Big cities
usually act as magnets, attracting people from the countryside to the excitement
and employment opportunites urban centres offer. But several adult children of
Henry and Sophia Smithers did the opposite: born in greater London at the
beginning of the 19th century, they scattered across Engand and
beyond as adults.
Henry Smithers
(1762-1828) was born in London, while his wife, Sophia Papps (1763-1845) was
born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge. They were married in 1783
at St. Matthew’s Parish Church, Bethnal Green, and had seven children.
Henry Keene Smithers was born in
St. Andrews Holborn parish, London in 1785. His birth and that of his sister
Charlotte Sophia were registered simultaneously in the non-conformist records on
Dec 14, 1789. After being apprenticed to his father, he became a coal merchant,
then a general merchant and accountant. He and his wife, Charlotte Letitia Pittman,
and their eight children lived in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames
River. He died in 1859. He was my three-times great-grandfather, and I have
written in greater detail about his life and beliefs in two previous posts.
Charlotte Sophia Smithers was
born in St Saviour’s Parish, County Surrey, in April 1789, so the family must
have moved across the Thames before she was born. I know very little about her
life except that she did not marry and was living with her brother Henry Keene
Smithers and his wife in St. Giles, Camberwell at the time of the 1841 Census
of England.
By the time
the 1851 census took place, she was age 61 and living as a lodger with a
Baptist minister’s family in Bedfordshire. She described herself as an
annuitant, meaning she had some private income. She died a few months later.
Martha Keene Smithers, born in 1790, was said
to have been a great beauty. She married John Van Cooten, at St. Woolos Church
in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales in 1808. (Newport was an important
coal-exporting port at the time, and her father had a business there; it went
bankrupt in 1812.) Martha and John had six children, at least one of whom was
born in the Netherlands. (John’s father was originally from the Netherlands, but
he became a sugar plantation owner in Demerara, Guyana, South America, which is
where John was born.)
Their
marriage must have been an unhappy one because, according the Van Cooten family
website, Martha went to the West Indies, leaving John and their young children
behind. She eventually returned to England, but, although she and John did not
divorce, they never lived together again. Her brother Sydney, who was steward
to the Duke of Devonshire, supported her. At the time of the 1851 census she
was living with her daughter Anna in London. She was buried in the parish of
St. George Bloomsbury, London in 1854.
John
Hampden Smithers was born in Southwark, Surrey in 1792, and his birth, like
that of his older siblings, was registered at the Maze Pond Baptist Church. He
was likely named after English politician John Hampden, who challenged the
authority of King Charles I and was killed in battle in 1643 at the outset of
the Civil War in England.
In 1806, when
brother Henry Keene was wrapping up his apprenticeship, John became apprenticed
to his father. John was admitted to the Freedom of the City of London by
patrimony in 1815. Also in that year, the business he and his father owned on
Oxford Street in London went bankrupt.
In 1822 John married
Amsterdam-born Elizabeth Hoffmann by license at St. Marylebone Church, London.
They had five children, the eldest daughter baptized in London, a son baptized
in Liverpool, and the two youngest daughters, born 1827 and 1830, baptized in
Derbyshire. All the children were baptized in the Anglican church. In 1827 John,
a provision merchant in Liverpool, went bankrupt a second time. Soon after that
the family appears to have moved to the city of Derby.
The 1851
census showed John, his wife and three daughters living in London. John gave
his occupation as proprietor of houses (basically a landlord.) I did not find the
family in 1841 or 1861 in the British Isles, so perhaps they were living in
Europe. He died in 1867 in Nice, France and was buried in the Anglican cemetery
there.
Sydney Smithers was born in
Southwark around 1795. I have not found any record of his birth or baptism. He
married Catherine Longsdon in 1822 in Youlgreave, Derbyshire, and they had
three children baptized in the Church of England. Sydney worked for William
Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire. A Whig in politics (he
supported liberalizing restrictions on Catholics and abolishing slavery,) the duke
was friends with kings, writers and botanists. He owned several vast estates,
including one in Derbyshire. Sydney and his family lived in Ashford, Derbyshire,
and his duties probably involved managing the duke’s household and estate there.
Sydney died in 1856, age 61.
Augusta Sophia Smithers, was
born in 1799 or 1800, and was baptized in 1827. Adult baptism is normal for a
member of the Baptist church, but several things suggest this baptism was not a
happy occasion.
The baptism
took place on August 26, 1827 at the Anglican Church of St. Mary Edge Hill,
near Liverpool, where her brother John lived. Her parents were Baptists, but it
appears that Augusta Sophia was converting to the Anglican religion. The
register of the baptism listed her father’s name, but her mother’s was left
blank. Perhaps her mother did not attend the service that day.
Like her
brother John, Augusta Sophia is hard to trace. I did not find her in the 1841
or 1851 censuses, but in 1861, at age 60, she may have been living as a lodger
in Wandsworth, Surrey. She may have been living as a lodger in Islington,
London in 1871, and she is probably the Augusta Sophia Smithers who died in
Croydon, Surrey in 1881.
Rosa Smithers only appears
in the records twice: the day she and her sister were baptized as adults, and
the day she died, two weeks after her baptism. Everyone must have known she was
very ill when she was baptized. She was buried at the Church of St. Mary Edge
Hill, near Liverpool, Lancaster, on 8 September, 1827. She was just 24 when she
died.
Several months later, in April 1828, her
father also died in Liverpool and was buried in the same cemetery.
These
highlights are all I know about the lives of Henry and Sophia Smithers’
children. Put them together, though, and patterns start to appear. I have begun
to suspect that, although their father wrote of his love for his children in
his 1807 book Affection, with other poems,
these siblings were not very close. In many of the families I have researched,
I have found widows, elderly fathers and unmarried sisters living with other
family members. In the case of my Smithers ancestors, this was not the case. I
should not speculate, though; I will never learn the truth.
Research Remarks
For more information on other generations of this family, and other families with the same last name, see Michael Smither’s Smither, Smithers, Smythers family tree in Ancestry.com’s Public Member Trees section. http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/49405444/person/12982389958
This article relies primarily on birth, marriage and death records found on Ancestry.com, supplemented by census records as of 184I. I found bankruptcy announcements in English newspapers on findmypast.com.
I have written more extensively about Henry Keene Smithers, non-conformist religious beliefs and apprenticeships. See http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2014/12/the-apprenticeship-of-coal-merchant.html and http://writinguptheancestors.blogspot.ca/2014/12/henry-keene-smithers-non-conformist.html.
The Van Cooten family page, www.vc.id.au/fh/smithers.html, includes several references Martha Keene Smithers and points to the position held by Sydney Smithers.
My suspicion that John Hampden Smithers was named after a politician from the English Civil War era who died in battle in 1643 is based on a poem called Hampden in Henry Smithers’ 1807 book Affection, with other poems. (see https://books.google.ca/books?id=DGUUAAAAQAAJ p.11-12) At first I had no idea who Hampden was. Then, while researching Henry’s political interests, I found an article about John Hampden. Henry mentioned someone named Sydney in the same poem, so perhaps his younger son was also named after a politician.
There was probably only one Augusta Sophia Smithers living in England at that time, so the person I found in the census was probably my ancestor. I was confused, however, because her birthplace was listed as Wandsworth, Sussex. All the information I have about Henry’s family, including property tax records, puts them in Walworth, Sussex.
