Great Great Aunt Sarah
Colin
David,
It just struck me looking back that when I asked a question some time ago concerning Nellie, in your reply you referred to Sarah's diary - do you actually posses this document?
C.
David Leedham
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Colin
Sorry, but I find this kind of stuff absolutely fascinating. Not so much perhaps the apparent content but the potential psychological insight into someone who persitently refers to their self in a private journal in the third person. I must have a chat with my psychologist friend about this.
Where was Sarah living at the time? Did she ever actually move far away from 'home' in her 92-odd years?
C.
David Leedham
Colin
I certainly think Great (or Great, Great from your viewpoint) Sarah would be an excellent candidate for a few sessions on the psychologist couch as, in the words of Olive Swift my best source for information on that generation, “Aunt Sarah was what you might call……a bit of an ‘eccentric’”.
A bit of background:
· Sarah told her mother, after the birth of the 12th child (Helena/Nellie), that if she had any more children she would move out. John arrived in 1881 (my grandfather) so Sarah, aged 20 years, moved out.
· She went to live with a family named ‘Harts’ who lived on a farm near the church in Rolleston. The Harts had six children, which Olive told me had a hint of irony as she left home due to the number of children in the Shellaker household.
· Sarah would insist, during her time with the Harts, that she was not a ‘Maid’ as that was an occupation which suggested ‘domestic service’ – considered by Sarah to be an occupation of the lower social classes.
· Sarah was therefore known as a ‘Mothers Companion’.
· Her role was to look after the children, to cook and to make Stilton Cheese.
· She was not at Rolleston long enough to be recorded there on the 1891 census.
· For a time she lived with her widowed mother Mary (who was widowed in 1904) in Front Street Billesdon.
· When her mother died (1913) she went to live with sister Nellie and new husband John Brown (married 1911) at the Nursery (flowers and vegetables not children) in Back Street Billesdon. Before she died Sarah’s mother had told her “to look after Nellie” as her sister was finding it difficult to adjust to married life, particularly as Nellie also had to look after he elderly grandfather-in-law – the Rev Field. Olive said Nellie had what would now be called a ‘nervous breakdown’.
· Nellie stayed with the Browns for the rest of her life; at the Nursery until the fire, then with Emma Geary and family until New Nursery was built which is where she died in 1953 around 92 years old.
Now this next comment is a bit strange ….. Sarah strongly believed that our family was in some way related to the Perceval family one of whom, Spencer Perceval (1 November 1762 – 11 May 1812), was the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated. He was as assassinated by John Bellingham, a merchant with a grievance against the Government, who shot him dead in the lobby of the House of Commons.
What I find strange is that Spencer Perceval died around 50 years before Sarah was born so his death was not a contemporary piece of news which Sarah would have heard while growing up. If she had said the family was related to the Duke of Wellington or some other famous person then it could be dismissed as the views of an ‘eccentric’ but I feel this link to Spencer Perceval is too obscure to be totally dismissed.
A decade or so ago I borrowed both volumes of Spencer Perceval’s biography from the British Library (written I recall in late Victorian era or maybe Edwardian) and after paying an extremely large deposit, I collected them from the main library in Leicester to where they had been sent from London. I then ‘speed read’ every page looking for any reference to Leicestershire or Rutland or Shellaker or any of the maiden names, known to me at that time, of the Shellaker women – but found no hint of any connection.
But maybe that link is yet to be found, it would be nice to prove Great Aunt Sarah was actually correct……….!
David
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