Week 43: My ancestor was a baker

[Jill on the A272]

Week 43: Baker



This is an opportunity to showcase a baker 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?

Trades and Occupations - Family Tree Forum

[Next week: Draper]

[Jill on the A272]

Nancy Heys (nee Watson) my 4x great grandmother was an oatcake baker in Cop Row, Burnley in 1851, her husband James was a handloom weaver but had a grocers. Lancashire oatcakes have all but gone now but were eaten soft when new or when dried and gone hard in a dish known as "stew and hard". They are made from a batter of fine oatmeal with a bit of yeast, and salt. I have had a go at making them and used them like a chapati or a taco.

[cbcarolyn]

My grandfather born in 1892 was a baker. He is listed in 1911 as a pastry chef. He managed a bakers shop and my Dad used to live above the bakery, I guess that is why he has such a sweet tooth.

you had to walk through the bakery to get to the flat above, my brother remembered going there.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tr...07477600/facts

he died when I was only 5 but I remember he made amazing cream horns and Christmas cake.

[Katarzyna]

A baker in the Army Service Corps
My grandfather’s brother Oliver Harry Wilkinson was born on 3^rd July 1887 in Tollesbury, Essex. The family moved to Harwich, then to Dovercourt where he married Ethel Elizabeth Felgate in 1910. He is listed on the 1911 census with Ethel as a Baker and Pastry Cook.
Ethel died in 1914 leaving him with a son, Ernest Raymond. Oliver moved to Ipswich with his parents who looked after Ernest when, in Nov 1915, Oliver, age 28, joined the Army Reserve. He was eventually posted to Army Service Corps as a baker in 1917 and trained with the Reserve Supply Personnel at Bath. He was declared unfit for military duties in March 1917 due to lumbago. (possibly from humping flour sacks??) However, on 5th January 1918, he was sent to Calais to join the 15^th Field Bakery.
15 Field Bakery
Calais.
Newspapers of 4 April 1919 reported that there were about 90 men, ages ranging 40 to 50, still employed at this bakery and about 100 who had been serving from before 1916. No move had yet been made to demobilise these men, in spite of repeated applications.
The Long, Long Trail.

On 16^th December 1918 Oliver was docked 3 days' pay for Improperly making a dough!

1918 improper dough.jpg Source citation for UK, British Army World War I Service Records, 1914-1920 Ancestry.co.uk


Despite this, his character reference reads - Very good. A good baker, willing, honest …….

His last posting was with the 6^th Field Bakery at Rouen which went to Germany as part of the Army of Occupation on the Rhine in June 1919. He was demobbed on 21^st October 1919.
The 1921 census lists Oliver as a widower and boarder at 65 London Road, Halesworth, Suffolk. He was a confectioner working for Harris of Halesworth.

Oliver married again in the September quarter of 1921 to May Elizabeth Robertson at Ipswich.
On the 1939 Register, he is with his wife May and employed at Ipswich Hospital.
He died at age 72 in 1959.