Week 12: My ancestor was a teacher

[Jill on the A272]

Week 12: Teacher

This is an opportunity to showcase a teacher from your family tree, you might want to offer a short biography and speak about their work eg
Name
Birth location/date
Family background
Where you've found them on the census
Their workplace/employer
Any tips on researching this occupation?

[Next week: Tailor]

[cbcarolyn]

I have 3 teachers that I know of, not really not found out much about any of them.

Firstly the closest relative I have a great grand aunt, she was the School Mistress in Gunwalloe, in Kelly's Directory, and I am assuming only for a couple of years, as she married and had many children.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/34206860/person/18607477563/facts

then I have 2 sisters, that are 1st cousins 4th time removed, they never married, and are living together in 1881/91 and 1901 as school mistresses
Elizabeth Jane Freeman 1851 - 1934 (Bessie)
Emma Freeman 1853-1930

Emma .jpg

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/34206860/person/20338238566/facts

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/34206860/person/20338238569/facts

Emma was 37 years at Ottery St Mary Girls school as Head Mistress (according to newspaper obituary), but Elizabeth is down as head mistress in 1881, so guessing her sister took over. Elizabeth is back in Gunwalloe in 1911, but I think she is possibly visiting as relations were over from Australia, or looking after her brother.

I think they are back together on Truro, with Brother John in 1921 - but not bought image.

I have just requested Elizabeth's will.

More research needed maybe.

[PhotoFamily]

My mother got her teaching certificate in college, but only taught intermittently. Once the youngest started kindergarten (me!), she started teaching preschool. Over the years, she took up several teaching positions and substitutions.

My grandmother, born on a farm in Ontario, obtained her teaching certificate, but the rumor is she taught only a year before she went to nursing school in the US.

My mother had two great aunts that went off to the Dakotas and taught there.

[Caroline]

I'm at the end of a short line of teachers.

It was never my ambition, I wanted to be an archivist/librarian really, and as far as I knew at the time, I had no teaching in my ancestry. I trained in Chichester at the then Bishop Otter College. The BEd had only just been invented but I chose to go into teaching after three years instead of staying on for the fourth year. I taught for 30+ years, firstly at Shottermill Junior School near Haslemere and after three years there, moved on to teach at The British School of Brussels, a 3-18 school, where I stayed until I took early retirement to come back to the UK. I had no need to move away from BSB, although basically a Upper Junior teacher, I taught in all three sections of the school, with subject responsibility for Primary Music and IT at different times and was able to be involved in a variety of enrichment activities from Drama to Macrame to IT as well as the Recorder groups and choirs. It turned out that I loved the profession and hope I was quite good at it too.

My mother went into teaching very late. She had already been teaching drama and literature with adults and had obtained her ADB and LGSM through the WI. Aged 49 she applied to Homerton College in Cambridge and graduated with a BED four years later and then followed that with a Doctorate. She then taught at Madingley Hall, some occasional lecturing in Cambridge and elsewhere nationally and also taught courses with the WEA and the WI. She never did teach in schools apart from during her training, though she did do some Speech and Drama work with private students.

Dawn Lewcock (BEd, ADB, LGSM, PhD) recently retired from teaching the history of theatre and drama for the Institute of Continuing Education, Cambridge University.
In addition to having published in many journals, Dr. Lewcock contributed to Aphra Behn Studies (CUP 1996) edited by Janet Todd, acted as an adviser and provided six entries for The Continuum Encyclopaedia of British Literature (2003) edited by Steven Serafin and Valarie Grosvenor Meyer, and wrote a chapter on the English pantomime audience for Audience Participation (Praeger 2003) edited by Susan Kattwinkel. Her book Aphra Behn Stages the Social Scene in the Restoration Theatre was published by Cambria Press in September 2008 and Sir William Davenant, the Court Masque and the Seventeenth-century Scenic Stage c1605-c1700 was published by Cambria Press in January 2009. She has contributed sixteen articles to the Literary Encyclopedia. (As Guest she also wrote articles for FTF.)

Back a generation, my mother once mentioned that her mother, Kathleen Mary Tompkins "Molly" 1898-2003, had been a pupil teacher while still at school herself, but then I found her listed on the 1921 as a junior mistress in Stanford Le Hope. At the bottom of the page is a Peter Dainty aged 6 years and 8 months - her sister's son. (I just paid for the next image to see if there were other boarders listed and am awaiting a refund after getting a blank list!!)

She doesn't appear on the Teachers' Registration Council Registers 1914-1948

granny-1921.jpg

An online search brought up some useful information:

stanford-le-hope-collegiate-boarding-and-day-school-fairview-avenue.jpg
The Collegiate School

From Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, A History to 1940 By Peter Watson and Odette Stevens

This imposing house still stands in Fairview Avenue. In 1887 it opened as the Collegiate School for Girls, the first principal being a Mrs. E. Worster. The school appeared to teach a variety of genteel subjects for the young ladies such as music, sewing and knitting in addition to the core subjects as the brochure from 1923 detailing some examination successes shows. The pupils were mostly local, the daughters of farmers and local trades people but there were also a limited number of boarders from the London area. They took children up to the age of fifteen.

In 1923 the school relocated to Stanford House in Southend Road which again still stands and around this time it also began to admit boys. The principal at this time was a Miss Harkness who had taken over from Mrs. Worster.

At the top of the same page is a description of Moor Place, the house where my grandmother was born in 1898 when her father was tenant of the farm. By 1911 the family were at Horndon House Farm in Horndon on the Hill. I do remember my grandmother talking about driving herself to school in a pony and trap - was that when she was working there? Her parents had moved to Ash Green in Surrey by 1921 and she married her cousin in Ash in 1928. It would be interesting to know how long she had stayed teaching in Stanford-le-hope.





On my paternal side, I have a great x2 aunt who was probably a piano and harp teacher, Same Name, but I've not found any others in the teaching profession on that side.

However, on the maternal side again, while I was digging around in census returns early on, trying to match up my Gillett families, I came across several unmarried females who had small groups of children in the household described as pupils, often their own cousins, nephews or nieces and including other children born overseas.

More about teachers and education in the FTF Online Magazine ~ September 2008 issue of the FTF Online Magazine.

Findmypast:

• Britain, School and University Register Books 1264-1930
• Britain School & University Memorial Rolls 1914-1918
• British Army Schoolchildren and Schoolmasters 1803-1932
• British Army Schoolchildren and Schoolmasters 1803-1932

Ancestry Card Catalogue - keyword school gives a long list of possible places to search for students/staff.

[Jill on the A272]

Caroline a very interesting piece, thankyou for sharing such a personal history.

[Barbara Dodds]

There's a few links in my family tree to teaching; some very recent

My mother and her two best friends all wanted to be teachers. The friends went down the pupil teacher route but my mother wanted to stay on at school and take Maths at what was then the Higher Certificate level (1930's) The Girls High School which she, and later I, went to severely disapproved and she left after taking her Scholl Certifcate to become a laboratory assistant at Boots. Fast forward until the late 1960's and she did a stint as a Teachin Assitant. One of her freinds became my brother's Godmother and the other taught at the last primary school I went to.

My father took his B. Ed degree with the Open University in the very early days. He taught at the second primary school I went to and then moved on to the remedial department of a secondary modern school where he finished his working life.

My grandmother's (favourite) older brother John Willie Robson was born on the 28th January 1887 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He trained to be a teacher at a college in Oxford but was only a teacher for a very short time. He was a victim of the First World War as he went missing in action, presumed dead in March 1918.

I found a letter home from John Willie to his mother when he was training to be a teacher which detailed the college. At the time I found the letter my eldest brother had just started a job iat Brooks College in Oxford teaching students to teach English, so I asked him about the college named on John Willie's letter. It turned out that the college became part of Brooks College. Our findings were added to the college archive of students lost during WW1

Prior to taking the role at Brooks college my brother taught A level English for approximately 30 years and was at one time quite well known for setting up a teaching resources website

[Caroline]

While sorting out my tailor today, I remembered that I had forgotten two people connected to him - this is about my tailor's granddaughter, Sarah Fanny Reed,. my first cousin 3x removed.

Sarah Fanny was born in 1851 and later became a schoolmistress of Central Infants School in Chichester (coincidentally one of the schools I did some teaching practice in, although at the time I had no idea of any connections with Chichester), eventually becoming headteacher there.

1871 Training College, Ditchling Road, Steyning, Sussex

1881 School mistress.

1891 Headmistress of Public School.

1901 Schoolmistress

Kelly's Directory 1911, Chichester, West Sussex

Central, Northgate (infants), built in 1837, for 157 children; average attendance, about 147; Miss Sarah Fanny Reed, mistress.

1911 she was "head teacher for county council".

1921 Hd. Teacher P. Elementary School (Retired).

Sarah never married and she died in 1933.
srah-fanny-reed=death.jpg
Probate to Charles Taylor, Solicitor. Effects: £1133 9s 8d

[cbcarolyn]

While sorting out my tailor today, I remembered that I had forgotten two people connected to him - this is about my tailor's granddaughter, Sarah Fanny Reed,. my first cousin 3x removed.

Sarah Fanny was born in 1851 and later became a schoolmistress of Central Infants School in Chichester (coincidentally one of the schools I did some teaching practice in, although at the time I had no idea of any connections with Chichester), eventually becoming headteacher there.

1871 Training College, Ditchling Road, Steyning, Sussex

1881 School mistress.

1891 Headmistress of Public School.

1901 Schoolmistress

Kelly's Directory 1911, Chichester, West Sussex

Central, Northgate (infants), built in 1837, for 157 children; average attendance, about 147; Miss Sarah Fanny Reed, mistress.

1911 she was "head teacher for county council".

1921 Hd. Teacher P. Elementary School (Retired).

Sarah never married and she died in 1933.
srah-fanny-reed=death.jpg
Probate to Charles Taylor, Solicitor. Effects: £1133 9s 8d

isn't it amazing how many coincidences there is in family history

[gloryer]

My great grandfather James Dickson McKerrow b1867 Douglas Lanarkshire d1941 Pollockshields
He was an Art Master. I did try to find which school he taught at. It must have been during his time at Crieff in Perthshire where he lived in that incredible house Walton Lodge that looks like the gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretal. He is buried in Crieff cemetary.
I believe he is listed as an artist in the Glasgow registry of artists. I also believe he had some of his paintings in an exhibition in Glasgow.
My mum claimed she got her artistic talent from him. She once got called to the front of the class in a drawing competition and won a small amount of money but he didnt believe her and thought she had stolen it so the next time she won she just spent it on sweets and shared it with her mates.

[Lin Fisher]

Been reading an article in the newspaper about my 2 x G Grandfathers half brother Daniel Dunn (1837-1896). Quite an obituary on his life. It said his Grandfather was Headmaster of Belbroughton Grammar School a 100 years before. Also his father, who I have mentioned as a publican also ran his house as a boarding school before changing it to Whittington Inn.

[Lin Fisher]

Just doing a bit on OH's tree and found his 2 x G Grandmothers sisters were teachers.

Katherine Diever Baker born 1833 in Newcastle upon Tyne, she never married and dies 28 Jun 1897 at 7 Crown St Newcastle

Sarah Bridger Baker, her sister was born 1819 Newcastle upon Tyne and died Mar 1898 Tonbridge Wells.

Margaret Jane Baker another sister was a governess on 1871 census. born 1830 in Newcastle and died 1921 in Tonbridge Wells