Part 16: A question resolved!

Those of you who have followed this Blog from the beginning will remember the tragic story of Jane Swinfield. My great-great-aunt, who was baptised at Earl Shilton in 1829, was convicted at the Leicester Quarter Sessions of January 1841 for stealing her mistress’s purse containing money, a gold ring and a pair of scissors. An account of her sentence can now be read through the very recent release of the digitised images of many 19^th century newspapers from the British Newspaper Archive. Both the Leicester Mercury and Chronicle ran the story. We now know that Charlotte Bugg was the victim of the larceny.

Jane was sent away to Millbank Prison, Westminster, in late May where she was still awaiting transportation for seven years at the time of the 1841 census. Due to the intercession of a charitable prison visitor, who petitioned on her behalf, she was pardoned and released in very early August. What became of her?

No sign can be found of Jane in the 1851 census using any clever searches in the national indexes which are available from any of the major providers and there is no “good” marriage for her. The only possible record for her was a death registered in late 1854 in the Windsor district of Berkshire. Was that her? I have now obtained a copy and her fate is known.

Poor Jane died on 23^rd November in the Union Workhouse aged just 26. It would be interesting to know when she was admitted as she was certainly not there in April 1851 at census time. Of course, no records of that institution survive from that date. The cause of her demise was recorded as phthisis, otherwise TB. It seems that she finally succumbed to the physical weakness which had been the reason for her early release from prison. Her “unsound lungs” gave up in the early winter of 1854. Perhaps she would have been better served by being sent to the other side of the World to join her distant cousins in sunny New South Wales!

Part 15: The end of an eventful life

William and Elizabeth Swinfield, my great-grandparents, married in Aldershot church, Hampshire, just before the end of his lengthy service of nearly 20 years in the 60^th Rifles. He had now to settled down to life as a civilian which must have been a very different experience to that as an active soldier.

          1881 census of the Staff Hotel

By 1881, we find them at the Staff Hotel, Camberley, Surrey. They lived in a cottage adjacent to his place of work. He described himself as a gentleman’s servant and pensioner of 40. His wife was recorded as “Edith”. By then, she had produced two sons. The elder, William Thomas, was then 2. The second, Joseph, was born and died in 1880. Was this occasioned by the diseases contracted by the father during his army career?

From "The Story of Camberley 1798-1992" by Gordon Wellard  

1891 census of Camberley

On 27^th March 1883, their last child, my grandfather Arthur was born at Barossa Common, Frimley, not far from the Staff Hotel. William was still earning his living as a servant. They were still in that area on the night of the 1891 census living on the London Road, what is now the A30, that very old coaching road which runs through Camberley from the West Country. William was 50 and a domestic servant and Elizabeth worked as a dressmaker. There two surviving sons were with them.

By the time of the 1901 enumeration, a double tragedy had befallen William! Firstly, his oldest son, William Thomas, then aged about 20, was severely wounded at the Battle of Glencoe, Natal, on 20^th October 1899 during the Boer War, whilst serving with the 1st Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He died two days later. He was one of the many casualties suffered during that engagement.

Secondly, just over a year later, on 21^st November 1900, his wife died in the Farnham Union Workhouse in Surrey . She was just 55 and died of “morbus cordis”. William was then a gardener of Frimley. It appears that this double loss had a profound effect on William.

By the time of the 1901 census, William and his sole surviving son had moved back to Earl Shilton in Leicestershire where they were lodging with his married sister, Sarah Raven. However, shortly afterwards he was on his own as Arthur left home.

In 1905, William had returned to Camberley where he had spent most of his married life. In very early January, he was found homeless by an acquaintance, Albert Smith, who took him back to spend the night at his home at 55 Park Street.  Albert's mother was awakened in the night by a noise and found William lying dead at the foot of the stairs. The report of the inquest in the Camberley News describes how William had fallen and broken his neck.

So ended the very dramatic and sad life of my favourite ancestor.      

Part 14: A life in the Queen's service

We left my great-grandfather, William Swinfield, in Part 5. His father had left home at least two years before his birth in 1841 at Earl Shilton. As we know, Thomas, was to settle for a while in Calverton, Nottinghamshire, where he became a Chartist, fathered a child, and emigrated to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with his new “wife” and daughter in 1854. Our recent visit to America has resolved the story of his life there and his final resting place.

Sarah Swinfield nee Hewitt, his estranged wife, now lived with Thomas Brown, the life-long bachelor, who would be her partner for many years until she died in 1862. Young William had left home too by 1851 when he was a 9 year-old coal miner at Bagworth. What did he do the rest of his life?

We find him in 1861 serving with the army as a private soldier of just 20. He was stationed at Winchester Barracks. His “soldier’s documents” record that he enlisted at Leicester into the 60^th of Royal Rifles on 24^th or 25^th August 1859 aged just 18. He was just over 5 foot 5 inches tall with straight light brown hair and blue eyes. He was immediately sent to Winchester where he was treated in the middle of 1860 for that most common of soldier’s ailments, gonorrhoea, before his 20^th birthday. After his first 4 years, all spent in England, he was posted to the East Indies where he spent time, more than 8 years in all, at Meerut, Calcutta, Madras, Ramandroog, and finally Bellary. He suffered from a range of diseases inflicted by the climate, a blow from a cricket ball causing “contusis pedis” and completed the set of STDs in 1868 when he was treated for syphilis! The MOs gave him a wide range of treatments which included tonics, iodine bandages, purgatives and leeches.

He returned via Aden to Shornecliffe and spent a further 8 years at Chatham, Winchester, Aldershot before being discharged, after a total of 19 years and 4 days in the Queen’s service, on 25^th November 1878 at Colchester. His name appeared 20 times in the regimental defaulters' book and he was once tried by court martial. He avoided any wounds and was generally a good soldier.

Just before he was discharged, William finally married at the age of 36. The ceremony took place on 14th Novembe 1877 in Aldershot parish church, Hampshire. His bride, who was to become my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Postlethwaite, was 30 and the daughter of a postman. William did acknowledge Thomas Swinfield as his father. Surprisingly, after all his array of illnesses, the couple were to have three boys including Arthur, my grandfather.

More of his later life is still to come.

Part 13: The mystery of Family 4!

As related in Parts 7 & 8 of these accounts of the Swinfield family and its branches, Families 3 and 4, which settled in NSW, Australia, descended from two brothers from Wolvey in Warwickshire, born in the first decade of the 19^th century. William and John emigrated in 1848 and 1853 respectively with their young families. Our Australian cousins, their descendants, live there today.

1841 census of Mancetter

John’s eldest child, Edward Swinfield, baptised in 1834 at Mancetter church, Warwickshire, was with his family at the time of the 1841 census but was not living with them just before they left these shores. He did not go with his family for some reason and the £10 advance paid for his travel was refunded in 1856 on the grounds that he was “unable to emigrate”. What became of him when he was stayed behind? It is clear that he married Emily Rowley on 13^th December 1866 at Atherstone. What happened to him then?  Thereby hangs another mystery!

Marriage of Edward Swinfield in 1866

Six current members of the Swinfield Genealogy & DNAGroup can trace their immediate ancestry back to George Alfred Swinfield and Naomi Henshaw who married in Leicester Register Office on 30^th December 1916. The groom was then serving as a driver in the army during WWI and living in Fulham, London. He recorded his father as Edward Swinfield, boot repairer. The witnesses to the ceremony were Frederick Alexander and Florence Gertrude Swinfield. It would appear that these were his brother and sister-in-law although no reference to their union can be found in the national marriage indexes for England and Wales. Frederick Alexander died in 1968, aged 80, and Florence in 1972, both in the Leicester district. She was born on 1^st July 1889.

George Alfred was born, according to the informant of his death in 1970, on 1^st January 1888. Were he and Frederick twins? If so, neither of their births appears in the indexes of that time. Several members of the family have been told the story that there were twins, that their original surname was Higginbotham and that they had been “adopted” by the Swinfields. Amazingly, neither boy was registered under any variant of that surname either and they cannot be found in any census taken from 1891 to 1911.

Edward Swinfield, who George Alfred acknowledged as his father, does not appear in any census after 1841 and there is no death for him. Where was he before and after his marriage in 1866? Emily, his wife, can be traced through each of the censuses of 1881 to 1911, continually stating that she was a widow. What had become of her husband? If he was dead by as early as 1881, how could he be the father of the twins born in 1888?  Emily did have two children who lived with her in 1881. Both had been born at St Kitts in the West Indies. Why had she been there shortly after her marriage? What had taken Edward there and did he return? The marriage record of 1866 would appear to show him to be a planter. Was that what took him to the other side of the Atlantic?



1891 census for Emily Swinfield and her two children

Are the English members of Family 4, like myself, not “proper” Swinfields, bearing the surname but not having ancestors who were true descendants of whoever assumed the name way back in the past? Genetic tests may again answer many of these unresolved questions! 

Part 12: Thomas settles down?

1191 Islington Street from the railway line
and off Barberry Lane

We have now returned from our three week and 2,500 mile drive around NE America and into Canada. Having found and visited both the house and grave of Thomas Swinfield, I now had a better idea of his life in Portsmouth during the 40 years that he lived in that delightful town.

The deeds of Rockingham County show that he had purchased the land, where the houses on Islington Street still stand, in the early 1870s. The other boundaries of the site, set out in a document of 1874, were what is now Barberry Lane to the east and the Concord & Portsmouth Railway (later the Boston & Maine Railway) to the rear. There he built the first house which he was to leave to his daughter and grandson in his will. The second house constructed on the land was to become the residence of William Warburton and his family by 1920. It is a pity that no-one was at home at 1207 Islington when we visited. I must contact the current residents to see if they can send me images of its interior to see where he lived. The lady, who now lives at no. 1191, knew little about its early history and no. 1205 is now occupied by high school students.

City directories record Thomas G. Swinfield as a pedlar at what was then numbered 71 Islington from as early as 1861. He later appeared consistently as a resident in that road, sometimes called “Creek” as that is where it leads, working as a farmer to his death in 1893. I still have no idea what became of his “second” wife Amy. 

Divorce of Thomas
and Chrlotte Swinfield 1887

By 1886, his “third” marriage appears to have broken down as his wife Charlotte was boarding away from the marital home at 48 Pleasant Street near the middle of town. In fact, Thomas divorced her in January 1887 on the grounds of “abandonment” (the pot calling the kettle black?). This discovery was made in the NEHGS Library in Boston. Sincere thanks to David Dearborn for his tour of its extensive collections.    

1900 census of Pleasant Street, Portsmouth, showing Charlotte Fraser

Charlotte Swinfield was no longer listed after 1892, reverting to her previous surname of Fraser. At the 1900 census, she was 85 and still lived at that address with her son by her first marriage and her daughter-in-law. They had left Canada in 1850.  

Morley Button Factory,
Islington Street, Portsmouth

Whilst buying flowers to put on the grave, at a florist just off Islington Street, we were intrigued by a large building now converted into a studio for artists. On enquiring what it had been used for, we were told that it was the old button factory. Amazingly, both William John and Edwin Swinfield Warburton, Thomas’s grandsons, worked at Morley Button Factory and William died on the premises in 1930!  Another fortuitous and great discovery!

Part 11: Visit to New Hampshire

Thomas Swinfield had died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1893. He was apparently buried in Proprietor’s Cemetery along with his daughter, Elizabeth Warburton (1839-1925). Despite all my efforts to contact someone at South Street Cemetery, of which Proprietor’s is just one of five enormous parts, in advance of a trip to New England (as part of a 60^th Birthday extended holiday to NE America and Canada), no-one answered the phone or replied to the messages which I left.

St John's Episcopal Church

On arrival, we went to the Portsmouth Public Library. The man who showed us around the “Special Collections” room was very helpful and we had the resources to ourselves. They hold an index to those buried at South Street which links the inscriptions to a map showing where the graves are. Not only did we locate the Swinfield/Warburton plot but also the burial of Thomas’s “wife”, Maria, Elizabeth’s mother, who had emigrated with him in 1854. She died as early as 31^st October 1865, stated to be aged just 60. This was recorded in the records of St John’s Church in Chapel Street. She died just prior to his marriage to his second wife, Amy, in 1866. Both Frances and William John Warburton, her grandchildren, were married in that church in 1882 and 1890. 

We were then able to visit Proprietor’s Cemetery and go straight to the grave. What an amazing feeling it was for both Di and me to stand by the stone which commemorates Thomas’s passing and where he was laid to rest after such an adventurous life! He was later joined by his daughter and her husband as well as his grandson and granddaughter. It seems that Edwin Swinfield Warburton commissioned the inscription about 1926 leaving room for his death year to be added when he finally joined them. That was not done! The other grandson, William John Warburton (1864-1930), is buried with his family elsewhere in the Harmony Grove area of South Street. He was the great-grandfather of my newly found 3^rd cousin, once removed, who lives in South Carolina. It seems that someone still tends the Warburton/Swinfield grave as fresh pelargoniums have recently been planted. I have left a card asking them to contact me the next time they visit. I wonder who they are?

1207 & 1205 Islington Street

We even visited the house where Thomas died in 1893 at 1207 Islington Street. It had been divided into two parts, as required in his will. The eastern half, now 1205, was left to his grandson. Another house, 1191 Islington, was built on the same plot around the time of WWI, where William Warburton lived until his death in 1930.  

1191 Islington Street

It is very strange and moving that we have now found out so much about Thomas after more than 30 years of searching. It was very hard to leave Portsmouth, which is a lovely place to live!  

Part 10: Cousins in America!

Elizabeth Swinfield Cooper, born at 10.15 am on Tuesday, 28^th February 1839, at Calverton, as the illegitimate daughter of Thomas Swinfield and Maria Cooper, was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the time of the 1860 census. She was the newly-married wife of John Warburton, a painter. What happened to her and do we have American cousins?

Marriage of 1859 

The card index of registration records for New Hampshire is searchable through the FamilySearch website of the Mormon Church. Elizabeth Swinfield had married John on 27^th August 1859 in the Middle Street Baptist Church, Court Street, when she was 20. It is believed, from all the records found for her, many unearthed by genealogist, Sandi Hewlett of Philadelphia, that she produced at least four children. They were Frances, born in 1862 at Portsmouth; William John born 6^th December 1864 somewhere in the state of Massachussetts; Annie who was born and died in 1865/6 at Philadelphia and Edward or Edwin on 28^th October 1866 in Boston.   




By 1870, when the census was taken, this couple and their three young children were back in Philadelphia. John was working as a French polisher. 

1880 census of Portsmouth, NH

1886 Portsmouth City Directory 

In 1880, Elizabeth was a young widow of just 40, living with Fannie, William and Edward at 9 Bartlett Street, back in Portsmouth. The 1886 Portsmouth city directory places them in residence at Islington Road/Street, the house which Thomas Swinfield left in his will, dated 1891, to his daughter and his grandson, William. Interestingly, although Frances Swinfield Jameson did not die until 1923 and the other son, Edwin/Edward, lived until 1927, neither was mentioned by their grandfather.

Elizabeth remained a widow throughout the remainder of her long life, living at Milburn Street in 1900 and Islington Street in 1910 and 1920. She was at 1207 and her son at 1191 and were these the two halves of the same building as bequeathed by Thomas? Elizabeth finally died at the age of 86 on 23^rd January 1925 of a brain haemorrhage. Her obituary was published in the Portsmouth Herald on that same day. She too was laid to rest in Proprietor’s Cemetery, possibly with her father.

1910 census of Islington Street, Portsmouth, for the Warburton and Davis families

Obituary of Elizabeth Swinfield Warburton,
died 23 January 1925, in The Portsmouth Herald

Frances Jameson had a daughter, Josephine, who married Charles Edwin Davis. They lived with the Warburtons in 1910. After the death of her husband, she moved to California where both she and her own daughter died. It is not yet known if there are any living descendants of hers. 

William John Warburton (1864-1930), the executor of Thomas’s will of 1894, had three sons. Only one, John Edwin (1891-1964) had issue. Just this week, we have, through the social network which is Facebook, made contact with his granddaughter in South Carolina. 


My sons have an American 4^th  cousin!