Blanche ARMSTRONG
(1890-1893)
(1890-1893)
Grave No: 8;
Estimated Year of Birth: 1890;
Date of Death: 28th May 1893;
Age: 3 years;
Latitude: 53.72086;
Longitude: -0.84954;
what3words: amount.surging.trump;
Condition: The cross has fallen from the base;
Height including base (mm):
1110 mm;
Width excluding base (mm): 420 mm;
Thickness excluding base (mm):
90 mm;
Mason: There appears to be a mason's mark on the left side of the base, but this is illegible.
In Loving (?) Memory of /
BLANCHE /
THE BELOVED DAUGHTER OF /
JOSEPH & ALICE ARMSTRONG /
OF HALIFAX /
WHO DIED MAY 28th 1893 /
AGED 3 YEARS, 5 MONTHS
How do you tell the story of a little girl, who dies before her 4th birthday?
Let’s start with the people for whom she was the most precious treasure: her parents, Alice and Joseph.
Alice Coulson was born in Hook on the 12th of June 1863 and she was baptised the following month. She was the daughter of Thomas and Jane Coulson. See their own entries….
Thomas Coulson is the son of John Coulson, a labourer of Hook. He lost his mother when he was 12, and he became a bricklayer by trade. In the 1851 census he’s listed as a master bricklayer, 26 and single .
Jane Colson‘s maiden name was Scutt. Her father was Jonathan Scutt, a farmer of 217 acres, employing several labourers, in Ousefleet. She also lost her mother as a child.
Alice’s parents married on the 14th of March 1857 at Snaith Parish church. He’s 30 she’s 26.
In the 1861 census Thomas is still a bricklayer and his wife, Jane, is listed as bricklayer’s wife. By this time, they have a daughter, Sarah Jane, age 3, and a son, Thomas, age one.
By the time of the 1871 census, when Alice appears for the first time, Thomas is now the farmer of 188 acres employing four labourers and five boys. Since Thomas’s father-in-law doesn’t die until 1873, it looks like it was arranged in advance for Jane and Thomas to have the lease of most of his farm of 217 acres, which probably belonged to the Empsons. Jonathan Scutt‘s probate of 1873 leaves his son Marmaduke (usually referred to as “Duke” in census returns), as sole executor, leaving only effects of under £600. It would be interesting to have a look at the will.
Alice is the second youngest child of 5: Sarah J 13, Thomas 11, Mary 9, William 7, and little Clara 1. Also part of the household are a grown up female domestic servant, a 12 year old nursemaid, and 4 young male farm servants. Interesting to note that the little nursemaid Emily is holding down a responsible job, while Sarah, a year older, is still a “scholar “.
1881 census: Alice‘s mother Jane has just been widowed. Her husband Thomas died on the 27th of February 1881 age 54 and is buried in Hook . She’s still farming 189 acres with 2 labourers , 4 boys, and her eldest son, Thomas, 21. Alice is missing from this census entry. She should be 17 years old. I wonder if she’s gone away to school, or visiting someone, and not recorded correctly on the census.
Time passes….
At some point Alice meets Joseph Armstrong, a draper. he was born in East Butterwick, Lincolnshire in 1856.
The wife of a prosperous farmer of 130 acres, Joseph’s mother is widowed when he’s only 4, carrying on the farm with her older sons. In the 1881 census, however, we find Joseph living above the shop with other young drapers in Chipping Wycombe (nowadays High Wycombe), Buckinghamshire. A near contemporary of HG Wells , who wrote about his life as a draper’s apprentice at this time in several books.
I haven’t got a clue how he got from a farm in rural Lincolnshire to a busy market town in the Home Counties, let alone back to Yorkshire and the arms of another farmer’s child … but I would love to know… they had quite a lot in common, coming from farming families, both losing their father, being younger children in large families, but having strong and capable mothers. Perhaps their faith brought them together.
Joseph and Alice married in Leeds on 24th June 1885, at Brunswick Chapel, the “Cathedral of Methodism” . He’s 28, a general draper, of 31 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds, son of George Armstrong, deceased farmer. Alice is 21, no profession, signs her name with an elegant flourish.
1891 census: Alice is now 26, Joseph is 35 and they are married with three children including baby Blanche, living at 3 Crown Street, in the middle of Halifax. The two older boys, William and Archibald, were born in Leeds (William Coulson Armstrong christened in Brunswick Chapel 13 August 1886), and Blanche was born in Halifax. Again I can only find the civil registration of Blanche’s birth and no baptism so I imagine she was baptised in a chapel. Blanche was perhaps named after her mother‘s little sister Eliza Blanche, who was born in 1879.
We don’t know what happened to baby Blanche, but the civil registration of her death is in Goole and she’s buried in Hook. Clearly, Alice returned home to her mother and little auntie Blanche for support at a very difficult time. Perhaps the death certificate might throw light on the tragedy.
What happened after that? The family were reunited in Halifax, where two more sons, Percival and Harold, were born. Joseph became a commercial traveller in silks and costumes, and after a spell in Grimsby, where two more daughters, Alice May and Gladys, were born, they settled modestly but comfortably in Leeds, usually with a live-in teenage help.
Now a thoroughly “big city” family, the boys went into insurance or electrical engineering, the girls became shorthand typists. The children’s names are fashionably refreshing, historical, and slightly whimsical, a welcome change, for the genealogist, from the dynasties of Johns, Williams and Thomases of country tradition. I like to think (my vivid imagination again) that Joseph and Alice were not only enthusiastic Methodists, enjoying the lively preaching, hymns and organ music of the Brunswick Chapel, but also enjoyed a warm, if abstemious, home life whenever Joseph was back from his travels, perhaps gathered round a parlour piano, or reading books or poetry from a subscription library ... and returning regularly to Hook to visit relatives and pay their respects in the churchyard to their much missed little girl.
Alice and Joseph lived to a good age, Joseph passing away in 1937, aged 80, “devoted husband” and Alice “beloved wife “ 3 years later, and they are buried together in Harehills Cemetery.
(Thank you to J.I. for this excellent research!)