Edward Alsop (1818-1901)
Edward was baptised at St Giles, on 17 Feb 1818, the fourth son of Edward Alsop and Betty (nee Hodgetts). Their abode was shown at that time as ‘Windmill’ and his father’s occupation as miller. On 29 July 1838 FreeREG shows that Edward married Rebecca (often spelled Rebekah) Clift (also known as Parkes) at Christchurch, West Bromwich. Edward was shown as a bachelor and a farmer of Rowley, of full age and Rebecca as a spinster of Rowley, also of full age. Whether Edward was older at baptism than usual I don’t know but with a baptism in 1818, it seems likely that he was only just of full age, which was 21 in those days! Or perhaps he lied… Edward’s father’s occupation was shown as farmer and Samuel Parkes as a Nail Factor.
The man Rebekah names as her father in the marriage entry was Samuel Parkes who was a Nail Factor, business families marrying into other business families again. There were many members of the Clift family living on the Portway/Oldbury side of Rowley and it appears that Rebekah was baptised as the illegitimate daughter of Sarah Clift of Mincing Lane. Rebekah gave her own surname as Clift and the name of her father at her marriage as Samuel Parkes and her mother Sarah appears to have been living with Samuel Parkes in the Club Buildings in 1841 and in Bell End in 1851 when she was shown as his wife but I have not been able to find a marriage between Sarah and Samuel . Rebekah also gave her maiden name as Parkes when the births of her children were registered. Whether Samuel was actually her father is unclear but it appears that she considered him such.
In the 1841 Census, Edward was living at Yew Tree, with Rebecca whose age was shown as 25, so it appears that she was a little older than Edward whose age had been rounded down to 20. Also listed living with them was a daughter Mary (actually registered and baptised as Mary Ann), aged 3 and a son Joseph, aged 6 months. Edward was shown as a Ag Lab. Mary Ann was baptised on 19 October 1838 at St Giles when the abode was given as Windmill and also, apparently, 9 December 1838 when the abode was given as Mincing Lane. This seems very odd. But both entries appear in the parish register, just a few lines apart and there is no other female Alsop born in the area in that period. I suspect, though I cannot be 100% certain, that this may have been a private baptism in October, often performed at home when a baby was in danger of dying. Then, if the baby survived, another ceremony was held a little later to ‘receive the baby into the congregation’ of the church. Joseph was baptised on 14 March 1841 when his parents were living in Yew Tree where Edward was a farmer, confirmed by the 1841 census. And another son Samuel Edward was born in 1844, baptised at St Giles on 14 March 1844, but his mother Rebecca was buried the same day with a note on the burial entry in the register that she had died in childbirth.
Poor Edward’s family life seems to have been badly affected by Rebecca’s death. By the time of the 1851 Census he had moved to Barr Common, Great Barr where he was farming 39 acres with just one labourer sharing the house with him. His daughter Mary Ann appears to be in service as a house servant, aged 12, at a farm in Handsworth, Birmingham. Joseph is living with his maternal grandmother in Bell End, Rowley and Samuel Edward is living with his paternal grandparents at the Mill Farm.
In the 1861 Census Edward was still farming at Barr Common but he had re-married in 1859 in Aston, Birmingham to Eliza Paviour , a widow, nee Billingham. With that maiden surname you will probably not be surprised to hear that Eliza, although she had been living in Aston at the time of her marriage to Edward, gives her place of birth as Rowley and there is a baptism at Park Lane Presbyterian chapel in Cradley in 1814 which may relate to her. However, her age in censuses varies in each census and her estimated year of birth from those ages ranges from 1813 to 1820, with three instances of 1817! Edward and Eliza appear not to have had any children.
Also in this census his son Samuel Edward, by now aged 17, was also living with him.
By 1871 Edward and Eliza were still farming at Barr Common but by 1881 Edward was described as a retired farmer and they had moved to Birmingham Road, Great Barr. Eliza died in 1889 and Edward remained in Great Barr in 1891 and 1901, dying in July 1901 and he was buried at St Margaret’s Great Barr on 27 July 1901. His substantial probate in December 1901 showed that he left more than £7,000 which was a substantial sum in those days.
Edward and Rebekah’s children:
Mary Ann (1838-1859)
As already mentioned above, Mary Ann was baptised twice and was apparently in service in Handsworth in 1851. It was not unusual for girls to go into service so young, brutal as we might find it today, and it appears that her two younger brothers were also separated and being cared for by different grandparents at that time. However, I was, at first, unable to find much trace of Mary Ann after that census.
At least one family tree on Ancestry has Mary Ann recorded as marrying a William Ward in Moxley, Staffordshire in 1864 and subsequently moving to Yorkshire but her father’s name in the FreeREG entry of that marriage record was shown as Henry so definitely not our Mary Ann.
However I did find a death and burial of a Mary Ann Alsop in Great Barr in August 1859. Great Barr was where Mary Ann’s father had moved to following her mother’s death and where he was also buried after his death. This Mary Ann was aged 20 which is the correct age. Bearing in mind that in the 1861 Census Edward’s son Samuel was also living at the farm with his father, it does not seem unlikely that the children, as they grew up, moved to live with their father, especially as Mary Ann could housekeep for him. I have not been able to find Mary Ann in any later censuses and I think that this is our Mary Ann.
Curiously the Civil Registration Death Index through FreeREG shows two entries for the death of Mary Ann Alsop in Walsall RD in this quarter, with the second entry being inserted below the first and in a different handwriting and with the page number being one different – very odd! But the GRO online search couldn’t find either of them so I couldn’t even order them to satisfy my curiosity! However, I did raise a query with the GRO, and some correction has been made and I have now been able to obtain Mary Ann’s Death Certificate.
Not easy to read but this confirms that this Mary Ann was indeed the daughter of Edward Alsop, farmer and that she died of phthisis (tuberculosis), aged 20 on 12 August 1859 at Great Barr. She had been suffering from phthisis for three years.
So two baptisms and two death registrations for this poor girl in her short and hard life.
Joseph 1841-?
Joseph was baptised at St Giles on 14 March 1841, when his parents were living at Yew Tree where Edward was farming. In the 1841 Census his age was given as 6 months and that census was taken on 6 June so presumably he was born sometime in December 1840, though his birth was not registered until the first quarter of 1841. In 1851, aged 9, he was living with his maternal grandmother Sarah Clift/Parkes in Bell End and he was still there in 1861, aged 20 when he was a warehouseman. His widowed grandmother, by then 65, was listed as a shopkeeper. This is not the first time we have found members of the Alsop family keeping a shop in Bell End, one wonders whether the tenancy was passed around the family as others moved on!
But after that, Joseph disappears. Searching for him has been difficult because he had a first cousin also named Joseph Alsop, also born in 1841, son of his father’s older brother Joseph Alsop and Sarah Eliza Dingley and who at one time also lived in Bell End…. Only by looking at the name of the groom’s father in various marriages was I able to establish that none of the marriages of Joseph Alsop in the surrounding area in following period was this Joseph. He was not with his father and brother in Great Barr in 1871 and I can find no other Joseph born in Rowley Regis in 1840/41 in any of the later censuses, all the entries I can find relate to his cousin. I cannot find a death registration for him in the UK nor a burial any where locally.
It occurs to me that Joseph may have emigrated, perhaps after his maternal grandmother died, as he was living with her in the last two censuses but I have not found any specific records of Sarah’s death or of him emigrating. There is no evidence of him living with his father in later life and his only sister died in 1859, so perhaps new adventures appealed. Certainly his brother had emigrated to Australia by the mid-1860s, perhaps they went together or one followed the other.
In the meantime, none of the other trees on Ancestry who have this Joseph on them have any information after 1861 either which probably means that there is no more information to find about him, at least at present.
Samuel Edward (1844-1933)
Samuel was baptised at St Giles on 14 March 1844, the same day that his mother was buried. This left his farmer father with three children, including a new born baby, under the age of six. It seems that he got a lot of help from his family, as the two boys were later living with grandparents, Samuel was with his paternal grandparents Edward and Betty Alsop at the Mill Farm, off Tippity Green, while his father had moved to farm in Great Barr.
By 1861 Samuel was living with his father in Great Barr and I found a newspaper report in the Walsall Free Press and General that, in June 1863, “Samuel Edward Alsop, farmer, Great Barr, pleaded guilty to carting night soil through the streets during prohibited hours . It appeared that, on Friday last, the night soil had been brought from West Bromwich, and that the waggon passed along Bridge Street during prohibited hours. Under the circumstances, the defendant was sentenced to pay a fine of 1 shilling and costs.” Which does not seem to be a very severe punishment – one cannot help thinking that if the smells associated with this work were so unpleasant that they could not be transported through the streets when people were out and about (I presume this was the restriction!), and bearing in mind that it was June and possibly quite warm, the magistrates had some sympathy for poor Samuel!
As mentioned above, Samuel’s father had remarried in March 1859, and his sister Mary Ann had died in August 1859 so perhaps Samuel Edward decided that there was not much to keep him at home. Certainly by 1867 he had been in Victoria, Australia long enough to marry his wife Matilda Blazeley. They appear to have settled in Condenand then Camperdown, Victoria and they had at least six children.
I found this obituary for his son Samuel, which gives some of the story of his father’s early life in Australia.
I was very interested, looking at some of his children on other family trees on Ancestry to see that his son Henry Alsop, born in 1871 in Victoria, was married in Australia and subsequently settled in New Zealand. The reason for my interest? His bride was a Lily Dingley – born in Wolverhampton – another Alsop/Dingley connection and one that showed that the close connectionns between these families had crossed the world, not confined to the Rowley area. And Dennis and Lily were married in the Wesleyan church by a John Adams. And the witnesses at the marriage were Lily’s mother and Grace Rose Adams, presumably related to the Wesleyan Minister. Lily’s parents were Dennis Dingley (born in Titford, Oldbury) and – wait for it… Betsy Alsop (born in Rowley Regis, the daughter of Joseph Alsop and Sarah Eliza Dingley)… So Henry married his second cousin. What a cluster of very familiar Rowley and Blackheath names – I wonder whether there was a mini-Rowley settlement there?! It must be challenging to move to the other side of the world, leaving all your loved ones behind – what could be more natural than for people to settle near to others from the same area and who had the same connections back at home?
Samuel Edward returned at least once to England, sailing back in April 1896, apparently, from passenger lists, alone and he returned to Adelaide arriving back in Albany in November of that year.
He died in July 1933 at Camperdown and is buried there.
Conclusion
So of Edward and Rebekah’s three children, the only definite issue was Samuel Edward’s children in Australia. After Edward’s death in 1901, an advertisement appeared in the Walsall Observer on 17 August, giving details of the auction of the contents of Edward’s house in Birmingham Road, at the behest of the executors of Edward’s Will so it seems likely that there were none of his children in England to take possession.
The Allsopp Genealogy website
In the course of my research on this twig of the Alsop family tree, I found the Allsopp Genealogy website (https://allsoppgenealogy.com/ ), run by Dennis Allsopp in Australia and he is also working on a One Name Study for the Allsopp family. It is an extensive and well documented website and if you have any Alsop connections, you will find it of interest. Dennis has kindly placed a link to this blog on the site as he thinks it may be of interest to some of his members, including this delightful illustration he has created about the Rowley Alsop family.
Whether Dennis has direct links to the Rowley Alsops I do not know but he has noted that Staffordshire was a ‘hotbed for the Allsop name’ and he is continuing to add names to his One Name Study.
I shall continue the story of the Rowley Regis Alsop family in my next piece, with Mary Ann and Rhoda’s stories still to come.
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 