RootsChat.Com
Some Special Interests => Travelling People => Topic started by: honey-roma88 on Friday 21 March 08 18:21 GMT (UK)
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Sorry for posting so much lately, I'm just discovering all new things at the moment so I'm on a bit of a roll. :-[
I was wondering if anyone had any family in West London.
I have family from the Old Pye Street/St. Anns Street area (nicknamed The Devil's Acre - bloody cheek! >:( ;D) in Westminster St. John the Evangelist.
" The area around Old Pye Street became known in Victorian times as the Devil’s Acre, with half the population estimated to be criminals. Here pubs acted as meeting places and receiving houses for stolen goods and the district was virtually a no-go area for the police." Victorian Walks http://www.london-footprints.co.uk/wkvictoriaadd.htm
Half my family came from here but they part of the good half obviously. ;)
I know that Romanies and other travellers settled in the Notting Hill slums (the potteries & piggeries) and many of my family settled in Walmer Road and the surrounding areas.
http://worley.org.uk/NOTTING%20DALE.htm
Just wondering if anyone else had family from around these areas. I know there are Coopers on Old Pye Street just from memory. My family were mainly hawkers, pedlars, labourers (bricklaying mainly), masons, general dealers, salt/bird/dog dealers and chair caners. Their names were Vincent, Morgan, Munday, Jones, Smith etc but I am interested in any names who were living in the same area not just my family.
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Riley Boss lived at the Potteries - and reputedly died there in 1850 after getting rather ill cutting his hand skinning a rabbit.
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Riley Boss lived at the Potteries - and reputedly died there in 1850 after getting rather ill cutting his hand skinning a rabbit.
That sounds like a terrible death...I looked up Riley but couldn't find him in Kensington in 1841. Must have been elsewhere and then he went and died before 1851. Is the Boss name a varient of the name Boswell?
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Riley Boss' real name was James Heron/Hearn.
He and his wives travelled Yorkshire/Lincs and East Anglia, but moved down to London not long before he died.
Boss is a variant of Boswell, and also a variant of Hearn/Heron. Another variant of the latter family is the surname Young. Just to confuse everyone.
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Riley Boss' real name was James Heron/Hearn.
He and his wives travelled Yorkshire/Lincs and East Anglia, but moved down to London not long before he died.
Boss is a variant of Boswell, and also a variant of Hearn/Heron. Another variant of the latter family is the surname Young. Just to confuse everyone.
Changing names is the bane of my genealogy life. I'm sure half the time my family is "missing" from the census or records it was just they were using a different name.
I have a great, great grandfather who for some reason used his sister middle name as a surname...???
Riley Boss is a great name though, I might change my name to that. Sounds very imposing, you wouldn't mess with him. ;D
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I think most of the Rom would have agreed with that. They didnt mess with him either.
you might find these two pages interesting:
http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Romano/00000039.htm
(about the Potteries)
http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Romano/00000041.htm
(About Riley Boss)
His two wives, as recorded there, were Shuri and Lura. They were actually Shorensy/Susan Smith who was called Yoki Shuri (Lucky Shuri). His other wife was Lucy Boswell.
He also had a third wife, Charlotte Hammond, but she ran off with Zacky Lee.
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I think most of the Rom would have agreed with that. They didnt mess with him either.
you might find these two pages interesting:
http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Romano/00000039.htm
(about the Potteries)
http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Romano/00000041.htm
(About Riley Boss)
His two wives, as recorded there, were Shuri and Lura. They were actually Shorensy/Susan Smith who was called Yoki Shuri (Lucky Shuri). His other wife was Lucy Boswell.
He also had a third wife, Charlotte Hammond, but she ran off with Zacky Lee.
Thank you :)
He must have made quite an impression on people if so much is known about him from so long ago.
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Charles Booth clearly thought the area was rough too!
http://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/b360/jpg/249.html
monique
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hello,
i was born in Notting dale , the potteries as it was known years ago.. what information do you want ?
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Hello
My family mainly the Morgans who lived at eight different addresses in Walmer Road as well as Latymer Road and other places in the very near area. They were originally from Wiltshire and regularly seemed to travel back an forth especially in the earlier years of the census.
Also the Burgess' and Brays who were pedlars and hawkers and bricklayer's labourers.
They ended up moving to Hammersmith and Fulham (where they married into other Romany families) where my family still live to this day. They worked as masons mainly but also were bird and dog dealers, general labourer, laundresses etc.
I kind of want to know anything you can tell me. ;D I know very little of this particular side of my family and would love to know anything about the area. :)
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check out some of the above links Honey - I think youll find it was a bit...... smelly!
:s
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Hi,
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Hi Andrew and all
My family also lived in Notting Hill and were Romanies/of Romany descent. They were the Hearnes and they lived around the Tobin Street/Hesketh Place area.
My great-great grandmother was Mary Ann 'Granny' Hearne. She married Joseph Hearne but her first husband was Thomas Jones from Surrey. She was actually a Smith before she married him and was a Romany born in Bristol.
Claire
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my friend and i are studying the london gypsy sites at the moment,trying especially to connect our devon penfolds with the london ones.we can find both lots in gurlings yard at battersea in 1891 and 1901 but as yet cant find evidence of the marrying into one another though we are sure they did.we are interested in any of the london travellers though especially williams/milers/lanes/lee/and hearns/penfolds oh and ay others like gess i suppose.anyone any thoughts or info be pleased to hear from you.cathayb
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i have also in my tree mary ann hearn b.1823 and mary ann hearn b.1866.anyconnection to anyone.cathayb
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My gran Florence Rogers was born in 1900 in Latimer Road,but as far as I know she wasn't a gipsy :o
Her brother Bill had a wet fish shop there for many years.
Their dad Herbert was a horsekeeper for the London Omnibus Company.
He grew up in Portland Place, Notting Hill,houses now costs £ millions there :o
Carol
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My family mainly the Morgans who lived at eight different addresses in Walmer Road as well as Latymer Road and other places in the very near area. They were originally from Wiltshire and regularly seemed to travel back an forth especially in the earlier years of the census.
My mother's family lived on Walmer Road, and my great aunt Louisa Hamilton married a Bert Morgan in 1908. There are hazy memories that he had some connection with the fair on Hampstead Heath? Any connections perhaps??
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My family mainly the Morgans who lived at eight different addresses in Walmer Road as well as Latymer Road and other places in the very near area. They were originally from Wiltshire and regularly seemed to travel back an forth especially in the earlier years of the census.
My mother's family lived on Walmer Road, and my great aunt Louisa Hamilton married a Bert Morgan in 1908. There are hazy memories that he had some connection with the fair on Hampstead Heath? Any connections perhaps??
God, sorry I have left this so long. Haven't been on here for ages. I have many many Albert Morgans (seems to be a family name - my great uncle, great grandad, great great grandad and great great great grandad's brother were all called Albert) - so a Bert seems quite a likely name to have been in the family. My Morgans lived on about 10 different places on Walmer Road (laziest travellers ever!) so I will have to look into this. Thank you for replying. :)
Andrew - I thought I had answered you but can't see my reply so I must be imagining it ??? . But I do have Jones who are a complete mystery to me. I know they lived in Westminster after travelling from Somerset in the 1840s and then everyone but my great great great great grandmother Jane disappears. She says she is born in Wells or Bath or Bristol (depending on her mood I suppose). Her father was William Jones (a basket maker) and her siblings were William, Thomas, Elizabeth and Joseph. Her mother was Mary Ann but I have no idea of her surname.
All of the family were described as beggars in 1851 (the only time I find them) when they are living in a lodging house Westminster (presumably in between sites).
Jane married George Munday (a chair caner) and is missing in '41, '51 and '61 but is on every other census.
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Here is Jane Jones (seated) with her daughter Julia Munday (aged 14) before her wedding. Just to see if you can see a family resemblance - apologies for the poor quality.
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hi, honey-roma88. just browsing, why don't you see if the restorers on the photographic restoration can do a cleanup of your photo, they are amazing and your photo looks really interesting. john.
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Just come across this site. I’m not convinced that my great-grandmother, MARTHA SUMMERS, had Gypsy blood in her at all, although I’m told she “had a presence about her” and that she “had the look,” in that her eyes would turn fierce and intense when angered. Martha, it would appear, was quite daunting
She was born in Notting Dale in (I think) 1874 and her father (my great-great-grandfather), Benjamin Summers, was a coachbuilder. The 1881 census noted many Travellers still living in caravans in Notting Dale.
As soon as the sun went down in the winter months it’s reported that this was Carnival Time, when it was “thronged like a fair … in the side streets were side shows including vendors of patent medicine and itinerant musicians.” Dogfights were commonplace, as were early morning bare-knuckle fights, one of which resulted in a local Gypsy being tried for murder.
If Martha had Gypsy blood in her, who knows? But this was the atmosphere my great-grandmother was born into. She had eleven brothers and sisters, their birthdates spanning 22 years, seven older siblings and four younger, but even though my own father spent years studying the family tree and, indeed, wrote two books on genealogy, my great-grandfather’s lineage remains a mystery. It just stops at his own grandparents (my great-great-great-grandfather). We’ve never been able to trace the Summers family further back than that. Certainly, as mentioned, Benjamin Summers, who married a girl from Bethnal Green, was a coachbuilder, and he himself had nine brothers and sisters. His father was also a coachbuilder, but all we know about his father was that he was known as William, and his wife was called Ann. And that’s it.
With eleven brothers and sisters, plus nine uncles and aunts and I can’t imagine how many cousins, there’s no doubt they would have been a formidable family with close links to the indigenous yet itinerant Gypsy composition of the neighbourhood, even more so through Benjamin’s work as a coachbuilder.
By the time my great-grandmother, Martha, was twenty several houses for ‘Ladies of the night’ had opened in the area, charging roughly a shilling from evening until mid-morning, but I’ve a feeling she’d moved a mile or two down the road to Kensal Green by this time, although that area itself was suffering huge social problems of its own at the time and, let’s face it, still is.
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Anybody heard of anybody called Summers from Notting Dale in the late 1880s? My great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Summers, was a coach builder, and my great-grandmother, Martha Summers, was born in (I think) Mary Place in (I think) 1874
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I have not come across the name associated with Travellers myself but according to the celtic travellers the name does appear as sometimes being the surname of Travellers though mainly from Norfolk...SUMMERS (Norfolk) (Gypsies Passing Through),If you could give us a few more details and age range we could perhaps see if we can find other occupations of the family and see if there were any likely Travellers amongst them?
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Martha's maiden name would be helpful and DOB??