PART FOURTEEN

The John Kyte Collett Line - 1810 to 2000

(including a branch line from Swindon to Australia)

This is the second of two sections of the fourteenth part of the Collett family

Updated August 2020

The June 2011 version of this family included a new branch of the Collett family that was previously depicted in Part 9 – The Aldsworth Line. However, the error for placing the family there was highlighted during the compilation of two new lines for the Collett families of Alcester and Abbots Morton in Warwickshire. Therefore, we must apologise to the family of Wayne Arthur Collett of Brisbane (Ref. 14Q10) which has now been correctly placed here in this family line, the line denoted by the names that are underlined.

The original error came from the fact that there were two George Colletts born around 1811, with the family details shown in Part 9 for the George who was actually the George in Part 14. The good news for Wayne and his family is that his ancestors can now be traced back to 1485 to Thomas Collett in Part 1 via Part 14, instead of to only 1760, as in Part 9.

The November 2007 update comes courtesy of Rita Garnett

whose great great grandmother was Ann Mary Collett (Ref. 14N41)

14M7	Thomas Shelburn Collett was born on 24^th January 1811 at Upper Slaughter and was baptised at the Baptist Chapel in Bourton, the son of Robert Collett and Mary Ann Kyte. His second forename was the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, while his birth was recorded in the register at Bourton on 12^th November 1811 by Protestant Dissenting Minister Thomas Coles, taken from the personal record of the event provided by his parents. He was around two years old when his father took the family to live in Bourton and in the early 1830s the family left Gloucestershire and moved to Somerset. That family move may have been caused by Thomas being charged on 22^nd December 1831 with trespassing with a gun and a dog at Sherborne while in pursuit of game. That Thomas Collett was named as the son of Robert Collett, a miller of Bourton. However, it has yet to be proved that Thomas the poacher was Thomas Shelburn Collett.
	It was after arriving in Shepton Mallet that Thomas married Ann Chamberlain. It would appear that the marriage did not produce any children for Thomas and Ann who were living in Shepton Mallet during 1841 when Thomas Collett was 30 and his wife Ann was 25. According to the next Shepton Mallet census in 1851, Thomas Collett, aged 40, was the Deputy Registrar to his father Robert Collett (Ref. 14L7), was born at Upper Slaughter in 1811, was married, and was living at Darshill in Shepton Mallet, but with no wife or any children listed with him.
	His wife Ann Collett was very likely the 36 years old Ann Collett who was listed as a servant at the High Street house of Thomas Cook, a gun maker. The couple were still apart in Shepton Mallet at the time of the following census in 1861, when Tom S Collett was 50, and his wife Ann was 45. However, it was at Shepton Mallet that Thomas Shelburn Collett died, sometime during the following months of 1861. At the time Thomas and Ann were the only members of the Collett family still living there.
14M8	Elizabeth Kyte Collett was born on 31^st August 1812 at Upper Slaughter and was baptised at the Baptist Chapel in Bourton, the daughter of Robert Collett and Mary Ann Kyte. It was at Bourton where she married her cousin John Dalby and where their two children were born. By 1881, Elizabeth Dalby, aged 68 and born at Upper Slaughter, was a widow living at Cheapside in Hemel Hempstead with the family of her daughter (Frances) Fanny Jane Jones and her husband Edward Jones. It was four years later that Elizabeth Kyte Dalby nee Collett died in 1885.
	14N13		Robert Dalby		Born in 1838 at Bourton-on-the-Water
	14N14		Frances Jane Dalby		Born in 1842 at Bourton-on-the-Water
14M9	Emma Humphries Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 23^rd November 1814. She died in 1846, by which time her parents Robert Collett and Mary Ann Kyte had moved to Shepton Mallet. Her second forename derived from earlier connects with the Humphries family and the fact that her mother Mary Ann was a beneficiary under the terms of the 1802 Will of Robert Humphries, the uncle of Mary Humphries who married Thomas Collett (Ref. 14K9).
14M10	John Ryland Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 17^th August 1816 and he died in 1834 after his parents Robert and Mary Ann Collett had moved to Shepton Mallet. His second forename derived from earlier connections with the Ryland family.
14M11	Susan Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 2^nd March 1818. She was married three times, to (1) Mr W Gait, to (2) Mr J Garrett, and to (3) Mr James B Mattick of Radstock in Somerset around 1860. It was the last of them with whom she had two sons Walter B Mattick, who was born in 1862, and Herbert E Mattick who was born in 1864. It is not known if Susan had any children from her earlier marriages. In 1881 James and eldest son Water were listed as being grocers and drapers, while Herbert was a saddler. Susan was listed as being 62 and born in Gloucester. Living with them at Market Place in Radstock was James’ 88 years old mother Therlet Mattick of Wincanton in Somerset. Susan Mattick nee Collett died during 1899.
14M12	Emily Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 21^st June 1821. She married (1) Henry Chamberlain and (2) George Robbins. It is very likely that Henry Chamberlain was the brother of Ann Chamberlain who married Emily’s brother Thomas Shelburn Collett (above). Emily produced three children from her first marriage, they being Henry John Chamberlain, Emily Ann Chamberlain, and Lucy Marianne Chamberlain who died unmarried the year before her mother. According to the 1881 Census Emily Robbins nee Collett aged 59 and born at Bourton-on-the-Water was living at Port Mansion in Longfleet near Poole. She was married to George Robbins aged 65 an Inland Revenue Officer born at Poole in Dorset. Emily Robbins nee Collett died in 1906.
14M13	Lucy Ann Collett was born at The Mill in Bourton-on-the-Water on 27^th February 1823. She was a milliner and dressmaker and lived for some years with her widowed father up to 1853 when she sailed to Australia on the ship Euphemus. On arrival at Melbourne she was engaged as a dressmaker, working for a Mr Turner at Geelong. At the start of the following year whilst at Castlemaine she met and married John Henry Foster a carpenter and builder. John was born in London in 1827 and the couple were married on 25^th March 1854. Lucy Ann Foster died on 24^th December 1902 at Queensland, her husband John having died two years early on 5^th July 1900.
	Lucy Ann is the starting point for the family line of Brian Foster of Maryborough in Queensland, the details of which are provided in Part Sixteen – The Lucy Ann Foster Line.
14M14	Ellen Hook Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 4^th October 1825 and died that same year.
14M15	Mary Anne Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 28^th July 1828 and died in 1897. No record has been found to say she married, but it is possible, although not yet proved, that she married Richard Collett (Ref. 3N1) of Chedworth. According to the 1881 Census, Richard Collett and Mary Ann were living at Middle Row, Woodman Inn in Bourton-on-the Water with three of their children.
	For the continuation of this family line see Part Three – The Chedworth Line commencing with Richard Collett (Ref. 3N1)
14M16	George Bryan Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 8^th April 1812, the eldest of the seven children of tenant farmer Joseph Collett and his wife Mary Bryan. Following the death of his father in 1827, young George worked with his mother on the 244-acre family farm at Eyford. In 1841 he was still farming with his mother, supported by seven farm labourers, when George was 19 and living with his mother and sister Martha (below) at The Square in Upper Slaughter at the home of John and Anna Davis. Soon after that George left the farm when he moved to Stanway in Gloucestershire, eight miles from Eyford. It is tempting to consider that Edward Witts, Rector and Justice of the Peace for Upper Slaughter, might have been a catalyst for that move. Edward was just a year younger than George and, as the son of a respected farmer, it is conceivable that they may have been childhood friends. Given that George became a farm bailiff, he may have been employed on the Stanway estate as a farm servant to the Earl of Wemyss.
	He remained unmarried for much of his early life and, it was not until 15^th October 1846, that George Bryan Collett married Elizabeth Emms from Hazleton, which lies five miles south-west of Bourton. The marriage at Stanway was recorded at nearby Winchcombe (Ref. xi 794a) and recorded his age as being 35 years, 9 months and 14 days, compared to his bride, who was just 20 years, 3 months and 14 days old. From that information it has been calculated that Elizabeth was born on 1^st July 1826, and within the IGI there is the baptism of an Elizabeth Emms on 20^th August 1826 at Ebrington, who was the daughter of William and Ann Emms. It is also very likely that Elizabeth’s slightly older brother was Oliver Webb Emms who married Elizabeth Galey at Didbrook during the summer of 1847, the event also recorded at Winchcombe. That would then account for one of George and Elizabeth’s sons also being given the name Oliver Emms Collett.
	Once married the couple initially settled in the village of Condicote, not far from Stow-on-the-Wold, where their first child was born during the following year. Not long after the birth, the family moved to nearby Lower Swell, where the next three children were born, and where the family was living at Swell Hill on the day of the census in 1851. George Collett, aged 39 and from Slaughter, was a farm bailiff, his wife Elizabeth was 24 and from Hazleton, and their two sons were Joseph Collett who was three years old and from Condicote, and Oliver Collett who was two, who had been born at Swell. It was Oliver’s baptism record at Lower Swell, that included his full name as Oliver Emms Collett.
	By the time of the next census in 1861, the family had left Lower Swell and was living at Longborough, just two miles from Lower Swell and Condicote. During the past decade two further sons had been born to George and Elizabeth at Lower Swell, but by 1861 their oldest son was no longer listed with the family. According to the Longborough census that year, George Collett was still a farm bailiff, although his age was recorded in error as 40 and not 49, and he said he was born at Bourton-on-the-Water. Elizabeth Collett from Hazleton was 34, and their three sons were Oliver Collett, aged 12, George Collett who was six, and James Collett who was two years old. Their eldest son Joseph would have only been 13, so it is possible that he had died prior to that date.
	Within the next twelve months the family moved again, when they left Longborough for the village of Eyford, within the parish of Upper Slaughter, where their daughter and last son were both born. It was obviously George’s occupation as a farm bailiff that resulted in so many moves for the family and, by 1871, they had moved once more, on that occasion to South Cerney, near Cirencester. At the time of the census that year, the couple’s two eldest sons had already left the family home to make their own way in the world. The remainder of the family was recorded as George Collett from Upper Slaughter who was 59 and a farm bailiff, his wife Elizabeth from Hazleton who was 44, and their four children George Collett who was 16 and James Collett who was 12, both born at Lower Swell, and Mary Collett who was eight and Frederick Collett who was five years old, both of them born at Eyford.
	Ten years after that, George Collett, aged 69 from Upper Slaughter, was still working as a farm bailiff while, once again, residing in South Cerney at Cerney Fields. Elizabeth Collett was 54 and from Hazleton, Mary Collett was 18, and Frederick Collett was 15 and had already left school and was a plough boy working on a local farm. Both of the children were confirmed as having been born at Eyford. Over the following decade, both children, Mary and Frederick, left the family home, presumably to be married, leaving just George, aged 79 and a retired farm bailiff, and Elizabeth, aged 64, still living in South Cerney, but at Berkeley Horns in the village in 1891. It was also at South Cerney where first Elizabeth Collett died, her death recorded at Cirencester (Ref. 6a 215) during the second quarter of 1893 and, after four years as a widower, the death of George Collett was also recorded at Cirencester register office (Ref. 6a 218) during the last three months of 1897, when he was 85 years old.
	It is interesting, that within The Complete Diary of a Cotswold Parson by Alan Sutton (compiled in 1917), there is a diary entry for 16^th December 1846, before George became a married man, which reads as follows: “Rumour had been long busy with his wife’s conduct, or rather, misconduct, it being currently reported that she received male visitors improperly; George Collett, the young farmer, and William Dix, the married farmer, with a grown-up daughter, are particularly mentioned.”
	14N15		Joseph Collett		Born in 1847 at Condicote
	14N16		Oliver Emms Collett		Born in 1849 at Lower Swell
	14N17		George Collett		Born in 1854 at Lower Swell
	14N18		James Collett		Born in 1858 at Lower Swell
	14N19		Mary Collett		Born in 1862 at Eyford
	14N20		Frederick Collett		Born in 1865 at Eyford
14M17		Mary Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 1^st September1813, the second child of Joseph and Mary Collett. On 21^st October 1826, after her family had returned from Maugersbury to a farm at Eyford near Upper Slaughter, Mary was an inmate at a nearby lunatic asylum, where she was visited by parson Francis Witts. The entry in the parish diary recorded that, “I called to-day at the Lunatic Asylum to enquire after a poor young woman from Upper Slaughter, niece to the blacksmiths, who, having been recently afflicted with mental derangement. I found poor Mary Collett in a very dejected state, but not violent.” It was soon after that, when she suffered a premature death.
14M18		Sarah Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 3^rd July 1815, a daughter of farmer Joseph Collett and his wife Mary Bryan. During the 1820s the family farmed at Maugersbury, but returned to Upper Slaughter and Eyford in 1926. By 1841 Sarah was living and working at Bath Road in Cheltenham, where she was employed as a milliner. With her that day was her younger sister Emma, who had been sent there by her mother, who feared for her wellbeing knowing young Emma, who had very recently inherited some wealth, had attracted the eye of the son of paupers in Upper Slaughter.
14M20		Emma (Amy) Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water around 1819, and within the census returns she was referred to as Emma, while in the Upper Slaughter parish diary she was named as Amy. She was the fourth of the seven children of Joseph and Mary Collett. During the late 1830s, Emma was left money through a Will and, when her newfound wealth was revealed, she was pursued by the son of pauper parents in Upper Slaughter. In order to protect Emma from making a bad decision, her mother sent her to Cheltenham, to live and work alongside her sister Sarah (above). And it was at Bath Road in Cheltenham that Emma, aged 20, was recorded in the census of 1841.
	It was during the summer of 1848 when the marriage of Emma Collett and William Naish was recorded at Marylebone in London (Ref. 1 239) in the third quarter of that year. Just over two years later the birth of their only known child, George Naish, was recorded at Lambeth (Ref. 4 348) during the last quarter of 1850. He was then baptised at Lambeth on 23^rd October 1850, when his parents were confirmed as William Henry and Emma Naish. Just a few months later, on the day of the census in 1851, Emma Naish nee Collett was 31 and her place of birth was confirmed as Bourton-on-the-Water, when she was staying with her elderly widowed mother, a farmer employing seven men, at Eyford, Upper Slaughter. With Emma was her newly born son George Naish, who had just been born at Lambeth in London.
	Whether the couple was ever reunited has not been established, but in 1861 Emma Naish was a domestic servant and cook at the home of the King family at Gloucester Terrace in Greenwich, South London. Emma was described as being a married woman, aged 41, who had with her, her son George Naish from Westminster who was 10 years of age and employed as a servant at the same address. By 1871 the pair of them were still residing in Greenwich, when Emma Naish was 51, from Bourton in Gloucestershire, a widow and a laundress. Still living with her was George Naish, who was 20 and a baker’s assistant.
	It would appear that mother and son stayed together for the remainder of their lives, since it was at Greenwich that the death of George Naish was recorded (Ref. 1d 512) during the second quarter of 1897, when he was 47. His mother outlived him by six years, when the death of Emma Naish was also recorded at Greenwich (Ref. 1d 519) during the third quarter of 1903, when she was 84.
14M21		Martha Collett was born at Maugersbury around 1823 when her parents Joseph Collett and Mary Bryan were farming in Maugersbury. The family then took over a 244-acre farm at Eyford in 1926, where Martha’s father died during the following year. In 1841 it was her widowed mother and eldest brother George (above) who were running the farm at Eyford, while residing at the Upper Slaughter home of John and Anna Davis on The Square when Martha was 17. The Upper Slaughter census in 1851 confirmed that Martha Collett was 27.
14M22		Samuel Collett was born at Maugersbury in 1826 and just prior to his family moving to a farm at Eyford, where Samuel’s father died in 1827. Where he was in 1841 is not known, but he was back living and working with his widowed mother at Eyford in 1851 when he was described as being 24 and a farmer’s son. Four years earlier, the first of four entries in the Upper Slaughter parish diary were made regarding Samuel Collett and his family. They are reproduced below: 10^th March 1847 - Engaged in the forenoon at the School room with Mitchell and his son, who produced the map of the parish which they had made, that the owners and occupiers of land might give information as to the ownership and occupancy, and name of each parcel of land, house, cottage &c. — G B Collett, W Gregory, Jos Reynolds, Samuel Collett, Geo. Lea, Price &c. attended. 10^th December 1849 - Visiting sick parishioners; Mrs. Collett and her son, Samuel. 15^th December 1849 - Justice business at home with Samuel Collett, making a complaint of an attempt to defraud. 24^th March 1852 - Vestry meeting, where met Messrs. E. Lea, G. Lea, Stratton, and Saml. Collett
	Just over five years later, on 1^st November 1856, the marriage of Samuel Collett and Jane Jeffries was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 719) during the last quarter of 1856. By 1861 the recently married couple was living at Beenham, six miles east of Newbury in Berkshire, by which time Jane had presented Samuel with their first two children. Samuel Collett from Maugersbury was 34 and a farm bailiff, his wife Jane from Bourton-on-the-Water was 23, and their two children were Albert Collett, who was three and born in Gloucestershire, and Mary who was one year old and born at Beenham.
	Two more children were born at Beenham before, around the middle of the 1860s, the enlarged family left Berkshire and moved to mid-Wales and the chapelry of Bettws Clyro in Radnorshire. It was at Bettws Clyro that the couple’s next three children were born and where the family was residing in 1871. Samuel Collett was 44 and working as a farm steward while also farming on 22 acres there. Jane was 34, and their six children were Albert Collett who was 13 and born at Condicote, Mary Collett who was 11, Jane Collett who was nine, Eliza Collett who was four, Sarah B Collett who was three, and Alice S Collett who was one year old, the last three born after the family had arrived at Bettws Clyro. Their daughter Susan was the absent child, who may have suffered an infant death.
	Not long after the census day in 1871, the family moved again, on that occasion to the Gloucestershire village of Longhope, within the Forest of Dean, where the last child was added to the family. Later, during that same decade, the family made another move, that time to Hurstbourne-Tarrant near Andover in Hampshire, where they were living in 1881 when Samuel’s occupation was still that of a farm steward at the age of 54. Jane was 45 and the only children still living at the family home were Eliza Collett who was 14, Sarah Bryan Collett who was 13, Alice Shelburn Collett who was 11 and Kate Collett who was eight years old.
	Samuel retired as a farm steward/bailiff during the next ten years, when he and Jane returned to Gloucestershire and Mill Farm in Little Rissington, where they were living in 1891. The census that year described him as a farmer at the age of 64 and Jane as being 54. Still living with them was their unmarried daughter Alice S Collett who was 21 and Samuel’s granddaughter Alice R Hamilton from Liverpool who was two years of age. After a further ten years Samuel and Jane were once again residing at Mill Farm in Little Rissington, and by then four of their children had returned to the family home. Samuel from Maugersbury was 74 and still a farmer, Jane was 64, son Albert was 43 and a retired police sergeant, Jane Wyles from Beenham was 39, Alice Collett from Clyro was 31 and Katie Collett from Longhope was 28.
	Six years later Samuel Collett died at Maugersbury but was buried at Bourton-on-the-Water, his death recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 199) during the third quarter of 1907, when he was 81 years old. Rather strangely the death of his eldest child, his unmarried son Albert aged 50, was also recorded at Stow using the same reference number, in that same quarter of 1907. Four years later Jane, the widow of Samuel Collett was residing in Bourton-on-the-Water with her two youngest children. Jane Collett from Bourton was 75, Alice Shelburn Collett 41 and Katie Collett was 38.
	14N21		Albert Collett		Born in 1857 at Condicote, Glos.
	14N22		Mary Collett		Born in 1859 at Beenham, Berks.
	14N23		Jane Collett		Born in 1862 at Beenham, Berks.
	14N24		Susan Collett		Born in 1864 at Beenham, Berks.
	14N25		Eliza Collett		Born in 1866 at Clyro, Radnor, Wales
	14N26		Sarah Bryan Collett		Born in 1868 at Clyro, Radnor, Wales
	14N27		Alice Shelburn Collett		Born in 1870 at Clyro, Radnor, Wales
	14N28		Kate Collett		Born in 1873 at Longhope, Glos.
14M23	Mary Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in January 1798. Following the death of her father in 1818 Mary inherited a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. Tragically she died just four years later in 1823 aged 25.
14M24	Ann Collett was baptised at Bourton-on-the-Water on 11^th December 1798. Following the death of her father in 1818 Ann inherited a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. After the tragic death of her younger married sister Elizabeth Marshall (below), Anne married her widowed brother-in-law Stephen Marshall at Bourton during August 1822 and took over the rearing of her nephew Thomas Collett Marshall, who was born around the end of 1819. A few years after they were married Stephen found himself in financial difficulties and was sentenced to a term in Gloucester debtors’ prison sometime between 1828 and 1830. After his release from gaol the couple, together with Stephen’s son Thomas, moved to London.
14M25	Elizabeth Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1800. Following the death of her father in 1818 Elizabeth inherited a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. On 21^st April 1819 she married Stephen Marshall at Bourton with whom she had a son before her premature death. That may have happened during the birth of her son or shortly thereafter. What is known is that Stephen Marshall married Elizabeth’s sister Anne Collett (above) at Bourton in August 1822.
	14N29		Thomas Collett Marshall		Born in 1820 at Bourton-on-the-Water
14M26	Martha Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1802 and she died on 7^th December 1810. She was buried in the family grave at St Lawrence’s Church Cemetery in Bourton, where she was later joined by both her parents. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
14M27	Thomas Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1804. His father died when Thomas was only thirteen years old and under the terms of his Will, and as his oldest son, Thomas inherited all of the lands and property within his father’s estate upon reaching 21 years of age. Five years later in 1831, Thomas married Mary Ransford who was born in 1803. By the time of the first national census in June 1841 Thomas and Mary were both aged 35 and were living at Bourton with six of their first seven children, all of whom had been born there. Seventeen years earlier Henry Collett (Ref. 29M1) married Elizabeth Ransford at nearby Turkdean. See Part 29 – The Turkdean to Australia Line. The family of Thomas and Mary in 1841 was made up of Thos Collett who was nine, John Collett who was five, Ann Collett who was four, Arthur Collett who was three, Emily Collett who was two, and Henrietta Collett who was under one-year-old. The missing child was the couple’s first-born daughter Mary, who had died in 1834.
	During the ten years from 1836 to 1847 the family of Thomas Collett was the subject of seven entries in the parish diary for Upper Slaughter. These are listed below, as they were written: 18^th August 1836 - Rode to Stow, and attended a meeting of subscribers to the Police Association, which was attended by Messrs. Pole, Jeaffreson, W B Pole, Winter, Beman, Harris, Collett, Pegler, T. Collett & others. 20^th June 1837 - I joined, at the Rectory, the Committee appointed to draw up rules for the proposed Friendly Society, meeting Robt. Waller, Ford, Billingsley, Wilkins, Kendall, Kimber, E. Lea, Collett, Ashwin. 1^st June 1839 - Besides a considerable party of ordinary members and musicians about fifteen dined on very good and well-cooked viands at the high table, being Trustees & Honorary members – Waller, Polson, Wilkins, Kimber, W. Smith, E. Lea, J. Bennett, Ransford, T. Collett, W. & Jos. Bryan, C. Barton &c. 5^th June 1840 - At half past one sat down to dinner, R Waller taking the Chair, about sixty dined, including Ford, Polson, Wilkins, Kendall, Welles, two Bryans, W. Smith, Palmer, T. Collett. 3^rd June 1842 - My son and I joined the party at the New Inn, and sat down to a very good plain dinner. The party at the High Table consisted of Messrs. Wilkins, Kendall, Kimber, W Stenson, Collett. 14^th December 1846 - Wrote for Thos. Collett to R G Smith at Ramsgate. 11^th November 1847 - Called on T. Collett on tax business.
	Four years later, Thomas and Mary were still living at Bourton. The 1851 Census recorded that 46-year-old Thomas was a cattle salesman and his wife Mary was 47, both having been born at Bourton. With them were five of their children, again all born at Bourton, and they were Arthur Collett who was 13, Emily Collett who was 11, Henrietta Collett who was nine, Susan Collett who was eight, and Alfred Collett who was four. Completing the household was 19 years old servant Sarah Beckley of Notgrove.
	By 1861, the family living at Bourton had reduced to just mother Mary Collett, whose status was a married farmer’s wife of Bourton who was 56. The only children living with her that day were her two daughters Emily Collett who was 21, and Mary H Collett who was 19, who was Henrietta in the previous census returns. On that same day, Mary’s husband Thomas Collett from Bourton, was 56 and head of the household at Aston Somerville just over the county boundary in Worcestershire, where his occupation was that of a farm bailiff. With Thomas were two male servants, Anthony Justin and George Stokes. Eight years later, on 4^th October 1869, he died and was buried at St Lawrence’s Church in Bourton. The headstone that marks his grave reads “In Loving Memory of Thomas Collett who died October 4^th 1869 aged 64 years” (see Headstone Epitaphs). The death of Thomas Collett was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 174).
	As a consequence, in the 1871 Census, Mary was described as a widow of 67 and an annuitant, when living with her was her daughter Mary who was 29. Following the death of her husband and sometime after April 1871, the widow Mrs Mary Collett married long-term family friend John Beale. John was a widower, his wife having died prior to the census of 1871. It was John’s father who had been a trustee of the Will of Thomas Collett in 1818, the main beneficiary of which was Mary’s first husband Thomas Collett.
	However, that second marriage for Mary was fairly short lived, as John Beale died in 1874 when he was 68, his passing recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold. When that happened, her unmarried daughter Susan Beale Collett returned to live with her widowed mother, as confirmed by the census in 1881, in which Mary Beale, formerly Collett, was 77 and retired, while living at the Butcher’s Shop on the High Street in Bourton. Living with her was her 38-year-old daughter Susan B Collett, also listed as retired. What is of further interest in that census that same year, was that Mary’s younger brother Alfred Ransford, aged 66, and his family were living next door to the Butcher’s Shop in Bourton.
	Mary Beale nee Ransford died at Bourton seven years later on 13^th July 1888 and was buried with her first husband Thomas Collett. Her death was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 235). The gravestone that had borne his inscription (see above) then had one added for Mary. This reads “Also of Mary Beale relict of the above who died July 13^th 1888 aged 84” (see Headstone Epitaphs). In early April 1871 Mary’s second husband to be John Beale was also recorded as living at Bourton-on-the-Water, where he was described as being aged 66 and a widower, which confirms that he was a similar age to Mary.
	14N30		Thomas Collett		Born in 1832 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N31		Mary Elizabeth Collett		Born in 1833 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N32		John Collett		Born in 1835 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N33		Ann Elizabeth Collett		Born in 1837 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N34		William Arthur Collett		Born in 1838 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N35		Emily Collett		Born in 1839 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N36		Mary Henrietta Collett		Born in 1841 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N37		Susan Beale Collett		Born in 1842 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N38		Esther Ransford Collett		Born in 1844 at Bourton-on-the Water
	14N39		Alfred James Collett		Born in 1846 at Bourton-on-the Water
14M28	John Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1807. Following the death of his father in 1818 John inherited a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. He lived at Berryfields in Bourton and he married (1) Mary Strong, the daughter of Robert Strong and Mary Hookham. The wedding took place at Batheaston in Somerset on 22^nd February 1837 and Mary’s father was a witness at the ceremony. She had also been born at Bourton, six years after John, in 1813. The marriage produced four children for the couple but, tragically, four months after the birth of their fourth children, Mary died at Bourton, where she was buried on 14^th May 1846, aged just 32. The death of Mary Collett recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 275) during the second quarter of 1846.
	Following the death of his wife, John married (2) Mary and that marriage produced another son for him, who was born at Burford, just over the county boundary in Oxfordshire. The birth of John Collett junior, was recorded at Witney (Ref. xvi 122) during the last three months of 1847. However, John Collett senior passed only a few months later, his death also recorded at Witney (Ref. xvi 117) during the first quarter of 1848, at the age of 41. John Collett left no Will, but legal letters regarding his estate and that of his father Thomas Collett (Ref. 14L11) were deposited at the Gloucester Records Office.
	One such letter written, by his second wife, stated that she did not wish to be burdened with her late husband’s four children from his previous marriage. That resulted in the children being placed in the care of the family and a little while later two of them were admitted into an orphanage in Bristol. Sadly, the bulk of John’s estate was inherited by his second wife and their son John, with a maximum of thirty-five pounds being left to each of his four earlier children. During his life John Collett senior is believed to have work as a publican and a farm bailiff.
	14N40		Emma Elizabeth Collett		Born in 1838 at Bourton-on-the-Water
	14N41		Ann Mary Collett		Born in 1841 at Aston Blank
	14N42		Robert Collett		Born in 1843 at Bourton-on-the-Water
	14N43		Thomas Collett		Born in 1846 at Burford, Oxon
	14N44		John Collett		Born around 1848
14M29	Henrietta Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1811. Following the death of her father in 1818 Henrietta inherited a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. Henrietta married Charles J Fox who was a butcher. The couple lived in London where Henrietta died between 1851 and 1861.
14M30	Robert Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1813. Following the death of his father in 1818 Robert would have inherited a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. However, at the age of just 19 he died at Bourton on 9^th May 1832. A headstone in the cemetery of St Lawrence’s Church at Bourton marks the grave where he was buried with his sister Emma. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
14M31	Emma Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1816. Following the death of her father in 1818 Emma stood to inherit a substantial sum of money upon reaching the age of 21. Tragically however, just like her brother Robert (above), Emma also failed to receive her inheritance when she died at Bourton on 24^th February 1834. With her death closely following that of her brother she was buried in the same grave as him, the headstone carrying both of their names. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
14N1	John Collett was born at Church Lench in Worcestershire during 1831, the son of John Collett from Badsey and his wife Jane from Atch Lench. He was baptised on 4^th March 1832 at Church Lench. In 1841, at the age of nine years, John was the only child living with his parents in the Evesham area which included Church Lench and Atch Lench. By the time of the next census in 1851, he had already left the home of his parents in Atch Lench, but was still living in nearby area, when it was confirmed that he was 19 and from Church Lench, one of three male servants at the Fladbury home of Charles Tandy of Fladbury. John was an agricultural labourer and during the next few years he married Hannah, with whom he is known to have had at least six children. Five years later, the marriage of John Collett and Hannah Newman was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 1) during the second quarter of 1856.
	For the census in 1861 John Collett from Church Lench was still living there with his wife Hannah and their first two children. John was 28, Hannah was 24, Ann Collett was three and Emma Collett was one year old. During the next decade the family left Church Lench and by 1871 they were living at Atch Lench where five of their six children had been born. According to the census return completed in 1871 it was only the couple’s first child who had been born at Church Lench, where Hannah had also been born. The census that year described the family living in a cottage in Atch Lench, within the parish of Church Lench, as John Collett, aged 38 and from Atch Lench, Hannah who was 35, Ann 14, Emma 11, Jane 9 – presumably named after John’s mother, Caroline who was six, Ellen who was three and John William Collett who was one year old.
	No further children were added to the family after that time, although it is possible that Hannah, who died during the next few years, did so during childbirth, the child not surviving the ordeal also. By 1881 widower John Collett, aged 48 and from Church Lench, was still living in Atch Lench with just his two youngest children. They were Ellen who was 14, and John W Collett who was 10 and already employed as an agricultural labourer like his father. Ellen was very likely acting as housekeeper.
	Also living very nearby in Atch Lench was John’s daughter Jane Collett who was 19 and employed as a general domestic servant at the home of miller George Bomford and his wife and large family. In 1851 John’s parents were living in the next property to the Bomford family in Atch Lench, so it seems likely that that was a long association between to two families.
	On the basis that all of his daughters left home to be married, by 1891 John Collett, aged 57, was still living at Atch Lench, but with just his son for company. By then, the census recorded John W Collett as being 21. Not long after that John William Collett became a married man and it may have been just after that when John went to live with his married daughter Emma at Salford Priors in Warwickshire. John Collett from Church Lench was 67 and a general labourer and the father-in-law of Joseph Sollis, the husband of Emma. It was therefore most likely that it was while he was living there with his daughter that John Collett died during the first decade of the new century.
	14O1		Ann Collett		Born in 1856 at Church Lench
	14O2		Emma Collett		Born in 1859 at Atch Lench
	14O3		Jane Collett		Born in 1861 at Atch Lench
	14O4		Caroline Collett		Born in 1864 at Atch Lench
	14O5		Ellen Collett		Born in 1867 at Atch Lench
	14O6		John William Collett		Born in 1869 at Atch Lench
14N3	Elizabeth Collett was born at Upper Slaughter where she was baptised on 26^th February 1837. In 1851 she was 14 and ten years later she was listed as being 24, single, and a needlewoman, born at Upper Slaughter. At that time, she was living with the family of agricultural labourer George Wilcox aged 51 and of Upper Slaughter. With her was her base-born daughter Ann E Collett aged five months, placing her month of birth as being November in 1860, who had also been born at Upper Slaughter. The birth of Annie Elizabeth Collett was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 305) during the last two months of that year. Elizabeth was married during the weeks following the 1861, her marriage to Nathaniel Tennant was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 609) during the second quarter of 1861. Her daughter eventually adopted her maiden name and, tragically, not long after, the death of Ann Elizabeth Tennant was recorded at Stow (Ref. 6a 290) during the first three months of 1863, when she was three years old. Nathaniel was an agricultural labourer and occasionally a haulier. The childless couple was recorded in every census from 1871, when they were living at Coln St Dennis, where Nathaniel from Spilsby in Oxfordshire was 30 and Elizabeth from Upper Slaughter was 33. It was at Bibury that they were living in 1881, when they had living with them nephew Ernest Yendell from Taunton in Somerset, who was two years old. By 1891 Nathaniel was 49 and Elizabeth was 53 but it was at Arlington Village, Bibury where they were recorded that year. During the next decade, Nathaniel passed away, leaving Elizabeth Tennant a widow who was working as a domestic servant at the age of 64 and again living and working in Bibury. Just under five years later, the death of Elizabeth Tennant was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold register office (Ref. 6a 280) during the first quarter of 1906, at the age of 69.
	14O7		Ann Elizabeth Collett				Born in 1860 at Upper Slaughter
14N4	Thomas Collett was born at Upper Slaughter and was baptised there on 4^th November 1838. The birth of Thomas Collett was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 107) during the third quarter of 1838. It is likely that he was born at The Square in Upper Slaughter, where two-year-old Thomas was living with his family in 1841. By the time of the census in 1851 he was 12 years old and the son of a carpenter, when he was living at home with his parents in Upper Slaughter. Ten years later Thomas was an unmarried carpenter at the age of 22 and was living with his widowed father and master carpenter Thomas Collett at his home in the village of Upper Slaughter. It was around six months after that census day, that the married of Thomas Collett and Elizabeth Forty Banning was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 1) during the third quarter of 1861. Elizabeth Forty Banning was born at Stow-on-the-Wold, where her birth was recorded (Ref. xi 39) during the second quarter of 1840. For the first few years of their married life the couple remained at Upper Slaughter, where their first two children were born. By the end of the 1860s, Thomas’ work had taken the family from Gloucestershire to Reading, where the couple’s third child was born, and where the family was living at the time of the census in 1871.
	The census for the St Mary district of Reading listed the family as Thomas Collett, aged 32, Elizabeth F Collett, aged 30, and their three children Cecilia A E Collett who was five, Samuel A H Collett who was four, and Alice K Collett who was not yet one year old. Within the next four years the family left Reading and moved in to London, and it was at Brixton that Elizabeth presented Thomas with their next two children, although shortly after the family was living in Peckham when their last child was born.
	According to the census in 1881, Thomas Collett from Upper Slaughter was recorded as being 48, which may be a transcription error for 42. His occupation was that of a wood stainer (painter) and he and his family were living at 7 Buckingham Villas in Camberwell, Surrey. Living there with him was his wife Elizabeth F Collett, aged 40 of Stow-on-the-Wold, and their six children Cecilia A E Collett who was 15, Samuel A Collet who was 14, Alice K Collett who was 10, Otto F Collett who was four, Amos T Collett who was three, and Rosella N Collett who was one year old.
	The family’s move to Camberwell may have been influenced by Thomas’ cousin John Collett (Ref. 14N32), who moved there around the mid-1870s. It is also worth noting that another John Collett (Ref. 33O19) of Bourton-on-the-Water was also living in Camberwell in 1881. All three men were born between 1835 and 1838.
	Thomas’ wife may well have been pregnant with the couple’s seventh child on the day of the 1881 Census, since later that year she gave birth to another son, and he was followed five years later by their last child. Not long after that, the family settled in the Wandsworth and Clapham area of London, where they were recorded in the census of 1891. However, the census enumerator that year, recorded the family’s surname with an additional e at the end of the name, in addition to recording incorrect ages for Thomas and Elizabeth, but correctly for their children. That year, Thomas Collett from Gloucestershire was 52 and working as a carriage liner, and his wife Elizabeth Collett was 50, instead of 42 and 40. The children living with the couple at Pensbury Terrace in Clapham, within the London Borough of Wandsworth, were Alice Collett, aged 20, Amos Collett who was 13, Rose Collett who was 11, Victor Collett who was nine, and Harold Collett who was four years old. By that time in their life, the couple’s two eldest children would have been 25 and 24 respectively, and were no longer living with Thomas and Elizabeth. The couple’s other absent child, Otto Francis Collett, aged 14, was living separately close by in the same Wandsworth & Clapham area.
	However, something strange happened to the family before the end of the decade, because Thomas and Elizabeth were not recorded together at the time of the census in 1901, and Elizabeth was living in the village of Shoreham, just north of Sevenoaks in Kent. She was described as Elizabeth Forty Collett, aged 56 (sic) from Stow-on-the-Wold and, although she was married, she was living on her own means, with just two of her children. They were naval seaman Otto Francis Keil Collett, aged 24 from London, and Amos Thomas Collett, aged 22 and a joiner, also from London. To supplement her income, Elizabeth had two boarders staying with her at Shoreham Street, and they were St George Bargise, a widow of 55 who was a dentist from Mauritius, and Eugene Lloyd aged 68 who was also from Mauritius. The death of Elizabeth Forty Collett from Stow-on-the-Wold, was recorded at Kingston-upon-Thames register office (Ref. 2a 62) during the last three months of 1923, at the age of 83.
	Where Thomas Collett was living in 1901 has still to be determined; nor has the whereabouts of his two youngest children been found, while it is established that Victor V Collett became a married man after the First World War. By 1911, Thomas Collett from Upper Slaughter was 72 and a journeyman joiner who was living at Teddington in Surrey with his second wife Rebecca Elizabeth Collett who was 64 and from St Peter’s Broadstairs in Kent. The census that year, confirmed that Thomas and Rebecca had been married in 1894. Two years later, the death of Thomas Collett was recorded at Kingston-upon-Thames register office (Ref. 2a 81) during the second quarter of 1913, when he was 74 years old. After fifteen years as a widow, the death of Rebecca Collett aged 79, was also recorded at Kingston (Ref. 2a 54) at the end of 1928.
	14O8		Cecilia Olivia E Collett				Born in 1865 at Upper Slaughter
	14O9		Samuel Alfred H Collett				Born in 1866 at Upper Slaughter
	14O10		Alice K Collett				Born in 1870 at Reading
	14O11		Otto Francis Keil Collett				Born in 1876 at Brixton
	14O12		Amos Thomas Collett				Born in 1877 at Brixton
	14O13		Rosella N Collett				Born in 1879 at Peckham
	14O14		Victor Vincent R Collett				Born in 1881 at Camberwell
	14O15		Harold Collett				Born in 1886 at Camberwell
14N6	Harriett Collett was born at Upper Slaughter where she was baptised on 26^th June 1842 and where in 1851 she was 9 years of age. Ten years later she was working as a housemaid aged 18 at the home of Edward Francis Witts the Rector and Justice of the Peace Rector for Upper Slaughter. Harriett was just one of eight servants serving the Rector, his wife and their only son. Rector Edward Francis Witts was the son of the Reverend Francis Edward Witts the author of “The Diary of a Cotswold Parson”.
14N8	Sarah Collett was born at Upper Slaughter on 14^th November 1845, a daughter of Thomas Samuel Collett and widow Elizabeth Goodwin, nee Eddles of Bledington. Her birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 19) during the fourth quarter of that year. On the day of the census in 1851, Sarah Collett was five years old and was living with her parents at Upper Slaughter. Ten years later, at the age of 15, Sarah was noted as having no occupation, when her father Thomas was a master carpenter. It was at Reading (Ref. 2c 272) during the last three months of 1868 that the marriage of Sarah Collett, aged 23, and James Hartwell, aged 20, was recorded, James having been born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 8^th January 1848. The wedding ceremony took place at St Lawrence’s Church in Reading on 20^th November 1868, when James was of full age, a bachelor and a plumber, residing at Charles Street in the St Mary’s district of Reading, the son of plumber Henry Hartwell. Sarah was simply described as a spinster, who father was Thomas Samuel Collett, a carpenter. In 1871, the couple and their first child, Amy Jane, recorded in error as Mary Jane, were living at Earley Cottages on London Road in the Earley and Sonning district of Reading and, by 1881, Sarah had given birth to five children, the first two born in Reading (although the birth of Amy Jane was recorded at Wantage), with the remainder born at Stow-on-the-Wold. James Hartwell from Bourton-on-the-Water was 34 and a plumber, and Sarah Hartwell from Upper Slaughter was 35. Their five children were Amy Hartwell who was 11, James Arthur Hartwell who was nine, Jessie Emma Hartwell who was six, Ada Elizabeth Hartwell who was five and Amelia Hartwell who was one year old. At that time the family was residing at Digbeth Street in Stow. Three more children were added to the family, and they were Hilda Sarah Hartwell in 1882, Horace Ernest Hartwell in 1884 and Annie Hartwell in 1886.
	By the time of the census in 1891, the family was still living at Digbeth Street in Stow-on-the-Wold, at a property known as Hartwell Cottage, more recently an antiques shop and holiday cottage. James was 44 and a plumber and painter, and with him and Sarah were their children. They were James who was 19 and a painter’s assistant, Ada who was 15, Amelia who 11 and still at school, Hilda who was nine and also at school, as was Horace who was seven and Annie who was five. After a further ten years, Sarah and her family were continuing to reside at Digbeth Street in Stow, where she was 56, and James was 54, a plumber and decorator with his own account. That year, the only children still living with the couple in 1901 were Ada Elizabeth aged 25, Hilda Sarah aged 19, Horace Ernest who was 17 and a plumber and decorator working with his father, and Annie who was 15 and a milliner’s assistant. That was also the occupation of Annie’s older sister Amelia, who was living above the department store of J C Smith at 3 Wood Street in Stratford-on-Avon. James Hartwell died three years after that census day, when he passed away at Stow-on-the-Wold on 20^th April 1904, aged 57. His Will was proved at Gloucester on 2^nd June 1904, when the executor of his personal effects valued at £773 19 Shillings 3 Pence was named as James Arthur Hartwell. According to the next census in 1911, Sarah was widow and head of the household at Stow-on-the-Wold. She living a long life and was 83 years old when she died on 25^th September 1929, following which she was buried with her husband in the cemetery of the old Baptist chapel in Bourton-on-the-Water. It was the aforementioned milliner Amelia Hartwell, the fifth child Sarah Collett and James Hartwell, and later Amelia Higgins, who was the grandmother of Pat Tolley, who generously provided new details of her connection to the Collett family.
14N10	Amy Collett was born at Upper Slaughter around 1850 and was aged 1 in the 1851 Census for that village. By 1861 Amy was listed in the census as being 13 and was living were her family at Upper Slaughter. However, a further ten years on when Amy was 21 she was working as a housemaid and was a visitor at the Upper Slaughter home of the Rector and Justice of the Peace Edward Francis Witts. Curiously, ten years earlier Amy’s sister Harriett (above) had been in service there. Also living and working there as a housemaid in April 1871 with Amy Collett was 18 years old Sarah Anne Cambray the eldest daughter of Jane Elizabeth Collett (Ref. 33N13) and James Cambray.
14N11	JOHN KYTE COLLETT was born at Longbridge House in Cowl Street, Shepton Mallet in 1836, the only son of Robert Hanman Collett of Bourton-on-the-Water and his wife Julia Speed of Shepton Mallet. His second forename derived from his paternal grandmother’s maiden name. He was just two years old when his father died, following which his mother moved the family to live at a smaller property in Garston Street where John was five years old at the time of the Shepton Mallet census of 1841. He was still living there in 1851 when he was 14 and attending the Grammar School in Charlton Road in the town.
	On completing his education, John became an apprentice to a linen draper in Bristol, before rejoining his mother and sister Ann (below) who had left Shepton Mallet by then and were living in Cardiff. It was also in Cardiff that he opened his own grocery shop in St Mary Street, following his mother’s example when she transferred her grocery shop from Shepton Mallet to Cardiff a few years earlier. John was a vegetarian and was a non-smoker for all his adult life, nor did he drink tea or coffee.
	By the time of the census in 1861, John K Collett, aged 25 and from Shepton Mallet, was confirmed as living in Cardiff with his widowed mother Julia and his sister Ann. In addition to his own business in St Mary Street in Cardiff, is also established that John also became a senior partner of the well-known firm of Collett, Whitefield and Co, wholesale provision merchants, trading internationally, much like many of his ancestors.
	It was around eight years later, at the age of 33, when John Kyte Collett married Sarah Ann Orledge Reeves at Pilton Church near Shepton Mallet in 1869, she having been born there in 1841. The marriage certificate described Sarah as the daughter of Thomas White Reeves, a yeoman, while John’s father was recorded as Robert Collett, deceased. Two years after they were married the childless couple were still living in Cardiff, when John K Collett was 35, and his wife Sarah A O Collett was 30. It was at Penarth, to the south of Cardiff, that the couple were living five years later when their only child was born.
	Five years after that, and on the occasion of the census in 1881, John and Sarah Collett were visiting the home of Sarah’s father Thomas White Reeves, the details of the day being as follows: Thomas White Reeves (Head of House), aged 74 and from Pilton in Somerset, was a widower employing two men and one boy on his 100-acre East Town farm at Pilton. Still living with him was his unmarried daughter Julia F Orledge Reeves, aged 39 and also of Pilton, his grandson Thomas William Reeves, aged 14 from Christchurch in New Zealand, his daughter Sarah Ann Orledge Collett, aged 40 and born at Pilton, and her husband John Kyte Collett, a provisions merchant from Shepton Mallet, who was 45. The household was completed by two domestic servants.
	Back at the home of John and Sarah Collett at 20 Romilly Crescent at Llandaff near Cardiff was their five years old daughter Edith Collett and the details extracted from the 1881 census return for her are provided under her own reference. Upon the publication during the following year of the Kelly’s Directory for 1882, the company of John Kyte Collett was listed as “Collett & Co, American and Canadian Importer of 235 Bute Street in Cardiff”. However, by 1891 the company was trading under the name of “Collett and Isaacs of New Street in Cardiff”, although no record of either John or Sarah, or their daughter Edith, has been found in the census that year.
	By the time of the census in 1901, provision merchant John K Collett from Shepton Mallet was 64, and living with him in Penarth was his wife Sarah A O Collett who was 60 and from Pilton. It is assumed that their daughter Edith was married by that time, since there is no record of Edith Collett of Penarth who was around 24 years of age anywhere in the census that year. However, there were two likely married candidates; Edith Brain and Edith Llewellyn, both of them born at Penarth, where they were also living. Ten years later in April 1911 John Kyte Collett, aged 75, was still living in the Penarth area with his wife Sarah A O Collett who was 70
	On his retirement from business John Kyte Collett devoted his energies to social and philanthropic work. He had always lived an active life and was tireless in his advocacy of improved social and industrial conditions. During his life he wrote several remarkable pamphlets on housing, land and educational problems. After the First World War he founded ‘The Children’s League of Peace and Goodwill’ with a membership of tens of thousands in all countries of the world, from Japan to Wales. He believed that world peace could only be achieved from the nursery. All of the children who joined the League were given a brass token, as shown below.
	Figure 1 has the words: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for I am the good shepherd” On the reverse side is written: “This is a token of membership of the Children’s League of Peace and Goodwill to all the children of all the races”
	It was many years later that John Kyte Collett died on 16^th October 1933 at the age of 97, who had continued working right up until that time. Following his death his body was eventually laid to rest in Cardiff where a headstone with the inscription below marks the grave.
	In Loving Memory of Sarah Ann Orledge Beloved Wife of John Kyte Collett Died March 18^th 1922 aged 81 Also her beloved sister Julia Frances Orledge Reeves Died June 16^th 1931 aged 89 Also of the above John Kyte Collett Formerly of Shepton Mallet Died October 16^th 1933 aged 97
	One interesting story relating to him, is that schoolboy John Kyte Collett and his cousin, John Lewis who was also born at Cowl Street in Shepton Mallet and the founder of the modern-day John Lewis Partnership, were evicted on several occasions, together with many other children, from a field attached to Langhorne House (now St Paul’s School), which was then owned by Mr Garton, the owner of the Anglo Bavarian Brewery.
	Much has been written about John Kyte Collett and his achievements, one of which is the establishment of Collett Park in Shepton Mallet in 1906, which was the subject of a Collett reunion in June 2006 to celebrate the centenary of the park. A photographic record of the weekend’s events can be found on this website in the folder entitled Shepton Mallet 2006. An earlier Collett reunion took place in June 1996 and a written record of that event can be found in the folder entitled Shepton Mallet 1996.
	14O16		EDITH COLLETT		Born in 1876 at Penarth
14N12	Ann Mary Collett was born in 1838 at Shepton Mallet, the only daughter of Robert Hanman Collett and Julia Speed. It was also in the same year that she was born that Ann’s father died. So by the time of the census in 1841 Ann Collett aged three years was living at Garston Street in Shepton Mallet with her widowed mother and older brother John (above). Ten years later she and her family were still living there, when Ann was 13. During the 1850s Ann’s mother took Ann to live in Cardiff, where her brother joined them following the completion of his apprenticeship. And it was in Cardiff that the three of them were recorded in the census of 1861. At that time Ann M Collett from Shepton Mallet was 23.
	It was seven years later that she married baptist minister the Reverend James Cruickshank in 1868. They had two children John, who was born in 1869 at Canton in Cardiff and Alice, who was born in 1870 at Tellcarn in Devon. By the time of the 1871 Census the four of them were living with Ann’s mother Julia Collett at Canton in Cardiff. Also living with them was 25 years old carpenter Fred Speed who had been born at Shepton Mallet, a nephew of Julia Collett nee Speed.
	According to the census of 1881, Ann and James Cruickshank were living at Back Lane in Crewkerne on the boundary between Somerset and Dorset. James was listed as a baptist minister who was 45 and born in Scotland, while Ann Mary was aged 43 and born at Shepton Mallet. Their children were given listed as Alice Mary Cruickshank, who was born in 1870, Elsie Cruickshank, who was born in 1872; and James Ryland Cruickshank, who was born in March 1881. See other Ryland references at 14I16 and 14M10. Also living with them at the time of the census was Ann Mary’s widowed mother Julia Collett, who was 69 and from Shepton Mallet.
	By 1891, only their son James R Cruickshank, aged 10, was still living at Crewkerne with Ann M Cruickshank, aged 53, and her husband James who was 55. On that occasion the couple’s two daughters were both living and working in Cardiff, where Alice M Cruickshank was 21 and Elsie Cruickshank was 19. It was Ann’s son James who eventually established a line of the Cruickshank family in New Zealand. Ann Mary Cruickshank nee Collett died nine years later in 1900.
	In 2015 David George Rogers, born circa 1950, provided the following information about Ann Mary’s daughter Elsie Cruickshank who was his paternal grandmother. Elsie married Thomas Rogers, a grocer, and they lived at 21 Windsor Terrace in Penarth. It was their son who was David’s father, while Elsie Rogers nee Cruickshank died during 1952.
14N13	Robert Dalby was born at Bourton-on-the Water in 1838. He married Mary Barker of Leamington and in 1881 they were living at 87 Edward Street in Kings Norton south of Birmingham. Robert was a painter who was aged 43, as was his wife Mary, and living with them were their children: Robert E Dalby born in 1863; Rosina F Dalby born in 1866; Frank M Dalby born in 1868; and Alfred E Dalby born in 1873.
14N14	Frances (Fanny) Jane Dalby was born at Shepton Mallet in 1842. She married Edward John Jones of Hemel Hempstead around 1867. He was a coal merchant employing five men and a boy and was born in 1841. Fanny was confirmed in the 1881 Census as being aged 39 of Shepton Mallet. Their children were: Herbert Edward Jones born in 1868; Lillian Mary Jones born in 1870; Charles Collett Jones born in 1871; Edith F Jones born in 1873; John Edward Jones born in 1879, and all were born at Hemel Hempstead. Also living with the family was Fanny’s 68 years old mother Elizabeth Kyte Dalby.
14N15	Joseph Collett was born at Condicote, to the west of Stow-on-the-Wold in 1847, and was the eldest child of George Collett of Bourton-on-the-Water and Elizabeth Emms of Hazelton. It was at Stow where his birth was recorded (Ref. xi 383) during the second quarter of that year. Unlike his following two brothers, no baptism record for Joseph has yet been found, so the second recording of him was in the census of 1851, when he was three years old and living with his family on Swell Hill in Lower Swell. It was the census return that gave his place of birth as Condicote. No later record of Joseph has been found anywhere in the subsequent census returns, so it may be safe to assume that the death of Joseph Collett recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 202) during the last three months of 1855, was the son of George and Elizabeth Collett.
14N16	Oliver Emms Collett was born at Lower Swell in 1849, with his birth recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 429) during the first three months of that year. It was also at Lower Swell that he was baptised on 15^th July 1849, the second child of George Collett and his wife Elizabeth Emms. In all of the later records in his life he was simply referred to as Oliver Collett, including the census of 1851 when he was two years old and living with his family on Swell Hill in Lower Swell. His place of birth, on that occasion, was recorded as Swell. He was still living with his parents in 1861, by which time the family had moved to Longborough, near Condicote, where Oliver’s older brother Joseph (above) had been born. The census that year recorded Oliver Collett, aged 12, as the oldest of the three sons still living with George and Elizabeth Collett. Ten years later Oliver was 22 and working for the Great Western Railway as a mechanic, when he was a lodger at the Barton St Mary Gloucester home of elderly Mary Jones.
	It was his work on the railway that eventually took him north to Lancashire, where he met and married his wife Martha Finney around 1877. Martha was born at Newton Le Willows in 1852 and was baptised at Newton-in-Makersfield on 29^th August 1852, the daughter of John and Eliza Finney. Not long after they were married the couple lived in for a short while in Liverpool, where their first of their five children was born, although very sadly, only two of them survived to adulthood. By the time of the census in 1881, the family had moved east to Widnes and it was at 5 William Street that the three of them were living on that day. Oliver Collett, aged 32 and from Lower Swell, was a railway engine driver, his wife Martha, aged 28, was from Newton-le-Willows, and their daughter Gertrude Collett was just one year.
	During the next ten years three more daughters were born into the family which, after living in Widnes for a very short while, moved the short distance to Garston on the north side of the River Mersey, to the south of Liverpool. It was while they were living there that the next two children were born, and then, towards to the end of the decade, the family moved again, that time to nearby Toxteth, where Oliver and Martha’s last daughter was born. The family living on Cleopas Street in Toxteth Park in 1891 was made up of Oliver Collett, who was 41 and a locomotive engine driver, Martha Collett, who was 38, and their four daughters Gertrude Collett who was eleven, Ada M Collett who was eight, Martha Collett who was six years old, and Jane Collett who was ten months old. Visiting the family that day was Mary Finney who was 27 and Martha’s younger sister.
	It was not long after the census year of 1891, that the family moved from Liverpool into Cheshire, where the couple’s only known son was born, when the family had settled in the Stockport area of that county. The birth of Oliver Collett was recorded at Stockport (Ref. 8a 66) during the third quarter of 1895, after which he was baptised at the Church of St Augustine in Stockport on 4^th September 1895, the son of Oliver and Martha Collett. Tragically, the child was around six months old when he suffered an infant death, which was recorded at Stockport (Ref. 8a 47) during the second quarter of 1896. Three years earlier, the family had suffered the death of their daughter Jane. Her birth, on 7^th June 1890 at Cleopas Street, was recorded at Toxteth Park (Ref. 8b 156) during the third quarter of 1890, when her parents were confirmed as Oliver and Martha Collett. Jane was three years old when her death was recorded at Stockport (Ref. 7a 42) during the first three months of 1894. The couple’s third loss of a child was in 1897, when the death of Ada Mary Collett was recorded at Stockport (Ref. 8a 53) during the second quarter of that year, at the age of 14 years. Ada had been baptised at Garston on 1^st April 1883, following her birth recorded West Derby, Liverpool, (Ref. 8b 696) during the first three months of 1883.
	The absence from the family of Ada, Jane and Oliver was confirmed in the Stockport census of 1901. Head of the household Oliver Collett from Lower Swell in Gloucestershire was 52 and his occupation was again that of a railway engine driver, while his wife Martha was 48 and from Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire. By that time, the couple’s two surviving children were still living with them, and they were Gertrude Collett, aged 21, who was a dressmaker from Liverpool, and Martha Collett who was 16 and an apprentice milliner from Garston. After another ten years Oliver and Martha were still living in the Stockport area, and still had their two unmarried daughters living there with them. The census conducted in 1911, listed the family as Oliver Collett from Lower Swell as being 61 and a railway locomotive engine driver with the Midland Railway Company, Martha Collett from Newton-le-Willows who was 57, and daughters Gertrude Collett who was 31 and a dressmaker, and Martha Collett who was 26 and a milliner.
	Just over three years later, the death of Martha Collett, nee Finney, was recorded at Stockport register office (Ref. 8a 85) during the third quarter of 1914, at the age of 62. The Will of Martha Collett was proved in Chester on 20^th September 1914, when the date of her passing was stated as being 3^rd September and the sole beneficiary was her husband Oliver Collett. After three years as a widower, Oliver Collett was living at 16 Stockport Road in Cheadle Heath when he died on 18^th October 1917. The death of Oliver Collett was recorded at Stockport register office (Ref. 8a 63), when he was 68 years old. His estate of £208 13 Shillings 8d was subject to probate at Chester on 13^th December that same year, in which his two daughters Martha and Gertrude Adams, and son-in-law George Adams, were mentioned. Both were married by that time, although Martha Coombes was already a widow, perhaps as a result of losing her husband in the Great War.
	Regarding the couple’s other two daughters, no record of Jane has been found at all, which may suggest that she did not survive beyond childhood. There are however, records for two Ada Mary, who were both born at Garston in 1882 and both of them were living in the West Derby area of Liverpool in 1911. The first was married to John Joseph Newman and had a daughter Kathleen who was born in 1907, while the second was married to Robert Thurston Bushell with two sons, Robert Edgar born in 1902 and William Samuel born in 1909.
	14O17		Gertrude Collett		Born in 1879 at Liverpool
	14O18		Ada Mary Collett		Born in 1882 at Garston; died 1897
	14O19		Martha Collett		Born in 1884 at Garston, Merseyside
	14O20		Jane Collett		Born in 1890 at Toxteth Park; died 1893
	14O21		Oliver Collett		Born in 1895 at Stockport; died 1896
14N17	George Collett was born at Lower Swell on 26^th August 1854 and was baptised there on 19^th November 1854, the third son of George and Elizabeth Collett, with his birth recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 324). At the time of the census in 1861 George’s family was living at Longborough to the west of Stow-on-the-Wold, when George Collett from Lower Swell was six years old. During the next decade his family moved south to South Cerney near Cirencester, where George Collett from Lower Swell was 16 and a labourer, who was living with his family at the time of the census in 1871. It was around three years after that when George became a married man.
	Like his older brother Oliver (above), George also worked for the Great Western Railway and, it was following his move to Swindon, that he met and married Kezia Duck. Their wedding was recorded at Highworth (Ref. 5a 19) during the second quarter of 1975. Kezia had been born at Wroughton near Swindon in November 1856, the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Duck. She was 18 years old when she married George, whose own age was recorded as 20 years and 3 months. Once married, the couple settled in the Stratton area of the town, where their first three children were born prior to the census in 1881. No record of the birth for their first child has been found, and that may be because Elizabeth was very likely already with-child on her wedding. This assumption has been made based on the stated age of the child in all subsequent census returns. The births of all of the couple’s other children, were recorded at Highworth.
	According to the census conducted in 1881, the family was recorded residing in a dwelling on the High Street in Stratton St Margaret, Swindon. George Collett, aged 26 and from Lower Swell, was employed as a railway goods guard. Listed at the address with him, was his wife Kezia Collett, aged 24 and from Wroughton near Swindon, and their three children Arthur Collett who was six and attending the local school, Lilley Collett who was five, and Edith Collett who was two years old, who were all born at Stratton. Also living with the family was thirty-one-year old boarder Joseph Green of Oldbury near Birmingham, who was a carpenter.
	Kezia was very likely with-child on the day of the census in 1881 since, later that same year, she gave birth to a second son, but after the family had moved to Gorse Hill in Swindon, and he was followed by a further three children who were also born at Gorse Hill. The Gorse Hill census of 1891 listed the larger family residing at Hinton Street, as George Collett from Gloucestershire who was 36 and a goods guard with the Great Western Railway, Kezia Collett who was 34, Arthur Collett who was 17, Edith Collett who was 12, George Collett who was nine, Ernest Collett who was five, Beatrice Collett who was two, and Elsie Collett who was not yet one year old. Apart from head of the household George, all the other members of the family were simply recorded as having been born in Wiltshire. The couple’s missing daughter Lilley Collett, who was fifteen years old and from Swindon, had finished her schooling and had entered into domestic service with a family in the Hungerford & Lambourne registration district, across the county boundary in Berkshire, where she was recorded as Lily Collett.
	The majority of the family was still living at Gorse Hill in March 1901. The census return that year confirmed that George Collett, of Lower Swell, was 46 and was employed by the Great Western Railway as a Goods Guards. Kezia Collett of Wroughton was 44, and living with them were their three youngest children. They were Ernest Collett who was 15, Beatrice Collett who was 13, and Elsie Collett who was 11, all three of them confirmed as having been born at Gorse Hill in Swindon. By that time the couple’s two oldest daughters were married, while no trace of their eldest son Arthur has been found in Great Britain in 1901, nor again in 1911. The couple’s second eldest son George Collett junior, had already left the family home and, like his father, was in the employment of the Great Western Railway and was living in Reading by March 1901. The youngest male member of the family, Ernest, had also left school by that time and was working as a ‘coll boy’.
	Over the next few years all, of the children left the family home to find their own way in the world and, by the end of the first decade of the new century, George’s and Kezia’s son George had returned from Reading and was once again living with them in Swindon. At the time of the Swindon census in April 1911, George Collett from Lower Swell was 56 and still a goods guard with the GWR, his wife Kezia Collett from Wroughton was 53, and their unmarried son George Henry Collett was 29. Just over thirty years later, the death of George Collett was recorded at Swindon register office (Ref. 5a 3) during the first three months of 1943, when he was 88 years of age. For the last six years of his life, George had been a widower, following the passing of Kezia Collet whose death was recorded at Swindon (Ref. 5a 7) during the third quarter of 1936, at the age of 79.
	14O22		Arthur Collett		Born in 1874 at Stratton St Margaret
	14O23		Lilley Amelia Collett		Born in 1876 at Stratton St Margaret
	14O24		Edith Emily Collett		Born in 1878 at Stratton St Margaret
	14O25		George Henry Collett		Born in 1881 at Gorse Hill, Swindon
	14O26		Ernest Albert Collett		Born in 1886 at Gorse Hill, Swindon
	14O27		Beatrice Frances Collett		Born in 1888 at Gorse Hill, Swindon
	14O28		Elsie Frances Collett		Born in 1890 at Gorse Hill, Swindon
14N18	James Collett was born at Lower Swell in 1858, another son of George and Elizabeth Collett, whose birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 329) during the last three months of the year. Not long after he was born his father’s work as a farm bailiff resulted in the family first moving to nearby Longborough, where James Collett was two years old at the time of the census in 1861, and later to South Cerney, near Cirencester, where they were living in 1871, when he was 12 and was already working as a labourer.
	Nine years later, the marriage of James Collett and Mary Ann Garrett was recorded at Warminster (Ref. 5a 240) during the third quarter of 1880, Mary Ann being a daughter of Joseph and Eliza Garrett and born at Warminster in Wiltshire near the end of 1854. It would appear from the next three census records that they did not have any children. In 1881, they were living at Upton Scudamore, just north of Warminster, where James Collett said he was 24 and from Stow-on-the-Wold. He would appear to have inflated his age out of embarrassment of being much younger than his wife Mary who was 26. At that time he was working as a carter and an agricultural labourer.
	After a further ten years, the childless couple was living on West Street in the Warminster, where James from Gloucestershire was 32 and a horse keeper, and Mary from Wiltshire was 35. By 1901, they had moved west into Somerset and were residing in Bath where, living with them on the day of the census, and described as a visitor, was Mary’s married and widowed older sister Charlotte Cox. James Collett from Lower Swell was 42 and a miller’s labourer, his wife Mary Collett was 46, and Charlotte was 55, both of them born at Warminster. It was a similar situation at Bath in early April in 1911, when James from Lower Swell was 52 and again working as a miller’s labourer, while Mary from Warminster was 55. The census return that years stated that they had been married for thirty years. Twenty-three years after that census day, the death of James Collett was recorded at Bath register office (Ref. 5c 747) during the first quarter of 1934, when he was 75. He must have been a widower by then, hence the error within the obituary printed in the Bath Chronicle & Herald, which gave his place of birth as Bathwick, which was actually where he died on 7^th July 1934.
14N19	Mary Collett was born at Eyford within the parish of Upper Slaughter during 1862, the only known daughter of George Collett and his wife Elizabeth Emms. Her birth, like those of her siblings, was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 337) during the third quarter of that year. Before 1870, her parents took the family to live in South Cerney, near Cirencester, where they were living in 1871 when Mary Collett was eight years old. Ten years after that, the 1881 census recorded Mary Collett of Eyford as 18 and with no occupation, when she was living at Cerney Fields in South Cerney with her parents and younger brother Frederick (below). By 1891 Mary Collett, aged 27 and from Eyford, was living and working in the Wallingford registration district in Oxfordshire. Only one other person with the name Collett was recorded in that area on that occasion, and she was Amelia Collett who was 16 and from Eynsham, whose family details are contained in Part 28, Ref. 28O78. Whatever happened to Mary Collett after 1891 is not known, but her absence from the next two census returns under the name of Mary Collett may suggest that she was married.
14N20	Frederick Collett was born at Eyford, just north of Upper Slaughter, late in 1865 or early in 1866, the youngest child of George Collett and Elizabeth Emms. His birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 364) during the first months of 1866. Not long after he was born, his father’s work as a farm bailiff, took the family to South Cerney, where the family was living in 1871, when he was five years of age, and at Cerney Field in South Cerney in 1881, when he was 15 years old and living there with his parents and sister Mary (above). Even at the age of 15 he was already in work, his first job being that of a plough boy, although he later became a carter working a farm.
	The only Frederick Collett born within the county of Gloucestershire in the census of 1891, was a lodger living and working in the Stretford area of Manchester, when in lodgings on City Road within the Barton-upon-Irwell registration district. That Frederick Collett was 26 and a groom, and may well have been Frederick from Eyford, since his older brother Oliver (above) and his family were living in Lancashire at that time. However, whether it was or not, it is established that he was once again living in the Cirencester area around the middle of the 1890s.
	Frederick Collett married Minnie Midwinter at St Matthews Church in the village of Coates, near Cirencester, on 25^th December 1897. The parish register recorded that Frederick Collett was 31 and a carter of South Cerney, and the son of George Collett, a farm bailiff. Minnie was born at Aldsworth in 1874, and was the daughter of agricultural labourer John Midwinter of Aldsworth and his wife Sarah of Sherborne. In 1881 Minnie was six years old when she was living with her parents and her two siblings George Midwinter and Rosetta Midwinter at Aldsworth.
	The couple’s first child was born just over one year later at South Cerney, near Cirencester where the births of the first three children were recorded, even though the second and third child were born at Ampney Crucis and Daglingworth, respectively. The census conducted at the end of March in 1901, recorded the family living at Ampney Crucis, where Frederick Collett, aged 35 and from Eyford, was a carter working on a farm, his wife Minnie was 26 and from Aldsworth, and their two children Mabel Collett, who was two years old and born at South Cerney, and Frederick Collett, who was just three months old, who had been born after the family had settled in Ampney Crucis. Two years later the family was added to with the birth of a third child, but at Daglingworth, near Cirencester. After that, around the middle of the first decade of the new century, the family moved again, on that occasion north to the village of Guiting Power, where the couple’s last two children were born.
	By the time of the next census in 1911, Frederick and Minnie’s first-born child, Mabel, whose birth was recorded at Cirencester (Ref. 6a 429) during the first three months of 1899, had died aged seven years, her death recorded at Winchcombe register office (Ref. 6a 233) during the third quarter of 1906. The census return completed in 1911, identified the family living at Guiting Power, when Frederick Collett from Eyford was 45 and employed as a wagoner working on a farm, Minnie Collett from Turkdean & Northleach (sic) was 36, Frederick George Collett from Ampney Crucis was 10, Gertrude Ethel Collett from Daglingworth was seven, Elsie Collett was three and Phyllis Mary Collett was one year old. Both of the two youngest children had been born at Guiting Power, although their births were recorded at Winchcombe register office. Further tragedy affected the family seven years later, when Frederick Collett senior and his only son Frederick George Collett junior both died at the same time, their deaths being consecutive records at Northleach register office (Ref. 6a 841/76 & 6a 872/77) during the last three months of 1918, when Frederick senior was 52 and Frederick junior was 18. Nine months after their passing, the death of Phyllis Mary Collett was recorded at Gloucester register office (Ref. 6a 272) during the third quarter of 1919, when she was ten years old.
	The birth of Frederick George Collett, at Ampney Crucis, was recorded at nearby Cirencester register office (Ref. 6a 393) during the first months of 1901. The birth of his youngest sister Phyllis Mary Collett, at Guiting Power, was coincidentally recorded at Winchcombe register office with the same reference number (Ref. 6a 393) during the second quarter of 1910. Having lost three of her children, and being widowed, Minnie Collett later married for a second time, when the marriage of Minnie Collett and Charles Holloway was recorded at Northleach register office (Ref. 6a 1181) during the second quarter of 1920.
	14O29		Mabel Collett	Born in 1899 at South Cerney; died 1906
	14O30		Frederick George Collett	Born in 1901 at Ampney Crucis
	14O31		Gertrude Ethel Collett	Born in 1903 at Daglingworth
	14O32		Elsie Collett	Born in 1907 at Guiting Power
	14O33		Phyllis Mary Collett	Born in 1910 at Guiting Power; died 1919
14N21	Albert Collett was born at Condicote in Gloucestershire in 1857, his birth recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 303) during the third quarter of that year, the first-born child of Samuel Collett and Jane Jeffries. Before he was two years old his father’s work as a farm bailiff meant the family left Gloucestershire when they travelled south to Beenham in Berkshire, where they were living in 1861. By then Albert’s mother had given birth to the first of Albert’s seven sisters, when Albert was three and his sister Mary was one year old. It was in 1866 that his family moved again, on that occasion to mid-Wales and Bettws Clyro, where the family was residing in 1871 when Albert was 13. His whereabouts in 1881 is still a mystery.
	On the day of the census in 1891, Albert Collett from Condicote was 33 and a police constable and a lodger at a boarding house in Bearland in Gloucester city. During the next decade Albert was promoted to the rank of sergeant although, by the time of the next census in 1901, and perhaps for health reasons, he had retired and was once again living with his parents on their farm at Little Rissington. Albert was unmarried and was 43. It was just six years later that the death of Albert Collett was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 199) during the third quarter of 1907, when he was 50. Curiously, it was the same reference number that the same year and same quarter that his father’s death was also recorded at Stow.
14N22	Mary Collett was born at Beenham in Berkshire in 1859, where she was baptised on 7^th August 1859, the second child and eldest daughter of Samuel Collett and Jane Jeffries.
14N23	Jane Collett was born at Beenham in 1862, her birth recorded at nearby Bradfield (Ref. 2c 343) during the first three months of that year. She was baptised at Beenham on 2^nd March 1862, another daughter of Samuel and Jane Collett. On being married Jane became Jane Wyles
14N24	Susan Collett was born at Beenham in 1864, where she was baptised on 7^th February 1864, a third daughter of Samuel and Jane Collett.
14N25	Eliza Collett was born in Wales, perhaps even on the day that the family was travelling from Beenham in Berkshire to their ultimate destination at Clyro in Radnorshire. It was certainly at Clyro that she was baptised on 7^th October 1866, while her birth was recorded earlier at Hay-on-Wye (Ref. 11b 142) during the third quarter of 1866. Eliza was the fourth daughter of Samuel and Jane Collett and she died during 1930.
14N26	Sarah Bryan Collett was born at Clyro in Radnor, mid-Wales in 1868, the fifth daughter of Samuel and Jane Collett who was baptised at Clyro on 10^th May 1868.
14N27	Alice Shelburn Collett was born at Clyro in 1870, where she was baptised on 13^th March 1870, the sixth daughter of Samuel and Jane Collett. Like her younger sister Kate (below) it seems that Alice never married and was 41 years old in the Bourton-on-the-Water census of 1911, when she and Katie were the only children still living there with their widowed mother Jane.
14N28	Kate Collett was born at Longhope in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire in 1873, although her birth was registered at Westbury-on-Severn (Ref. 6a 257) during the second quarter of that year. She was the last child of Samuel Collett and Jane Jeffries. Within the census of 1911 Katie Collett from Longhope was unmarried at the age of 38, when she was living at Bourton-on-the-Water with her widowed mother and her older unmarried sister Alice (above). On that day her occupation was stated as being as a ‘massense’, while ten years earlier she was simply described as working at home. Kate Collett never married and was living at Little Rissington when she died on 1^st February 1928, following she was buried in the churchyard of St Peter’s Church in Little Rissington.
14N29	Thomas Collett Marshall was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in either late 1819 or early 1820. Shortly after he was born his mother Elizabeth Marshall nee Collett died and his father married Anne Collett his sister-in-law. It would appear that Thomas later married and had a son Charles Marshall born at Bourton in 1854. By 1881 Thomas was a widower aged 61 and was a hawker with his 26-year old married son Charles who was also a hawker. At that time (April 1881) the pair of them were staying at the Dove Inn in St James Street in Norwich, the establishment of licenced victualler John Ford of Norwich.
14N30	Thomas Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water and was baptised there on 20^th March 1832, the first-born child of Thomas Collett and Mary Ransford. By 1851, Thomas from Bourton was 19, unmarried, and working as an office clerk, when he was a lodger at the Gas Street home, in Leicester, of William and Ann Hall. After a further ten years, Thomas Collett from Bourton was still a bachelor, when has was 29 and a manager with a gas company, who was lodging at a property on Wellington Street in Runcorn in Cheshire. Three years later, Thomas Collett married Ann E Walker of London in 1864 and their marriage produced twelve children, all of which were born after the family had moved to Dudley, near Birmingham. At the time of the next census in 1871, the family was residing in Dudley, where Thomas from Bourton was 39 and a company secretary, his wife Ann E Collett from London was 31, and their child by then were listed as Thomas Collett who was five, Harriet R Collett who was four, and Howson Collett who was under one year old. Their missing daughter Amelia had died during the previous year. On that census day, Thomas was employing two servants, Sarah Emery and Lucy Ryan.
	Seven more children were added to the family over the next ten years. So, by 1881, the family living at St James Road in Dudley was described as follows. Thomas 49 was a gas manager from Bourton, his wife Ann Eliza was 41 of London, and their children were Thomas Collett who was 15, Harriet Collett who was 14, the twins Mary A Collett and Lillian L Collett who were both aged eight, Eleanor F Collett who was seven, Edgar H Collett who was five, Raymond Collett who was three and Harold Collett who was two years old. Supporting the family were local girl Esther Rollason 23, a cook/domestic and Rachel Margaret Brookes aged 20 and a nurse/domestic from Bushbury in Staffordshire.
	The family was extended by two further children after April 1881 while, seven years later, the death of Thomas Collett was recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 152) during the second quarter of 1888, when he was 56. Following her husband’s passing, widow Ann moved south to Hastings, on the south coast, where she took over the management of a boarding house, and where she was living with four of her daughters in 1891. The census return that year, recorded head of the household Ann E Collett, from London, as 51 and a boarding house proprietor on Warrior Square, just a short distance west of Hastings Pier. Her three Dudley born daughters were Harriet R Collett who was 24 and helping her mother run the boarding house, as was Lillian L Collett who was 18, Eleanor F Collett who was 17 and still being schooled, and Annie K Collett who was eight years of age. In order to cope with five boarders at that, Ann employed a cook, Annie Peadon, and two domestic servants Lucy Lewer and Alice Field.
	It seems likely that Ann later moved along the coast to Worthing where she was living in 1901 with just her youngest child Annie Collett. It may be interest that there are details of many more Colletts who were born at Dudley contained within Part 48 – The Dudley West Midlands Line, although there is only a tenuous link to this family line.
	14O34		Thomas Collett		Born in 1865 at Dudley
	14O35		Harriet Rose Collett		Born in 1867 at Dudley
	14O36		Amelia Frances Collett		Born in 1868 at Dudley
	14O37		Howson Collett		Born in 1870 at Dudley
	14O38		Lillian Louise Collett twin		Born in 1872 at Dudley
	14O39		Mary Augusta Collett twin		Born in 1872 at Dudley
	14O40		Eleanor Frances Collett		Born in 1874 at Dudley
	14O41		Edgar Howson Collett		Born in 1875 at Dudley
	14O42		Raymond Collett		Born in 1877 at Dudley
	14O43		Harold Collett		Born in 1879 at Dudley
	14O44		Annie Adelaide Collett		Born in 1881 at Dudley
	14O45		Annie Kathleen Collett		Born in 1882 at Dudley
14N31	Mary Elizabeth Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 28^th March 1833 where she died the following year in 1834. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
14N32	John Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 17^th October 1835, the son of Thomas and Mary Collett, who was five years old in the Bourton census of 1841. At the age of 15, John was working as an apprentice with Thomas Ransford, with whom he was living at the Ransford family home on Earl Street in Coventry. Thirty-nine-year-old Thomas Ransford had also been born at Bourton-on-the-Water, was a grocer, and very likely a member of the Ransford family that had marital connections with the Collett. It is unclear where John was in 1861, but it was on 5^th January 1864 that he married (1) Sarah Ann Charles at Wellesbourne in Warwickshire, the event recorded at Stratford-on-Avon (Ref. 6d 33), where the births of the couple’s first two children were also recorded. The couple’s next two children were born at Aston in Birmingham. It seems very likely that John and his older brother Thomas (above) both moved north to the Birmingham area, as Thomas’s children where all born at Dudley. Sarah Ann Charles was born at Wellesbourne in late 1837, where she was baptised on 17^th January 1838, the daughter of John and Ann Charles. Tragically, only a few months after giving birth to her fourth child, Sarah Ann Collett died, her death recorded at West Bromwich (Ref. 6b 337) during the first three months of 1871, when she was only 33 years of age.
	Confirmation of her passing was also evident within the census of 1871, by which time widower John Collett from Bourton was 35 and a merchant, living in the Handsworth area near West Bromwich. Living there with him were his four children, Emily A Collett who was five, Oliver C Collett who was three, William H Collett who was nearly two, and John S Collett who was six months old. The two older children had been born at Stratford and the younger two at Aston. Five other people were recorded at their Handsworth home that day, and they were John's sister Susan B Collett and his brother Alfred J Collett, both of them from Bourton-on-the-Water. The family’s two domestic servants were Jane Williams and Matilda Walker, both of them aged 21. Also visiting the family was Fanny Fincher from London, who was 29 and related to John’s in-laws, the Charles family of Wellesbourne, who Fanny Fincher aged 39, was visiting in 1881.
	Four years later John Collett married (2) Cecilia Helen Carr in 1875, their wedding recorded at Kensington in London (Ref. 1a 115) during the first three months of the year. Cecilia was born on 2^nd May 1842 at Stowmarket in Suffolk, where she was baptised on 11^th July 1842, the daughter of George and Charlotte Carr. By 1871, she and her younger sister Adeline Hay Carr were running a school for young ladies in the Hammersmith area of London. Almost immediately after their wedding day, John and Cecilia travelled to Camberwell in London, where Cecilia gave birth to four children, the first of them born when the family was living at Peckham Road in Camberwell. That situation was confirmed by the census return completed in 1881. John Collett, aged 45 and from Bourton, was a hop merchant, his wife Cecilia H Collett from Stowmarket was 38, when their place of resident was Alleyn Park, Kingwood Lawn in Camberwell. Living with them were William Henry Collett who was 11, John S Collett who was 10, Cecilia D Collett who was four, Bernard Collett who was two, and Aubrey R Collett who was ten months old. All three youngest children had been born after the family had settled in Camberwell.
	The house would have been a busy place as, in addition to the seven members of the family, there was also a visitor, 26-year-old Alice Bromley from Stoke Poges, and three servants, cook Edith Horsnall from Essex, housemaid Elizabeth Harwood, 24 of Southwark, and nurse Helen Pepper, 20 of Abington Pigotts. The two oldest members of John and Sarah’s original family were missing from the family home in 1881. Emily was a boarder at The Ferns School for Girls in Islington, while Oliver was attending a grammar school in Essex. That perhaps indicates that the family was fairly well set up financially through John being a successful merchant.
	It may be interesting to note that another John Collett (Ref. 33O19), who was born at Bourton in 1837, was also living nearby in Camberwell at that same time in 1881, as was a cousin Thomas Collett (Ref. 14N4). All three men were of a very similar age, being born between 1835 and 1838. According to the next census in 1891, the family of John Collett was residing at Barrow Street in Streatham Common, Wandsworth. John was 55 and a hops merchant and Cecilia H Collett was 48. Still living with the couple were John’s two sons from his first marriage, William H Collett and John S Collett, aged 21 and 20 respectively, together with the couple’s four children. They were Cecilia D Collett who was 14, Bernard Collett who was 12, Aubrey Ransford Collett who was 10 and Arthur Stanley who was nine years of age. Also living with the family, following the death of their mother, was John’s unmarried sister Susan B Collett while, employed by John, were two female servants. Four years later the family was living at 113 Barrow Road and, just after the start of the new century, they were living at 94 Putney Bridge Road, still within the London Borough of Wandsworth, where they were recorded on the day of the census in 1901.
	John Collett from Bourton-on-the-Water was 65 and was again working as a hops merchant. Cecilia H Collett from Stowmarket was 58 and their four Camberwell born children were Cecilia D Collett who was 24, Bernard Collett who was 22, Aubrey Collett who was 20 and Arthur S Collett who was 19. Again, living with the family was Susan Beale Collett who was 58. Something happened a couple of years later, when John and Cecilia began living apart when, by 1904, Cecilia H Collett was recorded at 3 York Road in the London Borough of Norwood. Renting rooms from their mother at that address were brothers Bernard, Aubrey and Arthur, as confirmed in the electoral roll. A couple of year after that Cecilia was still residing in Norwood, but at 42 Chestnut Road, from 1906 onwards, when her husband John Collett was living at 9 North Side in Streatham Common in 1908 and at 9 Deerhurst Road in Streatham from 1909 onwards. It was a same situation in 1911, when John Collett a retired hops merchant from Bourton was 75, who longer had his wife living with him. Those members of his family who were still living with him at 9 Deerhurst Road were Cecilia Dora Collett who was 34, probably acting as his housekeeper, Bernard Collett 32 and Aubrey Ransford Collett 30. Continuing to live with John, was his sister Susan Beale Collett who was 68. Completing the household was servant Emily Barker, aged 22 and from Stoke Ash in Suffolk. On that same day in 1911, the estranged with of John Collett was a visitor at the Camberwell home of widow Louisa Mountain from Chislehurst in Kent, who was 72 and the wife of the late Stanford Henry Mountain, a merchant, who died early in 1890. Cecilia Helen Collett from Stowmarket was simply described as being 68 and married.
	It is very interesting that the unusual surname Mountain, cropped up again in 1936, where it was again linked to the Collett family. On that occasion, it followed the death of Cecilia’s son Aubrey Ransford Collett, when one of the beneficiaries was Stanford Walton Mountain, the grandson of the aforementioned Louisa Mountain. He was born at West Norwood at the end of 1893 and, by 1911 he was an 18-year-old student at Marlborough College in Wiltshire. That same year, his father Henry Stanford Mountain was living at Albert Gate Court in Knightsbridge and was the joint owner of 3 Gracechurch Street in London. His wife was Lily Isabel Walton, who he had married at Wandsworth near the end of 1890, when Henry was living at Alleyn Park, where the Collett family was living in 1881. Walton Mountain was present at the funeral of Aubrey Ransford Collett, when he was described in the Gloucestershire Echo as his cousin. Of further interest is the fact that Aubrey worked for the insurance firm of Messrs. Gardner, Mountain, and D'Ambrumenial in London.
	The remnants of the family were still living at 9 Deerhurst Road in 1913, a property owned by John Collett, who was the landlord to sons Bernard and Aubrey who each occupied a furnished single room on the first floor at the premises, as stated in the electoral rolls from 1908 up until 1913. Six years later, the death of John Collett was recorded at Dorking register office (Ref. 2a 27) when he was 83 years old. At that time in his life, John was residing at a property named ‘Cotswold’ on Rixham Lane in Dorking, where he died on 12^th October 1919, following which he was buried at Bourton-on-the-Water in the family grave (see Headstone Epitaphs). The Will of John Collett was proved in London on 19^th March 1920, when his sons Bernard Collett, a chartered accountant, and Aubrey Ransford Collett, a broker, were named as the executors and beneficiaries of his estate of £1,262 0 Shillings 10d. Four years after his passing, his wife Cecilia Helen Collett was buried there with him, as was his daughter Cecilia Dora Collett many years later in 1964.
	Today, a single tombstone marks the graves and carries the following inscription “In Loving Memory of John Collett son of Thomas and Mary born October 17^th 1835 died at Dorking October 12^th 1919. Also of his wife Cecilia Helen Collett born May 2^nd 1842 died April 9^th 1923. Also of their daughter Cecilia Dora Ransford Collett born November 27^th 1876 died January 28^th 1964”. At the time of her death on 9^th April 1923, Cecilia Helen Collett was also residing at ‘Cotswold’ on Rixham Lane in Dorking, which had been left to her when her husband died. Probate for the estate of widow Cecilia Helen Collett was granted in London on 6^th September 1923, when the executors of her Will were her two sons, Bernard Collett, a chartered accountant, and Aubrey Ransford Collett, an insurance broker. The sum total of her personal estate amounted to a considerable £2,394 9 Shillings 2d for that time. The death of Cecilia H Collett was recorded at Dorking register office (Ref. 2a 27) when she was 80 years old.
	14O46		Emily Ann Collett		Born in 1866 at Stratford-on-Avon
	14O47		Oliver Charles Collett		Born in 1867 at Stratford-on-Avon
	14O48		William Henry Collett		Born in 1869 at Aston, Birmingham
	14O49		John Sydney Collett		Born in 1870 at Aston, Birmingham
	The following are the children of John Collett by his second wife Cecilia Helen Carr:
	14O50		Cecilia Dora Ransford Collett		Born in 1876 at Camberwell, London
	14O51		Bernard Collett		Born in 1878 at Camberwell, London
	14O52		Aubrey Ransford Collett		Born in 1880 at Camberwell, London
	14O53		Arthur Stanley Collett		Born in 1881 at Camberwell, London
14N33	Ann Elizabeth Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 1^st January 1837 and she died there on 26^th April 1867. She was buried at St Lawrence’s Church in Bourton in the family grave alongside her three sisters, Emily Collett, Mary Henrietta Collett, and Esther Ransford Collett (see Headstone Epitaphs). The death of Ann Elizabeth Collett was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 42) during the second quarter on 1837, when she was 30 years of age.
14N34	William Arthur Collett, whose birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 13) during the first quarter of 1838, the only time in his life when his full name was used. As with all of his siblings, he was born at Bourton-on-the-Water, another son of Thomas and Mary Collett, with whom he was living in 1841 at the age of three years. On that census day, Arthur was one of the six surviving children still living with their parents at Bourton, and was 13 years old in the Bourton census of 1851. No further record of William Arthur Collett or Arthur Collett, together with records of his marriage and the birth of his children, has been found anywhere in Britain after 1851. That may mean that he left to country before becoming a husband and a father. All that is known, is that he married Miss Hobbs with whom he had three children before he died shortly after his fortieth birthday in 1879.
	14O54		Mary Henrietta Susan Collett		Born in 1871
	14O55		Sally Ransford Collett		Born in 1874
	14O56		William Arthur Collett		Born in 1876
14N35	Emily Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1839, her birth recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 23) during the third quarter of the year. She was two years of age in 1841 and was 11 years old in 1851, and attending school at Bourton, where Emily and her family were living on the census day that year. Ten years later, it was only Emily, aged 21, and her sister Mary (below) who were still living at Bourton-on-the-Water with their mother in 1861, when their father was absent from the family home that day. Just under five years after that day, Emily Collett died at Bourton on 6^th February 1866. She was buried in the cemetery of St Lawrence’s Church in the family grave with her sisters Ann Elizabeth Collett, Mary Henrietta Collett and Esther Ransford Collett and a gravestone carries the names of all four girls. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
14N36	Mary Henrietta Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 14^th April 1841, the daughter of Thomas Collett and his wife Mary Ransford. Her birth, also using her full name, was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 10). However, within the census conducted in June that year, she was simply recorded as Henrietta Collett aged two months, as she was ten years later, when Henrietta Collett was nine years old. It was as Mary H Collett aged 19, that she was living with her mother and sister Emily (above)s in 1861, and ten years later she was Mary Collett, aged 29, when she was the only child still living with her widowed mother at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1871. It is very curious that there appears to be no record of Mary Collett or Henrietta Collett from Bourton-on-the-Water anywhere in the country at the time of the census in 1881. While it was just over four years later, when the death of Mary Henrietta Collett was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. 6a 327) during the second quarter of 1885, at the age of 44. Mary Henrietta Collett was buried in the family grave at St Lawrence’s Church in Bourton on 8^th May 1885, together with her three sisters, Ann Elizabeth Collett, Emily Collett, and Esther Ransford Collett. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
	It might be of interest to insert here that another Henrietta Collett, also born at Bourton-on-the-Water, but around ten years after Mary Henrietta Collett (above), had her throat cut by her husband, saddler Joseph Walker on 18^th September 1887, at their home in Middle Row, Chipping Norton. No record of the earlier life of that particular member of the Collett family has been found, so it is possible that Collett was the name from an earlier marriage. What is known is that Henrietta Collett married widower Joseph Walker during the first quarter of 1877 at Chipping Norton (Ref. 3a 867), where Joseph’s wife Charlotte Gillett had died during the previous year leaving him with three young children.
	Over the ten years that they were married, it was not a happy household since, sometime after the census in 1881, Joseph’s eldest son committed suicide for which Joseph blamed his wife. At the time of that census, the couple and Joseph’s three children were living at Pembroke Street in Chipping Norton. Joseph Walker from Whichford was 39, Henrietta Walker from Bourton was 29, Fred Walker was 13, Julia Walker was 11, and Joseph Walker was eight years old.
	On 18^th September 1887, while Henrietta was looking after the two children of a relative, Joseph was out drinking and, on his return, he discovered money missing from his pocket. He suspected his wife of stealing from him and, in a drunken rage, slit her throat, while his son Joseph was putting his two cousins to bed. He was promptly arrested by the local police, but still drunk, he boasted “I have done it. I think I made a good job of it.” Joseph Walker was subsequently found guilty of the murder of Henrietta Walker and was hanged at Oxford Castle during November 1887.
14N37	Susan Beale Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water on 4^th December 1842, the daughter of Thomas Collett and Mary Ransford, whose birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 401) during the first month of 1843 under her full name. It was simply as Susan Collett that she was recorded in the next two census returns, the first of them in 1851 when she was eight years old and still living in Bourton with her family. Upon leaving school, she secured work in London as a shop assistant, which was how Susan Collett from Bourton was described in 1861, when she was 18 and living with the family of Edward Gardner, a boot and shoe manufacturer, at Oxford Street in Marylebone, London. After a further decade, Susan B Collett was 28 when she was staying with her merchant brother John at Handsworth near West Bromwich, who had very recently been widowed. The fact that she had no stated occupation, is perhaps an indication that she was acting as the housekeeper, looking after John’s four young children. Following the death of her father in 1869, Susan’s mother married John Beale, who died in 1874, at which time Susan returned to Bourton-on-the-Water to take care of her elderly mother. The next census in 1881, confirmed that unmarried Susan B Collett was 38 and that she was living with her mother at the Butcher’s Shop in Bourton, where they were both described as being retired.
	When her mother died in 1888, Susan travelled to London to live with within the Wandsworth area of the city with her older brother John (above) who had re-married in 1875. That was confirmed in the Streatham census of 1891, when Susan B Collett was 48 with no occupation, living at ‘Oakfield’, Barrow Road, Streatham Common, the home of John and Cecilia Collett. Ten years later, Susan B Collett of Bourton was 58 and was again living with her brother John and his family at 94 Putney Bridge Road, Lambeth, still within the London Borough of Wandsworth. John’s wife Cecilia passed away during the first decade of the new century, leaving John Collett, aged 75, and his sister Susan Beale Collett, aged 68, from Bourton-on-the-Water residing at 9 Deerhurst Road in Streatham, with three of John’s children. The death of Susan B Collett at Maugersbury was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. a 576) during the first quarter of 1936 when she was 93 years of age. She was buried at Bourton-on-the-Water, where she shares a headstone with her nephew Aubrey Ransford Collett (Ref. 14O52), who died one week later. Her inscription simply reads “Susan Beale Collett 4^th December 1842 – 31^st January 1936” (see Headstone Epitaphs). The personal effects of Susan Beale Collett passed through probate on 26^th March 1936, and were dealt with by executor Bernard Collett, a chartered account of 4 Bristol House, Southampton Row in London, Bernard being another nephew and the son of her brother John.
	A week after Susan passed away, the Cheltenham Chronicle printed a report on her funeral in the paper on Saturday 8^th February 1936, which read as follows: “MISS SUSAN COLLETT Bourton Funeral Of Keen Baptist. The funeral took place at Bourton-on-the- Water Baptist Church on Tuesday of Miss Susan Collett, of Maugersbury Manor, who died last Friday. Miss Collett, who was aged 93 years, was a former resident of Bourton-on-the-Water, where she had been (until her departure to Maugersbury about 35 years ago) a very active worker in the Baptist Church and Sunday School. Since leaving Bourton, she had lived at Maugersbury Manor, Stow-on-the-Wold, with her nephew, Mr A Ransford Collett, and her niece Miss Dora Collett. The service was conducted by the Rev. J. Saunders, of Eastbourne, former minister of Bourton Baptist Church. The family mourners were: Miss Dora Collett, Mrs Bernard Collett, Mrs Buckland, Miss Kathleen Collett, and Mrs Stanley Collett (nieces), Messrs. Sydney, Stanley and Oliver Collett (nephews), Miss Goggs, Mrs. Newman and Miss Chapman. Mr Ransford Collett was absent owing to his own serious illness, and Mr Bernard Collett also remained in London for the same reason. Others present at the church were: Mr C V Wilkins (deacon of Bourton Baptist Church), Mr H Hicks (deacon and secretary of Stow Baptist Church), the Rev. W W Richardson (pastor of Stow Baptist Church), Mrs H Howman, Mrs E J Lodge, Mrs G Collett, Mrs. P Collett, Mrs B Minchin, Miss J Hall, Mrs R Foster, Mr E W Kendall, Major C Wickens, Mr E B Wood, Miss Bullock, Mrs W R Davis, Mrs T Akers, Mr and Mrs E W Gilbert, Mrs R G Lawrence, Miss Mildenhall, Mrs W Roberta, Colonel and Mrs Howard Jones, Mr G Payne, Mrs W Packer, Mrs G Medlicott and Miss Parrott. There were many beautiful floral tributes.”
14N38	Esther Ransford Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water in 1844 where she died two years later in 1846. She was buried at St Lawrence’s Church in Bourton in the family grave with her three sisters, Ann Elizabeth Collett, Emily Collett, and Mary Henrietta Collett. (see Headstone Epitaphs)
14N39	Alfred James Collett was born at Bourton-on-the-Water at the end of 1846, the last child born to Thomas Collett and Mary Ransford, and his birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 12) during the first three month of 1847. He was four years old in 1851, although he was missing from the family home in 1861. At the age of 24 Alfred J Collett from Bourton-on-the-Water was an assistant tea dealer, when his was living with his recently widowed oldest brother John Collett at his home in Handsworth near West Bromwich. By 1881, Alfred James Collett was a commercial traveller who was unmarried at the age of 33, when he was a lodger at a boarding house on Birmingham Street in Dudley. He was still lodging there at Birmingham Street in 1891, by which time he was still a commercial traveller, when he was 43. It would appear that he was suffering with his health towards the end of the century, because he was an inmate in the Erdington area of Birmingham in 1901 at the age of 53, when once again he was described as an unmarried commercial traveller. It was just two and a half years later, that the death of Alfred James Collett was recorded at the Aston register office (Ref. 6d 53) during the third quarter of 1903, when he was 56.
14N40	Emma Elizabeth Collett, whose birth was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 376) during the second quarter of 1838, was baptised at Bourton-on-the-Water on 13^th June 1838, the eldest child of John Collett and Mary Strong. Her mother died when Emma was eight years old, and her father was remarried shortly after. However, her father also suffered a premature death when Emma was nearly ten years old. Unfortunately, Emma’s stepmother was not prepared to take on the care of Emma and her three younger siblings, as a result of which Emma and her brother Robert (below) were sent to live with their maternal grandparents Robert and Charlotte Strong at their home in Stow-on-the-Wold. That situation was confirmed in the next census of 1851. Robert Strong from Fairford was 60 and an inn keeper at an inn on the Market Place in Stow. His wife from Warwickshire was 55 and her daughter Emma Strong was 24. The couple’s two grandchildren were recorded as Emma Collett and Robert Collett, aged thirteen and seven respectively, who had been born at Bourton-on-the-Water, like their own daughter. Completing the household was house servant Charlotte Preston and Matthew Acock who may have been assisting Robert Strong at the inn. By the time Emma Collett from Bourton-on-the Water was 23 years of age, she was still working as a domestic servant, but at the Islington, London, home of Robert Dean, a clerk and commercial office, at a grand property on Thornhill Crescent.
14N41	Ann Mary Collett was born at Aston Blank (known as Cold Aston today) on 18^th September 1841, with her birth recorded at nearby Northleach (Ref. xi 367) during the fourth quarter of the year. It was almost one year later that Ann Mary Collett was baptised at Aston Blank on 13^th August 1842, the daughter of John and Mary Collett. Upon the death of Ann’s mother and then her father, when she was just five years old and seven years of age respectively, Ann Mary and her brother Thomas (below) were taken into the care of their elderly paternal grandmother Ann Collett nee Tilling (Ref. 14L11) at Bourton-on-the-Water. Her two other siblings, Emma and Robert, were looked after by the children’s maternal grandparents at Stow-on-the-Wold. That situation only occurred because their father’s second wife said that she did not want to be responsible for raising the four children of her later husband by his deceased first wife.
	Sadly, the two children were only with their grandmother for a short while, when Ann Collett, aged 74, passed away. When that happened, Ann Mary and Thomas were placed in the care of the Muller School for orphans in Bristol. That happened on 1^st November 1849 and Ann stayed there until she left on 22^nd June 1861. Approximately three months earlier, Ann Mary Collett was 19 and an orphan at Muller School at No. 1 Ashley Down, when her place of birth was recorded in error as Bibury. The New Orphan Houses, at Ashley Down, just north of Bristol, commonly known as the Muller Homes, was an orphanage built between 1849 and 1870 by the Prussian evangelist George Müller. The five houses held 2,050 children at any one time and some 17,000 passed through their doors before the buildings were sold to Bristol City Council in 1958.
	After June 1861, Ann Mary Collett entered into domestic service with Mrs Welch of Lewisham in London. Less than four years later she married John Russell at Southwark on 27^th February 1865. He was generally referred to as Philip and together they had six children born between 1865 and 1880. All her life Ann had doubts about when and where she was born. In 1909 she decided to try to seek confirmation by writing to the Muller School for a copy of her birth certificate. At the time of writing she was living a 13 Amberley Grove off Morland Road in East Croydon. The letter is transcribed below. “Sir, the liberty I take in writing is to ask you if you have the certificate of my birth, if so can you send me it. I entered MT house in 1849 and left in 1861 for service. I have tried to get it from Bourton Parish but the Rector has only two of the family, he has neither mine or my brother’ Thomas who was also at the school. Yours expectantly Ann Mary Russell – maiden name Collett.”
	In April 1911 Ann Mary Russell and her husband John Russell were confirmed as living in Croydon, when Ann was sixty-nine and John was 67. Ann Mary Russell nee Collett died on 6^th December 1921 at the age of 80 years while she was still a resident of Croydon. Ann Mary Collett was the great great grandmother of Rita Garnett who kindly provided the new information that has enabled this family line to be updated.
14N42	Robert Collett was baptised at Bourton-on-the-Water on 22^nd June 1843, his birth recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold (Ref. xi 390) during the second quarter of the year. Following the death of his mother, when aged just three years old, and then his father two years later, Robert and his sister Emma Elizabeth (above) went to live with their maternal grandparents Robert and Charlotte Strong at the Market Place in Stow-on-the-Wold, where Robert managed an inn. And it was there, that Robert Collett from Bourton-on-the-Water was living with sister Emma in 1851, when he was seven years of age. No trace of Robert has been found in the national census of 1881.
14N43	Thomas Collett was born at Burford in Oxfordshire on 8^th January 1846, his birth recorded at Witney (Ref. xvi 130) during the first quarter of that year. He was the fourth and last child of John Collett and Mary Strong. Thomas’s mother died when he was only four months old, possibly never recovering from the ordeal of his birth. His father then re-married but died in 1848, and was made an orphan when his stepmother declined to take care of Thomas and his three older siblings. As a result of that sad situation, Thomas and his sister Ann Mary (above) were taken in by their elderly grandmother Ann Collett nee Tilling, but tragically she died in 1849. Following her death, Thomas and Ann Mary were placed in an orphanage in Bristol that was the Muller School. They entered together on 1^st November 1849 and Thomas was the first to leave in 1860 when he went to live with his grandfather Robert Strong at Stow-on-the-Wold. As far as can be determined, Thomas Collett only appeared in one census return, and that was as a visitor to the Churchdown home of elderly Elizabeth Davis, when he was 26 and an agricultural labourer, whose place of birth was recorded as Stow-on-the-Wold . That is probably reasonable from his point of view, as his time at Burford, at the start of his life, was very short-lived. It also seems highly likely that Thomas remained living in the Stow area for the rest of his life, since the death of a Thomas Collett was recorded at Stow register office (Ref. 6a 249) during the second quarter of 1911 at the age of 66.
14O2	Emma Collett was born in 1859 at Atch Lench, although when she was one year old she was living with her family at Church Lench. Ten years later, at the age of 11, she and her family were residing in Atch Lench, but had left the family home by 1881, perhaps to be married. It is possible that she was married twice in her short life, since by the time of the census in 1901 she and her much younger husband and their two young daughters were living in Salford Priors in Warwickshire. Her husband was Joseph Sollis from Salford Prior who was 28 and a carter on a farm, while Emma Collett from Atch Lench was 40 and a housekeeper. Their two children were Jane Sollis who was six and Margaret Sollis who was four years of age, both of whom had been born at Salford Priors. Living with the family was Emma’s widowed father John Collett who was 67. Ten years later Emma and her family were still recorded as living in Salford Priors with her husband and her two daughters. Joseph Sollis was 38, Emma was 50, Jane was 16 and Margaret was 14. Also living in that same census registration district was Emma unmarried younger sister Ellen Collett (below).
14O5	Ellen Collett was born in 1867 at Atch Lench and was three years old in 1871 and was 14 years of the age in the census return for 1881 when she was living at Church Lench with her widowed father and youngest sibling John (below). In 1901 Ellen Collett from Church Lench was 33 when she was working as a domestic housemaid at Weston & Whixall under Redcastle in Shropshire, while during the next few years she moved to Salford Priors in Warwickshire to be near her older married sister Emma Sollis nee Collett (above). In the census of 1911 Ellen Collett was 43.
14O6	John William Collett was born at Atch Lench at the end of 1869, the sixth and last child, and only son, of John Collett and Hannah Newman, whose birth was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 177) during the first three months of 1870. He was baptised using his full name at Church Lench on 6^th February 1870. It was at Church Lench that he lived most of his early life, where he was one year old in 1871, after which his mother passed away, so he spent the next twenty years living with his widowed father, both of them being agricultural labourers. That situation was confirmed in 1881, by which time he was already an agricultural labourer at the age of only ten years, although his place of birth was recorded as Church Lench, when the only other member of the family was John’s older sister Ellen Collett aged 14 .
	John was still living with his father at the time of the Church Lench census in 1891 when he was 21 and working as an agricultural labourer, but during the following year he married Sarah Ann Harris from Arrow in Alcester, the event recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 106) during the second quarter of 1892. It was also around that same time that his father passed away. By the time of the census in March 1901 Sarah had presented John with three children. The Church Lench census that year listed the family as agricultural labourer John Collett, aged 31, his wife Sarah who was 33, their son John who was seven, and daughters Elsie and Margaret who were six and three. All of the occupants of the household, except Sarah, had been born at Atch Lench.
	Sarah, from Arrow in Warwickshire, may well have been expecting her fourth child on the day of the census in 1901, since later that same year she gave birth to another daughter. A further child followed many years later, so by April 1911 the family still living at Church Lench was made up as follows. John was 41, Sarah was 42, their son John was 17, Margaret was 13, Bertha was nine years old, and baby Ethel was only four months old. The couple’s eldest daughter was sixteen and was already employed in domestic service. John William Collett was 77 years old, when he died on 7^th May 1947, his Will proved at Worcester on 21^st June 1947 with the main beneficiary being his widow Sarah Ann Collett. The death of John W Collett was recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 9d 133).
	14P1		John William H Collett		Born in 1893 at Atch Lench
	14P2		Elsie Ellen Collett		Born in 1895 at Atch Lench
	14P3		Margaret Annie Collett		Born in 1897 at Atch Lench
	14P4		Bertha May Collett		Born in 1901 at Atch Lench
	14P5		Ethel L Collett		Born in 1910 at Atch Lench
14O8	Cecilia Olivia E Collett was born at Upper Slaughter in 1865, the eldest child of Thomas and Elizabeth Collett. Around the time she was three or four years old her parents left Upper Slaughter when they moved to Reading. And it was there in the St Mary district that Cecilia A E Collett was five years old. During the next decade the family moved again, on that occasion to Brixton in London. From there, her parents took the family to Peckham, and then to Camberwell, where the family was living in 1881.
	By the time of the census that year Cecilia A E Collett, aged 15 and from Upper Slaughter, was a paper gummer and envelope maker living with her parents at 7 Buckingham Villas in Camberwell, Surrey. It was just over two years later that Cecilia Olivia E Collett married Robert Hutcherson, their wedding recorded at Edmonton in London (Ref. 3a 378) during the last three months of 1883. The witnesses at their wedding were George Frederick Burton and Elizabeth Naomi Jenn. On the day the census was conducted in 1891 Cecilia Olivia Hutcherson from Upper Slaughter was 25 and a patient at St Luke’s Chest Hospital in East Finsbury.
	Tragically, it was less than one year later that the death of Cecilia Hutcherson was recorded at Edmonton (Ref. 3a 275) during the first three months of 1892 when she was only 27. Prior to her passing she had given birth to two children. Robert William Hutcherson was born during 1884 and Kate Amelia Hutcherson was born two years later in 1886.
14O9	Samuel Alfred H Collett was born at Upper Slaughter in 1866, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Collett. Just after he was born his father’s work took him to Reading, where the family was recorded in the 1871 Census for the St Mary district of the town. It was on that occasion that he was recorded at Samuel A H Collett, aged years. Further moves took place during the following decade, which took the family to Camberwell via Brixton and Peckham. It was Samuel A Collett, aged 14 and from Upper Slaughter, that he was farrier of 14 years living with his parents at 7 Buckingham Villas in Camberwell in 1881. It is possible that Samuel joined the army after that, since in the census of 1891, as Samuel Collett, aged 24, he was listed in the census that year at an ‘institution’ at Frimley within the Farnham registration district of Surrey. The only other Collett also living in that same area, was Ann Collett who 59.
	During the last decade of the century Samuel married Alice from London, and in March 1901 the childless couple were living within the Kingston-on-Thames registration district, when both of them were 34 and Samuel’s place of birth was recorded simply as Gloucestershire, while Alice’s was just London. Samuel’s occupation on that occasion was that of a carpenter. Ten years later in April 1911, Samuel Alfred Collett from Gloucestershire was 45 and was living within the Croydon area with his wife Alice Collett who was also 45. It was under the name of Samuel A Collett that his death was recorded at the North-Eastern register office in Surrey (Ref. 2a 51) during the last month of 1943 when he was 77, following which he was buried in the grounds of the Church of St Nicholas at Thames Ditton on 29^th December 1943.
14O11	Otto Francis Keil Collett was born at Brixton in 1876 but by 1881 he was living at 7 Buckingham Villas in Camberwell with his parents Thomas and Elizabeth Collett, when he was recorded as Otto F Collett aged four years. After a further ten years he and his family were living in the Wandsworth & Clapham area of London, although Otto Francis Collett, aged 14, was not living at the family’s home, but was living and working nearby. It is not clear what happened to his family after 1891, except that Otto joined the Royal Navy and in March 1901 he was enjoying a period of leave from his base in Chatham. Curiously the census that year recorded him in two places at the same time. The first was at his base at Chatham, where he was simply Otto Collett, aged 24 from London, Kent, where he was described as a navy seaman. In the second, he was listed with his mother Elizabeth Collett from Stow-on-the-Wold at her home in Shoreham Street in Shoreham, Kent, just north of Sevenoaks. He was named as Otto Francis Keil Collett, aged 24 from London, who was a naval seaman, while also living at the same address was his brother Amos (below). It was only two years after that when the death of Otto Francis Collett, at the age of 26, was recorded at Seven Oaks in Kent (Ref. 2a 453) during the first quarter of 1903.
14O12	Amos Thomas Collett was born at Herne Hill in Brixton, London, his birth recorded at Lambeth (Ref. 1d 198) during the last quarter of 1877. He was the son of Thomas Collett and his wife Elizabeth, who had moved to Brixton from Reading just a few years earlier. Further family moves took place while he was still very young, the first to Peckham, followed by a move to Camberwell, where he and his family were living at 7 Buckingham Villas by the time of the census in 1881 when as Amos T Collett he was three years old. In 1891 the family was living in the Wandsworth & Clapham registration district, when Amos Collett was 13. On leaving school Amos became a carpenter and a joiner like others in his family, and in 1901 he was living at Shoreham Street in Shoreham, north of Sevenoaks, with his mother and his brother Otto (above). The census listed him as Amos Thomas Collett, aged 22 and from London, whose occupation was that of a joiner.
	It was during the last three months of 1906, that the marriage of Amos Thomas Collett and Alice Poole was recorded at Exeter register office in Devon (Ref. 5b 306). By the day of the census in 1911 the couple was living at 7 Raby Road in New Malden, Surrey, with their first child. The birth of their daughter was recorded at Kingston register office (Ref. 2a 43) during the first quarter of 1910. Amos Thomas Collett from Herne Hill in Brixton was 32 and a joiner, his wife Alice Collett from Witherley Silverton in Devon was 28, and their daughter Hilda Alice Elizabeth was thirteen months old. As far as can be determined, two more children were added to the family, both births recorded at Kingston in 1912 and 1920, when the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Poole. Amos T Collett was 55 when he died during the second quarter of 1933, his death being recorded at Kingston-on-Thames register office (Ref. 2a 143). The couple’s youngest daughter never married, with the death of Beatrice W Collett recorded at the Surrey North Western register office (Ref. 5g 33) during the third quarter of 1964, when she was 44.
	14P6		Hilda Alice Elizabeth Collett		Born in 1910 at New Malden
	14P7		Frances M Collett		Born in 1912 at New Malden
	14P8		Beatrice W Collett		Born in 1920 at New Malden
14O14	Victor Vincent R Collett was very likely born at 7 Buckingham Villas in Camberwell during the three months following the census day in 1881, his birth recorded at Camberwell (Ref. 1d 15) during the second quarter of 1881. He was the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Collett and, by the time he was nine years old, he and his family were living at Pensbury Terrace in Clapham, London. With an older brother serving with the navy at the turn of the century, it is possible that Victor had also enlisted with one of the armed forces, and maybe saw active service during World War One, since it was near the end of the war that he was married. The marriage of Victor V Collett and Maud M Brockwell was recorded at Kingston-upon-Thames register office (Ref. 2a 55) during the second quarter of 1918. Victor was still living in the county of Surrey when he died, his passing recorded at the Surrey North Eastern register office (Ref. 2a 106) during the last quarter of 1943, when he was 62 years of age.
14O15	Harold Collett was born at Camberwell in in 1886, the last child of Thomas Collett and Elizabeth Fort, his birth recorded at Lambeth (Ref. 1d 199) during the final quarter of that year. He was four years of age on the day of the census in 1891, when he and his family were living at Pensbury Terrace in Clapham. With no record of Harold, and other members of his family in 1901, the electoral roll for 1911 and 1912, identified Harold Collett as the occupier of 81 South Hill Park in the London Borough of Hampstead.
14O16	EDITH COLLETT was born at Penarth in Glamorganshire in 1876, the only children of John Kyte Collett. At the time of the 1881 Census she was aged five years and was living at 20 Romilly Crescent at Llandaff, the home of her parents. However, on the actual day of the census her parents were away visiting her grandfather Thomas White Reeves at Pilton in Somerset and Edith had been left in the care of the family’s domestic housekeeper Kate Wynn. The only other occupant at that time was Edward Derring from America who was a clerk in a provision store. It seems very likely that Edward was visiting John Kyte Collett to set up trade links between the two businesses. That was more or less confirmed in the Kelly’s Directory of 1882, in which John’s company was given as “Collett & Co American and Canadian Importer of 235 Bute Street in Cardiff”.
14O17	Gertrude Collett was born at Liverpool during 1879, the eldest of the four daughters of Oliver Emms Collett and his wife Martha Finney. In 1881 she was one year old and was living at 5 William Street in Widnes, was 11 years old in 1891 when the family was living in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, and was 21 and a dressmaker still living with her parents in 1901, but which time they were residing at Cheadle. Gertrude was still a spinster in 1911 and was still living with her parents at the age of 31. Not long after she married George Adams, and it was as Gertrude Adams the wife of George that she was recorded at Chester for the probate of her father’s personal estate of £208 13 Shillings 8d on 13^th December 1917, following his death on 18^th October that year. Also named was her married sister Martha (below).
14O19	Martha Collett was born at Garston on Merseyside in 1884, the third daughter of Oliver and Martha Collett. By 1891, and at the age of six years, she and her family were living at Toxteth, while ten years later her parents had moved to Cheadle in Cheshire. At that time in her life she had left school and was an apprenticed to a milliner at the age of 16. She was still living with her parents in 1911, but in Stockport, when she was unmarried at 26. Prior to the First World War it would appear that Martha married to become Martha Coombes. Sadly, by the time of the death of her father in October 1917, Martha’s husband had died or been killed in action, because she was referred to as the widow Martha Coombes during the probate process of her father’s estate.
14O22	Arthur Collett was born at Stratton St Margaret near Swindon, although no record of his birth has been found. It is only the following census details which suggest he was born in 1874, some months before his parents were married during the second quarter of 1875. They were George Collett from Lower Swell in Gloucestershire and Elizabeth Duck from Wroughton, near Swindon. By 1881, he and his family were living on the High Street in Stratton, where Arthur Collett of Stratton St Margaret was six years of age. It was also later on, in 1881, that Arthur’s family moved from Stratton to the Gorse Hill area of north Swindon, where Arthur’s four youngest siblings were all born. And it there, at Hinton Street, that he was living with his family ten years later in 1891, at the age of 17, when he was working as a groom. No record of Arthur has been found in the census returns for either 1901 or 1911.
14O23	Lilley Amelia Collett was born at Stratton St Margaret, the eldest daughter of George and Kezia Collett. Her birth was recorded at Highworth (Ref. 5a 3) during the second quarter of 1876, when her forename was said to be Lilley. It was also as Lilley, that her parents recorded their daughter in the following census in 1881, when she was five years of age and living with her family at the High Street in Stratton. However, upon later leaving the family home, her name was more conventionally recorded as Lily. Within a few months of that census day, the family left Stratton, when they moved into Swindon and settled at Hinton Street in Gorse Hill. On leaving school, she entered domestic service and, by the time of the census in 1891, Lily Collett from Swindon was 15 years old and a domestic servant at the Berkshire Lambourn home of draper and grocer Henry Spanswick and his wife Ada.
	Eight years later, during the second quarter of 1899, the marriage of Lily Amelia Collett and John Selwood, of Thrupp near Stroud, was recorded at Swindon register office (Ref. 5a 11). By the time of the census in 1901, Lily had presented her husband with a son, William Selwood, when they were living in a GWR house in the railway village, when John was 31 and an engine fitter, Lily was 25, and William was one year old. Ten years later, the family of three was living in Swindon, where Lily Amelia Selwood was 35, her husband John Selwood from Thrupp was 41 and an employee of the Great Western Railway, where he was a labourer in the running shed, Lily Amelia Selwood from Gorse Hill was 35, and their son William John Selwood was 11.
14O24	Edith Emily Collett was born at Stratton St Margaret, possibly at the end of 1878 since, it was during the first quarter of 1879 that her birth was recorded at Highworth (Ref. 5a 8). It was at the High Street in Stratton, that Edith Collett was two years old on the day of the census in 1881 when she was living there with her parents George and Kezia Collett. Within a few months Edith’s family moved to Gorse Hill in Swindon where they were living in 1891, at Hinton Street, when Edith was 12. Just over nine years later, the marriage of Edith E Collett and Reginald James Young was recorded at Swindon register office (Ref. 5a 9) during the third quarter of 1900. The birth of Reginald James A Young was recorded at Highworth in the second quarter of 1876, the son of William and Ann Young. It was at Swindon St Paul, that the childless couple was residing in 1901, when Reginald was 25 and a greengrocer and Edith was 22. Curiously, neither of them has been identified within the census of 1911, although it was at Swindon register office (Ref. 7c 671) that the death of Edith E Young was recorded during the first three months of 1958, when she was 81.
14O25	George Henry Collett was born at Gorse Hill in Swindon on 20^th September 1881, the birth recorded at Highworth (Ref. 5a 2). He was another son of George and Kezia Collett who had been living at the High Street in Stratton St Margaret just six months before he was born. However, it may have been at Hinton Street in Gorse Hill that he was born and it was there also that he and his family were living in 1891, when school boy George Collett was nine years old. Upon leaving school, George secured work with the Great Western Railway, like his father before him. The GWR Staff Records confirmed that his employment with the company commenced on 6^th February 1899 and that he initially learned the trade of a coach builder at the Swindon Works. Just over two years later, when he was 19, the census in 1901 recorded that he was in lodgings in the St Mary’s district of Reading, midway between Swindon and London on the GWR main line, where he was employed as a locomotive engine stoker.
	By the time of the next census in April 1911, George Henry Collett from Gorse Hill was 29 and employed by the Great Western Railway as a carriage lifter, who had returned to Swindon, where he was living with his parents George and Kezia Collett. It was around that time in his life, that he had met Kate Wallace who was born at Rodbourne Cheney in Swindon in 1884. On the census day in 1911, Kate Wallace was 27 years old and was living with her older married brother William Edgar Wallace in Swindon, from where Kate was an overlooker (supervisor) at Messrs Compton Clothing Factory. Two months later, George and Kate were married at St Mary’s Church in Rodbourne Cheney on 3^rd June 1911. At that time George’s age was recorded as being 29 years 8 months 13 days, while Kate was 27 years 11 months 7 days. The wedding of George H Collett and Kate Wallace was recorded at Swindon register office (Ref. 5a 111) during the second quarter of 1911.
	Sometime during her life, it is understood within the family, that she had an operation on an ear, as a result of which, Kate became partially deaf. The couple’s first child, tragically, did not survive long enough to be named, the birth and death both recorded at Swindon register office during February 1912. That was a very sad time for the newly married couple, just setting out on their life together. In an attempt to ease their grief, Kate’s sister Ada contacted the couple and suggested that they might like to make a new start in Australia, to where Ada had emigrated just a few years earlier, to be married to Percy Gilbert Matthews. However, Henry and Kate’s move to Australia was not been as straightforward as it might have been, since their first application to Australia House was rejected. The application had been sponsored by Kate’s sister Ada who was listed as not having an occupation, and that may have been the reason for the rejection. It was only when a second application was made, listing their brother-in-law and butcher Percy Matthews, as the sponsor, that the couple were finally granted approval to settle in Australia.
	At that time, George and Kate were living at 12 Beatrice Street in the Gorse Hill district of Swindon and close to the railway works where George was employed. 12 Beatrice Street is still there today. So it was from there that they left England and sailed on the RMS Roscommon to Cairns in Queensland, where they arrived on 3^rd September 1913. The story told within the family is, that upon disembarking and seeing the aboriginal workers on the quayside at Cairns, Kate was so afraid that she wanted to re-board the ship and return to England. In the end she was persuaded to stay, and she and George lived at Cairns and very likely in a house on the corner of Grove Street and McLeod Street in Cairns, where the last of their four children were born.
	Around 1923 George and Kate and their children left Cairns and sailed the one thousand miles south on the ship Canberra to Brisbane. The Canberra was later renamed ‘Centaur’ and was called into service as a hospital ship during the Second World War. It was however sunk by the Japanese just off Cape Moreton, with a great loss of life. Upon arrival at Brisbane, the family initially lodged with George’s sister-in-law Ada Matthews and her family at Paddington. That was to allow George sufficient time to find a place for him and his family to live, which he did, and they then moved into the house at 18 Shaw Street in the Auchenflower district of Brisbane.
	And it was at Brisbane where Kate Collett nee Simpkins died on 30^th January 1966 and was buried there at the Mount Thompson Crematorium. George survived for a further eleven years and when he died on 13^th May 1977. Due to his failing health he was staying at St Luke’s Nursing Home in Brisbane, from where his body was taken to be buried with his wife, four days later. The cause of death was recorded as being bronchopneumonia and cerebral atherosclerosis. During his life in Australia, both at Cairns and at Brisbane, George continued the career that he had started in Swindon by working for the Queensland Railways. There was another time in his life when he worked as a butcher, probably thanks to his brother-in-law Percy Matthews. It was also around that time when George and Kate were still living at Auchenflower where they received the sad news that their son Cyril had been killed in action in Papua New Guinea in 1942.
	14P9		unnamed Collett son		Born in 1912 at Swindon; died 1912
	14P10		Harold Fleming Collett		Born in 1914 at Cairns, Australia
	14P11		Cyril Horace Collett		Born in 1916 at Cairns, Australia
	14P12		Vera Maud Collett		Born in 1917 at Cairns, Australia
	14P13		Arthur James Collett		Born in 1918 at Cairns, Australia
14O26	Ernest Albert Collett was born at Gorse Hill in Swindon on 12^th January 1886, his birth recorded at Highworth (Ref. 5a 5), when his parents were named as George and Kezia Collett. By the time of the 1891 Census for Swindon, Ernest was five years old, when he and his family were living at Hinton Street in Gorse Hill, and ten years later, in 1901 when he was 15, he was still living with his parents in Swindon. The census that was conducted that year, recorded Ernest Collett of Gorse Hill as working as a ‘coll boy’ with the Great Western Railway, where his older brother George (above) and their father were already working. What is known from the GWR Staff Records is that, eleven months earlier on 30^th April 1900, Ernest Albert Collett entered service with the company and that his period of employment with them continued until 5^th September 1905. The record shows that it was at Marlow in Buckinghamshire that he ended his time with the GWR.
	Over the following five years, Ernest travelled to North Wales, where he also took up a new contract of employment with the Great Western Railway. That situation was confirmed in the census of 1911, when unmarried Ernest Albert Collett from Swindon was 26 and a boarder in the Merionethshire town of Corwen, from where he was working as a railway fireman with the GWR. Two years and one month after that census day, Ernest Albert Collett aged 27 and the son of George Collett, was married by banns to Mary Jones, aged 22 and the daughter of Cadwaladr Jones, at the Parish Church in Corwen on 10^th May 1913. Both the bride and the groom, were recorded as residents of Corwen, Mary being a domestic servant and Ernest being a stoker although, later on, he was an engine driver with the GWR. The births of all five of their known children were recorded at Corwen register office when, in each case, the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Jones.
	There is speculation within the family that, sometime later in his life, Ernest Albert Collett may have separated from his wife who is known to live on after he passed away. The death of Ernest Albert Collett was recorded at Merioneth South Register office (Ref. 8c 110) during the early months of 1970, when his dated of birth was confirmed as 12^th January 1886, making him 84 years old when he died. Although no later record of his daughter Katie has been found, her birth was recorded at Corwen (Ref. 11b 500) during the second quarter of 1919, when her mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Jones.
	14P14		Elsie Grace Collett		Born in 1913 at Corwen, North Wales
	14P15		Lilian Collett		Born in 1915 at Corwen, North Wales
	14P16		Katie May Collett		Born in 1919 at Corwen, North Wales
	14P17		Ernest Arthur Collett		Born in 1921 at Corwen, North Wales
	14P18		Myra Collett		Born in 1929 at Corwen, North Wales
14O27	Beatrice Frances Collett was born at Gorse Hill in Swindon, possibly at the end of 1888 or early in 1889, with her birth recorded at Highworth (Ref. 5a 10) during the first quarter of 1889. Curiously, that was the only time in her life when her full name was used and, since her younger sister was also given the same second forename, it is likely that the name Frances was dropped by the family after 1890. Beatrice was another daughter of George and Kezia Collett who, in the census of 1891, was two years of age, when she and her family were residing at Hinton Street in Gorse Hill, where she may have been born. Ten years later she was still living at the family home in Gorse Hill where she was 13 and still attending the local school, when her place of birth was also confirmed as Gorse Hill. No further record of Beatrice Collett, either her marriage or her death, has been found in Great Britain, the same situation as for her eldest brother Arthur Collett (above).
14O28	Elsie Frances Collett was born in 1890 at Hinton Street in Gorse Hill, the youngest child of George Collett and his wife Kezia Duck. It was at nearby Highworth register office that the birth of Elsie Frances Collett was recorded (Ref. 5a 27) during the last four months of 1890, where the births of all of her older siblings were also recorded. She was just a few months old at the time of the 1891 Census for Swindon, but ten years later in 1901 she was eleven and her place of birth confirmed as Gorse Hill, where Elsie and her family were still living. Like her sister Beatrice, and their eldest brother Arthur (above), no trace of Elsie has been found in the census of 1911, nor has any marriage or death been discovered.
14O31	Gertrude Ethel Collett was born at Daglingworth on 7^th December 1903, the eldest surviving child of Frederick and Minnie Collett. Her birth was recorded at Cirencester register office (Ref. 6a 389) during the first three months of that year and not long after, the family settled in Guiting Power, where Gertrude was seven years old in 1911. Following the deaths of her father, brother and youngest sister in 1918/1919, and her widowed mother being re-married in 1920, Gertrude and her sole surviving sibling Elsie (below), returned to the area of Cirencester, where they were both later married. The marriage of Gertrude E Collett and William J Day was recorded there (Ref. 6a 1093) during the third quarter of 1929. Five children were born to the couple, the births of all of them recorded at Cirencester, when the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Collett. They were: Evelyn G E Day (Ref. 6a 526 in 1929 Qtr 4); Mervyn Charles W J Day (Ref. 6a 528 in 1932 Qtr 1) who died in 1988; Kenneth A Day (Ref. 6a 514 in 1933 Qtr 3) who died in 1936; Frederick A Day (Ref. 6a 521 in 1936 Qtr 1); and Ena M A Day (Ref. 6a 562 in 1937 Qtr 1). The death of Gertrude E Collett was also recorded at Cirencester register office (Ref. 22 1881) at the start of 1980, when she was 76 years old.
14O32	Elsie Collett was born at Guiting Power on 20^th June 1907, the youngest surviving child of Frederick Collett and Minnie Midwinter, her birth recorded at Winchcombe register office (Ref. 6a 395) during the third quarter of that year. She was three years of age in the Guiting Power census of 1911, and it was twenty-seven years later that her marriage to Sidney Swinford was recorded at Cirencester register office (Ref. 6a 745) during the first quarter of 1938. No record of any children has been found, while the death of Elsie Swinford, aged 78, was recorded at Cheltenham register office (Ref. 22 1382) during the third quarter of 1985.
14O34	Thomas Collett was born at Dudley in 1865 and it was at Dudley that his birth was recorded (Ref. 6c 58) during the third quarter of the year, the first-born child of Thomas Collett from Bourton-on-the Water and Ann Eliza Walker from London. He was five years of age in the Dudley census of 1871 still attending school in 1881, when he was 15 years old and living with his family at St James Road in Dudley. It is curious that no further records for Thomas Collett have been found.
14O35	Harriet Rosa Collett was born at Dudley in 1867, where her birth was recorded (Ref. 6c 360) during the second quarter of the year. Harriet R Collett was four years old in 1871 and was 14 years of age in 1881, when she was living with her family at St James Road in Dudley. By 1891, and following the death of her father in 1888, Harriet and her widowed mother had moved to Hastings with three of her younger sisters (below) where Harriet was 24 in 1891. At that time in her life, Harriet was helping her mother manage a boarding house at Warrior Square in Hasting, near the seafront. Sometime during the last decade of the century, Harriet made a return to the Midlands and was recorded as living in the Edgbaston parish of Birmingham in 1901. By then, she was 34, born at Dudley, and working as a domestic housekeeper for pensioner Leonard Brierley.
14O36	Amelia Frances Collett was born at Dudley in 1868, her birth recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 330) during the fourth quarter of that year. Tragically, she was around sixteen months old when she died, the death of Amelia Frances Collett recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 63), following which she was buried at Dudley on 22^nd April 1870.
14O37	Howson Collett was born at Dudley in 1870, his birth recorded there (Ref. 6c 50) during the third quarter of the year. He was six months old in the Dudley census the following year, when Howson and his family was residing at St James Road in Dudley. Nine months after that day, the death of Howson Collett was recorded ad Dudley (Ref. 6c 56) during the fourth and last quarter of the year, following which he was buried at Dudley on 30^th December 1871.
14O38	Lillian Louise Collett was born at Dudley in 1872, her birth recorded there (Ref. 6c 317) during the third quarter of the year. She was one half of a set of twins, who was eight years old in the census of 1881 when she was living at the family home in St James Road in Dudley. Following the death of her father in 1888, her mother and three of her sisters left Dudley, when they moved to Hastings. And it was there on Warrior Square, near Hasting Pier, where Lillian, aged 18, and her older sister Harriet (above) were assisting their mother in the running a boarding house near the seafront. She later became a hospital nurse and moved north to Yorkshire, where she was living in 1901. She was recorded in the census in March that year, as living at Cawthorne, to the west of Barnsley. She was 28 and from Dudley and her occupation was that of a domestic hospital nurse at the home of the large Scott-Smith family. During the following decade, she returned to the south coast where, in 1911, unmarried Lillian Louise Collett from Dudley was 38 and described as a sick nurse and the companion of elderly couple Thomas and Annie Gash at their home in the Broadwater district of Worthing. It was also at Worthing, that she appears to lived out the rest of her life as a spinster, since it was there, at the Worthing register office that the death of Lillian Louise Collett was recorded (Ref. 5h 97) during the third quarter of 1949, when she was 77 years of age.
14O39	Mary Augusta Collett was born at Dudley in 1872, the twin sister of Lillian (above) and the daughter of Thomas Collett and Ann Eliza Walker. The twins’ births were recorded at Dudley during the third quarter of that year, with Lillian’s first to be registered, followed by Mary’s (Ref. 6c 320). In the census of 1881 Mary was eight years of age when she and her family were residing at St James Road in Dudley. Her father died when she was sixteen and shortly thereafter her mother and four of her sisters travelled south to Hasting, where they were living in 1891. At that same time, Mary A Collett from Dudley, was working as a telegraph learner at the General Post Office on the High Street in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, when she was staying at the home of the Randall family. By 1901, Mary A Collet from Dudley was 27 and was one of four domestic servants at a residence in the St Giles in the Field district of London, when she was the assistant housekeeper. As with some of her sisters, Mary also remain unmarried all of her life, with the death of Mary A Collett recorded at Bromsgrove register office (Ref. 9d 72) during the third quarter of 1958, when she was 85 years old.
14O40	Eleanor Frances Collett was born at Dudley in early 1874, with her birth recorded there (Ref. 6c ) during the first three months of the year. She was seven years old in April 1881 when she was living at St James Road in Dudley with her family. After her father passed away in 1888, her mother took Eleanor and three of her sisters to live in Hastings. The Hasting census in 1891 included Eleanor F Collett aged 17 and from Dudley who was assisting her mother run a boarding house near the seafront at Warrior Square. Ten years later, at the age of 27 and still unmarried, Eleanor was living and working at the Wolverton, Southampton, home of the Reade family, where she was employed as a lady’s help and domestic. During the next decade Eleanor returned to the Warwickshire and, in April 1911, she was recorded as Eleanor Frances Collett from Dudley who was 37 and a matron living-in and working at a School for Boys in Leamington. It seems likely from this, that she never married.
14O41	Edgar Howson Collett was born at Dudley in 1875, his birth recorded there (Ref. 6c 5) during the last three months of that year. He and his family were living at James Road in Dudley on the day of the census in 1881, when he was five years old. Following the death of his father during 1888, Edgar’s mother left Dudley, when she was accompanied to Hastings with four of Edgar’s sister, while he remained in Dudley. That situation was confirmed in the Dudley census of 1891, when Edgar H Collett of Dudley had left school and was working as a clerk at the age of 15, when he was staying as a boarder at Victoria Terrace in the town. Two years after that census day, he emigrated to Victoria in Australia, sailing from the Port of London on 24^th March 1893, on board the ship Oruba, bound for Melbourne. On the passenger list, he was recorded in error as being 24, when in fact he was only eighteen years old. Six years after arriving in Australia, Edgar Howson Collett married (1) Helen Louisa Brown during 1899, who had been born in 1874, but who died at the age of 42 during 1917. That union produced two children for Edgar, who later married his sister-in-law, following the premature death of his wife. It was in 1919 that Edgar H Collett married (2) L D Brown who was born in 1880, and with whom he had a further child.
	The following is the earlier 1917 newspaper report on the passing of Edgar’s first wife. “The death occurred at Sorrento early on Saturday morning of Mrs Helen Louisa Collett, aged 42 years, wife of Mr E H Collett, of Myer's establishment from complications supervening on an apoplectic seizure. Mrs Collett and her two daughters left Bendigo by the A N A excursion and were joined at Sorrento a few days later by Mr. Collett. The deceased lady, though not possessing a very robust constitution, enjoyed fairly good health, and the news of her sudden demise will cause shock and sorrow among a wide circle of friends. She was an enthusiastic worker in many of the activities connected with the Forest Street Methodist Church, having been a teacher in the Sunday School, a vice-president of the Girls' Guild and a member of the Women's Auxiliary. She was also a valuable helpmate to her husband in his work as circuit steward, and was for many years a leading soloist in the choir. Mrs Collett was sister to Mr Walter Brown, house and land agent of Bendigo; Mr Ernest Brown of Murrumbeena; Private Hugh Brown of the A M C; Mr Roy Brown and Misses Ethel and Lottie Brown of Melbourne. Helen’s younger daughter Lorna, who was six years old when her mother died, placed on her coffin a bunch of flowers she had gathered from the garden with the label "For Mamma."
	It was in 1943 at the age of 68 that Edgar Howson Collett died at his home at Barkly place in Bendigo, Victoria and, at the time of his death, it was written that he had been residing there for almost fifty years. That means he was married after arriving in Australia, and where also his three children were born. The following is the newspaper report printed on the day of his burial.
	“English by birth, Mr Collett became associated with the late Mr Sidney Myer nearly 45 years ago, at the commencement of a connection with the drapery firm of Myer's at Bendigo, which continued right to the time of his death. For 40 of those 45 years Mr Collett was secretary of the company. Possessed of an exceptionally fine tenor voice, which had attracted notice even before he came to Australia, Mr Collett quickly found a place in Bendigo's musical circles. He became associated with Forest Street Methodist Church Choir, and that association was to continue for 44 years. For 22 years he was choirmaster, and relinquished the position about 18 months ago through illness. He took a great interest in the old Bendigo Choral Society, in which he acted as sub-conductor to Mr W C Frazier. Mr Collett was always in great demand as a vocalist, and he assisted and encouraged many young singers. He filled many offices during his connection with the Forest Street Church, among them being church steward, circuit steward, circuit treasurer, church trustee, and secretary of the trust.
	Mr Collett was prominent in the Masonic craft. One of the first members of the Corona Lodge, and master of the lodge in 1917. He was also conductor of the lodge choir. He was afterwards deputy-grand director of ceremonies of the Grand Lodge of Victoria. He occupied the chair in the Bendigo Sovereign Chapter and was sovereign of the Knights of Constantine and Prince Rose Croix. He was a commander of the Bendigo Consistory, 30^th Degree, and latterly was promoted to the 31^st Degree. He was also interested in the Oddfellow's Order. His sporting activities were confined to bowls. He was at one time a member of the committee, and auditor of Bendigo Bowling Club, in addition to being one of its most prominent players. Mr Collett leaves a widow, two daughters (Maisie and Lorna) and one son (Flying Officer Raymond Collett) who is at present serving with a Sunderland Squadron in Great Britain. The funeral will take place today to Bendigo cemetery.”
	14P19		Lillian May (Maisie) Collett		Born in 1900 at Bendigo, Australia
	14P20		Lorna Eleanor Collett		Born in 1908 at Bendigo, Australia
	14P21		Raymond Howson Collett		Born in 1920 at Bendigo, Australia
14O42	Raymond Collett was born at Dudley on 6^th August 1877, where his birth was recorded (Ref. 6c 191) during the third quarter of the year. Raymond was three years old in 1881, when he and his family were living at St James Road in Dudley. He was nearly eleven years old when his father suffered a premature death, just after which, his widowed mother arranged the baptism for Raymond, his brother Harold and their youngest sister Annie, who were all baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 27^th July 1888. The parish records confirmed that they were the children of Thomas and Ann Eliza Collett. Just as with his brother Harold, no record of ether of them has been discovered in 1891. However, in 1901, Raymond Collett from Dudley, was 24 and an unmarried house furnisher, who was in lodgings in the St Mary’s district of Leeds that year. It was very likely, that it was Raymond’s occupation that was the reason he moved around the country, since it was over eight years later, that the marriage of Raymond Collett and Margaret Faith from Chichester in Sussex, was recorded at Wandsworth register office (Ref. 1d 188) during the last three months of 1909. By 1911, the childless the couple was residing within the Lambeth area of London, where both Raymond from Dudley and Margaret from Chichester were 33 years old, when Raymond was a furnishing salesman. It was nine years later that the marriage produced the only child for the couple, when their daughter was born in 1920, her birth recorded at Lambeth register office (Ref. 1d 133) during the third quarter of that year, when the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Faith. Thirty years later Raymond and Margaret were living at 7 Sparkbridge Road in Harrow, North London, where he died on 25^th April 1950, following which administration of his personal estate of £3,767 13 Shillings 9d was granted jointly to his widow Margaret Collett and his unmarried daughter Lilian Joan Collett.
	14P22		Lillian Joan Collett		Born in 1920 at Lambeth
14O43	Harold Collett was born at Dudley on 4^th January 1879, with his birth recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 237) during the first three months of the year. He was two years old in April 1881, when he and his family were living at James Road in Dudley, and was nine years of age when his father died in 1888. It was later that year when the baptisms of Harold Collett, his older brother Raymond Collett (above) and his youngest sister Annie Kathleen Collett (below) were conducted at the Church of St Thomas in Dudley on 27^th July 1888. It is also established that his widowed mother Ann Eliza Collett from London, took four of Harold’s sister to Hasting, following the death of his father, where they ran a boarding house. It was there also that the five of them were living in 1891, while no record of Harold has been found in Britain at any time after 1881. Furthermore, it is not known whether, or not, Harold was ever married, but it is confirmed that he died during the Great War while serving as Private 6849 with the Royal Fusiliers. Tragically, he died in action on 29^th April 1917 and his name appears on Bay 3 of the Arras Memorial.
	On 28^th April 1917 British and Canadian troops stormed the town of Arleux as one of the phases of the Battle of Arras which covered the period from 9^th April to 15^th May that year. It was a major assault on the German line and, whilst the Canadian troops were successful with their attack, the British troops were not so lucky and met with stiff resistance from the enemy forces. The Arras Memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens is situated in the town of Arras and commemorates 35,000 British, South African and New Zealand servicemen who were killed between the spring of 1916 and August 1918.
14O44	Annie Adelaide Collett was born at Dudley in 1880, where her birth was also recorded (Ref. 6c 222) during the second quarter of the year, another daughter of Thomas and Ann Collett. She survived for only a few days, when she died and was buried at Dudley on 27^th May 1880. The death of Annie Adelaide Collett was recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 296) during the same quarter that her birth was recorded there.
14O44	Annie Kathleen Collett was born at St James Road in Dudley in 1882, her birth recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 23) during the third quarter of that year, the last child of Thomas Collett from Bourton-on-the-Water and Ann Eliza Walker from London. She was only six years of age when her father died in 1888 and, it was shortly after had passed away, that Annie Kathleen Collett was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 27^th July 1888, in a joint ceremony with her older brothers Raymond and Harold (above). The parish records confirmed that she was the daughter of Thomas and Ann Eliza Collett, and that she had been born on 2^nd June 1882. after which her mother moved took Annie and her three older sisters to live in Hastings, where her mother and two eldest sisters ran a boarding house near the seafront in the town. The boarding house, on Warrior Square, where they were living in 1891, when Annie K Collett from Dudley was eight years old. Upon completing her education, Annie entered domestic services and, by the time of the census of 1901, Annie K Collett from Dudley was 18 and was holding the position of domestic governess for the two young children of the Barker family within the Parish of Christ Church in Worthing, not far from where her widowed mother was also living in 1901, and where her older unmarried sister Lilian Louise Collett (above) was living in 1911.
14O46	Emily Ann Collett was born at Stratford-on-Avon, either at the end of 1865 or the beginning of 1866, her birth recorded there (Ref. 6c 112) during the first quarter of the letter. She was the first child born to John Collett and his first wife Sarah Ann Charles. It was also at Stratford-on-Avon that she was baptised on 24^th February 1866, the daughter of John and Sarah Ann Collett. By the time the census was con ducted in 1871, Emily A Collett from Stratford-on-Avon was five years of age and living at Handsworth, between Birmingham and West Bromwich. In 1881 she was a boarder at The Ferns School for Girls in Islington which was run by school mistress Miss C Birchall aged 53, when Emily Ann Collett from Warwickshire was 15 years of age. During the time she was at The Ferns School, her father and his second wife moved to Streatham in London, where Emily was reunited with her family by 1891. It was at 113 Barrow Street in Streatham that Emily A Collett from Warwickshire was 25, with no stated occupation, that she was living with the family, including two brothers and five half-siblings. Three years later, Emily Ann Collett married Harry Whale Buckland, with whom she is known to have had two children, although only one of them survived. The marriage of Emily and Harry was recorded at Wandsworth register office (Ref. 1d 289) during the third quarter of 1894. The following year, Emily’s brother William Henry Collett married Annie Bagg Buckland who was 21 in 1891 and the older sister of Harry Buckland who was 19 in 1891, when they were both living with their family at Lower Wick in Worcestershire. In 1901 and 1911, the couple was living at Bedwardine, with servants. In the former, Harry W was 28 and a hops and seed merchant from Sparkbrook in Birmingham, when Emily A was 35 from Stratford. By the latter census, Harry Whale Buckland was a hops merchant at 38 and Emily Ann Buckland was 45. On that day, their daughter was Beryl Faith Buckland was five years old and born at Lower Wick. Beryl later married to become Beryl Faith Eames, and she was the grandmother of Cathy Eames who was researching her family in 2012.
14O47	Oliver Charles Collett was born at Stratford-on-Avon, where his birth was recorded (Ref. 6d 307) during the third quarter of 1867. It was at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, that Oliver Charles Collett was baptised on 15^th November 1867, the eldest son of John and Sarah Ann Collett. By the time he was three years old, Oliver C Collett from Stratford was living with his family at Handsworth, just north-west of Birmingham. In 1881 he was 13 when he was living away from home, being privately educated by Assistant Grammar School Master Johann H Klinke from Germany in his home at 2 Church House, Dedham in Essex. Also in 1881, his future wife Ada J Northway from Colombo in Ceylon, was a ten-year-old pupil attending school at Lodge Road in Southampton, while ten years later she was 20 and a probation nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. Oliver was 27 when he married Ada Jessie Northway in 1894. Two years later in 1896 Jessie presented her husband with a daughter, but sadly she died during that same year. Oliver was a Justice of the Peace and spent time in Ceylon, where he died at the relatively young age of 35 on 13^th June 1902. A commemorative brass plaque in St Lawrence’s Church in Bourton-on-the-Water marks the event as follows: “Sacred to the Memory of Oliver Collett JP FRMS son of John Collett late of Bourton who died in Ceylon on 13^th June 1902 aged 35 years. This tablet was erected by some of his friends in Ceylon as a token of their esteem”. Over eleven months later, the Will of Oliver Charles Collett of Ceylon was proved on 16^th May 1903, when the two main beneficiaries were named as John Collett and Ada Jessie Collett. Whilst Ada was his widow, it is not known whether John Collett was his brother of her son.
	14P23		Maud Marjorie Collett		Born in 1896; infant death
14O48	William Henry Collett was born at Aston in Birmingham in 1869, the son of John Collett and his first wife Sarah Ann Charles, his birth recorded at Aston (Ref. 6d 58) during the second quarter of the year. By the time of the census of 1871, his mother had already died, leaving the remainder of the family living in Handsworth, between West Bromwich and Birmingham, where William H Collett from Aston was approaching his second birthday. Shortly after that sad time, his father re-married and the family then moved to London where, in 1881, they were living at Alleyn Park in the Kingwood Lawn area of Camberwell, where William Henry Collett from Aston was 11 years old. By 1891, the family was settled at 113 Barrow Road in Streatham Common, where William was 21 and working with his father as a hops merchant. Four year after that, in 1895, he married Annie B (Bagg) Buckland with whom he had three children over the following ten years, but sadly only two of them survived. Just after the turn of the century William and his wife were living in Sheffield. William H Collett was 32, while Annie B Collett was 31, and by that time their first child had already died. According to the census in 1911, William and his family were living within the Chapel en le Frith area of Derbyshire, in the village of Buxworth. William Henry Collett was 41 and a hops merchant from Birmingham, Annie Bagg Collett was the same age and also born in Birmingham, and their two surviving children were Oliver Collett who was seven and born at Sheffield, and Naomi Rhonwyn who was five years old and also born in Sheffield. Sixteen years after that census day, William Henry Collett died on 6^th March 1927, after which his Will was proved in Derbyshire on 3^rd May that same year, when his daughter Naomi Rhonwyn Collett was the sole beneficiary. Naomi was born on 5^th September 1905, with her birth recorded at Sheffield register office (Ref. 9c 132) during the last quarter of 1905. She never married and her death was recorded, using her full name, at the Trowbridge Wiltshire register office (Ref. 23 53) during the spring of 1977.
	14P24		Violet Rachael Collett		Born in 1896 at Lambeth, London
	14P25		Oliver Collett		Born in 1903 at Sheffield
	14P26		Naomi Rhonwyn Collett		Born in 1905 at Sheffield; died 1977
14O49	John Sydney Collett was born at Aston in Birmingham in 1870, where his birth was recorded (Ref. 6d 53) during the third quarter of that year, but tragically, his mother died early in the following year. On the day of the census day in 1871, John S Collett was around six months old, when he was living with his widowed father at Handsworth, to the west of Birmingham. His father was later re-married and, when he was around five years old, his new family left Handsworth, when they moved to London where, in 1881, they were living at Alleyn Park in the Kingwood Lawn district of Camberwell, where John S Collett from Aston was 10 years of age. At the time in his life when he was 20 years of age, John S Collett had no stated occupation when he was living with his family at 113 Barrow Road in Streatham Common. No record of him has been discovered within the census of 1901, when he was very likely in Ceylon. Two years later John Sydney Collett married Ethel Gully in 1903, maybe in Ceylon when their first child was born shortly thereafter. The married produced just two children, who were living with their mother at Streatham within the London Borough of Wandsworth in 1911. Ethel Mary Collett from Dalston in London was a married woman of 32, her son John Anthony was seven and born in Ceylon, and her daughter Marguerite Augusta who was just three months old, had been born at Streatham. Again, no record of John Sydney Collett has not been located anywhere in Britain on that day, so perhaps he was still working in India or Ceylon.
	Many years later, the death of John S Collett was recorded at Trowbridge register office (Ref. 7c 101) during the last three months of 1948, when he was 78 years old. The proving of his Will took place in London on 4^th December 1948, when it was confirmed that John Sydney Collett of 1 Elmbridge Avenue in Surbiton, Surrey, died on 30^th September 1948 at Woodlands Cottage in Bradford-on-Avon, which may have been a nursing home or Woodlands Cottage Hospital. His considerable personal estate of £21,833 8 Shillings 11d was handled by The National Bank of India Limited, possibly validating his early connection with his work in that area of the world.
	14P27		John Anthony Collett		Born in 1904 in Ceylon
	14P28		Marguerite Augusta Collett		Born in 1911 at Streatham, Wandsworth
14O50	Cecilia Dora Ransford Collett was born at Peckham Road in Camberwell on 27^th November 1876, her birth recorded there during the first quarter of 1877 (Ref. 1d 28), but only as Cecilia Dora Collett. She was baptised at East Dulwich St John on 23^rd December 1876, the eldest of the four children of John Collett, a gentleman from Bourton-on-the-Water and his second wife Cecilia Helen Carr, with whom she was living at Alleyn Park in Camberwell in 1881 at the age of four years. By the time she was 14, the family was living at 113 Barrow Road in Streatham Common. At the time of the census in 1901, Cecilia D Collett from Camberwell was 24 when she was living at Lambeth with her family. Ten years later in 1911, she was living with just her father and siblings at 9 Deerhurst Road in Streatham, where she was recorded as Cecilia Dora Collett aged 34, but with no job of work, so was probably acting as her father’s housekeeper in the absence of her mother who was away on a visit that census day. She never married and lived a full and long life. Upon her death in 1964, she was buried at St Lawrence’s Church in Bourton with her parents, where a single stone marks the grave. For Cecilia, the headstone records that she was the daughter of John and Cecilia Helen Collett and that she was born on 27^th November 1876, and that she died on 28^th January 1964. On the day that she passed away, Cecilia Dora Ransford Collett, a spinster, was residing at 11 Lillington Avenue in Leamington Spa.
	What is very interesting is, that twenty-eight years earlier, a legal notice was published by solicitors in Leamington Spa as follows. “NOTICE is hereby given that by a deed poll dated the twenty-seventh day of May, 1936, and duly enrolled in the Supreme Court of Judicature on the twenty-eighth day of May, 1936, CECILIA DORA RANSFORD-COLLETT, of Maugersbury Manor, Stow-on-the-Wold, in the county of Gloucester, Spinster, a natural-born British subject, renounced and abandoned the surname of Collett. - Dated the 28th day of May, 1936.” It therefore seems strange that her death and burial both continued to give her surname as Collett. Coincidentally, unmarried Susan Beale Collett (Ref. 14N37) died at Maugersbury on 31^st January 1936, and she was the sister of Cecilia’s father, her aunt.
	Footnote: Within the history of Stow-on-the-Wold there is a reference to Maugersbury Manor, which was the home of the lords of the manor for three hundred years. During the 1930s the whole estate was split up, at which time the manorial rights were purchased by Mr. Kenneth de Courcy of North Cerney. He was still the ‘lord of the manor’ in 1961, although at that time he owned no land within the parish. A further, more interesting note, states that Mr de Courcy and Miss Ransford Collett were the former tenants of the manor house. Could she possibly have been Cecilia Dora Ransford Collett? She was certainly living at Monks Barn in Maugersbury, possibly from around 1947 until the mid-1950s, when she moved to Leamington Spa.
14O51	Bernard Collett was born at West Lodge in Peckham Rye near the end of 1878, with his birth recorded at Camberwell (Ref. 1d 227) during the first months of 1879. He was baptised at St Giles Church in Camberwell on 17^th January 1879, when his family was living at West Lodge in Peckham Rye. He was two years old in 1881, when he and his family were recorded at Alleyn Park in Camberwell, and was 12 in the Streatham Common census of 1891, when living at 113 Barrow Road. By the end of March in 1901, he was 22 and an articled accountant who was still living with his family, but at Lambeth. It is established that Bernard was a chartered accountant in London, and was named as an executor in many Collett family Wills. Not long after the census in 1901, Bernard and his two brothers Aubrey and Arthur left their father’s house in Streatham, when they each took a furnished single room, Bernard’s and Arthur’s being on the second floor of their mother’s home at 3 York Road in Norwood, the details confirmed in the electoral roll in 1904. After that the two brothers returned to live with their father at 9 Deerhurst Road in Streatham where, again, they each had a single furnished room on the first floor, their father named as their landlord. And it was there in 1911, that Bernard Collett from Camberwell was 32 and a chartered account and where he lived with his father and Aubrey as least up until 1913. It was ten years after that when he married Irene Colman Smith. Irene was the daughter of Samuel Colman Smith from Scotland and his wife Frances Marian, and was born at Walthamstow in 1894. Their wedding was recorded at Stow-on-the-Wold register office (Ref. 6a 8) during the third quarter of 1923.
	Two years earlier, in 1921, Bernard Collett published the Family Tree for the Colletts of Upper Slaughter which was lodged with the British Library and which in 1935 was used by writer Clara Elizabeth Collett (Ref. 17O5) and Henry Haines Collett (Ref. 4N29) to produce ‘The History of the Collett Family’. Bernard was described as being a chartered accountant at the time of the death of his father John Collett in 1919 and again four years later at the death of his mother Cecilia Helen Collett when, on both occasions he and his brother Aubrey (below), were named as executors of the two Wills. At the time of the death of his younger brother Aubrey in 1936, Bernard, a chartered accountant, was named as an executor of his estate. At that time in his life Bernard was living at 4 Bristol House, Southampton Row, London WC1. However, fifteen years later, Bernard Collett was living at 42 Whitmore Road in Harrow, when he died on 5^th January 1951, with probate for his personal estate of £12,717 4 Shillings 1d granted jointly to George Herbert Cann and Irene Collett, a widow, Bernard’s wife. The death of Bernard Collett was recorded at Harrow register office (Ref. 5f 57) when he was 72 years old.
14O52	Aubrey Ransford Collett was born at West Lodge in Peckham Rye on 21^st May 1880, his birth recorded at Camberwell (Ref. 1d 363) during the third quarter of the year. He was the third child of merchant John Collett by his second wife Cecilia Helen Carr, and was baptised at the Church of St John the Evangelist in East Dulwich on 19^th June 1880. It was as Aubrey R Collett that he was recorded as being ten months old on the day of the census in the following year, when the family was living at Alleyn Park, Kingwood Lawn in Camberwell. At the age of 10 years Aubrey Ransford Collett and his family were living at Oakfield, Barrow Road in Streatham Common and later at 113 Barrow Road. On leaving school, Aubrey entered the world of finance, like his brother Bernard, when he took up a career in insurance. The whole family was still living together at 94 Putney Bridge Road in Wandsworth in 1901, where Aubrey Collett from Camberwell was 20 and employed as an insurance clerk. For a few years from 1904, Aubrey’s parents appeared to live in separate parts of London, when Aubrey and brothers Bernard and Arthur, each had a single room in their mother’s home at 3 York Road in Norwood. When their mother moved to 42 Chestnut Road in Norwood around 1906, Aubrey and Bernard moved back to live with their father at 9 Deerhurst Road in Streatham, where they each continued to have a single furnished room on the first floor of the house. Their father was confirmed as the owner of the property and was described as the landlord in the electoral rolls for the years up until 1913.
	And It was there, at 9 Deerhurst Road, that Aubrey Ransford Collett from Camberwell was 30 and an insurance broker who was still living with his father and two siblings in 1911. Eight years after that day, on the occasion of the death of his father John Collett in 1919, Aubrey was a broker and in 1923 at the time of the death of his mother, he was referred to as an insurance broker when, for both events, he was named as an executor of his parents’ personal estate, jointly with his brother Bernard (above). On 15^th April 1934, Aubrey sailed into Southampton on board the ship Camito, a vessel of the Elders and Fyffes Shipping Line, having sailed there from Bristol. He was described on the passenger list as being 53 and an insurance broker.
	He shares a grave in the churchyard at Bourton-on-the-Water, the inscription on which simply reads “Aubrey Ransford Collett 21^st May 1880 – 8^th February 1936”. On the same tombstone is another inscription “Susan Beale Collett 4^th December 1842 – 31^st January 1936”. Aubrey’s aunt Susan B Collett (Ref. 14N37) was also living at Lambeth in 1901. New information discovered in 2015 reveals that Aubrey was of 3 Old Broad Street in London and of Maugersbury Manor at Stow on the Wold, while it was at Evington Nursing Home, 3 Mandeville Place in St Marylebone London that he died. Probate of his considerable estate of £51,991 10 Shillings 8d was granted on 27^th April 1936 to Bernard Collett, a chartered accountant and Stanford Walton Mountain, an underwriter.
	The death of Aubrey Ransford Collett was recorded at Marylebone register office (Ref. 1a 35) during the first quarter of 1936, at the age of 55. Just over one year after Aubrey passed away, an auction sale of some of his personal effects was held at Christies in London on 1^st March 1937. The auction catalogue included the words “The following are Sold by Order of the Executors of A Ransford Collett Esq, deceased and have been removed from Maugersbury Manor, Stow-on-the-Wold, Glos”. Written on the same page by hand, were the words “Bernard Collett, 4 Bristol House, Southampton Row, WC1”.
	On Wednesday 12^th February 1936, the Gloucestershire Echo published the following article: “FUNERAL OF MR A R COLLETT SERVICE AT STOW, INTERMENT AT BOURTON The funeral took place at St. Edward's Church, Stow-on-the-Wold, yesterday of Mr Aubrey Ransford Collett, of Maugersbury Manor, Stow-on-the-Wold, who died in London on Saturday in his 56th year, after serious illness. Mr Collett, who was the fifth son the late John Collett, of Bourton-on-the-Water, was greatly respected in the district, but owing to business reasons he had been unable to enter into parish affairs, although he was always a ready subscriber to practically all local organisations. Mr Collett had been a member of the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club for many years. He came to live at Maugersbury Manor some 13 years ago. He was a director of the insurance firm of Messrs. Gardner, Mountain, and D'Ambrumenial, London. Owing to his work, he spent comparatively little time at Maugersbury Manor, usually coming there only at week-ends. He was an enthusiastic collector of antiques of all kinds, but his greatest interest was Freemasonry. In this he held several high positions. He was Deputy Provincial Grand Master of the Mark Degree for Gloucestershire and Herefordshire and Past Deputy Grand Director of Ceremonies in the Grand Lodge of England. Since coming to Gloucestershire, he took an interest in local Masonry, and was Past Master of the Prince of Wales Lodge, Stow-on-the-Wold, Mr. Collett's family came from near Bourton-on-the-Water. Miss Susan Collett, who died last week aged 93, was his aunt. She was a former resident of Bourton-on-the-Water, but lived the last few years of her life at Maugersbury Manor with Mr Collett and his sister, Miss Dora Collett. As a tribute to their brother, the members the Prince of Wales Masonic Lodge, Stow-on-the-Wold, formed a guard of honour outside the church as the cortege entered for the service.”
	The family mourners were Miss Dora Collett (sister), Mr and Mrs Bernard Collett (brother and sister-in-law), Mr and Mrs Stanley Collett (brother and sister-in-law), Mr Sydney Collett (brother), Mr Oliver Collett and Mr Anthony Collett (nephews), Miss Rhonwyn Collett (niece), Mr Walton Mountain (cousin), Sir Frederick Hall, Bt, and Lady Hall, Colonel and Mrs Howard Jones, Mr Lionel Walter, Mrs Newman, Mr Walter Roberts (gardener), and Mr A C Carne.
14O53	Arthur Stanley Collett was born at Alleyn Park at Kingwood Lawn in Camberwell either at the end of 1881 or early in 1882, with his birth recorded at Camberwell (Ref. 1d 40) during the first three months of 1882. He was the last child of John Collett and his second wife Cecilia Helen Carr. Rather oddly, the next census in 1891, described Arthur Stanley Collett was being nine years of age and born at Dulwich, when he and his family were residing at Oakfield, Barrow Road in Streatham Common. Arthur was 19 at the time of the census in 1901, when he and his family were living at 94 Putney Bridge Road in Wandsworth, when he was already working as a stockbroker’s clerk. In 1904, together with his two brothers Bernard and Aubrey (above), Arthur Stanley Collett was living in a single furnished second floor room at 3 York Road, the home of their mother Cecilia, his two brothers each having a separate room on the first floor. Their mother was living elsewhere in Norwood by 1906, resulting in her three sons leaving York Road, with Arthur’s two brothers returning to live with their father at 9 Deerhurst Road in Streatham. He later married Rita Lindeman with whom he is known to have had three children, but curiously only the birth of their second child has been found, with Joan Collett’s birth recorded at Kensington register office (Ref. 1a 112) during the second quarter of 1927, when the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Lindeman. The later marriage of the couple’s eldest daughter was conducted at Westminster in 1949.
	14P29		Diana Collett		Born in 1925
	14P30		Joan Collett		Born in 1927 at Kensington
	14P31		Henry Stanley Peter Collett		Born in 1930
14P1	John William Henry Collett was born at Atch Lench, near Evesham in Worcestershire on 17^th June 1893, and it was at Evesham that his birth was recorded (Ref. 6c 43) during the third quarter in 1893. He was the eldest of the five children of John Collett and Sarah Ann Harris, and was seven years old in the Church Lench census of 1901 and was 17 and a farm labourer in 1911. He was still in his late teenage years, when the marriage of John W H Collett and Eva L Millward was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 53) during the first three months of 1912. That marriage produced a total of four children for the couple, the birth of all of them recorded at Evesham, with the mother’s maiden name confirmed as Millward. It was towards the end of 1984, at the age of 91, that the death of John William H Collett was recorded at Evesham register office (Vol. 29).
	14Q1		John Henry Collett		Born in 1912 at Evesham
	14Q2		Graham John Collett		Born in 1913 at Evesham
	14Q3		Nellie Collett		Born in 1914 at Evesham
	14Q4		Joan Collett		Born in 1920 at Evesham
14P2	Elsie Ellen Collett was born at Atch Lench on 3^rd March 1895, the second child and eldest daughter of John and Sarah Collett. Her birth was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 151) during the second quarter of 1895. It was simply as Elsie Collett aged six and from Atch Lench, that she was recorded with her family in the Church Lench census of 1901. On leaving school, she entered domestic service, as confirmed in the census of 1911, by which time Elsie Ellen Collett was 16 and a general domestic servant in the Worcestershire village of Wick, at the home of the Jackson family. Just over six years later, the marriage of Elsie E Collett and Harry Roberts was recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 14) during the third quarter of 1917. Elsie Ellen Roberts was 74 years old, when her passing was recorded at Watford register office (Ref. 4b 11) during the spring of 1969.
14P3	Margaret Annie Collett was born at Atch Lench, with her birth also recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 264) during the last three months of 1897, another daughter of John and Sarah Collett. Margaret Collett of Atch Lench was three years of age in the 1901 census for Church Lench, where she was still living with her family in 1911, at the age of 13. The later marriage of Margaret A Collett and George D Brookes was recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 95) during the first three month of 1924. Margaret was 56 and living in Surrey when she died, the death of Margaret A Brookes being recorded at Croydon register office (Ref. 5g 136) during the third quarter of 1952.
14P4	Bertha May Collett was born at Atch Lench on 26^th September 1901, her birth recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 194) during the last quarter of 1901. As just Bertha Collett she was nine years old and attending school at Church Lench in 1911, where her place of birth was confirmed as Atch Lench. She was nearly nineteen years old when the marriage of Bertha M Collett and Arthur R Bartlett, the event recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 32) during the third quarter of 1920. Bertha did not move far from her place of birth, since the death of Bertha May Collett was recorded at Worcester register office (Vol. 29) in the spring of 1986, aged 84.
14P5	Ethel Lillian Collett was born at Atch Lench on 19^th November 1910, the last child of John William Henry Collett and Eva L Millward. As with all of her older siblings, the birth of Ethel L Collett was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 42). She was four months old on the day of the census in 1911, when with her family at Church Lench. She was nearly twenty years of age when the marriage of Bertha L Collett and Albert W Stewart was recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 128) during the quarter of 1930. She and her sister Bertha (above) appears to have living all of her life in the area of her birth, with the death of Ethel Lillian Stewart also recorded as Evesham at the end of 1993 when she was 92.
14P9	The unnamed Collett son and the first child of George Collett and Kate Wallace was born at 12 Beatrice Street in Swindon during the month of February in 1912. His birth, as ‘male Collett’, was recorded at Swindon register office (Ref. 5a 86), when his mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Wallace. His death was recorded at Swindon register office (Ref. 5a 73) during the first three months of 1912, when he was simply recorded as ‘male Collett’.
14P10	Harold Fleming Collett was the first of four children born to George Collett and Kate Simpkins after they had emigrated to Australia. Harold was born at Cairns in Queensland on 26^th September 1914 and in 1923 his parents and the family left Cairns, to move the one thousand miles south to Brisbane. He later married Merle Hallas Thompson on 24^th July 1943 at Gatton in Queensland, to the west of Brisbane. The details recorded at the time of the wedding were that Harold was aged 28 years 3 months and 28 days, while his bride was ten years younger at 18 years 4 months and 11 days. Merle had been born at Brisbane on 13^th March 1925. During the first fourteen years of their marriage Harold and Merle had five children while they were living at Brisbane.
	Harold Fleming Collett died from a blood clot on 17^th May 1977 at the Royal Brisbane Hospital where he was being treated for a leg injury. He was buried two days later at the Mount Thompson Crematorium in Brisbane. Tragically, Harold’s unexpected death came just four days after the death of his father George Henry Collett and actually happened on the morning of his father’s funeral. Merle survived her husband by twenty-six years and was still living in Brisbane when she died in 2003.
	14Q5		Victor George Collett		Born in 1944 at Brisbane
	14Q6		Estelle Merle Collett		Born in 1947 at Brisbane
	14Q7		Maude Evelyn Collett		Born in 1952 at Brisbane
	14Q8		Cathryne Dawn Collett		Born in 1954 at Brisbane
	14Q9		Harold Cyril Collett		Born in 1957 at Brisbane
14P11	Cyril Horace Collett was born at Cairns on 17^th March 1916 and was baptised at St John’s Church in Cairns, the son of George and Kate Collett. When he was seven years old his family moved from Cairns and settled in Auchenflower in Brisbane. On leaving school he worked as a labourer and at the age of twenty-four he enlisted for war service and signed on at Kelvin Grove in Brisbane on 26^th August 1940. His service number was Q28056 and in just over a year he was promoted to corporal on 20^th November 1941.
	Just over three weeks later on 13^th December 1941 he was one of the witnesses at the wedding of his younger brother Arthur James Collett (below) at Christ Church St Lucia in Brisbane. The other witness was Ina Kirkland who was a friend of the bride. Cyril was still at Brisbane on 27^th April 1942 when he was posted to 7^th Field Ambulance Division of 61^st Battalion. Three months later he was with the 61^st Battalion where they embarked for New Guinea on board the ship the MV Swartenhordt which sailed out of Townsville on 30^th July 1942.
	Tragically one month later he was killed in action and died at Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea on 29^th August 1942. He was originally buried at Milne Cemetery (Plot A Row B Grave 3) on 3^rd December 1942, but was later moved to the Bomana War Cemetery at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea where he was finally laid to rest on 29^th March 1946 (Plot A2 Row A Grave 19).
	Historical Note: After the Japanese landed at Lae and Salamaua in March 1942, Port Moresby became their chief objective. They decided to attack by sea, and assembled an amphibious expedition for the purpose, which set out early in May, but they were intercepted and heavily defeated by American air and naval forces in the Coral Sea, and what remained of the Japanese expedition returned to Rabaul.
	The Japanese then made an amphibious landing at Milne Bay on 27^th August 1942. The 61^st Battalion was first into action but was unable to hold back the Japanese. The Japanese reached the edge of the airstrip the next day, where they waited to be reinforced. In the early morning of 31^st August the Japanese charged the defences manned by the remaining men of the 61^st Battalion, who had been strengthened by the 25^th Battalion who were now fighting alongside them. The Japanese suffered heavy losses and had withdrawn by dawn. Those gallant men who died during the fighting, like Cyril, are buried in Port Moresby’s Bomana War Cemetery, their graves having been brought in by the Australian Army Graves Service from burial grounds in the areas where the fighting had taken place and where they had originally been buried.
	For his service to his King and Country, Cyril Horace Collett of the 61^st Battalion Queensland Cameron Highlanders was posthumously awarded the following medals; 1939-1945 Star, Pacific Star, War Medal, and Australian Service Medal.
14P12	Vera Maud Collett was born at Cairns on 10^th March 1917, but moved to Brisbane with her family in 1923. She later became Vera Maud Johnston when she married James William Johnston on 12^th September 1942 at St Alban’s Church in Auchenflower in Brisbane. James was recorded as being aged 27 years 5 months and 11 days, while Vera was 25 years 6 months and 2 days old. James was born on 1^st April 1915 at 136 Riding Road in Hawthorne district of Brisbane and Vera presented him with two children, both of them born while the couple were living at Brisbane. They were George William Johnston who was born on 20^th September 1944 and Joyce Helen Johnston who was born on 30^th June 1948. Their daughter Joyce died in the Royal Brisbane Hospital on 1^st January 1983 aged 38 and her ashes were placed in a communal grave at Mount Thompson Crematorium in Brisbane. James William Johnston died at Greensloped Repatriation Hospital in Brisbane on 5^th September 1994 and was buried at Mount Thompson Crematorium two days later. Vera died at Ipswich in Queensland during February 2002.
14P13	Arthur James Collett was born at Cairns on 4^th April 1918 in a house on McLeod Street and described as being on the corner of Grove Street and McLeod Street. That may or may not have been where his three older siblings were also born. He was baptised later that year at St John’s Church in Cairns on 30^th July 1918, the youngest son of George Collett and Kate Simpkin. Arthur was five years old when his family moved to 18 Shaw Street, Auchenflower in Brisbane.
	While living at Auchenflower, Arthur began attending Toowong State School where he was presented with a book as a prize for his swimming. He would have been the first to admit that he did not enjoy school and often ‘wagged off’ on many occasions. He also recalled receiving a good hiding for cutting-off the end the gramophone horn as he thought it would be ideal to help feed the chickens.
	On leaving school Arthur used to accompany a man selling fruit for a shilling per basket until he secured his first real job. That was with Bretts at Windsor during the day which allowed him to undertake extra work at the Elite Theatre in the evenings. That was a cinema where Arthur rewound the film reels, threaded up the projectors, and opened and closed the curtains before and after each film. In 1939 at the age of 21, Arthur was made redundant and shortly after that the family bought a milk-round which Arthur managed for them. He began with a horse and cart but later on acquired a truck which he used to collect the milk from Paul’s Dairy in South Brisbane, which he then delivered to homes in Hamilton, Ascot, Doomben and Hendra.
	Arthur married Edna Muriel Hobbs on 13^th December 1941 at Christ Church in the St Lucia area of Brisbane. The witnesses at the wedding were Arthur’s older brother Cyril Horace Collett (above) and Ina Kirkland. It was around that time that Arthur was working at the Ferry Shop in St Lucia. Edna was born at the Lady Bowen Hospital in Yeerongpilly in Brisbane on 16^th October 1918 and was baptised the following month on 12^th November 1918 at The People’s Evangelistic Mission in Leichhardt Street, in the Spring Hill district of Brisbane. She was listed as being 23 years 1 month and 28 days when she married Arthur who was slightly older at 23 years 8 months and 9 days.
	Edna’s parents were Christopher John Hobbs (1879 – 1961) who was born at Westwood near Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire and his wife Martha Christina Emilie 'Minnie' KRONING (1880 – 1971) of Tinana Creek, Maryborough. Arthur was eventually called up by the Australian Army and was released each night to deliver the milk but had to be back on camp by a set time each morning.
	During the war Edna would accompany Arthur on the round and would drop her off at the Doomben Race Track with some crates of milk. United States servicemen were billeted there and used to buy the milk from her with their US dollars. The marriage produced five children for Arthur and Edna and all of them were born at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Brisbane. Their first son was christened with his late uncle Cyril’s name in commemoration of the fact that he gave his life for his country.
	In 1994 Arthur and Edna were living at 40 McCormack Ave in the Ashgrove district of Brisbane. However, two years later he was admitted to hospital and never returned to their home. Arthur James Collett died on 23^rd November 1996 at the Royal Brisbane Hospital and was cremated at the Pinaroo Lawn Cemetery in Brisbane on 28^th November 1996, although his ashes were not interred until 29^th January 1997. During his life he worked as a milkman and a postman. Edna Muriel Collett nee Hobbs died on 2^nd July 2007 while attending the Prince Charles Hospital in the Chermside district of Brisbane.
	14Q10		Shirley Ann Collett		Born in 1943 at Brisbane
	14Q11		Raymond Cyril Collett		Born in 1946 at Brisbane
	14Q12		Ronald James Collett		Born in 1949 at Brisbane
	14Q13		Keith Collett		Born in 1950 at Brisbane
	14Q14		Wayne Arthur Collett		Born in 1959 at Brisbane
14P14	Elsie Grace Collett was the eldest child of Ernest Albert Collett and Mary Jones. She was born near the end of 1913, with her birth recorded at the Merionethshire Corwen register office (Ref. 11b 591) during the last quarter of that year. She never married but it seems likely that she gave birth to a base-born son at Dolgellau in 1941, when she was 27 years of age. Within the later family, it was understood that the unknown father was a soldier, possibly under training in North Wales. That stems from the fact that, upon registering the birth at Merioneth South register office, the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Collett. Sadly, for mother and child, the death of Elsie Grace Collett was recorded at Merioneth South register office (Ref. 8c 26) during the third quarter of 1950, when she was 36.
	14Q15		Brian Collett		Born in 1941 at Dolgellau, North Wales
14P15	Lilian Collett was born in 1915, with her birth recorded at Corwen register office (Ref. 11b 586) during the third quarter of the year, when her mother’s maiden name confirmed as Jones, another daughter of Ernest and Mary Collett. She was 26 years of age when the marriage of Lilian Collett and Iorwerth I Jones was recorded at Merioneth South register office (Ref.) during the second quarter of 1942.
14P16	Ernest Arthur Collett was born in 1921, when his birth was recorded at Corwen register office (Ref. 11b 563) during the first quarter of that year, with his mother’s maiden name confirmed as Jones. He was the fourth child and eldest son of Ernest Albert Collett from Swindon and Mary Jones. Like his sister Lilian (above), Ernest was also 26 years old when the marriage of Ernest Arthur Collett and Hilda Jean Watson was recorded at Radnorshire East register office (Ref. 8c 1049) during the second quarter of 1947. The births of the couple’s two known children were recorded at Merioneth South register office when, in each case, the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Watson.
	14Q16		Ann Collett		Born in 1951 at Merioneth
	14Q17		David Collett		Born in 1954 at Merioneth
14P17	Myra Collett was born in 1929 and was the last of the five children of Ernest Albert Collett and Mary Jones. Myra’s birth was recorded at Corwen register office (Ref. 11b 456) during the last three months of 1929, where her mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Jones. She was 24 years old when her married to David M Williams was recorded at Merioneth South register office (Ref. 8c 33) during the third quarter of 1955. Their marriage produced two daughters, Susan Williams whose birth was recorded at Merioneth South (Ref. 8c 10) during the fourth quarter of 1957, when her mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Collett. It was the same for Carol William, when her birth was also recorded there (Ref. 8c 7) during the first three months of 1962.
14P24	Violet Rachael Collett was born in 1896, the first child of William Henry Collett and Annie Bagg Buckland. Her birth was recorded at Lambeth register office in London (Ref. 1d 25) during the second quarter of 1896. Not long after she was born, the family move to Worcestershire, and it was at Worcester register office (Ref. 6c 218) that the death of three-year-old Violet Rachael Collett was recorded during the first three months of 1900.
14P25	Oliver Collett was born in 1903, his birth recorded at Sheffield register office (Ref. 9c 285) during the third quarter of the year. According to the next census in 1911, Oliver Collett from Sheffield was seven years of age, when he and his family was living at Buxworth in Derbyshire. Oliver later married (1) Alice Diana May Peele from Atcham, towards the end of the 1920s. She was the daughter of Leonard Cresswell Peele and his wife Mabel, and was born at Bicton in Shropshire during 1908. The birth of their daughter Ann M Collett was recorded at the Derbyshire register office in Chapel-en-le-Frith (Ref. 7b 16) during the third quarter of 1929, when the child’s mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Peele. Although no record of the passing of his wife has been identified, it would appear that Oliver Collett married (2) Enid D Fawcett in 1950, the event recorded at Sheffield register office (Ref. 2d 47) during the first quarter of that year. Enid Dora Fawcett was born in Sheffield on 17^th January 1904. The death of Oliver Collett was recorded at Sheffield register office (Ref. 3 105) during the first months of 1977, when he was 73 years old. The later death of Enid Dora Collett was also recorded at Sheffield register office (Ref. 3 134) during the spring of 1982, at the age of 78.
	14Q18		Ann Marguerite Collett		Born in 1929 Chapel en le Frith
14P29	Diana Collett was born in 1925, the eldest of the three known children of Arthur Stanley Collett and Rita Lindeman, although, so far, no recorded of her birth, or that of her brother Peter, has been found. What is known and confirmed is that the marriage of Diana Collett and Noel Firmston-Williams, known as Paddy, was recorded at Westminster register office (Ref. 5c 91) during the second quarter of 1949. In 1996, her Australia based brother Peter (below) was invited to attend the Collett Reunion at Collett Park in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. Unfortunately, he sent his apologies as he could not take up the invitation, so Diana took his place, to represent their branch of the global Collett family. At a time, Diana and Paddy were living at Godalming in Surrey. Eighteen months after their wedding day, Diane presented Paddy with the couple’s first child, Geoffrey N Firmston-Williams, his birth recorded at Hammersmith register office (Ref. 5c 47) during the last quarter of 1950. Three year later their daughter Sara Firmston-Williams was born, whose birth was recorded at the Middlesex South register office (Ref. 5f 48) during the third quarter of 1953. On both occasions, the children’s mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Collett.
14P31	Henry Stanley Peter Collett was born in 1930 and was most often referred to simply as Peter Collett. In 1996, Peter was living in Australia and although invited to the Shepton Mallet Collett Reunion in the June of that year, he was unable to make the trip, so was represented by his sister Diana (above). It may be of interest, that Peter Harry Stanley Collett died at Kingswinford on 26^th March 2004.
14Q1	John Henry Collett was born 6^th May 1912, the first child of John W H Collett and Eva L Millward. His birth was recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 5) during the second quarter of the year, when his mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Millward. No record of him being married has been found, while the death of John Henry Collett was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 29 81) near the end of 1974, when he was 62 years of age.
14Q2	Graham John Collett was born on 1^st June 1913, his birth recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 58) during the third quarter of the year, the second son of John and Eva Collett, when his mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Millward. It would appear that he was twice married during his life, on the first occasion to Alice M Joyner, the event recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 13) during the first three months of 1934. Nine months after their wedding day, Alice presented Graham with their only child, their son Peter J Collett, whose birth was recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 57) during the last three months of 1934, when his mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Joyner. Graham and Alice appeared to have divorced some years later, with Alice M Collett marrying William M Troughton at Evesham in 1946. It was at Pershore register office in Worcestershire that the second marriage of Graham J Collett was recorded (Ref. 9d 124) in the summer of 1970. Four years short of his one-hundredth birthday, Graham John Collett passed away at Worcester on 17^th July 2009 aged 96.
14Q4	Joan Collett was born in 1920, the last child of John William Henry Collett and Eva L Millward, her birth recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 9) during the fourth quarter of the year, when her mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Millward. Joan was nineteen years of age when her marriage to Cyril G Stanford was also recorded at Evesham (Ref. 6c 109) during the second quarter of 1940.
14Q5	Victor George Collett was born at Brisbane on 19^th September 1944. During his working life he was an earth moving contractor. In 1969 just a few months before his twenty-fifth birthday he married Daniela Szezesniak in Brisbane on 30^th May 1969. Daniela had also been born at Brisbane and was almost exactly two years younger than her husband having been born on 11^th September 1946. The marriage produced two children for Victor and Daniela, both of them being born at Brisbane.
	14R1		Justine Daniela Collett		Born on 25.09.1971 at Brisbane
	14R2		Bradley Shawn Collett		Born on 14.10.1973 at Brisbane
14Q6	Estelle Merle Collett was born at Brisbane on 21^st March 1947. She first married (1) Walter James Shepherd on 26^th December 1969 with whom she had two children who were both born at Brisbane. Walter was born on 7^th January 1946. After almost twenty years of married life together Estelle and James were divorced in September 1989. Estelle’s two sons were Jason Bradley Shepherd who was born on 26^th July 1970, and Leeton Wade Shepherd who was born on 14^th October 1971. Six months after her divorce Estelle married (2) Michael John Lane on 20^th April 1990. Michael was just over three years younger than Estelle having been born on 6^th June 1950.
14Q7	Maude Evelyn Collett was born at Brisbane on 24^th May 1952. Just prior to her twentieth birthday she married Mark Adrian Savage on 30^th October 1971, the marriage producing three children for the couple. Mark was born on 27^th January 1950, and their three children were Derek Savage who was born on 8^th July 1973, Selena Jade Savage who was born on 2^nd April 1977, and Adam Grant Savage who was born on 30^th January 1982.
14Q8	Cathryne Dawn Collett was born at Brisbane on 15^th November 1954. She later married Leslie Montague on 1^st August 1987, with whom she had two children. Their daughter Leanne Linda Montague was born on 20^th January 1987, while their son Damian John Montague was born on 22^nd August 1990. Cathryne’s husband Leslie Montague was born on 10^th April 1957.
14Q9	Harold Cyril Collett was born at Brisbane on 1^st December 1957. He was just twenty years old when he married Sue Ann Scowen on 5^th January 1978 at Shepperton in Victoria. Sue had been born at Puckapunyal in Victoria on 4^th November 1956 and she presented her husband with four sons during the following decade. Tragically, the couple’s third son Peter died during the same month that he was born in 1984.
	14R3		Daniel James Collett		Born on 09.09.1981
	14R4		Jonathan David Collett		Born on 22.11.1983
	14R5		Peter Matthew Collett		Born in October1984
	14R6		Michael Gregory Collett		Date of birth unknown
14Q10	Shirley Ann Collett was born at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Brisbane on 8^th July 1943. She became a school teacher and married Warren Cecil Chambers at Christ Church in St Lucia in Brisbane on 6^th February 1965. Warren was born at Brisbane on 7^th October 1941 and during his life he worked as a mechanic with Stephens Transport and later as a pest controller. Shirley and Warren were married for over thirty-five years and during that time they had ten children, all of whom were born at Brisbane in the Royal Women’s Hospital. However, the marriage ended in December 2000 when the couple were divorced.
	The ten children were: Christine Leanne, born 22^nd April 1967 who became a clerk with Brisbane City Council; Adrian James, born 15^th December 1968 who became a clerk with the North Brisbane Hospitals Board; Allyson Kate, born 21^st June 1972 who became a clerk with the Queensland State library; Bronwyn Elizabeth, born 22^nd July 1974 who was a shop assistant; Cathryn Angela, born 25^th January 1977 who was a receptionist; Andrea Louise, born 8^th December 1978 who became Mrs Bate; Kenneth Warren, born 14^th April 1981; Amy Jennifer Ann, born 12^th February 1983; Emma Clare, born 11^th March 1985; and Bethany Emily Jane who was born on 8^th September 1988.
14Q11	Raymond Cyril Collett was born at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Brisbane on 5^th June 1946. His second Christian name was given to him in honour of his uncle Cyril Horace Collett who lost his life fighting the Japanese during World War Two. Raymond, who was a mechanic, later married Susan Nolan at St Paul’s Anglican Church in Ashgrove in Brisbane on 29^th July 1967. At the time of their wedding Raymond was recorded as being aged 21 years 1 month and 24 days, while Susan was 20 years 2 months and 27 days old. Their marriage produced three sons for the couple and all three were born at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Brisbane.
	14R7		Adam Wade Collett			Born on 08.06.1977 at Brisbane
	14R8		Clayton Scott Collett			Born on 24.04.1980 at Brisbane
	14R9		Brock Mitchell Collett			Born on 11.08.1986 at Brisbane
14Q12	Ronald James Collett was born at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Brisbane on 19^th January 1949. During his working life he was a telecom technician and on 8^th May 1977 he married Sandra Baxendell at Marawah Farm in the Burbank district of Brisbane. Sandra, who was qualified as a veterinary doctor, was born in Queensland on 5^th August 1953 and was recorded as being aged 23 years 9 months and 3 days when she married Ronald who was 28 years 3 months and 20 days old. Sandra presented her husband with two children, the first born at the Royal Women’s Hospital and the second at Boothville Hospital, also in Brisbane.