Zipporah and Mary Workman

Zipporah (1836-1918)

Mary (1834-1846)

In 1841, Zipporah and her sister were living in Gazards Row, as shown on the 1847 Tithe Map below. Their house was number 94. They rented it, as did all the other inhabitants of the Row, from Sarah Poulton.

Map reproduced by the kind permission of Geoff Gwatkin

Their father Robert was an agricultural labourer, and their mother Sarah (nee Earl) a woollen weaver.

Both Zipporah and Mary, as well as their other siblings, were baptised at North Nibley Tabernacle.

Also in the household was ten-year-old Anne (the only sibling who I can’t find a burial record for), and William Earl, a lodger.

Three siblings, an earlier Zipporah, Joseph, and Robert, appear to have died young, as I can find no further records than their baptisms. Sadly, Mary died in 1846, aged only 7.

In 1851 Robert, Sarah and Zipporah were living in Nibley. The 15-year-old Zipporah was a woollen weaver, like her mother.

Six years later, in 1857, Zipporah married George Gabb, a shepherd (who was, variously, and agricultural labourer and a farm servant) and, in ’61, they were living in Pit Court, Nibley, with their young son, also called George. They had another son, Arthur, in 1864.

It can be seen that both George and Zipporah were illiterate, signing with their mark. Zipporah’s sister Ann, who had married Henry Gabb in 1849, was a witness, and both she and her husband were illiterate as well.

Zipporah and George lived the rest of their lives in the Warren Hill area of the parish. In 1881, Jane Augusta Watts, born 1869 in Berkeley, and recorded as George’s step daughter, was living with them, working as a parlour maid. Ten years later, she was recorded as being George’s daughter, and given his surname.

George died in 1901, and was buried in St Martins Churchyard.

I can’t find Zipporah on the ’01 Census, but, in 1911, she is visiting Ephraim Savage with her granddaughter Olive, in Hinton, near Berkeley. Zipporah died in 1918, aged 82.

In 1893, Jane Augusta (now Jane Augusta Watts) married Cecil William Poole, a labourer, in St Martins. She left the space for her father blank. In 1871, she had been living at Crossways (between Berkeley and Nibley) with her grandparents, Henry and Eliza, and their unmarried daughter Fanny.