As its title suggests, the structure of The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandparents is based around the cohort of direct ancestors who were 4 steps back in the generational lines that have led directly to the two children (who are now adults) in our family.
However, the book’s presentation of some of the lines within the family story goes back much further in time. In other words, I have not restricted my research to the period from the middle years of the 19th Century onwards. Rather, in some cases, the narrative also identifies ancestors in earlier periods, including 16th Century Yorkshire and Hannover and 17th Century Suffolk.
The extracts that follow are drawn from across the full spectrum covered by these different generations.
Extracts:
Arthur Joseph English, 1892-1970.
(Photo from English family records)
In this first extract from The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandparents, I refer to part of the First World War experience in the Royal Navy Reserve (RNR) of Arthur Joseph English (1892-1970) – my wife’s paternal grandfather. Arthur had entered the Merchant Navy as a 15 year-old Ordinary Apprentice and later rose to the rank of Captain. The details of his time in the RNR were contained in the family records passed on by him to his son and my father-in-law, Denis English.
Among the papers were two lengthy articles from The Sunday Times Weekly Review in January 1963 by an author called Don Everitt, respectively entitled “The Astonishing History of the K Boats” and “Ordeal in K13”. These were accompanied by a review of Everitt’s book (The K Boats published by Harrap at 18 shillings) by David Holloway in the Daily Telegraph later the same month: “White Elephants at Sea”. Denis’s file also included a short hand-written note from his father, dated 5 January 1970, which referred to another press cutting (which was not with the papers), though with a caveat – “[It] may be of interest to you, though [I] expect you’re sick of the whole subject”.
All sorts of questions arose. Why had Denis kept these particular press cuttings, which were nearly half a century old? What was “the whole subject”? And what was the family connection to it? As so often with family stories, the immediate reaction was one of regret that Denis was not around to ask in person. There was now a mystery to solve.
The solution to the puzzle emerged from two separate strands of enquiry: the detailed career of Arthur Joseph English and the truly “astonishing” story of the development of Britain’s submarine capability in the First World War.
By November 1916, Arthur was a Lieutenant (Temporary) in the RNR serving on HMS H2. On his discharge from that vessel, in April 1918, his captain reported that he was “a most energetic and efficient navigating officer of his submarine”. Following a period of service on HMS Maidstone, it was what came next for Arthur that draws the two strands of our story together.
Don Everitt’s 1963 book described how, in 1915, the Admiralty secretly laid down a class of submarines of revolutionary design. In response to the German U-boats successes in the early stages of the war – three cruisers were sunk in the English Channel in one particular attack – Britain’s new submersible destroyers were to be the largest, heaviest and fastest submarines in the world. Between August 1916 and May 1918, 17 of these steam-powered vessels were commissioned, designated as the K class.
It is difficult to summarise the full extent of the K class’s deficiencies, though, in his contemporary review of Everitt’s book, Holloway made a good attempt: “K boats had a habit of sinking of their own accord, diving out of control or merely failing to go down when required”.
Modern analysts offer no kinder judgement. In the Winter 2013 edition of Undersea Warfare, the official magazine of the US submarine force, Edward C Whitman stated that “the K boats compiled an almost unbroken record of disaster and death, unredeemed by even a single instance of combat effectiveness”. Among the technical deficiencies, in 1917, were “fuel leaks, explosions, fires, boiler flashbacks, hydraulic failures and groundings”. The article also noted that “loss of depth control was common and nosing into the bottom was a regular occurrence”.
Everitt drew on Admiralty papers and interviews with the (then) surviving participants to catalogue the series of tragedies, disasters and ill-luck that befell the K class of submarines. These included the so-called Battle of May Island in January 1918 (so-called because it took place on the way to fleet exercises, rather than being an actual battle), when two submarines were sunk, three others badly damaged and 105 lives lost.
Back to Arthur English’s wartime records and it is the next entry in his RNR Training Certificate Book that jumps off the page. From October 1918 until May 1919, he was the “navigating officer of a K class submarine (K11)”.
We cannot be sure how much Arthur was aware of the K class’s characteristics as an underwater death-trap when he joined K11. It is reasonable to assume, however, that, among the officers and crew, there would have been some well-informed speculation and insider knowledge about the severe difficulties that the K class had experienced by that stage of the war. Indeed, Undersea Warfare magazine states that “[the] wretched living conditions, coupled with a growing reputation for crew lethality, made the K class unpopular boats to serve in, and morale was a recurring problem”.
The Great War had only a month or so to run when Arthur was first exposed to the dangers of K11. He was not to know that, of course. Moreover, the remaining duration of combat was only partly relevant to Arthur’s survival prospects. The six sinkings within the K class were all due to accidents of various types; only one of the K class ever engaged an enemy vessel (when its torpedo failed to explode on hitting a U-boat) and none of the class’s death toll was attributable to enemy action. As late as 1921, K5 was lost with all hands during fleet exercises and K15 sank at Portsmouth.
When the war started, Arthur Joseph English was 22 years old. In 1918, having survived four years at sea, he was given a position of huge responsibility in a type of vessel that was almost certainly known to have had an appalling track record. What must he have thought? What must his expectations have been? How had he reconciled himself to the increased possibility of death by drowning or fire or asphyxiation?
Of course, there was no question of Arthur turning his back on what was required. He did his duty and this was recognised, in October 1919, with the award of the Mercantile Marine Medal. Nonetheless, one can only wonder at a bravery which – as with that of countless others across the different theatres of the Great War – evokes strong emotions of pride and gratitude, even a century on.
Charles Tyler Wilson (1839-1888).
(Photograph courtesy of Caroline Webber).
In the second extract from The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandparents, I give an example of how an apparently straightforward trawl through Census and marriage records can suggest to the researcher that something is awry. In this case, it yields some dark family secrets.
In the 1861 Census of England and Wales, my great, great grandfather, Charles Tyler Wilson – a 23 year-old “bookseller traveller” – was recorded as married to Emma Wilson (née Goodchild) and living in Cambridge. Ten years later, Charles – by then a warehouseman – and Emma were living in Islington, north London, with their four young children, a “visitor” Mahala Goodchild (who was actually Emma’s mother) and a lodger. So far, so good.
It was in the strange way in which family was reported in the 1881 Census that the puzzles started to emerge. Three of the returns were relevant: Emma Wilson was living in Leicester; one of their sons Charles Herbert Wilson (of the Line of Sixteen) was living with his aunt and uncle (more Goodchilds) in Cheetham, Lancashire; and Charles himself – a medical assistant – was living with his wife Charlotte (sic) in a shared house in Poplar, East London.
Two other questions raised themselves. First, I noted that when Charles Herbert Wilson married the 24 year-old Rosa Mary Whines at the church of St Ann, Tottenham, Middlesex, in March 1888, it stated on the marriage certificate that the groom’s father was “Charles Wilson (deceased), a chemist”. So far so good again, except that the death of Charles Tyler Wilson was recorded in the second quarter of 1888, which was obviously after the wedding date. I could only put this down to a slight delay (from end March to early April) in the registration of his death, which would have had the effect of pushing the date on by one quarter.
The second question related to Charles Tyler Wilson’s occupation: how was it that the 33 year-old warehouseman of the 1871 Census had become the medical assistant in 1881 and the chemist of 1888?
It was at this point that I entered into a very productive e-mail correspondence with an Ancestry contributor, Caroline Webber. She confirmed what I had now strongly suspected – that Charles Tyler Wilson was a bigamist – by reporting his second marriage to Charlotte Amelia Hambling in 1880. I was able to check this by accessing the online record of London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921, in which his status was given as “widower” in November of that year. (Charlotte then became the “wife” in the 1881 Census).
In addition, Ms Webber reported that Charles Tyler Wilson had been made bankrupt as a chemist in 1866. (I later confirmed this by looking at the London Daily News for 1st December 1866, in which the list in the “bankrupts” column included “Charles Tyler Wilson, Cambridge, chemist”. The Cambridge Independent Press of 8th December listed him as a “druggist” and then as a “chemist and druggist” on 9th February 1867, when reporting on the County Court’s “Order of Discharge to the said Bankrupt”). Thus, I concluded, his transition was not from warehouseman to chemist, but the other way round: bankrupt chemist to warehouseman.
The Census and birth/marriage/death (BMD) records allow us to follow the lives of Charles Tyler Wilson’s two wives – Emma Wilson (née Goodchild) and the bigamous Charlotte Amelia Wilson (née Hambling) – after his death in 1888.
By 1891, Emma Wilson was living in a three-room house in Chelsea, where her status was as a 52 year-old widow and her occupation, intriguingly, was “missionary” after which there was added the word “preach” on the Census form. In the 1911 Census, Emma was recorded as living in the household headed by her brother George Pipe Goodchild in Norwich. Her occupation – she was by now 73 years old – was “Bible woman”. After she died in Chelsea later that year, probate was awarded to “Charles Herbert Wilson, cashier, and Alice Maud Yiend (wife of William Yiend)”. The effects left in the will totalled £355 5s. (An aside. William Yiend had been a prominent England rugby player in the 1890s).
Charlotte Amelia Wilson (née Hambling) was given as a 40 year-old in the 1881 Census – the age is unmistakeable – when she was living with Charles Tyler Wilson in Poplar. (She was actually 41, having been born in Rendham, Suffolk, in June 1839). In the subsequent Censuses, her age increased rather slowly. In 1891, she was a 45 year-old lodger (and widow) in a single room in Poplar and she was still resident in the same address ten years later, when she was the head of the household, with two boarders, and now a widow of 51 (sic). The FreeBMD database records that Charlotte Amelia Wilson died in Poplar in 1907 at the age of 56; in fact, she was 11 years older than this. The effects left in her will totalled £83 10s 3d.
Charles Tyler Wilson and Charlotte Amelia Hambling had a daughter in their bigamous marriage: Charlotte Isabel Amelia Hambling was born in Poplar in the third quarter of 1882. (The register of baptisms at the All Saints Church records that Charles’s profession had reverted back to “chemist”). It is another sad story. In the 1891 Census, she is recorded as a resident in the Infant Orphan Asylum in Wanstead, Essex, along with just under 600 other children. (Her father had died by that time though, as noted, her mother was still alive and living in Poplar). The younger Charlotte died in the West Ham district in 1897 at the age of 14.
St. Bartholomäus Kirche, Kirchwalsede, Niedersachsen.
(Photograph taken by Rosie Rigg; courtesy of Ursula Hoppe and the Church Council).
The parents of my maternal grandfather (Alfred Niblett, 1888-1973, born in Osnabrück, Germany) were Charles James Niblett (1851-1927, born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire) and Anna Karoline Borstelmann (1853-1938, born in Elze, Germany). In 2018, my sister Rosie and I visited various places in the Land of Niedersachsen associated with the German branches of the family tree.
In the small town of Elze, to the south of Hannover, we visited die Peter und Paul-Kirche, in which Charles and Anna had married in 1873. It was curiously empty for a Sunday lunchtime, apart from two middle-aged women – the organist and a singer – who held a long practice session, perhaps 40 minutes or so, for the time we were there. The melodic sounds resonated down from the balcony and around the clean white walls of the church’s interior.
Outside, I found the statue of Martin Luther, erected in 1883 on the 400th anniversary of his birth, to be both powerful and moving. The inscription read: Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen! “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen!” This is reputed to have been Luther’s statement to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, at the formal hearing in Worms in 1521. (In his monumental A History of Christianity, published in 2009, Diarmid MacCulloch notes that the phrase was only attributed to Luther after his death by the editor of his collected works).
For the following day, we had hired an excellent local guide to show us around the village of Kirchwalsede and the town of Visselhoevede, including the two beautiful parish churches. At the former, we were able to see some of the original church records. We started by finding the baptism record of Anna Margreta Marquardt – the mother of Anna Karoline Borstelmann’s father, Johann Friedrich Borstelmann, (and my great (x3) grandmother) – in 1772. I felt the lump in my throat as I saw her name on the page: I just about held it together.
I had previously spent some time examining the comprehensive online database of Lutheran church records in Niedersachsen (www.genpluswin-database.de) and was familiar with the long direct family line that goes back through the Marquardt, Lange, Dieckhof and Henke families to the baptism of Harm Henke in 1582. We looked up some of the other original records: the burial of Gert Dieckhof in 1713, the burial of Casten Henke in 1691, and so on.
An unexpected bonus was that the written records contained additional information. Even in the Lutheran church, the type of service was, to some extent, dependent on the amount spent by the worshippers. Hence, the burial of Anna Marie Henke in 1711 was accompanied by “a sermon from the pulpit”. Elsewhere, the causes of death were given: the unfortunate Johann Lange died at the age of 56 three weeks before the Christmas of 1686 when a stone fell on him as he was digging a hole (presumably in the graveyard).
The baptism of Harm Henke in 1582 was, of course, relatively early in the history of the Protestant Church; it had been only two generations earlier that Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Or, to put it another way, it was six years before Philip of Spain sent his Armada into the English Channel. As I looked around the church in Kirchwalsede, its interior neatly decorated with flowers from a recent wedding, I was aware that, even though it had been modified and repaired many times over the centuries, this was still the space in which my great (x9) grandfather had lived and breathed.
And it was now, in a different context to Luther, that here I stood.
The final extract from The Line of Sixteen: Searching for my children’s great, great grandparents is taken from the book’s Preface. It draws on the German connection noted in the previous extract and describes an unusual way in which the family history research has come to my rescue in a tricky social situation.
On Sunday 27th June 2010 – in the Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, South Africa – the England football team was beaten 4-1 by Germany in a last 16 knock-out match of the World Cup. Not just beaten, it has to be said, but overwhelmed and humiliated.
The following morning, I – a disappointed, but not hugely surprised, England football supporter, born and raised in Leeds – entered a room to chair the weekly meeting of my team leaders. I was the member of the Senior Civil Service responsible for advising Ministers on the use of the European Structural Funds made available from the European Union. The regular get-together was so that my colleagues and I could review the progress on the disbursal of funds and discuss any immediate issues that were likely to arise in the week ahead.
The slight difficulty I faced was that the meeting was in Glasgow. I was the Head of the European Structural Funds Division in the Scottish Executive and the officials seated around the table – 7 or 8 in number – were, with one exception (a lady born in Northern Ireland), Scottish.
I’m not sure if there is a word in either Scots or Gaelic for schadenfreude. However, as I took my seat to call the meeting to order, I sensed that my colleagues, having not been wholly supportive of England’s (fairly dismal) efforts during the World Cup campaign – and with Scotland somehow having failed to qualify – were taking a friendly enjoyment from my potential discomfort.
I sat down on my chair, pulling it underneath me and placing my papers on the table in front of me. I looked quickly around the room at the attentive faces of my colleagues, who generally seemed to be attempting to hide their smirks behind some benign smiles. I addressed the group:
“It’s on mornings such as these that I am really grateful to have had a German great grandmother”.
To read more of The Line of Sixteen, order your copy from Amazon or Silverwood Books.
An Ordinary Spectator 