here. Well, he didn't want to stay back there and he asked my sister if she would marry him and come to this country.

At that particular time my father was a Stationary Engineer in a brewery. He had learned his trade from his Dad. He loved his work and he was very good at it. But at that time they had changed managements and he wasn't too happy with the new manager. So he told my sister that if she really liked it over here and if she wrote and told us all about it, he might consider the family coming out. So my sister thought it was very nice in Beverly, Massachusetts, that's where they lived and she sent postal cards and told us that she thought that we would like it over here. So my father decided that perhaps it would be good for my brother and myself and so they started selling the things gradually.

My mother was very proud of her brass fender and the shovel and poker and those things. And I remember every week she would shine them and work with them. Well, of course we had to leave these things behind and sell all of the furniture. But people were very good to us. They told us we could keep them until it was time to come away. I remember the last night we slept with different people. And the people at the church couldn't understand why we would want to come to this country. They felt quite sorry that we were coming.

By the way, when I was about ten years old I visited my Aunt Betsy. She lived in Liverpool. They had a shoe shop, a shoe repair shop. They had about six men working with them and my aunt had learned to make a shoe right form the beginning, right through. And she worked in this shop with her husband. And so when I went to visit with them for a month she didn't know what to do with me really. How to entertain me. She had a little (inaudible)…

I got acquainted with a little girl about my age and this ticket enabled us to go on the River Mersey to different points of interest. The maid would pack our lunch for us in the morning and off we would go and if we wanted to stop at nine. We thought this was fun. I stayed with her for about a month.

Then another time I was a little older than that I went to visit a cousin of my mother's. She lived in Peakirk (sic?) One of the outskirts of Peterborough. Now Peterborough has a beautiful cathedral and my aunt took me there to see it and it was really beautiful. Now Peakirk was a very lovely place in the country. I can close my eyes now and see all those lovely country roads. I called this cousin Aunt Lizzie. She had four children and she had been a teacher and her husband made chicken houses. He would go around to these different places in the country exhibiting these chicken houses. They had a maid and they had a lovely home and a beautiful garden. And I was quite fascinated with the garden because I had lived in such a dirty old city. They had plum trees and currant bushes and in the morning I would go out to pick up the eggs that had been laid. This little girl and I played with each other a lot and I remember there was a greenhouse out there. Not a greenhouse, a summerhouse and it went round and round I thought that was wonderful and we would get up little plays and then this little girl lived nearby, she was a relative of theirs and her Daddy had a wood lumber yard. And one day he took us into the country quite a ways to this long ride. I remember the horse and buggy. We had to go through a stream and the horse went through the stream and we visited a piggery that he had. And there were about three hundred little baby pigs and all of this was new to me and I really enjoyed it.

By the way, back to washday. When mother would wash it was an all day affair. She would get this set pot… the little fire going and the water boiling in the set tub. And had a rubbing board and all that, and the tub. And when she had the clothes ready to hang out to dry she had to put the lines across the street. And I remember the coal man coming along and different vendors and they would say, "Mrs, prop your lines up." And my mother had a long prop and she would prop the lines up high so that coal van could go by. Another thing, oh, and then she'd bring them in, of course, and sometimes there was soot on them because it was such a dirty city. She put the sheets, and folded them very carefully and put them through a mangle, so she didn't have to iron them and it was really an all day affair.

Sometimes my brother and I would take a small wagon and get just a small amount of coal. Buy a small amount of coal from the coal yard that was nearby. And other times she would have him come, have the coal man come by and chute the coal down into the cellar by the hundred weight or whatever it was. Another thing I remember, when she made….. there would be a man come to the door and he had yeast and he had scales. And my mother would get this yeast at the certain amount she wanted. And he would always give me a piece of candy or something. And Mother would rise to make the bread, and have it rise all night and then bake it the next morning.”

Bertha's Tape Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo