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The Smiths
My grandad on my mother’s side was Edward Smith. He was born on 20th June 1908 at 16 Grove Street, Cheltenham and he died on 23rd May 1993 at 22 Pepperham Road, Haslemere, Surrey. He was the third of 5 sons born to Joseph and Rose (Farmer) Smith. There were at least 2 more children but they died as babies; my mum always thought grandad was a twin but I have found no evidence to suggest this. Grandad did not tell me much about his family, and mum never really asked him. Also, with a surname like Smith, it has proved difficult and it is only since the use of DNA for family research that I have managed to get as far back as I have.
Edward (Ted) married Winifred Rowntree and I have always been told that it was thought she had married beneath her. Winifred’s father was a headmaster, whilst Ted’s was a rat catcher! When grandad was a child, he was so poor that he would have to carry his shoes around his neck to school and only put them on his feet when he arrived; he wasn’t so poor that he did not have any at all though! Winifred’s parents must have got on with him OK, as in the 1939 register him and Winifred are living with her parents at York Road, Woking.
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[Pic: Me and Grandad abt.1968]
Winifred and Ted were married in 1934 and it was to be another 9 years before my mum was born. My mum says that her mum did not want children, and it was only because of the war, and the threat of a job in the local laundry, that Winifred decided that anything would be better than that and decided to have a child to get her out of it. Fortunately, grandad was an aircraft fitter which was a reserved occupation during World War II so he was around to give my gran her wish; she had my mum just before her 38th birthday which was pretty old for the time. Unfortunately, my gran died a couple of years before I was born so I never met her.
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Click below to read about Grandad in the war, or read on for more on the history of the Smiths and Rowntrees.
On Edward’s birth certificate his dad, Joseph Smith, is described as ‘a hawker’; which was somebody who travelled about selling their wares; typically advertising them by shouting. It was obviously a reasonably long-time occupation as the same is mentioned when he married Edward's mum Rose Farmer 7 years earlier in Bristol. Both his father, and Rose’s father were also hawkers. Pretty unusual for them all to be this type of travelling salesmen I would have thought; unless they were actually travellers of some sort?
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[Pic: Winifred (left) with Edward behind her, his mum Rose in the middle, and my great aunt Olive on the right, with presumably her husband to the left abt.1934]
For a long time, all I knew other than the above, was that Edward’s grandfather Joseph Smith, was married to a Charlotte who had been born in Wiltshire, and that Joseph had been born in Honiton, Devon, and they had 3 children, one of whom was Joseph. I have since found another child, Jessica, who died as a baby but at the time I did not know this; there could have been more, but I still don’t know. Anyway, this was all a bit strange, as all my other research found families staying in the same village for centuries, whereas the Smiths appeared to move about a lot. Anyone who has tried to trace a travelling family would agree it can be difficult, but put this together with a common surname like Smith and you’ve a serious job on your hands!
It was many years before I managed to find a marriage certificate for Joseph and Charlotte, and this was because it was in another place again, Monmouthshire! The certificate told me that Charlotte’s maiden name was Isaac, and her dad was William Isaac, a horse dealer! Joseph’s father was yet another Joseph, and another Hawker! I think it was at this point, with the reference to horses, that the idea of gypsies came into my head; were they travelling gypsy families? Is that why they kept moving about and disappearing from census returns? I think I’d only managed to find the family on 1 census return. Did my grandad even know this? He was always a bit of a snob in mum’s opinion, and was this why he did not talk about his family very much? Maybe he knew, maybe he didn’t, but I don’t suppose I will ever know!
So now, as far as the Smith’s were concerned, I had 3 Josephs. Ted’s dad, Joseph who had been born in 1878 in Honiton, Devon. His dad Joseph, who I knew had probably been born in Bristol as I had found him and Charlotte in the 1891 census, and then his dad who was also Joseph but I knew absolutely nothing else apart from the fact that they were all hawkers. The only possibility was a Smith family of hawkers I had found in a lodging house in Bristol in 1861. There was a possible Joseph (senior) with a son Joseph of the right age and a wife called Mary, and some other children. However, there was no way of proving this was the correct family, until …. DNA.
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