Week 35: Unforgettable #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

“Unforgettable.” Meaning: memorable; incapable of being forgotten; remarkable; and, notable.[1] Looking from the outside at my family tree, no one meets that criteria.[2] Looking from the inside, everyone meets that criteria.

My husband’s third great-grandparents, William and Philis (Chandler) Bryant, lived in the village of Padbury, Buckinghamshire, England, where like most of his neighbors, he worked as an “agricultural laborer.” Two of their seven children emigrated to Nebraska, including my husband’s second great-grandfather. The youngest of the family, Hannah, seems to have had a really tough life and she strikes me as an “unforgettable” person. I am hampered a bit in researching Hannah due to the pandemic because my local Family History Library is closed and the church records for Buckinghamshire can only be accessed there. Nevertheless, there are other records that tell me about Hannah’s life and hers is a story worth telling.

While the parish of Padbury comprises about 2,000 acres, over three-quarters are farms. The village is small consisting of basically a single “Main” street (named that), with some small off-shoots, including “Old End” where the Bryants lived.[3] In 1841, the year after Hannah’s birth, its population was around 696. Today, it has only grown by about 100 people and many homes in the village look much like they would have back in the day.[4] Old End in particular has several 17th-18th century cottages and houses with thatched roofs.[5]

At ten-years-old, Hannah helped the family make ends meet by working as a lace maker. A well-established trade in England, one of the main centers of lacemaking in the East Midlands of England, including Buckinghamshire.[6]“Bobbin” lacemaking can be traced back to before 1600.[7] By 1809, Buckinghamshire lace was referred to as English “Lille” because of its similarities to French lace from Lille, Flanders.[8] Of the 345 females living in Padbury in 1851, eighty-one of them worked as lace makers.[9] By 1900, machine lace dominated the industry and most of the handmade lace industry disappeared.[10] Even during Hannah’s time, lacemaking must not have brought much money into the family as many of the lace makers in Padbury lived in households where the head was a “pauper.”[11]

I next find Hannah in the 1861 census. Still employed as a lace maker, Hannah was living in the Buckingham workhouse with her two-year-old daughter, Agnes.[12] The census shows eighty people of all ages living in the workhouse, exactly half males and half females. Most of the men were elderly, but still working as “Ag Laborers.” The children, fifteen and under were listed as “scholars.” Of the twenty-seven women (ages nineteen and older), eleven worked as lace makers like Hannah. Nine of the women living there were unmarried mothers of small children.[13]

One of seven in the county of Buckinghamshire, the Buckingham Union Workhouse was built in 1838 and designed to accommodate 125 people.[14] Life in a workhouse was highly regimented as the Poor Law Commissioners established daily routines, a uniform, regular worship services, etc.[15] From March to September, the “inmates” rose at six a.m. and began work at seven. They had one hour for dinner and then would resume work until six p.m. In the winter, they were allowed an extra hour to sleep in the morning.[16] For children, like Agnes, the workhouse was required by law to provide at least three hours of schooling each day, but the quality of this education was poor and inconsistent. Also (and unsurprisingly), while girls learned the “Three Rs” their “education” primarily consisted of needlework, knitting, and “domestic employment.”[17]

So how did Hannah wind up at a workhouse? Both of her parents had died within three months of each other two years earlier and I can find only three of her siblings still alive: brother John in Nebraska; sister Elizabeth married with children; and, unmarried sister Fanny living with Elizabeth as their “house servant.”[18] I very much doubt that Hannah and Agnes would have been accepted by her family and, as such were relegated to the workhouse.

Things don’t seem to have improved much for Hannah over the next few years: Agnes likely died and Hannah had two more children out of wedlock – Joseph and William. She married Henry Smith in 1869, but it is unclear to me whether Joseph and William were his sons. Despite being married, in 1871 Hannah and her children Joseph, William, and John (her first child with Henry) again lived at the Buckingham workhouse.[19] Not enumerated with his family, I have not been able to locate Henry in 1871. Instead of lace maker, Hannah worked as a laundress, likely for the workhouse. A bit more crowded than in 1861, the Buckingham workhouse housed fifty-five males and sixty-three females. Again, the most of the woman worked as lace makers.[20]

Hannah and Henry must have reconnected by 1877 because Hannah gave birth to their second child, Annie, in November of that year. I suspect they may have continued to live at the workhouse because Henry died there four years later.[21]

Despite her husband’s death, life may have improved for Hannah by the time I find her in the 1881 census: she was living on “Old End” back in Padbury, with her four children and an aunt, Ann Bryant.[22] Her sons, including eleven-year-old John are all “ag laborers” and she and Aunt Ann made lace. In the next village of Steeple Claydon, an old Padbury neighbor of Hannah’s lived Allen Bandy, his wife Ann and five children. Ann died that same summer and perhaps because they knew each other growing up, Hannah and Allen marry in the fall of 1882.[23]

I feel like Hannah finally achieved some stability in her life. Nine-years later, Allen was an agricultural laborer, but Hannah didn’t need to work anymore and the couple had two children together, Ellen (1883) and George (1884). [24] I haven’t been able to determine what happened to Hannah’s other children so I am hoping that when I can get back to the Family Search Library, I will be able to figure this out.

By the turn of the century, Allen worked as a “cattleman on farm” which I’m guessing was an improvement from mere “ag laborer.”[25] Allen passed away in 1903 and Hannah six years later.[26]

Perhaps Hannah didn’t do anything notable or notorious in her life, but she survived sixty-nine years during a time that was not terribly hospitable to poor women. Truly unforgettable.

[1] Merriam-Webster online dictionary (http://www.merriam-webster.com : accessed 12 September 2020), “unforgettable.”

[2] With the notable exception of Abraham Lincoln who may be my husband’s fourth cousin, four times removed.

[3] “Parishes: Padbury,” A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4, William Page. Ed. (London: Victoria County History, 1927), 209-215; digital publication, British History Online (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol4/pp209-215 : accessed 17 September 2020).

[4] “Padbury,” City Population (https://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/southeastengland/buckinghamshire/E34003795__padbury/ : accessed 15 September 2020).

[5] “Parishes: Padbury.”

[6] “Buckinghamshire lace,” Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/art/Buckinghamshire-lace

: accessed 26 September 2020).

[7] “Britain: Honiton, Bucks Point, Bedfordshire, Torchon,” The Lace Guild (https://web.archive.org/web/20140713035959/http://www.laceguild.org/craft/britain.html#bucks :accessed 15 September 2020).

[8] “Buckinghamshire lace,” Britannica.

[9] 1851 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Padbury, folio 287, 5-38; PRO HO 107/193633; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020). “GB Historical GIS/University of Portsmouth, Padbury AP/CP through time/Population Statistics/Males and Females,” A Vision of Britain Through Time (https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10217970/cube/GENDER : accessed 15 September 2020).

[10] “Britain: Honiton, Bucks Point, Bedfordshire, Torchon,” The Lace Guild.

[11] 1851 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Padbury.

[12] 1861 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Buckingham, folio 12, 18, Hannah and Agnes Bryant in Buckingham Union Workhouse; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[13] Ibid.

[14] “Buckingham, Buckinghamshire,” The Workhouse (http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Buckingham/ : accessed 15 September 2020). This is a terrific website. He has a lot of great pictures of the Buckingham Workhouse, but restricts their use, so I cannot show you them. Sadly, he has slapped a lot of copyright notices on many of the images on his site that are clearly not his original work.

[15] “Workhouse Life,” The Workhouse.

[16] Ibid.

[17] “Education in the Workhouse,” The Workhouse.

[18] FreeBMD, “England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915,” entry for William Bryant, Buckingham, vol. 3a, p. 332 (Jul-Aug-Sep, 1859); digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020). FreeBMD, “England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915,” entry for Phillis Bryant, Buckingham, vol. 3a, p. 332 (Jul-Aug-Sep, 1859); digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020). 1861 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Padbury, folio 128:3, abode 12, Thomas and Elizabeth Gibbs, children, and Fanny Briant; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020). U.S. census, Douglas County, Nebraska Territory, p. 582, John Bryant; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[19] 1871 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Buckingham, folio 12, lines 21-21, Hannah, Joseph, William and John Smith in Buckingham Union Workhouse; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[20] Ibid.

[21] FreeREG (https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5817ae2fe93790ec7543b192/henry-smith-burial-buckinghamshire-leckhampstead-1881-01-18?locale=en : accessed 15 September 2020), parish register burial entry for Henry Smith, 18 January 1181, Leckhampstead, Buckinghamshire; citing St. Mary the Virgin, reg. no. 660, file line no. 991.

[22] 1881 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Padbury, folio 131:18, abode 112, Hannah Smith; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[23] FreeBMD, “England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915,” entry for Allen Bandy, Buckingham, vol. 3a, p. 1017; digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[24] 1891 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Steeple Claydon, folio 76:6, abode 43, Allen Bandy; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[25] 1901 census of England, Buckinghamshire, Steeple Claydon, folio 91:9, abode 69, Allen Bandy; digital images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

[26] FreeBMD, “England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915,” entry for Hannah Bandy, Aylesbury, vol. 3a, p. 386 (October, November, December 1909); digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020). FreeBMD, “England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915,” entry for Allen Bandy, Aylesbury, vol. 3a, p. 437 (April, May, June 1903); digital image, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 15 September 2020).

The Buckingham Workhouse was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. “Workhouse, Buckingham,” GilbertScott.org (https://gilbertscott.org/workhouse-buckingham/ : accessed 16 September 2020).

“Padbury, cottage in Lower Way,” taken 2006, copyright by Kevin Quick (http://www.countyviews.com/bucks/vipages2/padbury7.html)