Prudence Oliver, Ellis Griffin, Protestant House and more, and how they're all connected ..

Shane Bywaters · Guru

Prudence Oliver, Ellis Griffin, Protestant House and more, and how they're all connected ..

Barb Silvester · Senior Member

An eagle eye and great detective work, Shane! I can't wait to hear more.

Barb

Shane Bywaters · Guru

To any eagle eyes out there, Miriam Shearer is of course on this travel document as discussed above, but I have deliberately left a couple of additional lines below her.......

Of course, I saw Elsie Oliver and thought, hmm, is that one of ours. I also remembered a couple of sentences from Mariam's document 'When I was 19 my two eldest brothers went to Canada. They were 21 and 23 years old. After two years they sent for me to join them. So with friends in 1913 I left home.

So Miriam said she travelled with friends, there is an Oliver practically next to her on the check-in documents, must be quite a coincidence if the Elsie Oliver is not something to do with our Oliver's, surely?.. so given the age on the document of Elsie Oliver, 27 in 1913, I started looking for an Elsie Oliver born about 1885/1886 with a Stonesfield type area connection.

The 1911 census showed up the following:

Name: Elsie Oliver
Age in 1911: 26
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1885
Relation to Head: Servant (Employee)
Gender: Female
Birth Place: Stonesfield
Civil Parish: Wimbledon
County/Island: Surrey
Country: England
Street address: 1 Parkside Avenue, Highcroft, Wimbledon
Marital Status: Single
Occupation: Ladies Maid Domestic

So we have a potential Stonesfield connection, but it does not say where the family connection is.

So, on to the 1901 census:

Name: Elsie Oliver
Age: 16
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1885
Relation to Head: Servant (Employee)
Gender: Female
Birth Place: Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, England
Civil Parish: Brighton
Ecclesiastical parish: Brighton St Peter and West Blatchington St Peter

Again, no link to her parents here.

Then, back to the 1891 census:

Connection made - Elsie, daughter of Augustus and Elizabeth Oliver, who we know is the sister to the Grandmother of Linda (here on the messageboard) and sister of Philip who died in the First World War.

So, is it this Else that is travelling? could it be that these young ladies who did or didn't know they were distantly related, were friends and emigrated together? if you're watching in Linda, what do you think? I know you did say that Elsie emigrated and came back, and indeed we have a picture of Elsie and her brother Jack taken in Canada in the Picture Gallery:

As I will come to tell in a later posting regarding the family we are discussing in this thread, if this is the right Elsie, as well as emigrating together both Miriam and Elsie would also come to share another experience in both their lives, that of loosing a brother to WW1.

Shane

Shane Bywaters · Guru

Miriam's document doesn't include a family tree with names and dates, and indeed doesn't really include many names specifically like her children for example, so it still requires a bit of good old detective work to piece this all together helped but it is helped by a good few clues here and there in the document.

Looking specifically at Miriam, you are right Barb, when you say she emigrated to Canada but came back.

From what I can gather she departed in 1913 and came back in 1922, and got married to Duncan Shearer (who was also born in Stonesfield and emigrated to Canada in 1910) and had their first three children whilst in Canada.

Here is the 1913 travel document, June 20th 1913:

The marriage:

Then a travel document from 1922, Duncan, Miriam and their children Amy, Kathleen and Mabel returning to Stonesfield:

Whilst in Canada they were recorded as part of the 1916 Canadian Census and that confirms (as you said Barb) that they were based in Winnipeg, Manitoba:

I believe Miriam and Duncan then had two more children back in England, Harold and Maisie, so the tree from Duncan and Miriam looks like this if I have everything correct:

On a sadder note, it does appear that Mariam lost her husband and the children lost their father soon after, in 1929, Duncan was aged just 37.

10 January 1929 Stonesfield.
Duncan Shearer
Male
37 Years
Grocer and General Carrier
Pulmonary Tuberculosis
EE Griffin - Brother in Law present at the death Stonesfield

Thanks for now,
Shane

Shane Bywaters · Guru

Thanks for that Barb, I agree, I think there will be many interesting things to discover in this family line!

I had included a picture above of Protestant cottage as it looks now, but below are some fantastic older pictures from the Oxfordshire History Centre Photographic Collection.

There first 2 are circa 1910-1930, so getting on for 100 years ago and very much when Ellis and family were living there.

This next one is circa 1950's and the cottage is showing the signs of Ellis' building skills with much renovation work complete, its looks like a new roof, new windows, new porch and something I know the family were very proud of was the new balustrade wall around the front of the cottage, Miriams notes include 'My father who was a skilled tradesman also build a lovely balustrade wall around the front of the house and when he reached the gateway he also made a cavity in the wall in which he placed a tin box with his name and date, also a young man's name who was helping him, so perhaps in years hence the box may be found, who knows!'

Thanks,
Shane

Barb Silvester · Senior Member

What a wonderful story, Shane. I do hope you'll put more excerpts from Miriam's document on the website. I do remember her, and her sisters Florence and Mabel (but didn't realise they were all sisters). Florence and Mabel both lived in Protestant House in the 1950s. One was married and the other was not. I don't remember which was married nor do I remember which was which, but I recall that one was quite a bit taller than the other. Miriam has an interesting history because she came to Canada (Winnipeg I believe) and at least one of her children was born in Canada, somewhere around 1920 or possibly earlier. She only stayed for a few years and then returned to Stonesfield. I believe Billy Oliver mentions her shop on the Cross in the interview you posted on this website.

I didn't realise that Miriam was a direct descendant of Solomon Oliver. This could be a very interesting branch of the family. I look forward to hearing more.

Barb

Shane Bywaters · Guru

Hi All,

I wanted to start a new thread to capture and share various bits around a new area of the tree that I've come to learn of.

Late last year I was having a conversation with a well known Stonesfield resident Avis Ushaw, who descends from Solomon Oliver down through Albert and Hannah, then Beatrice and Frederick Bartlett. We were talking about how she used to play by the cross and around the old oak tree when she remarked that she believed the cottage on the cross that sits just outside the Church was built by, or at least had 'something' to do with the Olivers, but she didn't know anything more.

Well, I guess I have come to learn that often there is truth and fact behind these remarks and faint memories, and its just a case of getting to those facts.

The cottage in question is called Protestant House, some might say a rather provocative name as it sits just outside the 13th century parish church!. The cottage is perhaps one of the oldest cottages in Stonesfield and is believed to be 17th/18th century, though it has a plaque on the front with a late 19th century date which is probably more to do with some major alterations than it's original build date.

So upon consulting my usual and trusted books and repositories I soon discovered that it was brought by an Ellis Griffin in 1897. Researching a little further I came to learn that Ellis and his siblings (and then indeed his own children) were a family of builders, very well known and highly regarded throughout Oxfordshire.

I then gathered together the children of Ellis looking for an Oliver connection:

Now there are quite a few stories and facts to tell around these folks, and some which I have discovered already will follow later, but alas no immediate Oliver connection.

One or two other documents surfaced from around the time that Ellis died

So I then took the search backwards, to the parents of Ellis, and hey presto, we locate that Ellis is the son of Prudence Oliver and Prudence is the daughter of Solomon Oliver (who of course we know from his transportation to Bermuda) - Oliver connection made!

We know things about Solomon, we also know quite a bit about Solomon's son's Albert (see Fantastic Family Photo article) but very little is know about Prudence.

A few weeks after talking to Avis I was in Stonesfield and passing Protestant Cottage and stopped for a moment to look at the cottage. Lizzie, the current inhabitant must have seen me as she popped out of the house and enquired as to my interest, I explained and then she told me that she had a document by a Miriam Shearer with some history of the house - if you look at the tree diagram above you will see Miriam is Ellis's daughter - you can imagine my delight and I kindly accepted the offer of seeing the document (of course!)

I will post more from that document in time. As I mentioned above we know very little about Prudence, unfortunately Miriam's document doesn't include an awful lot either but I think what it does include probably says a huge amount about Prudence and the type of person she was. Here is an extract:

My Grandfather had heard of a farmer at Stonesfield who wanted a good all round handy young man to work on his farm. His (My Grandfathers) farm had collapsed so he walked all the way, found the farm (a Mr Austin by name) and worked for him for many years. My Grandfather married a Stonesfield girl named Prudence Oliver, who lived near and had a cottage quite close to the farm. My father (whom I loved) told me all this and I loved to listen to the way in which fate took him from the farm to a more prosperous way of life.

There were two or three men who worked as labourers on buildings, but not many real skilled craftsmen. One such man, a Mr Geo Howes was a fine workman and lived quite near my Grandparents.

One winter Mr Howes became very ill, doctors were expensive and had to be paid for. However, a lot of older people had a great knowledge of herbs, which often proved successful as a cure, but poor Mr Howes got worse and developed pneumonia.

My Grandparents were humble but very religious people and were always really willing to lend a hand, so my Grandmother went to see if she could do anything. Seeing how ill the poor man was, she soon got to work making poultices and stayed all night replacing them as they cooled off. After a time the treatment had worked wonders and he gradually got better and by the Spring he walked down the road to see my Grandmother to thank her for what she had done, and what could he pay her. Of course she said 'Nothing at all Mr Howes, to see you about again is payment itself. 'Well' he said 'there is one thing I would like to do, and that is to take one of your boys and apprentice him to my trade on the buildings and I will make a good workman of him'.

My Grandmother thanked him and said 'If you will take my Ellis, he doesn't care much for farm work, and he is a good boy'. So when my father came home and heard this he was so delighted and when Mr Howes was fit he went with him and became a skilled slater and plasterer.

Wow, I don't know about you, but I love that.

Ellis, his brothers and his children would go on to build and work on many buildings in Stonesfield and right across Oxfordshire establishing a very good reputation, and to think it all started with that act of kindness from Prudence I think is quite a special story.

There is and will be more to share on this whole branch, but on that happy note I will end for now.

Thanks,
Shane