Gertrude Ayton, actress of some renown?

[MonicaL]

HC, I am shocked that you have come across this post - how amazing! Welcome to RootsChat  Your name came up in some searches already off line from here and RM and I discussed how we could possibly get in touch with you....and here you are!

I think from other info, RM was going away for a couple of weeks (think not due back from somewhere lovely in Canada until first week of April). Blown away undoubtedly RM will be (as I am) 

Monica

[RedMystic]

Good morning - or I should say GREAT morning!

It is fabulous to hear from you Howard. Welcome to RootsChat.

As Monica indicated, we knew you existed but didn't know how to make contact. Your Gertrude has provided quite a lot of fun.

(BTW: Since first posting this inquiry, I've come across a few "cousins" who are also doing family history research & interested in knowing more about your branch. We're a far flung bunch: western Canada, eastern Canada, Glasgow, the southern USA, and Israel. )

You need to post on RootsChat 2 more times before you and I can send personal messages to one another. If you're comfortable with it, perhaps you can shed some light on Gertrude.

From your comment about her being great fun, it sounds like you had a relationship with her. It might be silly but it makes me happy to know that, while the family came apart, she retained contact with her grandchildren.

Josh, who posted on this thread 4 or 5 posts ago, is aware of what appears to be Gertrude's 1/2 brother (Ayton Jacob), but there seems to have been no knowledge of Gertrude in that side of the family. I've run across that development in another on-line tree as well. Was she estranged from her birth family?

I'd love to hear more about her; performance reviews abound, but no biography or obituary have appeared. I have an imaginary picture of her in my head & would love to know how it compares to reality. (The cousin in eastern Canada has a 1914 picture of Jack in a family grouping of some sort; (I've not seen it). There is an unlabelled woman in it that he thinks may be Gertrude, but I question (based on her young age) whether they would have been an item at that point.)

And while it doesn't directly connect to your relationship to Gertrude, the curiosity is getting to me.  Can you tell us please, which Harry Hansen she married in 1950? We found two - one the actor & the other, a fellow almost 20 years her junior who died in Blackpool.

Thanks again for getting in touch. You've made my day.

[Lydart]

RedM told me of this thread which I have read with great interest .... I tried to find her info about the son who went to Eldoret, in Kenya !


PLEASE we are all agog waiting for a photo of the mysterious Gertrude ! 

[RedMystic]

RedM told me of this thread which I have read with great interest .... I tried to find her info about the son who went to Eldoret, in Kenya !


PLEASE we are all agog waiting for a photo of the mysterious Gertrude ! 

Hi Lydart, the fellow you generously looked up for me when you were in Eldoret last month was Gertrude's b-i-l. It's a fascinating & well travelled branch of the family - a wee bit hard to follow at times though. 

[howard47]

Hello Red Mystic

I first met Gertrude somewhere around 1960 when I was about 12. Before then I was unaware of her existence as there had been no contact with our family for a very long time. After that we all kept in touch regularly – Gertie and Harry would come and stay sometimes and we would visit them in Blackpool sometimes. Harry was also an actor – I remember him sitting with a typewriter in the backroom of their house in Blackpool working on one of his plays. They both had very sharp minds, probably as a result of working in ‘rep’ for so long. When younger they would travel round the country by rail, staying in boarding houses. They would spend their evenings performing one play, their afternoons rehearsing the next play and their mornings learning the lines of a third play – quite a challenge.
Last year my father (Gertrude’s son) died (born 23 Sept 1917 in Gloucester). She had left Edinburgh when he was still very young, but as a boy he was sometimes sent off to Blackpool for his holidays. On one occasion (in the 1920s) he was actually given a part in one of the plays that was being performed.  I think the part was ‘Little Willie’ in a play called ‘East Lynne.’ Although he was just a boy he was old enough to appreciate being clasped to the breast of the beautiful leading lady every night as she declaimed the famous line, “Gone, gone, and never called me mother!”
I will have to do a bit of digging around amongst old photos and see what I can find.

H.C.

[RedMystic]

Hi Howard,

It's wonderful to hear from you again.

Thanks for sharing your memories. Please accept my condolences on the loss of your father. Monica found some pictures of him from a few years ago when he attended the ceremony honouring your grandfather's role in starting the Scottish blood service. He looked like a wonderful, cheerful fellow. (I thought I could see some of the Inkster in him too. )

When your grandfather sailed to New York in 1927, Gertrude was named as one of his next of kin, at the same address as his other next of kin, your grandfather's mother Jessie. (Your grandfather was entered in the manifest 2x, with different contacts on each entry.)

Interestingly, the info on actor Harry Hansen who died in London (in 1972 if memory serves but I'd need to check back in my records) didn't mention a marriage. Do you know if her 2nd husband died in Blackpool or London?

Thanks again for adding to the story of Gertrude.

[MonicaL]

Hi Howard and RM

Regarding Harry Hanson, we have two likely fellows that RM and I were looking at. One was in rep theater around the same time as Gertrude and then became an empresario with his own company - Harry Hanson's Court Players - http://boards.ancestry.co.uk/topics.occupations.theater/42.3.1/mb.ashx

However, I contacted the effervescent Pearl who showed in that string of posts linked above (also www.lonelysolutions.blogspot.co.uk) and her memory of that Harry Hanson was that he was known as the Duchess of Warlingham....which sort of stopped us in our tracks a bit.

We have these possible dates for Gertrude:

Remarriage: 1950, 2nd Qrt in Ealing, Middlesex - Vol. 40, pg. 556 to Harry T. Hanson
Death entry: May 1988 in Blackpool (b. b. 18 Jul 1891)

As RM mentions, we found a possible death in Blackpool for a Harry Hanson in 1977 (born in 1903) and wondered whether this was Gertrude's husband (the theatre empresario died in London in 1972 - born c. 1895).

There are a number of joint theatre billings for Gertrude and HH through the 1920s where HH shows in the main as a comedian.

Monica 

[howard47]

Hello all

This morning I spent a bit of time looking through some bags of old family photos – (I have a lot of work to do on this). Amongst them was a brown envelope containing various pictures and notes which Gertrude sent to my father and mother in 1979, some of them will probably be of interest to you (includes a picture of Ayton Castle).  Another (wartime) picture of Gertrude has written on the back, “God bless you & keep you both safe. From Mummy on my 50th birthday.”  And has the date 15/7/41 – presumably sent to the Copland family. She lived well into her 90s, so May 1988 sounds about right. Unfortunately I don’t know when Gertrude married Harry Hanson – I wish I had asked more questions when I had the chance – but it may be relevant that my grandfather Jack Copland died in March 1949.

This afternoon I have been involved in another Ayton connection. My elderly relative Isabel is not too well at the moment and I was taking her some supplies. Her mother was called Wilhelmina Margaret Johnston Taylor Ayton – known as ‘Mena’ – and her grandmother was Isabella Taylor Ayton. Unfortunately none of us is too clear about the exact relationship to Gertrude.

H.C.

[MonicaL]

Hi H.C.

From the names you mention:

 Her mother was called Wilhelmina Margaret Johnston Taylor Ayton – known as ‘Mena’ ....

you would think there is certainly some connection to Gertrude's family with the Ayton and (Margaret) Taylor surnames.

I think this is the family back in Edinburgh with young Gertrude for 1901:

William Ayton 63, Printer's Rader (printer’s reader….could translator of foreign languages be a polite version of the same thing?) b. Edinburgh
Margaret Taylor 58 b. Keith, Banff
Robert Ayton 24
Margaret Ayton 21
George Ayton 20
Annie Ayton 18
Gertrude Jacobs 9 – granddaughter b. England

Address: 48 Rosemount Bdgs, Edinburgh

Monica