Chapter 14.
Maternal Progenitors.
There is practically no record of the history of individual mothers of the early Daggetts and this applies also to Florence Nelson who married William Daggett III in 1738 at Pickhill. The surname Nelson was fairly widely distributed in Yorkshire, including several at Topcliffe, Wath and Ripon between 1650 and 1800, but we can find no details of the birth or even the death of Florence. It would seem that the later Daggetts who had the name Nelson in their first names derived this from Florence and not, as has sometimes been supposed, from (Horatio Nelson) the popular hero of 1805.
They were . . . . Richard Nelson Daggett born 1789
Richard Nelson Daggett born 1805
Ralph Nelson Daggett born 1867
Ralph Nelson Daggett born 1893
all descended from John ( born 1751 at West Tanfield ), the youngest son of William and Florence.
Jane Dodsworth was born 13th January 1771 at Scorton in the parish of Bo1ton-on-Swale near Catterick in North Yorkshire. Her parents were Thomas and Jane, formerly Metcalfe. Metcalfe and Dodsworth are found all over Yorkshire and are both very well established families.
In the chart on the next page the connection with Bagby near Thirsk is purely conjectural in the absence of more definite information. There were Dodsworths at Thirsk, too.
As well as Jane's family, there was that of Francis Dodsworth of Scorton at the same time. There do not appear to have been any Dodsworths in Bolton-on-Swale before 1758, but the Metcalfes were there quite early in the 18th century. In fact there was a marriage of James Metcalfe who was connected with the Ducketts, themselves nothing to do with the Daggetts!
There are some further details of Jane's brothers and sisters on page 7/2.
Ruth Nowell married Thomas William Daggett I on Christmas Eve 1827 in the church of St.Michael-le-Belfry, York. The witnesses were Jane Lickis, and George Westmorland, two names that we have not met elsewhere.
The surname Nowell occurs from time to time in and around York; for instance, a "Bro.Nowell" was on the register of the members of York Methodists' Circuit in 1822 and in 1845-48. Perhaps he was responsible for introducing Ruth to Thomas William? These registers obligingly supply us with the names of Ruth's parents, Thomas and Charlotte Nowell but these have not been further researched. The date of birth of Ruth has not been found but it is calculated as 1802 from the age of 37 given on her death certificate on 15th April 1839. "Decline" was given as the cause of death a term which may have indicated some consumptive disease. Two months earlier she and William had lost their baby daughter Jane at the age of 18 months through "water in the head". The short lives of Ruth's other children are mentioned on page 8/2.
Ruth was buried on 21st April 1839 in Grave No.12145 near the western entrance to York Cemetery. She was not, of course, of our direct line but is included here for interest.
Alice Potter was Thomas William's second wife. She was born on 13th August 1806 and baptised two days later at Stockton-on-the-Forest. This is a village four miles north-east of York City and was in the ancient Forest of Galtres, an extensive wild tract which was navigated with some difficulty by early travellers. The "lanterns" that were built on top of some of the church towers in York are said to have been erected to help guide such travellers at night-time. Incidentally it was to this Stockton that Jane Daggett, Alice's sister-in-law, moved after marrying Jason Clark in 1836.
Alice's father, John Potter, was described as a farm labourer at the time of her marriage in 1840. This John had married twice. His wife Elizabeth died of "decline" and was buried "in the Chapel Yard" at Stockton in April 1801 at the age of 39.
John's second marriage was to Mary, daughter of "the late Mr.Pearson of Market Weighton cordwainer" (also John) by his wife Alice (née Hodgson) who were married at Stockton-on-the-Forest on 23rd November 1803. Both were resident in the parish. John and Mary Potter had five children, of whom the second was Alice. There were other Pearsons, farmers, in Stockton at that time as well as at least two other Potter families. A John Potter of Fossgate, York, whipmaker in 1816-17 may have come from one of these.
At the time of her marriage in 1840 Alice was 34 and "in service" and her address was Parliament Street, York. The ceremony was witnessed by a Thomas Pearson, perhaps a relative of her mother's. An Alice Potter was a pupil at the Grey Coat School, York, the girls' equivalent of the Blue Coat School which was later attended by John Daggett in the 1850's. In 1823 she "passed out to Mr.Gibson in Petergate" which probably means that she entered Mr.Gibson's employment, perhaps as a servant. Alice Potter was a witness at the marriage of A.Simpson in 1831 at St.Michael's - it is strange that this surname should crop up again - see p.14/2.
We have found no account of Alice's movements between 1847 and the 1871 Census when she was lodging with the Armstrong family at 48 Townend Street, Clifton, York. Her occupation was given as former nurse. The following year on 7th October Alice died at the same address and was buried two days later in York Cemetery in the same grave as Thomas William's first wife Ruth and the infant Thomas William.
Ellen Ann Bennett married John Daggett in St.Jude's Church, St.Pancras on 24th September 1866. Both gave their address as 323 Gray's Inn Road; this is very near King's Cross and St.Pancras Stations and may indicate that they had only recently arrived in London. Ellen's age was 24. Her father was Robert Bennett, a warehouseman and the ceremony was witnessed by Henry Robert Bennett (perhaps her father's full name?) and Elizabeth Manby Bennett. We have no other information about her pedigree; the only other Ellen Ann Bennett recorded as having been born in 1842 was at Leicester in the final quarter of the year. (There was another in late 1844 at Eton.)
Ellen survived her husband until early in 1931, when she died at Edmonton aged 88. This place was either the address of a hospital where she spent her last days or was the official Registration District covering Muswell Hill, where she lived.
Elizabeth Yull was born early in 1872 at St.Pancras. (There also appears to have been another family of the same name in the same district between 1865 and 1875.) Her father was Phillip Francis Yull, a warehouseman. The name Francis crops up again with Cyril, Derek and the second Wilfred. Elizabeth's mother was Adelaide or Adalaide, née Brown. The Yulls came from Gressenhall near East Dereham in Norfolk. They are supposed to have been farmers, possibly of Danish descent. We have not yet followed up this trail.
Adalaide was buried in the family grave at Manor Park Cemetery, a grave which may have been first occupied by her husband Phillip who died before 1892 or by an earlier generation.
Elizabeth or Bessie died in Ilford during the Spring of 1947 before the house at Lake House Road, Wanstead had been rebuilt. She had two sisters. One was Adelaide Mary who, for some reason, became known to us as Aunt Nellie. She married John Cormack in Hackney in 1887 when she was 20. Their son Jack married a Hungarian woman, Volly, about the time of the end of the 1914-18 War. They lived with Jack's widowed mother in Prince's Road, Romford, having previously inhabited the same part of Walthamstow as the Daggetts. They were all frequent visitors, together with Jack's children May and John, to the Wanstead house in the 20's and 30's. John Cormack was in the textile or clothing business and he eventually took Thomas William Daggett, Elizabeth's husband, into partnership.
Bessie's other sister, Flora, was born in 1869. She became a private teacher of music, specialising in the piano and mandoline. She had a house in Orford Road, Walthamstow, at its junction with Third Avenue. She remained unmarried and died in the mid-1920's.
(See chart on next page.)
Memorial card to Adalaide Yull.
Lita Elizabeth Hebdon, my mother, was born at Southwold Road, Clapton on 4th November 1894.Her parents were William John and Marion née Coggin. Their ancestry has been traced to some extent and is shown in Ilene's account of the Hebdon family. William and Marion were first cousins.
When Lita was young the family moved to Pretoria Avenue, Walthamstow, and then to Ravenwood Road. Lita was educated at Mrs.Bellchambers' private school in Fyfield Road where, among other subjects, she was taught a little French - a rare subject in those days.
The spelling Hebdon is much less common than Hebden which is the way that two or three Yorkshire places are spelt now. William Hebdon, a Londoner by birth, had seen extensive military service in India; on returning to England he worked in a clerical capacity in various firms. Marion Coggin came from an East London fimily, and her sister Ellen Elizabeth became the mother of Maud, who married Herbert Foreman.
Ilene's main interests - outside her more humdrum occupation of housewife - are gardening and music. She learnt the rudiments of piano and violin playing as a child and supplemented this with evening classes after the War. In recent years she has taken up the clarinet, which she plays in the Arun Light Orchestra that we formed in 1982.
Stanley Walter Foreman, Ilene's brother, was born at Hoe Street Walthamstow, on 12th January 1915. His upbringing and education ran parallel with his sister's and he worked in London offices before and after the 1939-45 War. Active service in the Army gave him a desire to travel abroad more widely. He went to India on behalf of his firm for 5½ years in 1950 and, after two brief returns to England, he emigrated to Australia. He married Marian Alice Mott in 1957 in Melbourne, having made and developed Marian's acquaintance when they worked together in London.
After one or two ventures in the retail trade, Stanley became postmaster in a village in the Melbourne district before retiring in the late 1970's.
Ilene has drawn up genealogical trees for all the families that have contributed to our present generation and an excerpt from these is included below.
Vera Daisy King was my first wife, whom I married in September 1938. She was born at Francis Road, Leyton in June 1917 and her mother died when she was very young. Vera's father, Frederick King, remarried to Lilian Groombridge by whom he had a son Roy. The family lived next door to mine in Fairlawn Drive, Woodford Green. Frederick was a clerk in the L.N.E.R.Works at Stratford and he predeceased his second wife by many years.
After I left No.2 Hillside Avenue, Woodford Green in 1946 Vera supplemented her income by working in the Jubilee Hospital and then at a local shop. She also took in one or two lodgers, one of whom was Arthur Raistrick, a clerk in the Woodford Income Tax Office. In March 1957 a Divorce was granted to Vera on the grounds that I "had deserted the Petitioner without cause for a period of at least three years immediately preceding the presentation of the petition."
Later the same year Vera and Arthur were married and it was not long before they moved, together with Vera's son Robin, to Bradford. Arthur, as his surname implies, was of Yorkshire origin. Sonia remained in Essex.
Vera's health deteriorated rapidly during the 1970's and she became confined to a wheelchair, finally passing away in Bradford in December 1983.
Ilene Florence Foreman, with whom I had been acquainted all my life, became my second wife on 3rd April 1958, the wedding taking place at South Chingford Congregational Church in Chingford Mount Road. We went off on our short honeymoon by motor-cycle combination in snowy weather to Canterbury.
Ilene came from parents of widely differing backgrounds. Her father Walter Herbert Foreman was of country stock having come to London from the Bury St.Edmunds district of Suffolk, where his father had been employed as coachman on a large estate. Ilene's mother was a Londoner although her grandfather on that side of the family came from Wheatley, near Oxford. Ilene's maternal Grandmother was Ellen Elizabeth Coggin, a sister of my own grandmother Marion Coggin. So my mother Lita Hebdon and Ilene's mother Maud Marion Walter were first cousins and Ilene and I are second cousins. This relationship accounts for our mutual interest in tracing back our joint ancestry via the Coggin family. Reference to the chart on page 14/8 and the following chart will explain this in more detail.
Ilene was born at 11 Shernhall Street, Walthamstow on 3rd September 1916, her parents being Walter Herbert Foreman and Maud Marion Foreman née Walter. She was educated at St.Mary's Schools and then at the South Central in Queen's Road. After working for a short time as cashier in Selfridges in London's Oxford Street and. then in a Walthamstow shop, she was employed in charge of the Cost Office at Halex Ltd.at Highams Park up to the time of our marriage in 1958.
After her mother died in 1948 Ilene continued to live with her father at 78 Marlborough Road, South Chingford. The three of us moved to 51 Addington Road, West Wickham, Kent immediately after our marriage. Herbert Foreman died in Farnborough Hospital on 5th December 1960 after a short illness.
Lita and Wilfred maintained very close contact with her sister Nell and her children after she had married Jack Mankey at Walthamstow in 1907. Lita and Wilfred were married in the same St.Mary's Church on lst July 1915. I was born in February 1917, my sister Joyce three years later. We were brought up at Howard Road, Walthamstow, until we moved to Woodford. After the War Lita and Wilfred remained at Woodford until 1958 when they went to Theydon Bois. Wilfred senior died in 1966 and Lita survived for another nine years. She had always relied very heavily on him for all decisions and so we feared that she would be unable to cope on her own. However, she insisted on remaining at the bungalow in Dukes Avenue - a road with the same name as that in Muswell Hill where Wilfred's Aunts had lived - where she took in a lodger from time to time to help with her income and to provide some company.
She visited her son Wilfred and his wife Ilene at Littlehampton at Christmas 1967 but became seriously ill immediately after arriving. An emergency was declared by our doctor who managed to get Lita into hospital at Chichester. When they left her there Wilfred and Ilene were told to expect the worst during the next 24 hours. But the worst didn't happen and Lita gradually pulled round. She spent a month in hospital after which she was discharged. She returned to Theydon Bois where she carried on for another seven years. Like so many old people she insisted on her independence, but this was quite illusory because she was a constant source of worry and anxiety to all her neighbours, and particularly to Syd and Joyce. She proved quite incapable of properly looking after her everyday needs and several vain attempts were made to get her into a suitable home. For a few months she went into a private home at Upminster, but conditions there were very second-rate and the cost high. It was with very great relief that Joyce managed to arrange for her to go into Sherrill House, Fencepiece Road Chigwell in 1974. This was a Council-run home, very conscientiously handled by the warden and his staff. Lita sold the bungalow and now, although confined to a wheelchair by arthritis, she lived a much happier life than for many a year. Sadly, this was to be for a short time only, for she was rushed off to the King George Hospital, Ilford, during the night of 24yh March 1975 where she died the next day, aged 80.
(See Chart on next page)