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Genealogy

Gunner William George Simmons

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A couple of months ago I was randomly served a Facebook post about the Airspeed Horsa glider. The Horsa was a cheap, single use glider used to deliver troops to Normandy on the 6th and 7th of June: D-Day and beyond. The mission was land behind the defending German troops and support the frontal assault from the Channel. It was called Operation Mallard

I remembered that the family oral history held that my uncle Jack (actually Henry John) Simmons had flown on one. I determined to find out a bit more. The first port of call was a UK.gov website run by the Ministry of Defence. They will search for the records of service personnel and either produce them or refer the applicant to the National Archives at Kew. But there was a small hurdle. They’ll only do that in the case of a documented deceased person. That meant I needed Jack’s death certificate. It wasn’t a real problem, I knew enough about him to order it from the Government Records Office but it would take about a week to arrive.

In the meantime, I remembered that Jack’s younger brother Bill (William George) had also served in the war but I knew even less about his service than Jack’s. He was thought to have been a prisoner of war, possibly in the far East but that was about it. I also remembered that I’d obtained Bill’s death certificate a while ago for a completely different purpose. I had the website address and a scan of the certificate so I made the request. The replay came back surprisingly quickly. They didn’t have his records; they’d been transferred to the National Archives, but here is some advice on how to request them.

So I did. In the mean time, Jack’s DC had arrived so I made the request to the MoD. And again I had to make a second request to Kew.

It took about five or six weeks but yesterday I was emailed a link to scans of some of of Bill’s paperwork. It was scrappy and faded and needed quite a bit of deciphering, but it told me quite a lot. And armed with what I saw I was able to make better searches of archives at Family History sites and what I put together was this.

To put Bill in context slightly, he was the second son of my maternal grandmother, Rhoda Jane Simmons. (née BAILEY) by her first husband, Henry G. Simmons. He was born on the 21st August 1918 in East London.

What follows is informed partly by the various documents I was sent by the National Archives and partly by the historical record. Bills service record puts him in certain places at certain times and the known history of the war enables me to fill in the gaps to a high degree of confidence.

In May 1939, with the possibility of war on the horizon the government passed the Military Training Act. All men of 20 or 21 years of age were required to register for service and most would undergo six months of training. After that they would return to civilian life but be regarded as Militiamen and were liable for recall for the next four years . Bill dutifully did that and on 18th July 1939 he was enlisted as Gunner William George Simmons, 1509475, and assigned to 112 Battery, 19th Searchlight Mobile Depot, part of the Royal Artillery, for training.

On the first of September, of course, Germany invaded Poland and two days later war was declared. All militiamen were immediately transferred to the regular army. At the end of the year, Bill was posted to “8th Searchlight Battery, 2nd Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery.” He deployed to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force on the first of January.


I don’t at the moment have any detailed records of the movements of his unit for the next few months but by the 20th May it had ended up at Frévent in northern France. By this time, the German Fall Gelb offensive had occupied most of the area and the BEF was falling back to Dunkirk. Bill’s unit was either cut off or overrun and was captured. He was reported as a prisoner of war on the 20th.

From there he had a long journey across Europe. He would have been taken first to a local collection point in a barn or field, then probably marched through two or more consolidation camps ending perhaps in a facility near Lille or Valenciennes. The marches were hard with little food and water and quite a few prisoners didn’t survive.

The next step was a rail transfer to a Dulag or transit camp. Given where we know Bill ended up, it was likely to be near Königsberg or perhaps Stettin. That was where they would have been formally processed, given medical checkups and issued a prisoner number. (Bill was 7113)


This would take about a week, after which prisoners were put, again, on trains probably in cattle trucks and transported to occupied Poland. Bill’s destination was Stalag XXA in Toruń. It would have taken three to five days. He probably arrived in early June.

And there he remained for the best part of five years. As far as I’ve been able to determine, conditions were on the poor side of austere. Food was minimal, at least to begin with, although occasionally supplemented with Red Cross parcels. Dramas, such as The Great Escape rather romanticised prison life. It wasn’t much like that. As enlisted men, rather than officers, Bill and the others were required to work. Agricultural labour was common, or railway maintenance, or forestry.

On the other hand, at least they weren’t Russians. Apparently, conditions for Russian prisoners were much worse.

Four and a half years passed.

In January 1945 the writing was on the wall for Germany. The Allies were moving slowly but inexorably eastwards and the Russians were also steadily advancing from the east. A decision was made to abandon the POW camps in Poland. On or around 20th and 21st January the Allied prisoners were marched out in groups of a couple of hundred. The sick and injured were left behind in camp hospitals as were the Russians. Ten days later, Russian forces reached the camp, but most of the British were gone. They were walking across Poland towards Germany in the depths of a Polish winter


If their journey to the camp had been hard, the march west was far, far worse. There was little food and water and they were frequently reduced to scavenging. They slept either in barns or abandoned buildings or in fields and ditches and many froze to death in their sleep. Wikipedia has an overview article on The March. You need a strong stomach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_(1945)

I don’t know exactly what route Bill followed, or what particular privations he personally suffered. What I do know is that the next entry in the summary of his service is that he was “Freed by Allied Forces on the European Western Front,” but no date is given. The date column actually reads “D.N.K.” “Do not know.”

The historical record shows that the majority of prisoners on the march were heading for Stalag II-B or Stalag 357 near Bad Fallingbostel in Lower Saxony. Those camps were liberated by units of the British Army on 16th April. It seems likely that if Bill had reached there, that would be the date of his liberation. So my default assumption would be that he was one of the many who were simply picked up by Allied forces on the road as they advanced. But whenever and however it was, he was now back with the British.

The next entry shows that he was repatriated, probably by Operation Exodus on 11th May. Exodus was a huge airlift carried out in the spring and early summer of 1945 to bring freed POWs home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Exodus_(WWII_operation)

I don’t know what happened to him or what he did once he got home for the next year or so. All I do know is that he was discharged from the army for medical reasons on 25th May 1946. The grounds given were “Flat feet and mild anxiety state.” Conditions that were perfectly understandable for someone who’d been doing heavy labour for four years and marched the best part of a thousand miles through snow.

His discharge notes say that his military conduct had been exemplary. Furthermore he was an “Honest, sober, reliable and trustworthy man, who has rendered very satisfactory service during his time with the colours. Willing, loyal and hardworking” He was awarded the War Medal.

After the war he had, I think, a fairly normal life. He became a quantity surveyor. He married twice, the first time in 1956 to a June Bailey, who was actually his first cousin through his mother’s parents. I don’t know how long that marriage lasted but I don’t recall ever meeting her. Rather late in life in June 1985 he married again to Dorothy Griggs and died of lung cancer before the first year was up, in May 1986. He was living, at the time, out here in Southend.

Bill could be cantankerous and was sometimes hard to get on with. Despite his testimonial as “sober” he became quite a heavy drinker later in life and could be loud and annoyingly opinionated after a few large Bell’s. But finding all this out has slightly softened my attitude. He went through a LOT during his time in captivity and I strongly suspect that the diagnosis of “mild anxiety” that led to his discharge would nowadays be recognised as PTSD. I think he deserves a bit of latitude.

That was the life and service of my uncle Bill Simmons. In a week or so I should have enough information to cobble together a timeline of his elder brother Jack.

Genealogy

A wedding long ago.

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I’ve had this photo hanging around for quite some time. If I’ve ever scanned it before I’ve lost track. Anyway, it showed up the other day and I scanned it again.

It’s the family portrait at my parents’ wedding. It was Saturday 20th November, 1948 at St Mary Magdalen, East Ham.

Wedding of James E. Gillett and Hilda B. Clare. Sat 20th November 1948

Almost everyone in both immediate families is there. Obviously in the centre we see my father, James Edward with his new wife, and my future mother, Hilda Beatrice Clare. On the left as you look are most of the Gillett side, including three of his brothers and his sister.


On the far left, I think, is father’s eldest brother, William. “Uncle Bill” to me. His full name was William Walter Thomas, something I only discovered when I started to root out all the birth, marriage and death certificates. I find it mildly amusing for reasons we’ll come to.


Next to him, the young lad would be his only son, also William. In this case William Arthur. My cousin “Little Bill.” He’s about 12 years old here, having been born in 1936.


Next, and behind Little Bill is my aunt Joyce: Joyce Evelyn Gillett, the baby of the Gillett family and the only woman. 20 years old here.


The slightly older woman next to Joyce is someone I’m not sure about. Probably she’s the wife of one of the brothers but I’ve got no way of knowing which one she might be. If I had to guess I’d lean towards her being Katharine née Russell, uncle Wally’s wife. Bill’s marriage to his wife (and Little Bill’s mother) Marjorie is known to have been a bit, well, rushed (As is possible to see from Little Bill’s rather early arrival, which is another story) and may well not have lasted.


My grandmother is next in line: Agnes Clara née Ryan. Her husband, my grandfather William Alfred Gillett isn’t in this picture. Records show he died in a hospital in Leyton, east London in May the next year so I’m assuming he was too ill to attend the wedding.


Completing the Gillett side we have, probably, my uncles Wally, (Walter Arthur) and Tommy (Thomas Albert) You see, perhaps, why I’m slightly amused. I had an uncle William Walter Thomas, and an uncle Walter, and an uncle Thomas. Seems weird to me.


Missing from this line up is my last uncle John Alfred Gillett. I think I’ve been given a reason for his absence but just now I can’t remember.

You might have noticed that there are three generations of Williams mentioned there. (Karen delights in calling them all the “Willie Gillies”) It wasn’t uncommon in the past for an eldest son to be named for the father. And in fact it goes back further than that. Grandfather William was the eldest son of a William Gillett CRANNAGE (the circumstances of the name change are not clear) and HIS father was supposedly also a William. I say supposedly because while he was named as the father on the birth certificate there’s no evidence he ever had anything to do with his son and could well have just been a name plucked out at random to go on the paperwork. Still, he gave his name. Young Bill, though, broke with tradition and when he married and had a son fifteen years later he named him Andrew.

Getting back to the photo. Behind and to the left of my mother is her brother Arthur Edward Clare (Uncle Ted to me) and next to him at the back, her youngest brother Ron: Ronald George. In the front again we have the father and mother of the bride: Arthur George Clare and Rhoda Jane née Bailey. Arthur was Rhoda’s second husband and the father of Hilda, Ted and Ron. Her previous husband, Henry Simmons had died in 1919 in the Spanish ‘flu epidemic leaving her with the final three siblings we see here. Rhoda Florence, known as Floss, William George and finally Henry John “Jack” Simmons.

The wedding took place during a gap in James’ Merchant Navy service. He’d signed on as a carpenter’s mate with the MV Arawa of New Zealand in 1942. He then spent most of WW II also as a carpenter’s mate on MV Rangitiki before transferring to MV Pipiriki. He was paid off from her in May 1948 and came home. I don’t know what he did with himself, apart from getting married, for the next six months, but three weeks after the wedding he signed on with MV Hertford as ship’s carpenter for what looks to have been her maiden voyage. I have no details of where they went, but they were away for six months. He then did one more voyage lasting until December 1949 before leaving the sea for good.

Genealogy, General, Memoir

Family Photo

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At the funeral of my Auntie June ( neé Tidd) a few months ago her sons, Gary and Jamie, produced a couple of albums of old photos. Mostly they date from the early 1950s. I took charge of one of them and I’ve been slowly scanning the pictures for posterity. Not surprisingly, they mostly feature June, her husband Ron Clare (who passed in 2002) and their friends. Usually on holiday.


But there’s one that sets itself apart. It’s Ron and June with his parents (my grandparents) and ALL the siblings and spouses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them all together before. The scribbled note on the back says it was taken in 1953 or ’54. I suspect it was at their house in Hatherly Gardens in East Ham.

All the family

Front and centre: my maternal grandmother, Rhoda Jane Clare (neé Bailey) Born in London in 1891 and worked as a domestic servant. In 1912 she married a Henry George Simmons and had three children. Henry John known as Jack (1913) Back row, second left. Rhoda Florence–Floss–(1916) Back row, centre and William George, (1918) Front row on the right as you view it.

In 1919, Henry George was carried off by the Spanish ‘flu epidemic. Must have been hard for Nanny Rhoda, but luckily an old friend of Henry’s, Arthur George Clare, seen next to Rhoda on the left, stepped in to help and in May 1922 they married. In December that year, my mother, Hilda Beatrice Clare, far left, was born. Think about that. Take all the time you need.

Later on, they had Arthur Edward (1925) back row, second right, and Ronald George (1931) on the right at the back. Completing the family group we have my dad, Hilda’s husband, James Edward directly behind her, half hidden, and June Iris Tidd, Ron’s wife, in front of him on the right.

I’m absolutely fascinated by this picture. As I said, I’ve never seen all of them together before, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of grandfather Arthur at all. And as he died in 1959, I really remember very little about him.

They’re all gone now, as you might imagine. June was the last living member of her generation of the family. But we do have these and many other photos, and I hope they keep on emerging.

Genealogy, Memoir

The long hard life of Elizabeth Philips

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About twenty five years ago–long before Who Do You Think You Are– I started looking into my family history, just out of curiosity.

Back then, there was no internet, no Ancestry, no electronic indices and the search procedure was rather tedious so it took me quite a while to track down very much at all.

Over the years, though, I built up a patchy but reasonably accurate (I hope) picture of my ascending family tree.

Mostly it’s fairly mundane. The Gilletts and the Clares (my mother’s family)  were mostly “ag labs”–agricultural labourers–in the nineteenth century and even when they migrated to the towns and cities in the late nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries they remained mostly unskilled.

I was, though, oddly fascinated by one particular ancestor and her life.  It took a while to put it together. In fact, I ground to a halt on a bit of a problem and stopped looking for quite some time until about ten years ago  I got to talking to Karen about it and she managed to break the logjam.

But this isn’t the story of how we unearthed it; this the the story we unearthed.

Her name was Elizabeth Philips and she is one of my Great Great Great Grandmothers.

Elizabeth Philips was born to Anne (born Trehearne) and William Philips in Upton on Severn in Worcestershire in 1804, they having married in August the previous year. She was baptised there on the 22nd of July and that’s really all I know about that. There’s some information regarding William and Anne in later life, including a couple more children (Hannah, 1806 and Joseph, 1815) but little else.

Elizabeth didn’t trouble any other official records that I know of until 1835 when she had her second child, Ann, baptised at Saint Martin’s in the city of Worcester.  I have no way at the moment of knowing how she came to leave Upton on Severn to the city.  I know Ann was at least her second child because she  also recorded an older brother, James, in the census of 1841 but I haven’t turned up evidence of his birth or baptism–which would have been sometime around 1829 or 1830. She didn’t mention a father for Ann and it wasn’t until the 11th of December 1838 that she married. Her husband was Edwin Gillett, a plumber and glazier originally from farming stock in Gloucestershire–perhaps tenant farmers, perhaps ag-labs; I haven’t been able to find out.

Was Edwin Ann’s father? I have no idea. He might have been, but there’s no evidence of it. He would have been eighteen or so at the time. He was born to a Charles and Mary Gillett,  in a small Gloucestershire village called Temple Guiting in 1813.

Edwin and Elizabeth did definitely have one child, John, born in October 1839, but he only lived for six months before being carried off by Tuberculosis in the spring of 1840. Edwin, sadly, had gone before, also succumbing to TB in December of 1839.

And so in the first national census, taken in April of 1841, we find Elizabeth, James and Ann living in Water Course Alley in central Worcester.  It seems likely that it was a bit of a slum. My first thought was that, from the name, it was canalside, but  a more or less contemporary map shows   houses on the alley marked as “City Ditch (site of)” Presumably the ditch was built over. . Water Course alley isn’t there  any more of course. It’s now a municipal car park between Queen Street (which does survive, at least in name, from 1841) and the A34, constructed on the course of Silver Street.Watercourse

It must have been a hard life for Elizabeth, what we’d now call a lone parent, faced with bringing up two children once Edwin died. Ann was quite young, only about 6 and James was 12. He was in fact working, as a “twine spinner” which is part of the process of ropemaking but at the age of 12 he couldn’t have been getting paid very much.

Elizabeth  was a “gloveress” which is interesting in itself. According to Amanda Wilkinson, a historian specialising in 19th century female work, in Worcester it was very often a cover for prostitution.

https://19thcenturyhistorian.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/g-is-for-gloveress/

Glove making was skilled and delicate work, but appallingly badly paid and so many gloveresses supplemented their income on the streets. I can’t help wondering if that’s how Elizabeth found herself with two fatherless children by the age of 30.

Incidentally, fans of Terry Pratchett may be noting the similarity to the profession of “seamstress” in Ankh-Morpork. I’m sure it’s not an accident. Sir Terry was very well versed in social history and must have been aware of the realities facing single women in poverty.

She wasn’t single for all that long. In early 1843 she married one Henry Lewis, a widower and (according to the census) neighbour in Water Course Alley. Henry was a cordwainer, or shoemaker, also a highly skilled trade.  Henry and Elizabeth then fade from official records for ten years.  I’ve never managed to find them in the census for 1851 but in 1853 Henry died at the age of 39 (He was probably born  in 1813 although there’s no definite  record I can find) The cause of death was recorded as a “fit of apoplexy brought on by intoxication,” which is alarming,  His place of death was a street called Lowesmoor, only a short distance from Watercourse Alley. Elizabeth, James and Ann were on their own again.

Until  May 1855,  when Ann had a child of her own. And here it gets just a little murky. Ann’s child was registered as William Gillett CRANNAGE. She gave the little boy “Gillett “ as a given name after her mother’s first husband. Does that suggest that Edwin was  in fact her natural father?

William’s father was named as a William Crannage, a “stoker at the gas works” but nowhere is there any record of a marriage between them. Six years later in the census of 1861 young William was living with his mother,  grandmother and uncle James all under the name of Lewis in Pheasant St, again, very near Watercourse Alley. Of William Crannage there is no sign.  There are a handful of candidates appearing in various census records but none  I can definitely pin down as the father,  the Elizabeth was working then as a laundress–possibly a little too old to carry on as a “gloveress”–as was Ann, and James had become a boatman.

In 1862, at the end of August, Ann (as Ann Gillett) married a Seria Gunnell and then with somewhat indecent haste, had a child in early 1863. Make of that what you will. It seems she left Elizabeth’s home but didn’t take William with her, as the 1871 census shows just Elizabeth and William living together: Elizabeth as Elizabeth Lewis, widow and laundress,  and William as William C. Gillett, a labourer.  There is no mention of James; I’ve never found any definite trace of him since. Ann, meanwhile had given Seria three more children.

Elizabeth was quite old by then  and at some point in the next six years she went into the workhouse where she died of “senile decay”–effectively old age–on the 2nd of May 1877. She would have been 73, not a bad age for a working class woman in Victorian England I think. I’d really like one day to have a sight of whatever records of the workhouse survive.

William Gillett/Crannage/Lewis–take your pick; he did–married a local girl, Jane Stevens, in 1878 and had eleven children, one of whom, William Alfred,  was my grandfather. The eldest child was a girl, whom they named Elizabeth Ann. I find it interesting that William honoured his grandmother first.

There is one odd fact. William married Jane under the name of Crannage, that was what was originally on the marriage certificate and in the register,  but all the children were registered as Gilletts and in 1921 their marriage certificate was formally amended to show that the then William Gillett was the William Crannage who had married 43 years previously. Karen has suggested that this was to validate an entitlement to a pension that was going to kick in at the age of seventy.

It leaves me wondering, though. It seems that by strict linear paternity, I’m not really a Gillett at all, but possibly a Crannage. There’s no guarantee that Edwin was even my genetic three-greats grandfather through Elizabeth. Who, in fact, do I think I am?

But this isn’t my story. It’s the long and hard life of Elizabeth Philips. She had three children by at least two different fathers, both of whom she outlived,  and brought up an abandoned grandchild as her own. She was a survivor and in a curious  way, I’m kind of proud of her.