Rebecca, Samuel, and Joseph Workman

Rebecca (1835-1877)

Samuel (1837-

Joseph (1834-1879)

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

At the time of the ’41 Census, Rebecca, Samuel, and Joseph were living at Pound House with their parents (or grandparents, in the case of Rebecca) Joseph and Elizabeth, and four of their eight siblings.

I have to assume that Pound House was near Nibley House, circled in blue. The Parish Pound and an adjacent house were recorded there on the 1847 Tithe Map. However, by 1847, Joseph and his family were living either in Pit Court, or behind the Black Horse. It’s impossible to tell where, as the ’51 Census doesn’t give locations in the parish, and there is more than one Joseph Workman to deal with.

Both Joseph and his elder son, Andrew, were masons.

The older children were baptised at St Martins, but (for some reason) the younger ones were baptised at the Tabernacle. Rebecca was the illegitimate daughter of their daughter Hannah.

In the Bristol Mercury of November, 1839, this announcement appears.

I had previously drawn a blank with Hannah, then found this information on the family tree of Werona Armstrong, on Ancestry. The mystery is, to me, why is this marriage of a couple low down on the social scale have a paid advert in the Bristol paper?

This interesting item appears in the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard of July 1837. This is pure conjecture, but it seems that James was a servant to Edward Sheppard, the Uley clothier whose business collapsed spectacularly at the end of the 1830s. Was James, variously employed as a hawker and labourer in the Census’, part of the fallout from this collapse?

James was baptised as James Berry and used this name on his marriage certificate. However, in the censuses, he uses the name James Philpott or Philpot. He was the illegitimate child of Thomas Philpott and Sarah Berry. He and Hannah were married at the Congregational Tabernacle in Dursley. Hannah died in 1892.

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In 1851, Joseph (at 15, an agricultural labourer), Samuel and Rebecca were still living with Joseph and Elizabeth, and their siblings had left home.

In 1856, at St Martins, Samuel married Frances Tanner. In 1861 and 1871, he and Frances are living with their two children in Charfield, and Samuel is employed as a cordwainer, then a bootmaker.

In 1881, Frances, still living in Charfield, as recorded as being married, is working as a bakers assistant. Her daughter Frances is living with her and working as a woollen weaver. Their son, William, has moved to Sheffield and is working as a railway carriage cleaner.

In 1885, Frances, now living in Swansea, marries Thomas Wheeler.

Frances, her mother, died in 1887, and was buried at Charfield. But her address was given as Bridgend.

Oddly enough, in 1881, Samuel, now a plate layer, is recorded as living in Llanguick, Glamorgan, and as a widower.

Ten years later, he is living in Cwmddu, with his second wife, Rosehanah, born in Glamorganshire, and their 3 children.

In 1890, he is imprisoned for being drunk and disorderly, and the records tell us of his appearance.

In 1901, he is recorded as being a coal mine labourer, and living in Llangynwyd with his family. In 1911, he and Rosehannah are living at Bridgend.

I can find no further record of Samuel.

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Joseph had already moved to South Wales by 1861. In 1857, he married Emma Harrald (from Colston, Wiltshire) at Newport. In 1861 they were living in 55 Dolphin Street, Newport, with their two children. Joseph was a wharf labourer. The couple went on to have seven children, before Joseph’s death in 1879.

Joseph went on to work as a railway labourer, then on his probate, was recorded as a wharf foreman.

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Rebecca married John Gasson, a greengrocer, in February 1861 in Southwark, London. Notice that she is illiterate, and gives Joseph as her father.

For the next 20 years, they live in London, first in Lambeth, then in Kensington, but in August 1871, they left the UK with four children, on the steam ship Peruvian, headed for Baltimore.

In the 1877 Census, Rebecca and John (now a bookkeeper) are living in Brooklyn, New York. Rebecca died in later in 1877 and it seems that John married soon after, as he appears on the 1880 Census for Lake, Tennessee, with a second wife, Ella.