PART
FORTY-ONE
The
Middlesex Harefield
(see also The Middlesex Ickenham
& Ruislip Line - 1720 to 1910)
This
line commences with Henry Collett (Ref. 1M28)
of
Kempsford in Gloucestershire
Updated October 2024
This is the family line of Jean Oakes
nee Ferguson (see Ref. 41P10) of Cheshire
depicted in capitals, and Cheryl Collett
(Ref. 41S1) in the
was George James Collett (Ref. 41P6) of
Harefield & Washington depicted by the underlining.
As a result of the August 2008 update it
is also the family line of
Trevor Collette (Ref. 41S17) of Kingston
in Ontario
The April 2010 update was thanks to
Rebecca Humphreys of Farnham in Surrey
whose great-great-grandfather was Henry
James Collett (Ref. 41P1)
A previous update included the family
line of Brian Arthur Collett (Ref. 41R35)
of Sutton in Surrey who kindly provided
the new information regarding his family
The revision of February 2013 included
the line of David George Collett (Ref. 41R23)
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41M1 |
HENRY COLLETT (Ref.
1M28) was the second son of Robert and Mary Collett and was born at Kempsford
on 2nd April 1772 where he was baptised on 27th April 1772. He was born into a tragic family as his
older brother John had died an infant death, his only younger sister
Elizabeth also died in the same way when he was just approaching his fifth
birthday, and shortly after that his father died. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
So, the family,
that would have otherwise been six in number, was reduced to just three, they
being Henry, his widowed mother Mary, and his only surviving younger brother
John. Mary then appears to have sought
solace with a local blacksmith by the name of Joseph Bunce, as a result of
which, just over a year later, she brought into the family a base-born child. That was followed eighteen months later by
a second base-born child, the father for whom was not known. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It was initially believed that at some time in his
life Henry left Gloucestershire and made his way to Cornwall, most likely for
work reasons. It was also believed
that it was there that he met Elizabeth Withiell who was born in Cornwall in
1770. Not long after they met it was
understood that they were married at Philleigh on 16th August 1792,
when Henry Collett was recorded as being a farmer. It has long been acknowledged that there was
a seven years gap between the date of their wedding and the birth of their
first confirmed child, leading to speculation that there may have been others
born during this period. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Since then, new
information has come to light which places a question-mark over Henry’s marriage
to Elizabeth Withiell. The alternative
option, which is now considered to be more realistic, was that Henry moved to
London, rather than Cornwall, where he married Elizabeth Woods on 31st
December 1798 at St Mary’s Church on Marylebone Road in the City Borough of
Marylebone. That date correlates
better with the birth of their first child.
Sometime after
they were married the couple left the City of London and settled at Harefield
in Middlesex, where all of their children were born. The baptisms for all of the children listed
below were conducted at St Mary’s Church in Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Previously it was
thought that more children than listed below had been born in the years between
1793 and 1800 and that one of these may well have been |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At the time of his son Richard’s
marriage, in December 1837, Henry was reported to be working as a watchman. This too seems at odds with him being a
farmer in Cornwall in 1792 and again might be a further clue that he was not
the Henry Collett who married Elizabeth Withiell at Philleigh. Four years after the marriage of his son
Richard, at the time of the first national census in 1841, Henry and his wife
Elizabeth were both listed as being 70 years of age, while they were living
at Copper Mill Lane in Harefield.
Living there with them was their married son Richard and his family,
including the aforementioned grandson Richard Benjamin Collett.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Almost four years later Henry’s wife Elizabeth
Collett died at Harefield, during the second quarter of 1845, leaving Henry
as a widower, who was confirmed was being 79 at the time of the next census
in 1851. The detail in the census return
recorded that he was born at Kempsford and that he was a labourer with a
pension. Still living with Henry at
that time was his son Richard, together with his wife Sarah and their eight
children. Henry Collett survived for
almost another two years after the census day, and died at Harefield during
the first quarter of 1853.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41N1 |
|
Born in 1800 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N2 |
Robert
Henry Collett |
Born in 1802 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N3 |
WILLIAM
COLLETT |
Born in 1803 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N4 |
Elizabeth
Collett |
Born in 1806 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N5 |
James
Collett |
Born in 1807 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N6 |
Richard
Collett |
Born in 1809 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N7 |
Jonathan
Collett |
Born in 1811 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N8 |
Ann
Collett |
Born in 1812 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41N9 |
Sarah Ann Collett |
Born in 1816 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N1 |
John Collett was born at Harefield in 1800, the eldest son of Henry
Collett and his wife Elizabeth Woods. Because
of the connection with Ickenham, through his brother William Collet (below),
it was originally thought that he may have been the John Collett who married
Charlotte Montague from Ickenham near Ruislip in Middlesex. However, it can now be confirmed that John,
the husband of Charlotte Montague, was born in 1787 at Pinner, Ruislip, so was
not the son of Henry and Elizabeth Collett.
It is more likely that he was related in some way to the aforementioned
Thomas Collett, the registrar for the Brentford, Staines & Uxbridge
registration district in 1840. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In view of the Ickenham connection, it
is considered worthwhile providing the details of the family of John Collett
and Charlotte Montague (Ref. 41n2), and Thomas the registrar, in the second
section of this family line, Part 41 – The Ickenham & Ruislip Line, which
was previously an appendix at the end of this file.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N2 |
Robert Henry Collett was born at
Harefield in 1802, where he was baptised at St Mary’s Church on 9th
May 1802, the second child born to Henry and Elizabeth Collett. Robert Henry Collett later married Ann Stevens
at St Mary’s Church in Lambeth on 24th May 1836 following the
publication of banns. The couple both
signed the register in their full names and the witnesses were Leonard
Collett and Hannah Dunn. At this
moment in time, it is not known who Leonard Collett was, or what relationship
he had to Robert Henry Collett. However,
it is known that he married Hannah Dunn at that same church almost exactly
one year later, since the records there confirm that Leonard Collett married Hannah Dunn at St Mary Lambeth on 14th
May 1837. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Robert was around thirty-four at the
time of their wedding, while Ann was about ten years younger than Robert, and
their marriage produced three known children who were born at Harefield. In the Harefield census of 1841, he was recorded
simply as Robert Collett a grocer, having a rounded age of 35, while his wife
Ann was 25. Living with them at Copper
Mill Lane were their three children, Mary Ann Collett, who was five, Henry
Collett who was three, and Ruth Collett who was two years old. Also listed with the family in 1841 was 70-year-old
Ruth Stevens, who was very likely Ann’s mother. Ten years later it was the same situation,
except that the Harefield census of 1851 provided more accurate details of
Robert’s and Ann’s ages.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Robert Henry Collett was 48, by which
time he was described as a gardener and a seedsman, while Ann Collett was
38. Their three children were again
recorded as Mary Ann Collett, who was 14, Henry Collett, who was 13, and Ruth
Collett who was 11 years of age.
During the next decade the two oldest children left the family home in
Harefield, leaving just the youngest child still living there with her
parents in 1861. By that time the
family was residing in a dwelling on the road leading to Copper Mills and was
made up of Robt Hy Collett of Harefield, who was 58 and a nurseryman and a
gardener, his wife Ann, who was 47, and their daughter Ruth who was 21 and
described as being deaf. Living just
one dwelling away from them was the family of Jonathan Collett (below),
Robert’s younger brother.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Where the couple’s unmarried daughter
Mary Ann Collett was at that time has not been determined, but following the
death of Ann Collett during the 1860s, Mary had returned home to look after
her widowed father by the time of the next census in 1871. The Harefield census that year recorded
Robert Henry Collett, aged 69 and a gardener, living at Park Lane with just
his two unmarried daughters, Mary A Collett who was 34 and domestic servant,
and Ruth Collett who was 31 and an invalid having been deaf for eighteen
years.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
On that occasion in 1871, living just
one house along Park Lane from Robert and his two daughters, were the two
sons of his late brother Jonathan Collett, Charles and Frederick Collett. According to the next Harefield census in
1881, Robert H Collett was a widower of 80 years who had been born at
Harefield, who was still living at Park Lane with his two daughters Mary A
Collett and Ruth Collett who was incorrectly recorded as Edith Collett. As ten years earlier, living just next door
but one, was Robert’s nephew Charles Collett, and next to him was another
nephew James Theophilus Bolton Collett, the son of Robert’s brother Richard (below)
who was simply listed as James T B Collett.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Robert Henry Collett died not long
after the census in 1881, and may well have been followed shortly after by
his invalid daughter Ruth, since neither of them were recorded in the next
census of 1891, by which time his surviving daughter Mary Ann Collett had returned
to Watford, where she was living before Robert was made a widower. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41O1 |
Mary
Ann Collett |
Born in 1836 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O2 |
Henry
Collett |
Born in 1837 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O3 |
Ruth
Collett |
Born in 1839 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N3 |
WILLIAM COLLETT was born at
Harefield on 12th December 1803, where he was baptised a year
later at St Mary’s Church on 8th December 1804. When he was of full age, he married
Elizabeth Bishop who was possibly one year older, having been born at nearby
Ickenham, near Ruislip in Middlesex, either at the end of 1802 or very early
in 1803. She was the daughter of John
and Elizabeth Bishop and was baptised at Ickenham on 6th February
1803. It was also at the birth of
three of the couple’s youngest four children that the mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Bishop. Once they
were married the couple settled in Harefield, where all of their children
were born. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
William’s
occupation was that of a butcher, as verified by subsequent census returns,
while in June 1841, the census that year for Harefield included the family as
follows. William and
Elizabeth were both recorded with a rounded age of 35, whereas the age of
their five children that day was more accurately stated. They were William who was 15, Ellen who was
nine, Isaac who was four, Jacob who was two, while the youngest member of the
family was baby Emma who was just six months old. Also living with the family was
Betty Sheerwood, aged 65, who was previously thought to be Elizabeth’s mother,
which could only be correct if William was twice married, first to Elizabeth
Sheerwood and later to Elizabeth Bishop.
However, no recording of either marriage has been located. It is also known that the death of Betty
Sheerwood was recorded two years later at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 238). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
No trace has been found of the three
missing children, George, Abraham and Sarah, in any of the national census
records, so it must be assumed that they had died as infants prior to
1841. Nor has any trace been found of
William’s youngest son John, either in the census of 1851 or any later census
records. There is every possibility
that the death of John Matthew Collett recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 265)
during the first three months of 1846, may relate to William’s last-born
child. In 1851 the family living at
Harefield was headed by butcher William Collett who was 47, as was his wife
Elizabeth from Ickenham, while the children still living with the couple were
Ellen Collet who was 20, Isaac Collett who was 14, Jacob Collett who was 12,
Emma Collett who was 10, David Collett who was six and Job Collett who was
five. Every member of the household,
excluding Elizabeth, had been born at Harefield. The couple’s eldest son was absent that
census day, but was still unmarried and living with his parents ten years
later.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By April 1861 William was described as
a master butcher, while he and his wife Elizabeth, both aged 57, were living
with their four unmarried sons at the High Street in Harefield. Once again, their place of birth was
confirmed as being Harefield and Ickenham respectively. Their unmarried sons were William Collett
who was 34, Jacob Collett who was 21, David Collett who was 17 and Job Collett
who was 15. Also living with the
family was
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
William and Elizabeth both appeared in
the 1871 Census when both of them were 67 years old. That day they, and their son Job Collett
aged 26, and their grandson George James (previously George Collett Jones in
1861) aged 17, were living with the couple’s married son Jacob Collett and
his wife and two children at Harefield.
Ten years later William Collett, aged 77 and a butcher from Harefield,
was still living with his married son Jacob and his family in the High Street
in Harefield, as confirmed by the census in 1881. At that same time William’s wife Elizabeth
Collett, aged 79 and from Ruislip, was staying with another of her married
sons, David and his family, at the Grocer’s Shop in Harefield. It has been assumed that both William and
Elizabeth passed away during the next decade, since no record of them has
been found within the census of 1891.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41O4 |
William
Henry Collett |
Born in 1826 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O5 |
Mary Collett |
Born in 1829 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O6 |
Ellen
Collett |
Born in 1831 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O7 |
|
Born in 1832 at Harefield; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
41O8 |
Abraham Collett |
Born in 1833 at Harefield; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
41O9 |
Sarah Collett |
Born in 1835 at Harefield; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
41O10 |
Isaac
Collett |
Born in 1836 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O11 |
JACOB
COLLETT |
Born in 1838 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O12 |
Emma
Collett |
Born in 1840 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O13 |
David
Collett |
Born in 1843 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O14 |
Job
Collett |
Born in 1845 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O15 |
|
Born in 1846 at Harefield; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N4 |
Elizabeth Collett was born at Harefield in 1806 and
was baptised there in St Mary’s Church on 26th March 1806. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N5 |
James Collett was born at Harefield where he was
baptised at St Mary’s Church on 15th March 1807, the son of Henry
and Elizabeth Collett. No mention of
him has been found in any of the census records. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N6 |
Richard Collett was born at Harefield in 1809 and
it was there that he was baptised in St Mary’s Church on 26th
December 1809, the son of Henry and Elizabeth Collett. At the age of 28 he was a labourer working
at a local mill on the occasion of his marriage to Sarah Bolton at Harefield
on 25th December 1837.
Sarah was 26 and had been born at nearby Chalfont in Buckinghamshire
in 1811, and she was the daughter of gardener Henry Bolton and his wife
Elizabeth. Richard and Sarah were both residing
in Harefield at the time of their wedding, and both of them made the mark of
a cross on the marriage certificate, which was witnessed by Sarah’s
mother. After they were married the
couple continued to live with Richard’s parents at Copper Mill Lane in
Harefield, where all of their children were born. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The Registrar at
Uxbridge, whose name appears on the birth certificate for the couple’s second
child, was |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later,
according to the census of 1851, Richard Collett was 41, while Sarah was
39. During the previous ten years a
further six children had been added to the family, and the couple and their
eight children were still living at the Harefield home of Richard’s father
Henry Collett from Kempsford in Gloucestershire. The eight children recorded on the census
return in 1851 were Elizabeth Collett, aged 12, Richard Benjamin Collett, aged
11, Sarah Collett who was nine, Mary Ann Collett who was eight, Ann Collett
who was six, James Collett who was three, and twins John and Harriet Collett
who were both two months old. All of
the children were confirmed as having be born at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Two years later
the family was completed with the birth of Richard’s and Sarah’s final
child. However, it would also appear
that one of the twins, John, died while still very young, just after the
census in 1851. Ten years later in
1861 the Harefield census that year listed the family as Richard, aged 52,
who was working as a labourer, while his wife Sarah was 48. Only five of their nine children were
living with them at that time, and they were Richard B Collett, aged 20, Anne
Collett, aged 15, James Collett, aged 12, Harriet Collett, aged 10, and
Thomas Collett who was seven years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It was also at Harefield that Richard
Collett died just over five years later on 11th June 1866 at the
age of 57. His death was recorded at
Uxbridge, and the informant was his married daughter Elizabeth Green, nee
Collett. The death certificate
recorded that Richard was formerly a gas maker, and that the cause of death
was bronchitis. His widow Sarah
Collett continued to live at Harefield after his passing, and was recorded
there in the census of 1871 when, as the widow Sarah Collett, she was
58. The only member of her family
living with her on that occasion was her granddaughter Emily Mary Collett,
who was three years old. Emily was the
base-born child of Sarah’s unmarried daughter Mary Ann Collett.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41O16 |
Elizabeth
Collett |
Born in 1838 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O17 |
Richard
Benjamin Collett |
Born in 1840 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O18 |
Sarah
Collett |
Born in 1841 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O19 |
Mary
Ann Collett |
Born in 1843 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O20 |
Ann
Collett |
Born in 1845 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O21 |
James
Theophilus Bolton Collett |
Born in 1848 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O22 |
Harriet
Collett twin |
Born in 1851 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O23 |
John Collett twin |
Born in 1851 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O24 |
|
Born in 1853 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N7 |
Jonathan Collett was born at Harefield in 1811 and
it was there that he was baptised in St Mary’s Church on 17th
December 1811. He later married
Margaret and both he and his wife were listed as having a rounded age of 25
in the Harefield census of 1841. By
that time the marriage had produced two children for Jonathan and Margaret,
and they were Charles, for was four, and Maria who was still under one year
old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Maria did not survive and died during
the next few years, although the couple’s loss was offset by the birth of a
second daughter shortly after. One
further child was added to the family during the next five years, so by the
time of the census in 1851 the family living in Harefield was made up of
Jonathan, who was 40, Margaret, who was 38, and their three children,
Charles, aged 13, Elizabeth Margaret who was seven, and George who was four
years old. It should be noted that
Elizabeth has been difficult to trace in the following census returns because
she often used her second forename.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It is highly likely that Jonathan and
Margaret were preparing for the birth of another addition to the family on
the census day in 1851, with another son born to the couple shortly
thereafter. However, further tragedy
seems to have struck the family after the census that year, when their son
George died during early months of 1855, but once again their loss was partly
compensated by the birth of the couple’s final children.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Only two of the three new children
were recorded in the Harefield census of 1861 when the family was living in a
cottage on the road leading to the Copper Mills, just one dwelling away from
Jonathan’s older brother Robert Henry Collett (above). At that time Jonathan Collett, aged 49, was
an agricultural labourer, and his wife as Margaret Collett was 48. With them were their three surviving sons,
Charles Collett, who was 23 and also an agricultural labourer, Jonathan
Collett, who was 11, and Frederick H Collett, who was eight years old. Sometime during the next decade both Jonathan
and Margaret died, leaving just their youngest son still living with their
eldest son at Harefield, with their other son Jonathan having left home for
work reasons by then, although he and his sister Elizabeth did return to the
family home in Harefield at a later date.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41O25 |
Charles
Collett |
Born in 1837 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O26 |
Maria Collett |
Born in 1840 at Harefield; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
41O27 |
Elizabeth
Margaret Collett |
Born in 1844 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O28 |
Robert
George Collett |
Born in 1846 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O29 |
Jonathan
Collett |
Born in 1851 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41O30 |
Frederick
Henry Collett |
Born in 1853 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41N8 |
Ann Collett was born at Harefield in 1812 and baptised there at St
Mary’s Church on 26th December 1812, the daughter of Henry Collett
and Elizabeth Woods. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O1 |
Mary Ann Collett was born at Harefield in 1836. She never married and at the age of 44 in
1881, she was living with her elderly widowed father Robert Collett at Park
Lane in Harefield, with her unmarried sister Ruth, who was recorded in error
as Edith Collett. The earlier census
returns for Harefield in 1841 and 1851 included Mary Ann Collett as being
five years old and 14 years of age, respectively. For the latter she and her family were
living at Copper Mill Lane. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
She was absent from the family home in
1861 when her parents were living on the road leading to the Copper Mills in
Harefield. That was because she and
her brother Henry (below) were both living and working in Rickmansworth,
Hertfordshire, but not together. Mary
Ann Collett from Harefield was 23 and employed as a nurse maid at the home of
William and Mary Waywick. However,
following the death of her mother during the 1860s, Mary Ann had returned to
Harefield by the time of the census in 1871 to look after her widowed father
and her invalid sister Ruth, who were then living in Park Lane, where Mary A
Collett, aged 34, was recorded as a domestic servant.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It was the same situation ten years
later when the family of three was again shown as residing in Park Lane in
Harefield where head of the household was Robert H Collett, aged 80, with no
stated occupation, and his daughters unmarried Mary A Collett, aged 44, and
Ruth Collett, aged 41, who was deaf.
It is known that her father died shortly after that, and her younger
sister may also have passed away around the same time.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Whether by
coincidence or not, unmarried Mary A Collett, aged 53 and from Harefield, was
living and working as a domestic cook at a residence on the High Street in
Watford, the eldest of three servants. On that same day her unmarried cousin
Harriet Collett (Ref. 41O22), aged 40 and from Harefield, was also living and
working in Watford. In addition to those
two members of the family, also living in Watford that day, was their niece
Rosina Collett (Ref. 41P32), who was 16 and also from Harefield |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Mary’s time at
Watford appears to have been short-lived, because by March 1901 she was
living at Fairview Street in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the home of her
brother Henry (below) and his wife Ann. The census that year recorded Mary A
Collett from Harefield as 64 years old and a general domestic servant but,
with no listing for her in the next census of 1911, it must be assumed that
she had died during the first decade of the new century. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O2 |
Henry Collett was born at Harefield in 1837 and
was three years old in the census of 1841, when he was living at Copper Mill
Lane in Harefield with his parents Robert Henry and Ann Collett. Ten years later in 1851 Henry was 13 and
was still living with his parents. On
leaving school he took up the occupation of a baker, and both he and his
sister Mary Ann (above) were living and working in the Watford
registration district of Hertfordshire in 1861, when he was recorded as Henry
Collett, age 23, from Harefield.
Shortly after that Henry married Ann Sears who was born at
Rickmansworth in 1835. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It would appear
that the marriage did not produce any children for Henry and Ann, since in
the census of 1871 the childless couple were living in Reading St Mary, where
Henry Collett from Harefield was 33, while his wife Ann from Hertfordshire
was 35. By the time of the census in
1881, Henry, aged 43, was a baker living at Newbury Street in Wantage in
Berkshire (part of Oxfordshire from
April 1974). With him was his wife
Ann, aged 45, together with her nephew George T Sears, who was 15 and from
Paddington in London. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Sometime during
the following years, the couple returned to live in Reading, where they were
incorrectly recorded at the time of the census in 1891. Henry Collett from Harefield was 53, and
his wife Ann was 55. Another move took
place during the 1890s, since by March 1901, Henry Collett, aged 63 and from
Harefield, and his wife Ann Collett, aged 65 and from Rickmansworth, were
then living at Fairview Street in Cheltenham, where Henry was described as a
journeyman baker. Living there with
them was Henry’s older sister Mary A Collett (above). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O3 |
Ruth Collett was born at Harefield in 1839, the youngest of the
three known children of Robert Henry Collett and his wife Ann Stevens. According to the census records she lived
all her early years at Harefield, where in 1841 she was two when living at
Copper Mill Lane, and again in 1851 when she was 11. By 1861 Ruth and her parents were living on
the road leading to the Copper Mills, where she was described as being deaf
at the age of 21. Following the death
of her mother during the 1860s, Ruth’s older sister Mary Ann returned to
Harefield to look after her and her widowed father. The next census in 1871 confirmed that the
three of them were living in Park Lane in Harefield where Ruth Collett was 31
and was listed as being an invalid who had been deaf for the past eighteen
years. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It was very
likely, because of her disability, that she never married and, in the census
of 1881, she was again registered as being deaf at the age of 41, although
she was incorrectly recorded in the census as Edith Collett. On that occasion, as ten years earlier, she
was again living with her elderly widowed father Robert Collett and her
unmarried sister Mary A Collett (above) at Park Lane in
Harefield. With her father passing
away during the next few years, it has not been determined exactly what had
happened to Ruth after that time, but her absence from all of the following
census returns indicate that she too died during the 1880s. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O4 |
William Henry Collett was born at
Harefield, the son of labourer William Collett and his wife Elizabeth, who
were both named as residents of Harefield on the child’s baptism record. Curiously, that same baptism record for the
ceremony conducted at Harefield on 15th January 1826, the same day
that two other children were baptised there, also gave the birth date of
William Henry Collett as 15th January 1825, whereas the other two
children’s date of birth was at an earlier time in the previous year. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
He was recorded
simply as William Collett aged 15 in the census of 1841, when he was still
living with his family at Harefield.
Ten years later he was absent from the family home, but was back with
his parents in 1861, when he was 34 and a bachelor, one of the four sons still
living with William and Elizabeth Collett at their home on the High Street in
Harefield. His occupation was that of
Master Butcher, like his father, with whom he was presumably working. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Seven weeks
after the day of the census William married Ann Calcutt of Northamptonshire
on 27th May 1861 at Limehouse in Stepney. The witnesses at the ceremony were David
Collett, William’s younger brother, and Eliza Climpson. The marriage register recorded that both
William and Ann were living at West India Road, which was in Poplar Close by
Limehouse. Ann was born on 1st
February 1838 at Steane Park, just north-west of Brackley, the daughter of
James Calcutt and Hannah Matthews who were married at Lower Heyford in
Oxfordshire on 3rd November 1834.
What may be of interest is that James Calcutt was a shepherd born at
Stonesfield in Oxfordshire, which also had a contingent of Colletts living
there. See Part 38 - The Oxfordshire
Stonemasons. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Living near to
William and Ann in Poplar at that time was William’s younger sister Emma Collett
(below) who had just married George Goodman. Ann, being much younger than William,
formed a close relationship with her sister-in-law Emma, who was a similar
age, and that closeness was continued by each of their eldest children, they
being Henry, the son of William, and Harriet, the daughter of Emma, who were
married nearly twenty years later. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
During the ten
years following their wedding day, the marriage produced five children for
William and Ann and all born at Mile End Old Town in Stepney. The birth certificate for their third child
Laura, revealed that the family was living at 7 William Street in Mile End
Old Town. Within the next two years
the family left William Street and by April 1871 they were living at 18
Roberts Place in Mile End Old Town in the St Philips West Tower Hamlets
district of London, from where William was continuing to work as a butcher. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
According to the
1871 Census the respective ages given for William and Ann were incorrect,
being 40 and 39, whereas they should have been nearer 44 and 32, with their
age difference being twelve years. The
reason for this may have been the embarrassment caused by the great
difference in their ages. In that same
census William’s and Ann’s children were listed as Henry, who was eight,
Eliza, who was six, and Laura who was two years old. It seems highly likely that Ann was
with-child on the day of the census in 1871, since the couple’s fourth child
was born later that same year. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
A few years
later Ann presented her husband with their fifth child, but this happy event
was followed shortly after by a major tragedy for the family, when William
died at the age of 50. It was in 1875
that William Henry Collett died and was buried at St Saviours Church in Bow
Common. His age at the time of his
death was given as 55, which again was in conflict with his actual age. So, by the time of the census of 1881, Ann
Collett was recorded as being a widow.
However, although she has been located within the census records for
that year, she did not have her children with her. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The 1881 Census
confirmed that Ann Collett, from Steane Park near Brackley, was a widow and
was a general servant working at the Kings Arms public house at 18 Moor
Street in Soho. Ann gave her age as
being 40, when in fact she was 42. Moor Street is still there today, just off
Cambridge Circus on Shaftesbury Avenue.
The proprietor and licenced victualler of the inn was Mr W
Wheatley, 46 of Colmworth in Bedfordshire, with his younger wife Emily who
was 29 and from Kingland in Middlesex.
The couple’s daughter was two years old Beatrice who was born at Soho. Three of Ann’s children were also living in
the Soho area at that time, and they were Henry Collett who was head of the
household, who said he was 21, when he was nearer 18, his sister Amy, who was
eleven, and his brother Arthur, who was six years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later
in 1891 Ann was listed as living at |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P1 |
Henry
James Collett |
Born in 1862 at Stepney |
||||||||||||||
|
41P2 |
Eliza
Collett |
Born in 1865 at Stepney |
||||||||||||||
|
41P3 |
Laura
Collett |
Born in 1869 at Stepney |
||||||||||||||
|
41P4 |
Amy
Collett |
Born in 1871 at Stepney |
||||||||||||||
|
41P5 |
Arthur
Collett |
Born in 1874 at Stepney |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O6 |
Ellen Collett was born at Harefield in 1831, the
daughter of William and Elizabeth Collett.
As Ellen Collett she was listed in the census of 1841 as being nine
years old. It is understood that, when
she was around the age of 21, she fell pregnant and in 1853 she gave birth at
Harefield to a base-born son who was given the name George Collett Jones,
the father being named as James Jones of the Middlesex Militia. During the following two consecutive years Ellen
gave birth to two more children fathered by James, and it was only after, or
around the time of, the birth of the third child, that James Jones married
Ellen Collett at Harefield on 11th July 1855. All three children were born at Harefield,
as were all of their subsequent seven children. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The Harefield
census in 1861 confirmed that Ellen Jones, aged 31, was married to James
Jones who was also 31. Living with
them were four of their five children, Lavinia Jones who was seven, Emma
Jones who was six, Mary Jones who was four, and Aaron Jones
who was eleven months old. Ellen’s missing
son George Jones was then eight years of age and the census confirmed that
he was living nearby with his paternal grandparents at their home on the High
Street in Harefield. It would also appear
that later in his life, when George was old enough to do so, he dropped the Jones
from his name, and that may have been a consequence of him being base-born
and being raised by his Collett grandparents, with whom he was still living
in 1871. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
During the
following decade Ellen presented James with a further five children, as
confirmed by the next Harefield census in 1871, when the family was living in
a dwelling on the High Street. By that
time the couple’s eldest daughter Lavinia Jones had left the family home and
was living elsewhere. The enlarged
family was therefore recorded as James Jones, aged 41 and from Rickmansworth,
his wife Ellen Jones, aged 42, Emma Jones who was 15, Mary Jones who was 13,
Aaron Jones who was 12, Frederick Jones who was eight, David Jones
who was six, Alice Jones who was four, Lily [Caroline Lily] Jones
who was two, and Ernest Jones who was two months old. Excluding the head of the household, all of
the other members of his family were born at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By 1881 Ellen,
then confirmed as Helen Jones, was a widow at 50 who had been born at
Harefield. She was working as a letter
carrier, while living in the third house along the High Street in
Harefield. Also living in the High
Street at that time was her brother Jacob Collett and his family (see below),
while living with Ellen on that occasion were just three of her ten children. They were her sons Frederick Jones, aged
18, and David Jones, aged 16, both of them working as brick-maker’s
labourers, and her daughter Caroline Jones who was 11. Once again, all three children were
confirmed as having been born at Harefield, and from this it would appear
that her youngest child Ernest had not survived. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Within the Collett Family Bible there is a reference
to the death of Helen Ellen Morgan nee Collett who died on 7th
June 1927. Since Ellen Collett of
Harefield, born in 1831, was still recorded in the census of 1881 as Helen
Jones, it is possible that she was married for a second time sometime after
then, to become Ellen Morgan.
Unfortunately, there is no mention of Helen Ellen Morgan’s age at the
time of her death, but if she was Ellen Collett, she would have been
ninety-four which seems improbable, but not impossible. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P6 |
George
James Collett Jones |
Born in 1853 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O10 |
Isaac Collett was born at Harefield in 1836, the son of William and
Elizabeth Collett. He was confirmed as
being four years old in the 1841 Census and was 14 in 1851, when he was
living with his parents at Harefield.
It was just four years later that Isaac Collett died at Harefield,
where he was buried on 3rd February 1856 at the age of 20. His death was recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 16) during the first
quarter of 1856, with the next entry in the register being Robert George
Collett (Ref. 3a 17) at the age of nine years [41O28]. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O11 |
JACOB COLLETT was born at Harefield in 1838, his
birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 281) during the last three months of
that year, the son of William and Elizabeth Collett. He was listed as being two years old in the
Harefield census of 1841 and was 12 at the time of the census there in
1851. On leaving school he took up
employment as an agricultural labourer and in 1861, when he was 21, he was
unmarried and was still living with his parents at the High Street in
Harefield. Four years later the
marriage of Jacob Collett and Margaret Lacey was recorded at Uxbridge in
early 1865, following which the couple settled in Harefield, where all of
their children were born. Margaret was
born at Missenden just north of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire in 1845, and
was the daughter of Alice Lacey. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At the time of
the 1871 Census for Harefield, Jacob gave his age as 32 when he was working
as a labourer, while Margaret stated she was 26 and from Missenden in
Buckinghamshire. By that time in their
lives the couple had only two of their four children living with them,
following the premature deaths of the other two. Isaac Collett was four years old and Ellen
Collett was not yet one year old. Staying
with Jacob and Margaret that day was Jacob’s parents William and Elizabeth
Collett, and Jacob’s younger brother Job Collett. Ten years later, according to the census in
1881, Jacob Collett from Harefield was working as a brick-maker at Harefield,
when he gave his age in error as 39.
This was near to the year that he was born, rather than the 41 years
of age that should have been recorded.
Margaret stated she was 35 and born at High Wycombe. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The couple’s
children living with them on that occasion were Isaac Collett who was 14,
Ellen Collett who was 11, Emma Collett who was nine, Flora Collett who was
five and Alfred Collett (Thomas) who was two years old, all confirmed as
having been born at Harefield. Jacob’s
son Isaac had already followed in his father’s footsteps and in 1881 he was
working with his father as a brick-maker’s labourer. Also living with the family again was
Jacob’s father William Collett, the butcher of Harefield, who was 77,
together with a lodger, 14-year-old Robert Bugbee of Harefield, who was an
agricultural labourer. At that time in
1881, the Collett family was living in a dwelling on the High Street in
Harefield, only a few doors away from Jacob’s sister Helen Jones nee Collett (above). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Also, on the day
of the census in 1881, Jacob and Margaret may have been expecting the birth
of their next child, who was born later that same year, and was followed by
two more children, born into the family over the next four years. The three new arrivals were confirmed in
the next census in 1891, when Jacob was 50, and his wife was 45. However, by that day, the three eldest
surviving children had already left the family’s home in Harefield, while
still living with them were Emma Collett aged 17, Alfred Collett aged 13,
Mabel Collett who was nine, George Collett who was seven, and Ellen Collett
who was five years old – who was recorded as Ethel Collett ten years later. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
According to the
March census in 1901, Jacob Collett and his family were still residing at an
address on the High Street in Harefield, where Jacob, aged 62, was employed
as a bricklayer’s labourer. Still
living there with him was his wife Margaret who was 55, while the only
children still living with the couple were Thomas A Collett, who was 22 and a
labourer at the nearby cement works, Louis G Collett who was 18 and a
bricklayer’s apprentice, and their daughter Ethel Collett who was 15 and a
cotton spinner. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later
the census in 1911 confirmed that only the two youngest sons were still
living with farm labourer Jacob Collett, who was 73, and his wife Margaret
who was 65, at 9 Waterloo Villas on the High Street in Harefield. They were Alfred Thomas Collett (sic) who
was recorded in error as 28 (instead of 32), while his brother Lewis George
Collett who was 28, was recorded as being 25.
All three men were confirmed as having been born at Harefield, while
Margaret’s place of birth was simply stated as Buckinghamshire. Judging by the two sons stated age in the
previous census, Alfred was nearer 32, while Lewis was 28. The death of Jacob Collett was recorded at
Uxbridge register office (Ref. 3a 30) during the third quarter of 1921 when
he was 82 years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P7 |
Jonas Collett |
Born in 1865; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
41P8 |
Isaac
Collett |
Born in 1866 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P9 |
David Collett |
Born in 1868; infant death |
||||||||||||||
|
41P10 |
ELLEN
ELIZABETH COLLETT |
Born in 1870 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P11 |
Emma
Collett |
Born in 1872 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P12 |
Flora
Collett |
Born in 1875 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P13 |
Thomas
Alfred Collett |
Born in 1878 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P14 |
Mabel
Collett |
Born in 1881 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P15 |
Lewis
George Collett |
Born in 1883 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P16 |
Ethel
Collett |
Born in 1885 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O12 |
Emma Collett was born at Harefield on 9th November 1840
and, when the birth was recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 296) during the last
quarter of 1840, her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Bishop. She was six months old at the time of the
census in 1841 which took place on 6th June that year. By 1851 Emma was 10 and was living with her
family at Harefield in the Uxbridge & Hillingdon registration
district. It would appear that on
leaving school Emma sought work in the Watford area and in the 1861 Census
she was incorrectly listed as being 22.
It was probably while she was at Watford that she met miller George
Goodman and, less than a year after the census day, they were married at Holy
Trinity Church in Kentish Town on 20th January 1862. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
George was a similar age to Emma, having been born at
Rickmansworth in 1839. The couple’s
first child, Harriet Goodman, was born in July the same year that they
were married. Not long after that the
family settled in Poplar, living near to where Emma’s older brother William
Henry Collett (above) was living at that time. There then followed the birth of a further
thirteen children born to the couple over the next two decades. In 1871 the family of seven was living in
the ‘Leather Market’ district of St Olave Southwark on the south side of the
River Thames in London. The census
return listed the family as living in a house on William Street in
Bermondsey, where George was 31 and still working as a miller, his wife Emma
was 30, and their five children at that time were Janet Goodman who
was eight, Alice Goodman who was seven, Eliza Goodman who was
five, David Goodman who was three, and George Goodman who was
two years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Rather curiously,
the couple’s eldest child Harriet Goodman was not living with the family on
that occasion. Instead, it looks as
though she was living with her father’s brother Robert Goodman and his wife
Emma Goodman, formerly Washbrook, at Watford, when she was described as being
11 and a silk winder. However, ten
years after that Harriet Goodman was visiting her cousin Henry James Collett
(Ref. 41P1) at 16 Church Street in Soho, whom she married shortly after the
census in 1881. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
During the next ten years, three children were added
to the family which, by the time of the census in 1881, was living at 4 Abbey
Street South in Bermondsey. Abbey Street today is the B202 link road
between Tower Bridge Road (A100) and Jamaica Road (A200). George was no longer a miller, his
occupation then being that of a carman, while living with him was his wife
Emma and six of their children. They
were Eliza Goodman who was 15 and working as a domestic servant, David
Goodman who was 14 and still at school, George Goodman who was 13 and an
errand boy, Edmond Goodman who was nine, Ellen Goodman who was
two, and Ernest Goodman who was just seven months old, having been
born on 12th August 1880. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Two more children were born into the family shortly
after the census year, and so by 1891, the Bermondsey family comprised George
Goodman 54, Emma Goodman 52, George Goodman 22, Edmond Goodman 18, Ellen
Goodman 12, Ernest Goodman 10, Alfred Goodman who was eight, and John
Goodman who was seven years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Just after the
turn of the century George was still working as a carman in London at the age
of 62, when he and his family were living at 33 Abbey Street in Bermondsey. Emma was then 61 and just three of her
children were still living there with her and her husband. They were Edmund Goodman, who was 28 and a
weights and scales maker, Ernest Goodman, who was 20 and a printer’s
labourer, and John Goodman, who was 17 and employed as a wharf clerk, all
three of them simply noted as having been born in Surrey. The couple’s first child, and their eldest
daughter Harriet Goodman, married her cousin Henry James Collett in
1881. See Henry James Collett (Ref.
41P1) for further details of their family. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Emma’s and George’s son Ernest Obid Goodman, who was
born on 12th August 1880, married Charlotte Payn on 17th
July 1907. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O13 |
David Collett was born at Harefield in 1843, with
his birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 334) during the first three months
of that year, the son of butcher William Collett and his wife Elizabeth Bishop. At the time of the census in 1851 David
Collett was six years old, while ten years later, when he was 17, he was
still living at home with his parents at the High Street in Harefield. At that time in his life, he was employed
as an agricultural labourer. Just over
one month after that David Collett was
one of the witnesses at the Stepney Limehouse wedding of his older brother
William Henry Collett (above) on 27th May 1861, at which he
made his mark, rather than sign his name. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
David later married Charlotte Ward at Uxbridge during
the second quarter of 1866, Charlotte having been born at Reading in 1839
although, within all of the following census returns, she gave her place of
birth as Harefield. Once they were
married the couple moved to Harefield where they lived for the rest of
life. Five years later in 1871 they
were confirmed as living in Harefield, where David was 28 and working as a
bricklayer, and Charlotte 32. By that
time their family comprised two daughters Lottie, who was four years old, and
Elizabeth, who was under one year old, and a son William David Collett who
was three years old, all three of them having been born at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later
the Harefield census of 1881 confirmed that David Collett was 37 and that he
was working as a builder. Living with
him was his wife Charlotte, aged 41, whose occupation was stated as being
that of a grocer. That indicated that
she was the proprietor of the grocer’s shop in Harefield. Living with David and Charlotte in April
1881 were their seven children. They
were Lottie aged 14, who had left school and was assisting her mother in her
grocer’s shop, William who was 12, Elizabeth who was 10, Joseph who was
eight, Alfred who was six, Alice who was five, and Grace who was two years
old. Also living with the family at
that time was David’s mother Elizabeth Collett, aged 79 and of Ickenham,
together with David’s younger brother Job Collett (below). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It is interesting that the Harefield census conducted
in 1891, recorded David Collett as being 48 and his stated occupation at that
time in his life was that of a baker and a grocer, most likely having taken
over the running of the shop due to his wife’s failing health. His wife Charlotte Collett was 51, and the
children still living with them on that occasion were Lottie, who was
recorded as Lettia Collett, aged 24, William Collett aged 22, Elizabeth
Collett aged 20, Joseph Collett aged 18, Alfred Collett aged 16, Alice
Collett aged 15, and Grace Collett who was 11 years old. Still living with the family was David’s
brother Job Collett who was 45. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Just after the
start of the new century David was once again working as a builder and was
then 57 years of age in the March census of 1901. He was still living on the High Street in
Harefield with his wife Charlotte who was 61 who was confirmed as having given
up the grocer’s shop, since she was listed as having no occupation. Once again David’s brother Job listed as
another member of the household, as was live-in domestic servant Minnie Tin from
Horn Hill in Buckinghamshire who was 14.
According to the next Harefield census in 1911, retired builder David
Collett of Harefield was 67 and was still living there with his wife
Charlotte who was 71 and also from Harefield.
Still living with the elderly couple was David’s brother Job Collett
who was 65, and returning to the family home, to presumably take over the
family business from his father, was the couple’s unmarried son Alfred
Collett who was 36 and a builder.
Tending to the needs of David and Charlotte, was domestic servant Jane
Everett aged 20 years and from Surrey, and visiting the couple that day was
Emma Gibson aged 48 and from Biggleswade in Bedfordshire. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In addition to them, David’s and Charlotte’s married
daughter Alice had returned to the family home, together with her baby son,
but minus her husband. The census
listed the two on them as Alice Creighton, aged 35 and from Harefield, and
her son Francis Collett Creighton who was just one month old. Just over five years later, on 23rd
June 1916, Charlotte Collett nee Ward died while she and her husband were
still living in Harefield, and she was followed two years later by David
Collett, who died there on 21st April 1918. A headstone in the churchyard of St Mary’s
marks their joint graves. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
As a builder, David Collett had acquired a
considerable fortune by the time he passed away. His Will was proved in London on 1st
August 1918 when his address was given as Cumberland House in Harefield. The executors of his estate of £29,122 10
Shillings and 8 Pence were named as his sons Joseph Collett and Alfred
Collett, who were both builders, William Gregory, a gentleman, and Evelyn
Hurden, another builder. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P17 |
Lottie
Collett |
Born in 1866 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P18 |
William
David Collett |
Born in 1868 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P19 |
Elizabeth
Collett |
Born in 1870 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P20 |
Joseph
Collett |
Born in 1872 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P21 |
Alfred
Collett |
Born in 1874 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P22 |
Alice
Collett |
Born in 1875 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P23 |
Grace
Collett |
Born in 1878 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O14 |
Job Collett was born at Harefield on 27th June 1845,
and was the youngest surviving child of William Collett and his wife
Elizabeth Bishop, his mother’s maiden-name confirmed at the registration of
his birth at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 357) during the third quarter of 1845. On leaving school he eventually became a
bricklayer, like many other members of the Collett family. In the census of 1861 Job was 15, and was
already working as a bricklayer’s labourer, when he was living at the family
home on the High Street in Harefield.
By the time of the next Harefield census in 1871 he was still
unmarried at the age of 26, when he was then working as a bricklayer, while
he and his parents were living at the home of his older married brother Jacob
Collett (above) |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
A further ten
years later and Job was still a bachelor at 34, when he was still working as
a bricklayer. According to the 1881
Census, Job Collett of Harefield was living with his married brother David
Collett (above) and his family in the property known as the grocer’s
shop in Harefield. It was the same
situation ten years later when Job was 45 and continuing to work as a
bricklayer, while still living with his older brother David. It seems more than likely that Job actually
worked for his brother David, who managed the family’s building company. According to the next census in 1901, David
Collett was confirmed as a builder, and unmarried Job Collett was again a
bricklayer living with him and his wife Charlotte at their home on the High
Street in Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
On the occasion of the 1911 census for Harefield, Job
Collett was still living there with his brother David Collett who had retired
by then, the family building business then being managed by David’s son
Alfred Collett. Under occupation, bachelor
Job was simply described as a gentleman aged 65. This confirms that he was a bachelor all
his life, and it is also known that he was a very eccentric character and was
very careful, virtually Scrooge-like, with his money. At one time later in his life he was
employed as a bird scarer, presumably at nearby London Airport. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Job Collett died at Harefield on 10th June
1934, his death recorded at Uxbridge register office (Ref. 3a 83) during the
second quarter of 1934, when he was said to be 90 years of age. He left a considerable sum of money in his
Will, and his life is marked by a marble vault in St Mary’s Church at
Harefield on which there is the following inscription ‘Job Collett son of
William and Elizabeth of Harefield born 27th June 1845 died 10th
June 1934’. The newspaper article
reproduced in Appendix Two of this family line refers to Job visiting the
church and planning the expensive tomb sixteen years before he died. His first Will was made on 5th
December 1923, over ten years before he died.
The document dictated that his estate would be held in trust for
twenty years after his death and then divided into three, split equally
between nephews Harry Collett and his son Bert, Arthur Collett, and Isaac
Collett and his son Isaac. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The aforementioned Harry Collett and Arthur Collett
were Henry James Collett (Ref. 41P1) and his brother Arthur Collett (Ref.
41P5), while Harry’s son Bert was a reference to Herbert Henry Collett (Ref.
41Q1) the eldest son of Henry (Harry) James Collett. Isaac was the cousin of Harry and
Arthur. In fact, it was only as a
result of a visit from Henry (Harry) James Collett and his son Herbert
(Bert), after the making of his first Will, that Job re-wrote the document
excluding the two of them because they did not adhere to Job’s strict
abstinence policy. A Codicil to the
Will was therefore made on 3rd November 1925 which removed Harry
and Bert Collett, who were replaced by |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Under his final
Will the eventual main beneficiaries to his estate were his nephews, although
it would appear that the Will was not proved until 1937, perhaps because of
family disputes over its contents. In
October that year the Sunday Pictorial included a headline article about the
‘miser’ Job Collett. This is
reproduced in Appendix Two at the end of this family line. Upon his death, the cottage in which he had
lived most of his later life passed to his eldest nephew Isaac Collett, with
the stipulation that it must be renovated before he received his inheritance. In the newspaper article, Isaac makes
reference to the eight years following the death of Job that it would take
before any of the beneficiaries would receive their inheritances. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O16 |
Elizabeth Collett was born at Harefield in 1838 and
was twelve years old in 1851. She
later married the younger James Green who was born at Rickmansworth in
1845. That event took place after September
1861 when, as Elizabeth Collett, she was a witness at the wedding of her
brother Richard (below). For
some reason no record of Elizabeth has been found six months earlier at the
time of the census in 1861, nor ten years after in 1871, as either Elizabeth
Collett or Elizabeth Green. However,
it was in the census of 1881 that Elizabeth and her husband James were living
at 7 Cumming Street in Clerkenwell.
Elizabeth Green from Harefield was 41, while James Green, aged 35, was
an attendant at the public baths in Clerkenwell. Living with the couple at that time was
their daughter Julia Green, aged 17 and of Rickmansworth, and
Elizabeth’s niece Emily Collett, aged 13 and born at Harefield. Emily was the base-born child of
Elizabeth’s younger sister Mary Ann Collett (below), with whom she was
living in 1891. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O17 |
Richard Benjamin Collett was born at
Harefield on 10th December 1840 and was 11 in 1851 and 20 in April
1861. Five months later on 14th
September 1861 at Hillingdon, he married Caroline Hughes who was born at
Harefield in 1842. Richard’s
occupation at that time was that of a zinc worker. Caroline’s father, who was a witness at the
wedding, was William Henry Hughes, also of Hillingdon, who was a copper
worker. The second witness to sign the
marriage certificate was Richard’s sister Elizabeth Collett (above). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Shortly after
they were married Richard and Caroline were living at Abbey Road in Merton,
Surrey, where their first child was born.
The child’s birth certificate stated that Richard Benjamin Collett was
a copper forger. A year or so later
the family had made the one mile move from Merton to Wimbledon, where they
were living at the time of the birth of the couple’s second and third
child. The 1871 Census for Kingston
& Wimbledon listed Richard as 30, Caroline as 29, and their two children
as Arthur, who was five, and Clara who was two years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The birth
certificate for the couple’s third child six years later placed the family as
living at 2 Vine Cottages on Hubert Road in Wimbledon and made reference to
Richard being employed as a foreman at the Garratt Copper Mills. Four years later the census of 1881
recorded the family of five still living at 2 Vine Cottages, but by then
Richard was working as a commercial clerk at the copper works. The family at that time comprised Richard B
Collett, aged 40, and Caroline Collett, aged 39, both of them from Harefield,
with their three children Arthur F Collett, aged 15 who was a draper’s
porter, Clara C Collett, aged 12, and Bernard B Collett who was only three
years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
After the census
in 1881 the family appear to have moved and, although their location in 1891
has not been determined, Richard’s son was living and working in the Putney
area of London where he was recorded incorrectly as Arthur Collette, while
Richard’s daughter Clara was recorded at Eton. The remainder of the family has not been
positively identified in 1891, so it is not clear where Richard and Caroline,
and their son Bernard were at that time. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years on
from then, Richard Collett, aged 60, and Caroline Collett, aged 59, were
living in the village of Nutfield near Redhill in Surrey, where Richard was
working as a foreman at the Fullers Earth Works. Living with the couple at Nutfield was son
Bernard who was 23 and also employed at the Fullers Earth Works, but as an
engine driver. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At the time of
the marriage of his son Arthur during the second half of the first decade of
the new century, Richard Collett, as father of the groom, was recorded on the
marriage certificate as a Works Foreman.
Sometime during the next few years Richard and Caroline left Nutfield
and moved to Horley, south of Reigate in Surrey, although it would appear
from Richard’s death certificate that he continued to work at the Fullers
Earth Works in Nutfield, and very likely with his son Bernard. And it was at Reigate that Richard and
Caroline were confirmed as living at the time of the census in 1911. Richard Benjamin Collett was 70, while
Caroline was 69. Also living nearby in
Reigate at that time was their youngest son Bernard, who was married by then,
with a family of his own. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Sadly, it was
later that same year that Richard Collett died on 9th October 1911
and, according to the certificate drawn up at Horley on the following day,
this happened at Cockley Pits in Nutfield, where Richard was a foreman at the
Fullers Earth Works. The certificate
also confirmed his age as being 70, and that the cause of death was acute
bronchitis. The informant of the death
to the registrar at Horley was his son Bernard, who was present at Cockley
Pits when his father passed away.
Following the death of her husband, Caroline Collett moved to Newbury
to live with her son Arthur at Shaw-cum-Donnington, where she died almost
exactly eight years later on 11th October 1919. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P24 |
Arthur
Frederick Collett |
Born in 1865 at Merton |
||||||||||||||
|
41P25 |
Clara
C Collett |
Born in 1868 at Wimbledon |
||||||||||||||
|
41P26 |
Bernard
Bolton Collett |
Born in 1877 at Wimbledon |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O18 |
Sarah Collett was born at Harefield in 1841 and
was nine years old in the Harefield census of 1851. She may have been the Sarah who married
Charles Holloway, a brick-maker from Denham in Buckinghamshire. In 1881 Sarah, from Harefield, and Charles
were living at Railway View in Horton Road in Hillingdon with their seven
children. Charles was 41, Sarah was
40, and their children were John Holloway who was 17, Ann Holloway
who was 12, Charles Holloway who was eight, Edith Holloway who
was seven, Richard Holloway who was six, May Holloway who was
four, and Frederick Holloway who was three years old. All of the children had been born at
Yiewsley in the London Borough of Hillingdon. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O19 |
Mary Ann Collett was born at Harefield on 20th
August 1843, her birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 352). She was eight years old at the time of the
1851 Census when she was living with her parents Richard Collett and Sarah
Collett nee Bolton at the home of her grandfather Henry Collett of
Gloucestershire. On completing her
schooling, Mary entered into domestic service and, according to the next
census in 1861, Mary A Collett was 17 years of age and a servant at the home
of William and Elizabeth Roddy and their family at the High Street in
Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Over six years
later, on 13th December 1867, unmarried Mary Ann Collett gave
birth to a base-born daughter Emily who was very likely placed in the care of
Mary Ann’s widowed mother, with whom she was living at Park Lane in Harefield
on the day of the census in 1871. The
census return that year described Emily Mary Collett as being three years of
age and the grandchild of Sarah Collett nee Bolton. On that same day, unmarried Mary Ann Collett
was living at the home of
widower Henry Hawkins, a farm bailiff, at Dorefield Grove Farm on Woodcock
Hill in Rickmansworth where she was described as his niece. That relationship can be explained by the
fact that on 11th November 1848, Henry Hawkins married Elizabeth
Bolton, the sister of Mary Ann’s mother Sarah Collett nee Bolton, who was
therefore the aunt of Mary Ann Collett.
Sadly, Elizabeth Hawkins née Bolton had died just a few weeks prior to
that census day, when she passed away on 1st March 1871. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Later that year, Mary Ann became
pregnant when she was still living at the home of Henry Hawkins, her
base-born son Herbert being given the forename Hawkins when he was born on 16th
May 1872.
Although no father’s name was included on his birth record, Herbert
revealed his father was Henry Hawkins, a farm bailiff, when he became a
married man. Two years later, on 31st
October 1874, Mary Ann Collett married Thomas Crook who was born at Hill End
in Harefield in 1846. Their marriage was
recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 33), when Mary Ann was confirmed as the daughter
of Richard Collett, a labourer of Harefield, and Thomas was named as
the son of Thomas Crook, a blacksmith. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By the time of
the census in 1881, Mary Ann Crook, aged 38 and from Harefield, was living at
Hill End in Harefield with her husband and their only children together. Thomas Crook was 34 and a labourer who had
been born at Hill End, while their son Ernest Crook was one year old,
who had also been born at Harefield. Living
with the Crook family that day, was Mary Ann’s nine-year-old base-born son
who, for proprieties sake was incorrectly recorded as Henry Crook, who had
been born at Harefield. At that same
time, Mary Ann’s base-born daughter Emily Collett, aged 13 and from
Harefield, was staying with Mary Ann’s older married sister Elizabeth Green
nee Collett (above) at 7 Cumming Street in Clerkenwell, London. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later,
according to the census in 1891, the Crook family was still living at Hill
End, when every member of the household having been born at Harefield. They were Thomas Crook who was 43 and a
labourer working at the nearby chalk works, his wife Mary Ann Crook who was
49, and their son Ernest Crook who was eleven and still at school. Completing the family group were Mary Ann’s
two base-born children; unmarried Emily M Collett was 23 and employed as an
asbestos cloth weaver, and Herbert H Collett was 19 and a general
labourer. They were described as the
stepdaughter and stepson of head of the household Thomas Crook. It was four years after that census day
when Mary Ann’s base-born son Herbert Henry Hawkins Collett was married in
1895, with her daughter Emily Mary Collett being married during the following
year. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Just
after the turn of the century, Mary Ann Crook was listed in the 1901 Census
as being 57 years of age, when her husband Thomas Crook was 53 and their son
Ernest was 21. They were still living
at Hill End in Harefield, where both Thomas and Ernest were employed as
general labourers. Two years later, on
22nd June 1903, Mary Ann Crook née Collett died at Hill End, when
her married daughter Emily Mary Mead was present as she passed away. The death of Mary Ann Crook was recorded at
Uxbridge register office while, within the Harefield Parish Register, it was
recorded that she was buried there during June 1903. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P27 |
Emily
Mary Collett |
Born in 1867 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P28 |
Herbert
Henry Hawkins Collett |
Born in 1872 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O20 |
Ann Collett was born at Harefield in 1845 and was six years old in
1851, and 15 years of age in 1861. Ann
later married house painter Frederick Ridrup who was born in 1843 and by 1901
both of them were still living in Harefield.
However, it is likely that she married Frederick after 1891 as there
is no listing of her as Ann Ridrup in any of the earlier census records. There is also a chance that Ann was first
married to William Windfield and, although his wife was Ann Elizabeth, she
was also born at Harefield around 1845. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O21 |
James Theophilus Bolton Collett was born at
Harefield in 1848, his birth recorded under his full name at Uxbridge (Ref.
iii 394) during the second quarter of that year. He was the sixth child of Richard Collett
and Sarah Bolton, and was one of eight children still living with his parents
in 1851 at two years of age, when he was simply named as James Collett. On the census day that year, the large
family was living at the Harefield home of James’ grandfather Henry Collett
from Kempsford who was 79. It was
again as James Collett aged 12, that he was still living with his family at
Harefield in 1861, when he was attending school. Just over six years later, nineteen-year-old
James Collett from Harefield married eighteen-year-old Ann Smith Fells of Marston
Moretaine, in south-west Bedfordshire, where the wedding took place on 10th
June 1867, and where the couple’s first child was born. The marriage was recorded at Ampthill (Ref.
3b 160). After the birth of that
child, the family of three settled in Harefield, where seven more children
were added to their family. Ann Smith
Fells was born in 1849 and was baptised at Marston Moretaine on 2nd
September 1849, the daughter of Ambrose Fells and Sophie Smith. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By the time of
the census at the start of April in 1871, Ann had already presented James
with two children. James Collett was
24, Ann Collett was 23, and their two children were Margaret Collett who was
three, and Harriet Collett who was just one year old. After a further ten years, James Collett
from Harefield was 33 and working as a non-domestic gardener and labourer. He and his wife Ann, aged 32 and from
Marston in Bedfordshire, were living at Park Lane in Harefield with their
daughters Margaret aged 13 and also from Marston, Harriet who was 11, Sarah
who was nine, and Rose who was five, together with their sons Walter who was
three, and James who was one year old.
Next door to their dwelling in Park Lane was the home of James’ cousins
Charles and Frederick Collett (below), while just two doors away was their
uncle Robert Henry Collett. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later,
the census in 1891 again recorded the family residing at Park Lane, by which
time James Collett was 43 and employed as a cowman. Wife Ann Collett was 42 and their children
were Walter Collett who was 15 and a milk boy, James Collett who was 10 and at
school, Reginald Collett who was four years old and also at school, and Daisy
Collett who was two. Also living with
the family as a boarder was Elizabeth Roe who was six years old and born in
London. James and Ann’s third daughter
Sarah had already left the family home by then and was living and working in
Rickmansworth. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Just three
children were living with the couple at Park Lane by the end of March in 1901
when, at the age of 52, James was once again working as a gardener and Ann
was 51. The first of the three
children still with them was their unmarried eldest daughter Margaret, who
was recorded as being 30, rather than 33, with she and her mother both
confirmed as having been born at Marston Moretaine. The other two children were the couple’s
youngest children, Reginald who was 14, and Daisy who was 12, both of them
confirmed as having been born at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By April 1911
only their son Reginald was still living with James and Ann. James Collett of Harefield was 62 and a
jobbing gardener, his wife was 61, and their unmarried son was strangely
recorded as 28, although it is likely to have been an error in translation,
his age really being 23. As was the
case regarding the births of their Harefield born children being registered
at nearby Uxbridge, so it was that the later deaths of both James and Ann
were also recorded there, most likely when they were still residents of
Harefield. It was only just over five
years after the day of the census in 1911, that the death of James T B Collett
was recorded at Uxbridge register office (Ref. 3a 49) during the fourth
quarter of 1916, when he was 69 years old.
Ann survived her husband by twenty-two years, when the death of Ann S
Collett was recorded at Uxbridge during the first three months of 1939, at
the age of 89. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41P29 |
Margaret
Sarah Collett |
Born in 1867 at Marston Moretaine |
||||||||||||||
|
41P30 |
Harriet Collett |
Born in 1868 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P31 |
Sarah
Ann Collett |
Born in 1871 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P32 |
Rosina
(Rose) Collett |
Born in 1876 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P33 |
Walter
Herbert Collett |
Born in 1877 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P34 |
James Thomas Collett |
Born in 1880 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P35 |
Reginald
Richard Collett |
Born in 1887 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41P36 |
Daisy Beatrice Collett |
Born in 1889 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O22 |
Harriet Collett was a twin with her brother John (below)
and was born at Harefield in January 1851, being two months old in the census
that year. Her birth was recorded at
Uxbridge just before that of her twin brother, during the first three months
of 1851 (Ref. iii 27). They were both living
with their family in 1851, while her twin John passed away during the
following years. As a result, it was
only single twin Harriet, who was 10 years old in the census of 1861, who was
living at Harefield with her family, the place of her birth. For some reason she did not appear in
either of the census returns for 1871 and 1881, but was living and working at
the home of the Cottrell family in St Albans Road, Watford in 1891, where she
was employed as a domestic cook at the age of 40. Also living at the High Street in Watford was
Harriet’s cousin Mary A Collett (Ref. 41O1) who was 53 and from Harefield, the
eldest of three domestic servants, while at Queens Road in Watford at that
same time was Rosina Collett (Ref. 41P32) who was also from Harefield and was
16 years old, a servant with the Andrews family. All that is known about Harriet after that,
is that she never married and died at Harefield, with her death recorded at
Uxbridge register office during the last three months of 1916, when she was
65. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O23 |
John Collett was the twin
brother of Harriet (above) and was born at Harefield in January 1851,
his birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. iii 468) during the first quarter of
1851, another son of Richard Collett and Sarah Bolton. He was two months old in the Harefield
census of 1851, but sadly did not survive, with his death also recorded at
Uxbridge during that same decade. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O24 |
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O25 |
Charles Collett was born at Harefield in 1837, the
eldest surviving child of Jonathan and Margaret Collett. In 1841 he was four years old, and was 13
in 1851. In 1861 Charles Collett, aged
23 and an agricultural labourer, was still living with his family in a
cottage on the road leading to the Copper Mills. With the death of both of his parents
during the 1860s, Charles assumed the role of head of the household and looked
after his younger brother Frederick Henry Collett (below). So, by the time of the next census in 1871,
when Charles was 32, he only had living with him at Park Lane in Harefield
his youngest brother Frederick. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
On that occasion
Charles Collett from Harefield was still working as an agricultural labourer,
while his much younger brother Frederick, aged 18, was employed as a
bricklayer’s labourer. By that time in
his life Charles was very likely resigned to leading the life of a bachelor,
and it was in that capacity that he continued to live out the rest of his
life at Harefield. Living just one
dwelling away from him and his brother, on Park Lane in 1871, was his uncle
Robert Henry Collett with his two unmarried daughters. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
According to the
next census in 1881 Charles was 42 when he was still living at Park Lane in
Harefield with his unmarried siblings, Elizabeth Collett who was 35, Jonathan
Collett who was 31, and Frederick Collett who was 27. All four of them were listed as having been
born at Harefield, and as Elizabeth had no stated occupation, it seems
reasonable to assume that she performed the role of house keeper for her
brothers. It is interesting to note
that the dwelling in Park Lane in which they were living on that occasion was
situated right next door to the family of their cousin James T B Collett (above),
and two doors away from their uncle Robert Henry Collett. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In 1891 the same
four siblings were living at White Heath Farm in the Hill End area of
Harefield, which was adjacent to The Plough Inn. Charles Collett, aged 50 rather than 53,
was a labourer of Harefield, and recorded there with him was his sister
Margaret (below) and his two brothers Jonathan and Frederick. Ten years after that Charles gave his age
as being 61 in the census of 1901, when he was still living at
Harefield. By that time in his life,
he was employed as a gardener and labourer, while still living there with him
was Elizabeth, Jonathan, and Frederick.
With no trace of him found in the census of 1911, it is likely that
Charles Collett died during the first decade of the new century. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O27 |
Elizabeth Margaret Collett was born at
Harefield in 1844 and was recorded as Elizabeth Margaret Collett, aged seven
years, within the Harefield census of 1851, when she was living there with
her parents Jonathan and Margaret Collett.
No record of her has been positively identified in 1861, but in the
census of 1871 Margaret Collett, aged 24, was living in Harefield. By the time of the census in 1881, and
following the deaths of both of her parents, Elizabeth Collett, aged 35 and
from Harefield, was acting as housekeeper for her three unmarried brothers at
the house of her older brother Charles (above) on Park Lane in
Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
She was still
living there with her three brothers ten years later but, on that occasion,
she referred to herself as Margaret Collett, aged 42 (sic) from
Harefield. Her brother Charles was
once again the head of the household at White Heath Farm at Hill End in
Harefield, next door to The Plough Inn.
The same group of four siblings was still living together in Harefield
in March 1901, when once again she was recorded as Elizabeth Collett, by
which time she was 53 (sic). No record
of Elizabeth or Margaret has been found in the census of 1911, when she would
have been in her mid-sixties. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O28 |
Robert George Collett was born at Harefield
in 1846, the son of Jonathan and Margaret Collett. He was four years old at the time of the
Harefield census in 1851, but tragically, four years later he died during the
last week of February in 1856, following which he was buried at Harefield on
2nd March 1856 at the age of just nine years, under the name of
Robert George Collett. His death was recorded at
Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 17) during the first quarter of 1856. Coincidentally, the entry in the register
immediately prior to Robert’s, was that of 20-year-old Isaac Collett (Ref. 3a
16) [41O10]. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O29 |
Jonathan Collett was born at Harefield in 1849. In 1851 he was one year old, and was 11
years of age in 1861. In 1871 Jonathan
Collett, aged 22 and from Harefield, was living and working in the Watford
area, but by 1881, and following the deaths of his parents, unmarried
Jonathan returned to Park Lane in Harefield to live with his surviving
siblings Charles, Elizabeth, and Frederick.
At that time, he was 31 and was working as a general labourer. Living next door to the quartet was their
cousin James T B Collett (above) and his family, and next door to him
another cousin Charles Collett. According
to the next census in 1891, Jonathan Collett from Harefield was 39 (sic) and
a labourer, living at White Heath Farm at Hill End in Harefield. Also living there with him was his brother
Charles and sister Margaret (above), and brother Frederick (below). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
A similar
problem occurred ten years later when, in the 1901 Harefield Census, Jonathan
again gave an incorrect age saying he was 48 rather than 51. At that time, he was employed as a
bricklayer’s labourer, who was very likely working with his bricklayer
brother Frederick (below).
Still living with the two brothers was their sister Margaret (above)
and older brother Charles. Sadly, by
the time of the next census in April 1911, Jonathan Collett and his brother
Frederick were living in an institution in Harefield, which may have been the
local workhouse. Jonathan Collett was
62 and he confirmed that he had been born at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41O30 |
Frederick Henry Collett was born at
Harefield in 1853 and was the youngest child of Jonathan and Margaret
Collett. In the Harefield census of
1861 Frederick was eight years old, but not long after that both of his
parents died, after which he was looked after by his eldest brother Charles
Collett (above). In 1871 when
he was 18 and a bricklayer’s labourer, Frederick was confirmed as living on
the road to the Copper Mills in Harefield with his brother Charles, with whom
he was also living at Park Lane in Harefield in 1881. Also returned to the family by then was
Frederick’s sister Elizabeth and brother Jonathan (above). All of the four siblings were unmarried,
with Frederick being employed as a bricklayer at the age of 27. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It was at White
Heath Farm, Hill End in Harefield that the four of them were still living
together in 1891, when Frederick Collett was 36 and was continuing to work as
a bricklayer. Curiously ten years
after that in March 1901, Frederick said he was 43 which may simply be a
misinterpretation of 48. At that time,
he was still working as a bricklayer, possibly with his brother Jonathan who
was a bricklayer’s labourer, with whom he was also still living, together
with his other brother Charles and sister Margaret. The two younger brothers were still
together ten years later, but according to the census in 1911 they were
living in an institution in Harefield, where Frederick Collett, aged 58 and
from Harefield, was recorded. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P1 |
Henry James Collett was born at Mile End Old Town in
Stepney on 31st December 1862.
He was eight years old at the time of the census in 1871, when he and
his family were living at 18 Roberts Place in Mile End Old Town, from where
his father William Henry Collett was working as a butcher. Sadly, Henry’s father died four years
later, following which his widowed mother Ann was forced to enter into
domestic service, when she took up the position of general servant at the
Kings Arms public house in Soho. It was
not previously known what had actually happened to Henry and his four
siblings at that time in their lives, since none of them were living with
their mother by the time of the census in 1881. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
However, thanks
to new information received from his great-great-granddaughter Rebecca
Humphreys in 2010, the full story of his life can now be told. The photograph of Henry (above) was
also supplied by Rebecca and is an extract from a larger family group picture
taken during the First World War. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In
April 1881, Henry Collett was living at 16 Church Street in Soho with his
younger brother Arthur who was six, and his sister Amy who was eleven. He gave his age as being 21, although he
was actually nearer eighteen years of age and, on that occasion, he was
working as a porter for a printer. The
three siblings had probably moved to Soho to be near to their widowed mother
Ann, who had found work at the Kings Arms in Moor Street. Also living with them at 16 Church Street
was eighteen years old Harriett Goodman who was recorded as a visitor. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In
fact, Harriet Goodman (show on the right around 1916) was the first cousin of
Henry James Collett, the daughter of George Goodman and his wife Emma Collett
(Ref. 41O12), the sister of Henry’s father William Henry Collett. It is possible, although not proved, that
Henry and Harriet may have already been in a relationship with each other by
that time in April 1881, since the two of them were married towards the end
of that same year. The marriage
took place at the church of St James in Piccadilly in the final quarter of
1881, when Harriet was nineteenth years old, she having been born on 26th
July 1862. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At
the time of their wedding Henry and Harriet were living at Golden Square in
Soho, between Regent Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. Henry’s occupation was recorded as being
that of a porter for a bricklayer, that is, a hod-carrier. The couple’s first child, Herbert, was born
while the couple was still living at Soho during the following year. The marriage produced a further three
children for Henry and Harriet before they left Soho for a new home in South
London, they being Louisa, Harry and Dorothy. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By
1891 the family of six was living in the Lambeth district of Newington at 6
Monkton Street, which is still there today and is just off the Kennington
Road (A23). According to the census
that year, Henry was 29 and was employed as a hotel porter. Harriet was also 29, and their four children were
listed as Herbert, who was 10, Louisa, who was seven, Harry, who was six, and
Dorothy who was three years old. Over
the next ten years a further five children were added to the family,
including a set of twin boys. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The
census return at the end of March in 1901 placed the Collett family living at
Block No 6 in Victoria Dwellings in the Battersea district of London. Henry Collett from Stepney was 38, when he
was working within the estate as the resident mechanic, while his wife
Harriet from Uxbridge was also 38, and was described as a housekeeper. Henry and Harriet’s children, still living
at the family home on that occasion were, Herbert, aged 19, Dorothy, aged 12,
the twins Edmund and George, who were both five years old, Irene who was
four, Violet who was two, and baby Laura who was just twelve days old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By
that time in 1901 the couple’s eldest daughter had left the family home to
marry William Joyce. The only other
missing child was their second son Harry, who may have died while still a
child, since no further record of him has been found after 1891, nor has any
member of the family any memory of him.
The family’s accommodation in 1901 was built by The Metropolitan
Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Association and, although Henry’s
occupation was recorded as the resident mechanic, he was in fact the caretaker
for Victoria Dwellings, with his wife being the housekeeper there. The Association had bought some of the land
around Battersea Park from the Crown for the project at £1,600 per acre. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Other bodies were also involved in
developing the area, such as the Artizans' and General Labourers' Dwellings
Company, who built Shaftesbury Estate.
Charles Barry Junior was the architect to the MA&LD Association,
which also had dwellings in King's Cross and later became known as the
Victoria Dwellings Association. The
buildings comprising Victoria Dwellings consisted of three blocks; one for
artisans and made up of 98 tenements of 3 or 4 rooms, and two for labourers,
each having 90 tenements of 1 or 2 rooms.
They were of four storeys and were built in yellow stock brick. The Victoria Dwellings at Battersea Park
Road were demolished in 1983. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It seems rather
odd that, to date, no record of any member of the family has been identified
within the census returns completed in April 1911, except the eldest daughter
Louisa, who was married by then. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Henry
James Collett was extremely patriotic and joined up at the outbreak of the
First World War. However, due to the
fact that he was fifty-one, he could not be put on frontline duty and so was
part of the volunteer non-combatant force.
It is believed that he was awarded the military medal for his service
to King and Country. In 1920 Henry and
Harriet were living at 31 Landseer Street in Battersea, where they received
the tragic news that their son George had died as a victim of the flu
pandemic. George had not been well as
a result of his capture by the Germans during the Great War and his
subsequent enforced labour in a salt mine. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At
that time in his life, Henry was employed as a maintenance man at the Royal
Mail Sorting Office on Lavender Hill.
Henry and Harriet were at the centre of a very lively and closely-knit
family. Their youngest daughter Laura
lived on the top floor of 31 Landseer Street with her family. Her husband was a strong communist and had
lively debates with his father-in-law.
Henry’s eldest daughter Louisa lived at 62 Landseer Street, whilst his
other daughter Irene, lived next door to her at number 60. Henry and Harriet’s house hosted all manner
of family gatherings and get-togethers, and their grandchildren would often
be found there. Harriet did everything
she could to support her children during great difficulties, especially her
daughters. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Sometime
around 1924, Henry went to visit his rich uncle Job Collett in
Harefield. Unfortunately, Job was a
strong believer in abstinence and did not approve of Henry’s social habits
and, as a result of this, Job removed Henry (referred to as Harry) and his
eldest son Bert from the second writing of his Will in 1925. In Appendix Two, at the end of this family
line, there is a newspaper article which was published in 1937 after the Will
of Job Collett was proved and settlement of his estate finally resolved, the
main beneficiary being Henry’s cousin Isaac Collett (below). Henry James Collett died just before the
start of the Second World War. He was
a real character and could often be seen walking home swinging his walking
stick and wearing his light, near white, planter’s suit. Landseer Street was bombed at the time of
the blitz on London during WWII, hence the reason it does not exist today. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q1 |
Herbert
Henry Collett |
Born in 1882 at Soho |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q2 |
Louisa
Ellen Collett |
Born in 1884 at Soho |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q3 |
Harry
Collett |
Born in 1885 at Soho |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q4 |
Dorothy
Mary Collett |
Born in 1888 at Westminster |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q5 |
Edmund
John Collett twin |
Born in 1895 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q6 |
George
A Collett twin |
Born in 1895 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q7 |
Irene
Harriet Rose Collett |
Born in 1896 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q8 |
Violet
Collett |
Born in 1899 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q9 |
Laura
Julia Collett |
Born in 1901 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P2 |
Eliza Collett was born at Mile End Old Town in
Stepney on 5th June 1865.
The only other information so far found relating to Eliza is within
the 1871 Census in which she was six years of age and was living with her
family at 18 Roberts Place in Mile End Old Town. Four years after that her father died in
1875 and by April 1881 Eliza’s widowed mother was working as a general
servant at the Kings Arms in Soho. No
trace of Eliza or her sister Laura (below) has been found at that
time, while her other siblings were living at 16 Church Street in Soho. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Two of Eliza’s
siblings reappeared in the next census in 1891, but nothing after 1871 has
ever been found for Eliza, so it was assumed that she had passed away as a
child. However, an entry in the
Collett family bible includes the information that William Hayes and his wife
Eliza both died in May 1933. It is
therefore possible that Eliza Hayes may have been the former Eliza Collett
and if so, she would have been sixty-eight at the time of her death. Other entries in the bible record the
deaths of Eliza’s brother Arthur Collett (below) on 3rd
August 1933 and Helen Ellen Morgan nee Collett on 7th June
1927. The position of the latter of
these two individuals within the family has not been positively identified,
although it is possible that she was the former Ellen Jones nee Collett (Ref.
41O6). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P3 |
Laura Collett was born at Mile End Old Town in
Stepney on 7th June 1869 and at that time her family was living at
7 William Street. Her birth
certificate confirmed her parents as William and Ann Collett. Laura was listed in the 1871 Census as
living with her family at 18 Roberts Place in Mile End Old Town, but was
recorded in error as Louise Collett aged two years. So far, no record of Laura or her sister
Eliza (above) has been found ten years later in the census of 1881,
following the death of their father in 1875. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By 1891 Laura
was twenty years old and was a domestic housemaid living once again with her
widowed mother Ann Collett at 29 Hilldrop Crescent in Islington St Lukes,
midway between Kentish Town and Lower Holloway. Three and a half years later on 1st
October 1894 Laura married George Pitts by banns at All Saints Church in
Great Barford just to the east of Bedford.
George was a railway porter from Great Barford and was living at
Caledonian Road in Islington at the time of their wedding. The church record indicated that it was
Laura’s brother Henry Collett who gave away the bride, with no reference made
at all to her deceased father, or her mother, who may have also passed away
by then. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Just over six
years after Laura and George were married, they were living in Islington with
their first child and, according to the census return for 1901, the family of
three was listed as Laura Pitts, aged 30 from Stepney, George Pitts, aged 31
of Great Barford, who was working as a builder’s general labourer, and their
son George Pitts, who was one year old and born at Kings Cross. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
During the next
decade two further children were added to the family which, by April 1911 was
living in the Greenwich registration district of London. The family on that occasion comprised
George Pitts of Great Barford who was 42, Laura Pitts of Stepney who was 40,
and their son George who was eleven, and with them their two daughters Dorothy
Pitts who was nine, and Ena Pitts who was four. All three children were listed as having
been born at Islington prior to the family’s move to Greenwich. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
They later had
another daughter Emma Pitts who appears to have been born at Great
Barford. Emma was the grandmother of
Phil of Harrow who kindly provided the information relating to his family
line. Phil was born and lived in |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P4 |
Amy Collett was born after the second of April 1871, and the event
probably took place at 7 William Street in Mile End Old Town in the Stepney
area of London where her family was living on the day of the census that
year. Four years later in 1875, Amy’s
father William Collett died and that tragic event appears to have resulted in
the family being separated. According
to the census in 1881, Amy was eleven and was living at 16
Church Street in Soho under the care of her older brother Henry (above),
who was head of the household at the age of twenty-one. Also living there with them was their
brother Arthur (below). No Amy Collett
has been found in the census of 1891, so it is probably safe to assume that
Amy was married by that time. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P5 |
Arthur Collett was born at Stepney in 1874, the
youngest child of William Collett and Ann Calcutt. Sadly, his father died when he was only one
year old, and it would appear that this caused the break-up of the
family. By 1881 Arthur was six years
old and was being looked after by his eldest brother Henry James Collett (above)
and his older sister Amy at 16 Church Street in Soho. Also living and working in the Soho area of
London was their mother who was employed as a domestic general servant at the
Kings Arms Inn at Moor Street. For whatever
reason, no record of Arthur has so far been found in any of the census
returns after 1881. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
However, there
are three later known references to him; the first being a photograph taken
during the Great War which shows Arthur, described as Uncle Arthur, with his
twin nephews Ted and George Collett in their army uniforms. The note also stated that Uncle Arthur was
a coalman. The second reference placed
Arthur as one of three beneficiaries under the terms of the 1923 Will of his
uncle Job Collett (Ref. 41O14). The
third and last known fact about Arthur was recorded in the Collett Family
Bible. This stated that he died on 3rd
August 1933, although no age or place was indicated. If this was indeed a reference to Arthur
Collett of Stepney who was born there around 1874, then he would have been
approximately sixty years old when he died.
It would also seem likely that he never married. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P6 |
George James Collett was born at Harefield on 15th June 1853 and
was originally baptised |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
On 24th
April 1874 at Harefield, George married Emily Mary Heath who was born on 14th
August 1854 in the hamlet of Shredding Green in the parish of Iver in
Buckinghamshire. Emily was the
daughter of William Heath and Susan Norman.
The couple’s first three children listed below were born at Harefield
where, in 1881, they were living at Chapel House, and where George Collett
was working as a gardener. Chapel House was part of the Harefield
Manor House estate in |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The census
details confirmed that |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Sometime after
the birth of the child, George and Emily emigrated to North America, taking
their children with them. It was
originally thought that the move took place after the turn of the century,
but it would appear that they must have sailed to America prior to 1891,
since the family was not listed in that year’s census, nor has any record of
them in the UK been found within the census of 1901. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Unlike many
immigrants to America, George and his family did not enter the country
through Ellis Island in New York Harbour, but it is understood that they
lived their early years in that country in the town of Minnesota. What has been established is that George
James Collett died at Washington DC on 27th September 1913 and was
buried there at the Glenwood Cemetery.
His widow Emily lived for another sixteen years before she died on 15th
September 1929, when she was buried with her husband. It is understood that Emily had relatives
that lived in Washington and it was probably this fact that originally
persuaded George and Emily to seek a new life in the Brave New World, and
eventually settle there. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q10 |
George
William Collett |
Born in 1875 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q11 |
Lewis
|
Born in 1878 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q12 |
Beatrice
Maude Collett twin |
Born in 1878 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q13 |
Cyril
Henry Collett |
Born in 1885 at Watford |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P8 |
Isaac Collett (Isaac the elder) was born at Harefield on 25th April 1867,
his birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 32) during the second quarter of that
year. He was four years old in the
Harefield census of 1871 and, ten years later, at the age of 14, Isaac had
already left school and was working for his father as a brickmaker’s
labourer. Just over nine years later he
married Mary Ann Gubby on 26th May 1890 at the Church of St Mary
the Virgin in Harefield, the event recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 31) during
the second quarter of the year. Mary
had been born at Norwood, Middlesex, in 1864.
Shortly after they were married, Isaac and Mary fled north to live in
Kingston-upon-Hull, the
reason for the move likely to be that Mary was well-advanced with the pregnancy
of the couple’s first child, who was born ten weeks after their wedding day and,
who sadly, did not survive. By
April in 1891, the childless
couple was residing at Withernsea Street, within the parish of Sutton-with-Stoneferry
in Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
That census day, Isaac Collett from Middlesex was 23 and a general labourer,
while his wife Mary Collett was 26 and also from Middlesex.
Lodging with them was young married couple Albert Blackwell from
Buckinghamshire and his Middlesex born wife Eliza Blackwell aged 21. During the next decade four children were
born into the family at Sculcoates near Kingston-upon-Hull. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The 1901 Census
confirmed that the family was living at Benjamin’s Terrace on Dalton Street
in Sculcoates where Isaac, from Harefield, was 34 and was working as a
labourer at the local cement works. It
also confirmed that Mary was three years older than her husband, at the age
of 37, while her place of birth was then stated as being Southall in
Middlesex. Their children on that
occasion were Isaac who was nine, George who was four, Alfred who was two,
and new arrival William who was not yet one year old. Over the next few years, a further two
children were added to the family. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ten years later
the family was still living at Sculcoates when, according to the census of
1911, Mary Collett was recorded in error as still being 37 instead of 47. Isaac Collett, from Harefield, was 43 and a
labourer at the local cement works, and their six children were Isaac who was
19, George who was 15, Alfred who was 13, William who was 10, Edward who was
eight and Sidney who was six years old.
At some time during the next five years, possibly around the outbreak
of war, Isaac and Mary returned to live at Harefield and in April 1918 the
couple was living at 6 Waterloo Villas in Harefield when they received the
tragic news of the death of their son Alfred, who had been killed in action
during the First World War. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In addition to
the death of their sons George and Alfred, Isaac and Mary must have suffered
another family loss since, in a newspaper article in 1937, Isaac made a reference
to only having three children. The
article took the form of an interview with Isaac about the passing of his
uncle Job Collett (Ref. 41O14), and the inheritance that had been left to his
nephews, due to Job never having married and having no children of his own. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
As the eldest
nephew, Isaac had been made the executor of the Will by his uncle, in which
he and selected other nephews were named as the sole beneficiaries. An earlier Will of 1923 and Codicil of 1925
also referred to Isaac as Job’s nephew, in addition to which his eldest son
Isaac was also listed as a beneficiary.
Also, in the Codicil to the Will, Isaac’s own grandson Isaac Collett,
the only known child of his own son Isaac, was also named as a beneficiary. Upon the death of Job Collett in 1934, his
cottage at Harefield passed to Isaac Collett, the elder, who was nearing
completion of its restoration under the terms of the Will in 1937. See Isaac’s interview by a Sunday Pictorial
reporter in October 1937, which has been reproduced at the end of this family
line. This provides a fascinating
insight to the man that was his rather curious uncle Job Collett. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The later death
of Mary Ann Collett, nee Gubby and born in 1864, was recorded at Uxbridge
register office (Ref. 3a 101) during the first quarter of 1943 when she was
78 years old. Curiously, though, no
record of her husband’s passing has been found. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q14 |
George Albert Collett |
Born in 1890 at
Sutton-with-Stoneferry |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q15 |
Isaac
Collett |
Born in 1892 at Sculcoates |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q16 |
George
Thomas Collett |
Born in 1896 at Sculcoates |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q17 |
Thomas
Alfred Collett |
Born in 1898 at Sculcoates |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q18 |
William
Collett |
Born in 1900 at Sculcoates |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q19 |
Edward
Joseph Collett |
Born in 1903 at Sculcoates |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q20 |
Sidney
Collett |
Born in 1905 at Sculcoates |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P10 |
ELLEN ELIZABETH COLLETT was born at
Harefield on 6th September 1870 and she later married John Harman
in Middlesex during 1889. John was
born in 1869 at Norwood and was the son of Edward Harman (1832 – 1909) of
Islington and Mary Ann Pierce of St Luke’s in London. It is possible, though not yet proved, that
this particular Harman family may have been in some way connected to the
Harman family that were the owners of the Harman Brewery in Uxbridge. The marriage of Ellen and John produced six
children for the couple and all born at Harefield, these being: John (1889);
Robert (1893); Ellen (1895); Alfred (1897); Ernest (1899); and Mabel who was
born on 24th February 1900. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The couple’s
eldest son John Harman junior enlisted with the 16th Battalion of
the Middlesex Regiment at the outbreak of the First World War. And so it was that, as Private Harman 6278,
he was tragically killed in action on 26th April 1917, following
which he was buried at the Etaples Military Cemetery, fifteen miles south of
Boulogne in France. At the time of his
death John was 28 and was not married.
His parents Ellen and John, who were listed as his next of kin, were
living at 8 Waterloo Villas in Harefield when they received the sad news. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The
inscription on a headstone at Etaples Military Cemetery reads “In Memory of Private John Harman 6278,
16th Bn., Middlesex Regiment who died on 26 April 1917, age 28, son of John
and Ellen Elizabeth Harman, of 8 Waterloo Villas, Harefield, Middx. Remembered with Honour” |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ellen and John’s
younger son Alfred Harman was interviewed for the making of a book about
village life in Harefield. His
recollections of his last day at school and starting his first job around
1910 can be found at the end of this family line in Appendix One. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The couple’s
youngest child, daughter Mabel Harman, married James Ferguson on 1st
August 1921 and the marriage produced two children, James Ferguson who was
born at 8 Waterloo Villas in 1922 and Jennifer Ferguson. And it was James’ daughter Jean Oakes nee Ferguson
who kindly provided the basic details which enabled this family line to be
constructed. Her grandmother Mabel
Ferguson, nee Harman, lived all her life at Harefield, where she died in
1984. Ellen Elizabeth Harman nee Collett died at 8 Waterloo
Villas on 13th May 1940, and it was there also, nearly four years
later that her husband John Harman died on 9th April 1954. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P11 |
Emma Collett was born at Harefield in 1872, the daughter of Jacob
and Margaret Collett. She was nine
years old in 1881 when the census that year recorded her living with her
family in the High Street at Harefield, where her father was a
brick-maker. Emma was still living
with her parents ten years later in 1891 when she was 17. During the next two years she married
Philip Wiggins, a bricklayer from Southall in Middlesex. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Over the
following sixteen years Emma presented Philip with nine children, while the
family was still living in Harefield.
In 1901 Philip Wiggins was 29, and his wife Emma was 28, by which time
they had three children Philip, Alfred and Nora. During the next ten years the remaining six
years were added to the family. So far
April 1911 the full family was Philip Wiggins 39, Emma Wiggins 38, Philip
Wiggins 17, Alfred Wiggins 14, Nora Wiggins 12, Ethel Wiggins who was nine,
Mabel Wiggins who was eight, May Wiggins who was seven, Daisy Wiggins who was
five, George Wiggins who was two, and Dora Wiggins who was five months old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P12 |
Flora Collett was born at Harefield in 1875, the
daughter of Jacob Collett and his wife Margaret Lacey. Flora was five years old in the Harefield
census of 1881, when she was living there with her family. By the time she was 15 or 16, she had left
her family in Harefield, although no positive identification for her
whereabouts has so far been found.
Towards the end of the century Flora married William Bowden, but
again, no record of the couple has been found in the census of 1901, by which
time their marriage had produced their first two children. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
However, during
the first decade of the new century a further three children were born into
the family, the last of which was born after the family had settled in
Harefield. The census in 1911 listed
the family as William and Flora Bowden, both 35, Mabel Bowden 12, George
Bowden 11, Ethel Bowden who was eight, Emma Bowden who was four, and Ellen
Bowden who was two years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P13 |
Thomas Alfred Collett was born at
Harefield in 1878, another son of Jacob Collett and Margaret Lacey, his birth
recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 32) during the last quarter of that year. As Alfred Collett, he was two years old in
the Harefield census of 1881. Ten
years later he was again described as Alfred Collett, who was 13, although in
the March census of 1901 he was recorded as unmarried Thomas A Collett, aged
22, who was still living with his family on the High Street in Harefield,
from where he was working as a labourer at the local cement works. Thomas Alfred Collett is understood to have
been involved in the Boer War with the Middlesex Regiment and also later
served in the early days of the First World War. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In the census
conducted in 1911, the entry for Thomas Alfred Collett was incorrectly in the
following way. Firstly, his two
forenames were reversed, and secondly his actual age was misrepresented. The entry therefore stated that Alfred
Thomas Collett from Harefield was 28 years old (not 32) and a bricklayer’s
labourer, when he was one just one of two children still living with their
parents at 9 Waterloo Villas on the High Street in Harefield. Three years later, the marriage of Thomas
Alfred CoIlett and Lily Eunice Woodley was recorded at Uxbridge register
office (Ref. 3a 113) during the third quarter of 1914. Not long after that Thomas rejoined the army, but was later disabled
and given an honourable discharge on 20th November 1915, when the
army record simply named him as Thomas Collett. His wife was considerably younger than
Thomas, with her birth, at Harefield at the end of the first week of February
in 1892, recorded at Uxbridge during the first quarter of 1892, the eldest
child of Thomas and Fanny Woodley of Harefield Moor. On leaving school, Lily Eunice entered
domestic service and, in the Ickenham (near Harefield) census of 1911, when
she was 19, she was a general servant who was still living at home with her
parents. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It was only
after Thomas had been discharged by the army, that he and Lily started their
family, with a total of six children born between 1917 and 1929. Previously though, it was known that it was
their eldest son who was named in the 1925 Codicil to the 1923 Will of Thomas
Alfred Collett’s uncle Job Collett (Ref. 41O14), his son Thomas replacing
Bert Collett (Ref. 41Q1) aka Herbert Henry Collett, the son of Job’s nephew
Harry (Henry James) Collett (Ref. 41P1), who displeased Job Collett over the
evils of drink, between those two years, to have his name removed (see
Will in Legal Documents) |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
New information received in early 2013
from Dave Collett of Grayshott in Hampshire indicated that Alfred and Lily (Lilian)
had a total of seven children, while only the six listed below have been
positively identified, when their mother’s maiden-name in each case was
confirmed as Woodley when their births were recorded at Uxbridge register
office. The couple’s youngest child
was David George Collett who was born in 1929, and was only two years old
when his father died. The
aforementioned Dave Collett was the eldest of the two children of David
George Collett and his wife Doreen M Ryder.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Thomas Alfred Collett was buried at St
Mary’s Church in Harefield during 1931, the same grave being the resting
place for his widow who died nearly forty years after. Thomas and his family were residing at 66 High Street in Harefield at the time of
his death. The property was one of a
number of terraced houses built by the earlier members of the Collett family
and were originally known as Waterloo Villas.
Their son David George often talked about 'The Collett Trust' and it
is understood that it was a reference to how the family building business
ended up, and that the dwelling formed part of the trust holding. The much later death of Lily Eunice Collett
was recorded at the Middlesex Hillingdon register office (Ref. 13 147) during
the first three months of 1978, when she was 87 years of age, and when her
date of birth was confirmed as 6th February 1892.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Interesting
Note: In 1918, Isaac and Mary Collett
(Ref. 41P8) were living at 6 Waterloo Villas, while living next door at 8
Waterloo Villas in 1917 was his married sister Ellen Elizabeth Harman nee
Collett (above). Both couples
lost a son in the Great War during each of those years; they were Alfred Collett
the son of Isaac and Mary, and John Harman the son of John Harman and Ellen
Elizabeth Collett. See Appendix One, a
comment made by Alfred Harman in 1910 about the earlier Collett family of
house-builders. Two later members of
the family, Thomas Alfred Collett and David George Collett - the two sons of
Thomas Alfred and Lilly Eunice Woodley listed below - built their own homes
in Harefield during the early 1960s. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q21 |
Thomas
Alfred Collett |
Born in 1917 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q22 |
Joan
Eunice Collett |
Born in 1919 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q23 |
John
Edward Collett |
Born in 1922 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q24 |
Constance
Gwyneth Collett |
Born in 1924 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q25 |
Eunice
Evelyn Collett |
Born in 1927 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q26 |
David
George Collett |
Born in 1929 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P14 |
Mabel Collett was born at Harefield in 1881 and
just after the census in April that year.
She was nine years old in the Harefield census of 1891, but had left
the family home to be married by March 1901.
It was just prior to the census that year that Mabel, aged 20, married
Harry Short, who was 21, after which the childless couple settled in the area
of Rickmansworth, where they were living on 31st March 1901, and
where Harry was employed as a general labourer. Over the next ten years Mabel presented
Harry with three children, and by April 1911 the family was living in
Harefield. Harry Short was 32, Mabel
Short was 29, and their three children were Alfred Short who was ten, Mabel
Short who was four, and Thomas Short who was one year old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P15 |
Lewis George Collett was born at
Harefield in 1883, the youngest son of Jacob Collett and Margaret Lacey. In the census of 1891 for Harefield, he was
recorded simply as George Collett, aged seven years. By the time of the next census in March
1901 Louis G Collett was 18 and was still living with his parents at the
family home on the High Street in Harefield, where he was working with his
father as a bricklayer’s apprentice.
He was still unmarried ten years later, when he was still living at
Harefield with his parents, when he was recorded as Lewis George Collett, aged
25 instead of 28. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P16 |
Ethel Collett was born at Harefield in 1885, the
youngest child of Jacob and Margaret Collett.
She was five years old in 1891 and in 1901 she was 15, when she was
still living with her parents at High Street in Harefield, where she was also
working as a cotton spinner. Within
the next four years Ethel married Edward (Ted) Cooper who was the same age as
Ethel. During the years up to 1911
Ethel and Ted had three children, so in the census that year the family
living at Harefield comprised Edward Cooper, aged 25, Ethel Cooper, also 25,
and their three children Ethel Cooper who was five, Ellen Cooper who was two,
and Edward Cooper who was just one month old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P17 |
Lottie Collett was born at Harefield in 1866, the
eldest child of William Collett and Charlotte Ward. It seems likely that she was baptised as
Charlotte, after her mother, but was referred to Lottie all of her life. All her early years were spent with her
family in Harefield, where she was four years old in 1871, and 14 years old
in 1881. She was still living with her
parents at Harefield in 1891, when Lottie Collett was 24. It was during the next few years that Lottie
married William Gregory, as confirmed by the March census in 1901, when she
and William were living at Watford Urban with their first child. Lottie Gregory from Harefield was 34, while
her husband William Gregory from Ruislip who was also 34, was employed as a
railway clerk. Their daughter was six
years old Gladys L Gregory who was born at Midway Park in Hertfordshire. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Lottie may well have been with-child
on the day of the census since, shortly thereafter the census day she gave
birth to another daughter. This was
confirmed in the next census in 1911 when the family of four were living in
the Uxbridge area. On that occasion
Lottie Gregory and her husband William were both 44, while their two children
were Gladys Lilian Gregory, aged 16, and Winifred Alice Gregory who was nine
years old.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P18 |
William David Collett was born at
Harefield in 1868, the eldest son of David and Charlotte Collett. It was the Harefield census in 1871 in
which he was recorded as William David Collett aged three years. In 1881, at
the age of 12, he was still living at Harefield with his family, as he was
ten years later in 1891, when he was 22.
His mother managed the grocer’s shop in Harefield, so it seems logical
that by the time of the census in 1901 William, aged 31, was working as a
baker and shopkeeper in the village.
Living with him at 118 High Street in Harefield were his sisters Alice
and Grace (below), who was also working with him as his shop
assistants. With no record at all of William in
the next census of 1911, when he would have been around 42 years old, it
might be assumed that he had either left England for one of the colonies, or
had passed away by then. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P19 |
Elizabeth Collett was born at Harefield in 1870, and
was under one year old in the Harefield census on 1871. She was 10 in 1881 and 20 in 1891, when on
both occasions she was still living at Harefield with her parents. One source says that she was described as
Clara Beth Collett in the census of 1891, while being simply Elizabeth in
both the 1871 and 1881 census records.
With no record found of her as Elizabeth Collett in 1901, it may be
safe to assume that she was married by then. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P20 |
Joseph Collett was born at Harefield in 1872 and
in 1881 he was eight years old and living with his family at the grocer’s
shop in Harefield. He was still living
there with his family in 1891 when he was 18.
It seems likely,
although not yet proved, that Joseph married Annie Maria Cawdell shortly
after the 1891 Census, perhaps in late 1892 or early 1893. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By 1901 the marriage between Joseph
and Annie had produced three children for the couple, but at the time of the
census bricklayer Joseph, who was 27, was a patient in hospital in St
Marylebone. His wife Annie, who was
born at Luton, was 28 and she was living at Willesden in Middlesex with their
three children. They were Grace aged
seven years and born at Aveley near Thurrock in Essex, Winifred who was four
and born at Harefield, and one-year-old Charles who was born at Harlesden,
not far from Willesden. The whole
family was listed living together at Willesden in the census of 1911, when
Joseph and Annie Maria were both 38, Grace Annie Collett was 17, Winifred
Lilian Collett was 14, and Charles William Collett was eleven years old.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At the time of the death of Joseph
Collett on 27th October 1918 he was residing at 35 Winchelsea Road
in Harlesden, Middlesex, when administration of his personal effects of £94 6
Shillings and 8 Pence was granted to his widow Annie Collett in London on 20th
March 1920.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q27 |
Grace Annie Collett |
Born in 1893 at Aveley nr Thurrock |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q28 |
Winifred Lilian Collett |
Born in 1896 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q29 |
Charles
William Collett |
Born in 1899
at Harlesden |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P21 |
Alfred Collett was born at Harefield in 1874,
another son of David Collett and Charlotte Ward. He was six years old and 16 years of age in
the two Harefield census returns for 1881 and 1891, when he was living there with
his parents on both occasions. For
whatever reason, perhaps due to him taking part in the Boer War, no trace has
been found of Alfred in the census that took place at the end of March in
1901. By the time of the census in April 1911, Alfred was once
again living with his parents David and Charlotte Collett in Harefield, when
he was listed as an unmarried man at 36 years of age, whose occupation was
that of a builder. It is therefore
very likely that he had taken on the family building company from his father,
a retired builder. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It is possible, although not yet proved
that, during the following year, he became a married man, the wedding of
Alfred Collett and Mary Elizabeth Ottley (born in 1876) recorded at Uxbridge
register office (Ref. 3a 47) during the second quarter of 1912. Eight years after that day, the death of
Alfred Collett took place at Harefield on 24th March 1920, at the
age of 46. What is known from his
death record is that his last occupation was that of a baker, like his
brother William (above) who ran the village bread shop in Harefield in
1901, ably assisted by Alfred’s two younger sisters Alice and Grace (below).
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P22 |
Alice Collett was born at Harefield on 2nd
March 1876, the daughter of David Collett and Charlotte Ward. Alice’s mother was the shopkeeper at the
grocer’s shop in Harefield in 1881, when Alice was five years old. Ten years later Alice was still living
there with her parents when she was 15.
Just after the turn of the century, and at the age of 25 in 1901,
unmarried Alice Collett was working as a shop assistant with her brother William
(above) at his baker’s shop at 118 High Street in Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Four
years later on 24th April 1905 Alice Collett married Francis
Creighton at Uxbridge and later, in 1923, Francis Creighton was one of the
trustees in the Will of Alice’s uncle Job Collett (Ref. 41O14). (see Will in Legal Documents). Francis was known as Frank and was
born at Uppercleugh, Applegarth in Dumfriesshire, Scotland on 13th
August 1879, the youngest son of William Creighton and Jane Armstrong
Ker. At the time of the census in 1901
Francis Creighton was 22 and was working as a builder’s clerk, while living
at 74 High Street in Harefield with his widowed father and two older
brothers. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
According to the census in April 1911,
Alice Creighton nee Collett was recorded staying with her parents in
Harefield, with her one-month-old son.
Alice Creighton was 35 and from Harefield, while her son was Francis
Collett Creighton. Tragically Francis
Collett Creighton, who was born at Haringey on 5th March 1911,
only survived for just over three years before he died at Harefield on 6th
October 1914. Where Alice’s husband
was at the time of the census in 1911 has not been determined.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Sixteen months prior to the death of
her first child, Alice presented Frank with another son, Norman Collett
Creighton, who was born at Harefield on 27th May 1913, and who
died at Beaconsfield on 9th July 1998. Norman later married Jean Lingard Harrison
at Harefield on 4th January 1936, and they had three children, one
of whom was Jane Rosemary Creighton who married Anthony Burrows at Gerrards
Cross on 12th September 1964.
And it was Anthony who kindly provided the information about their
Creighton family. It was also at
Harefield that Alice Creighton nee Collett died on 25th June 1935
at the age of 59, while her husband Frank Creighton lived on for another
twenty-four years, before he passed away at Harefield on 27th
December 1959.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P23 |
Grace Collett was born at Harefield in 1878 and
was the youngest child of David and Charlotte Collett. In 1881 her family was living at the
grocer’s shop in Harefield which was managed by her mother. Grace was two years old at that time, and
was 11 years old in 1891. By the time
of the next census in 1901 she was 22 and was working as a baker’s assistant
in Harefield at the shop run by her brother William (above) at 118
High Street. In 1910 Grace Collett married Evelyn
Hurden at |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Evelyn was five years younger than
Grace and was born at Bow in
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P24 |
Arthur Frederick Collett was born at
Abbey Road in Merton on 30th November 1865. His birth certificate for the registration
district of Croydon gave the sub-district as Mitcham in Surrey, and his
father as Richard Collett, a copper forger.
However, not
long after he was born, he and his parents were living just one mile from
Merton at Wimbledon, where Arthur’s two siblings were born. According to the 1881 Census, and at the
age of 15, Arthur and his family were living at 2 Vine Cottages in Hubert
Road in Wimbledon, from where he was employed as a draper’s porter. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The census record also confirmed his
place of birth as being Merton. Ten years
later in 1891, the census on that occasion placed Arthur living and working
within the Wandsworth & Putney registration district of London. However, his name was incorrectly recorded
as Arthur Collette, aged 26, although the census return did confirm his place
of birth as Merton. The photograph
above would appear to have been taken possibly before, or around, the time
that he was married in 1908. He later
became a master decorator and specialised in ecclesiastical decoration. In association with his work, he travelled
to Czechoslovakia to learn everything he could about stained-glass window
making and restoration. And it may
have been during the spring of 1901 that he was there, as he has not so far
been located in the UK national census which took place that year.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Perhaps it was his work that took him
to the Newbury area where he met Edna Digweed, to whom he was later
married. Eddie, as she was known
within the family, was eighteen years younger that Arthur and was born during
1883 at Yattendon, a village to the north-east of Newbury. At the time they met Edna was living with
her parents at Shaw-cum-Donnington on the northern outskirts of Newbury. Edna’s father was Levi Digweed, a
blacksmith, who was born at Greenham near Newbury in 1858, who was only seven
years older than his future son-in-law.
Edna’s mother was Fanny Levi who was also born in 1858. Edna was 17 and was working as dressmaker
at the time of the 1901 Census for Shaw-cum-Donnington, when she was living
there with her family.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The
marriage between Edna, aged 24, and Arthur, aged 42, took place at St Mary’s
Church in Shaw-cum-Donnington on 23rd September 1908. Arthur’s place of residence was stated as
being St Nicholas Road in Newbury and his father was confirmed as Richard
Benjamin Collett. Less than three
years later, the pair of them were settled in Shaw-cum-Donnington where,
according to the census of 1911, Arthur Frederick Collett was 45, and his
wife Edna was 27. By that time Edna
had presented her husband with their first child, Amy Beatrice, who was one
year old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Sadly,
the marriage only lasted for just less than five years since, tragically on
23rd May 1913, Arthur fell from a ladder while working on the
redecoration of St Mary’s Church and never recovered from his injuries. Around that time the family was living at
Shaw Cottage in Shaw-cum-Donnington.
However, during their short life together the marriage produced three
children for Arthur and Edna, all three being been while the couple were
living in Newbury. Edna Collett, nee
Digweed, survived for a further thirty-seven years and died at Newbury on 25th
May 1950. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q30 |
Amy
Beatrice Collett |
Born in 1909 at Newbury |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q31 |
Raymond
Bernard Collett |
Born in 1912 at Newbury |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q32 |
Arthur
Frederick Collett |
Born in 1913 at Newbury |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P25 |
Clara C Collett was born at |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Once they were married the couple
settled in East Grinstead where their children were born. They were Leonard Charles Page and Hilda
Margaret Page, although there may have been others. According to the East Grinstead census of
1901, their parents were Clara Page from Wimbledon, who was 32, and her
husband Charles Page, aged 33, who was working as a town postman at that
time. Two further children were added
to the family over the next few years, so by 1911 the family living at East
Grinstead comprised Charles Page 43, Clara Page 42, Leonard Page 12, Hilda
Page 10, Elsie Page who was seven, and Freda Page who was six years old.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P26 |
Bernard Bolton Collett was born at
Wimbledon on 25th May 1877, his second name coming from his
grandmother’s maiden-name. At the age
of three years, he was living with his family at 2 Vine Cottages on Hubert
Road in Wimbledon. Where Bernard and
his parents were living in 1891 has not been discovered, but sometime after
1881, he and his parents moved to Nutfield, south-east of Reigate in
Surrey. And it was there that the
three of them were living in March 1901.
At that time Bernard, aged 23, was working with his father Richard at
the local Fuller’s Earth Works, where he was an engine driver. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It may have been during that period in
his life that he met Beatrice Annie Holmes to whom he was married less than
two years later. The couple was
married by banns at Holy Trinity Church in Wimbledon on 17th
January 1903. Beatrice was born at
Clapham on 2nd October 1877, and was the daughter of cabinet maker
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
At the time of their wedding, Bernard
was 27 and was living at Nutfield, where he was working as an engine driver,
while Beatrice was 24 and she was living at 155 Graham Road in
Wimbledon. During their life together,
the marriage produced five children for Bernard and Beatrice. The first child was born at Merstham, just
north-east of Reigate, with the next four born after the family had settled
in Nutfield. And it was at Nutfield
that the young family was recorded in the census of 1911. On that occasion Bernard Collett from
Wimbledon was 32 and a stationary engine man employed in the production of
Fuller’s Earth. His wife Beatrice
Collett from Brixton was also 32, while their four children were described as,
Ethel Collett who was seven and from Merstham, Ivy Collett who was five,
Leonard Collett who was four, and Herbert Collett who was just three months
old, all born at Nutfield.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Six months later, during October 1911,
Bernard was still working at the Nutfield Fuller’s Earth Works, where his
father Richard was still working as a foreman. Sadly, it was Bernard who was on hand to
witness his father’s death at Cockley Pits on the ninth of October, and it
was Bernard who reported the death to the registrar at the Horley
sub-district of Reigate, where his father and mother were then living.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Tragically, Bernard Bolton Collett died
while he was still fairly young, when he passed away on 3rd April
1915 while he was attending the St James Infirmary in Ouseley Road in
Balham. He was just 39 years of age
and the cause of his passing was cardiac failure, coupled with chronic
bronchitis and emphysema. Immediately
prior to him being admitted into hospital, Bernard was living at 118 Penwith
Road in Wandsworth, where he was employed as a stoker at a local block of
residential flats. His death was
reported to the South west Battersea sub-district of Wandsworth by his
sister-in-law C Holmes. It is interesting to note that both
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Following Bernard’s death, the family
was tragically split up. This resulted
in his two oldest boys, Leonard who was eight and Herbert who was not yet
five years old, being taken from the family and placed in the care of a local
Doctor Barnardo’s Home. Only the two
daughters, who were old enough to support their mother, and their baby
brother Arthur, who was just over two years of age, remained living with
their mother Beatrice, who lived the life of a widow for the next fifty
years. Beatrice Annie Collett, nee
Holmes, died on 3rd April 1966, at the age of 89.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q33 |
Ethel
Eveline Collett |
Born in 1903 at Merstham, Surrey |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q34 |
Ivy
Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1905 at Nutfield, Surrey |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q35 |
Leonard
Archibald Collett |
Born in 1907 at Nutfield, Surrey |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q36 |
Herbert
Charles Collett |
Born in 1910 at Nutfield, Surrey |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q37 |
Arthur
Richard Collett |
Born in 1912 at Nutfield, Surrey |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P27 |
Emily Mary Collett was born at Harefield on 13th
December 1867 and was the base-born daughter of Mary Ann Collett, her birth
recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 33) during the first months of 1868. Following her illegitimate birth, Emily was
taken into the care of her widowed grandmother Sarah Collett at
Harefield. And it was with her
grandmother that Emily Mary Collett from Harefield, aged three years, was
living at the time of the census in 1871.
During the next few years her grandmother passed away, which resulted
in Emily going to live with her aunt Elizabeth Green nee Collett (Ref. 41O16),
Elizabeth being her mother’s older sister. The next census in 1881, Emily Collett from
Harefield was 13 years old, when she was living at 7 Cumming Street in
Clerkenwell, the home of James and Elizabeth Green. Over the following years Emily was reunited with
her mother Mary Ann, who was married by then and was residing at Hill End in
Harefield. Within the Harefield census
of 1891, Emily M Collett of Harefield was 23 when, both she and her base-born
brother Herbert (below), were living at the Hill End home of Mary Ann
Crook and her husband Thomas Crook.
The census return confirmed her relationship to Thomas Crook as stepdaughter,
and her brother as stepson. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Five years after
that census day, the marriage of Emily Mary Collett and William Charles Mead
was recorded at Uxbridge register office (Ref. 3a 53) during the third
quarter of 1896. By 1901, the
childless couple was living at Hill End in Harefield where Emily’s mother was
also living and where Mary Ann Crook died in 1903, with Emily at her
bedside. On the census day, William
Charles Mead from Rickmansworth was 30, his occupation that of a carpenter,
when Emily Mary Mead from Harefield was 33 with no stated occupation. Just thirteen months after attending her
mother, when she passed away, Emily Mary Mead died at Hill End on 18th
July 1904, with her husband by her side, her premature death recorded at
Uxbridge register office when she was only 36 years of age. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P28 |
Henry Hawkins Herbert Collett was born at
Harefield on 16th May 1872, his birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a
30), the second child born to unmarried Mary Ann Collett, no father mentioned. The order of his three forenames changed
during the early years of his life, as recorded in various records and
indicated below, while later in his life he was known as Harry. The year before he was born his mother Mary
Ann was living with her widowed uncle William Hawkins at his home in
Rickmansworth. The inclusion of
Hawkins in Henry’s name suggests that William was his father, which was later
confirm when Herbert became a married man.
On the day of the census in 1881, as Henry Crook (sic) aged nine years
and from Harefield, he was living with his mother and his stepfather Mary Ann
Crook and Thomas Crook at
Hill End in Harefield, when he was incorrectly recorded as the son of Thomas
Crook. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The situation had been rectified by
the time of Harefield census in 1891 when, as Herbert H Collett, he was again
living at Hill End with his mother and stepfather, together with his older
base-born sister Emily (above), when both were acknowledged as the
stepchild of Thomas Crook. Herbert H
Collett from Harefield was 19 and a general labourer. On that same census day, Herbert’s future wife,
eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Creasey, was lodging at 5 Park Terrace in
Harefield, having moved there from Park Road in Luton, Bedfordshire, where
she was born on 25th January 1873.
It was very likely that Elizabeth first knew Emily Mary Collett
through working together at the Harefield asbestos works, where Elizabeth was
an asbestos spinner and Emily was an asbestos cloth weaver. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Four years later at Harefield, on 25th
December 1895, Henry Herbert Hawkins Collett, aged 23 years and the son of William
Hawkins – a farm bailiff, married Elizabeth Creasey, aged 22 and the daughter
of James Creasey. The event was recorded at
Uxbridge register office (Ref. 3a 49), while it was only five months
after that day when the couple’s first child was born at Harefield, and he
was followed by a further eight children, all born at Harefield. Only the first two children were living at
Hill End with their parents in 1901, when Herbert Collett was 28 and a
bricklayer’s labourer, Elizabeth Collett from Luton was also 28 and working
as a servant in a local shop, and the two children were Herbert Collett aged
four years, and Violet Collett who was two years old. On that occasion, it was originally believed
that the couple already had a son Ernest, who was born and died shortly
thereafter, although no such birth or death record has been found at the Uxbridge
register office. As a result of the
lack of evidence, his name has been deleted from the list of children below. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
During the
following decade, a further five children were added to the family at
Harefield, where they were still living in 1911. Every member of the family had been born at
Harefield, except Herbert’s wife, whose place of birth was recorded as Luton
in Bedfordshire. Herbert Henry Collett
was 38 and a general labourer working with a bricklayer, Elizabeth Collett
was 37, and their seven children were Herbert Collett who was 14, Violet
Collett who was 12, Gladys Collett who was nine, Ivy Collett who was seven,
Ernest Collett who was five, Irene Collett who was two, and Nellie Collett who
was just three months old. Despite her
advancing years, Elizabeth presented Herbert with two more children over the
next seven years, making around forty-five years old for the birth of the
couple’s last child at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Much later, when Elizabeth
Collett died at the age of 70 years on 23rd December 1943, while
residing at 8 Breakspear Road, West Ruislip in Hillingdon, she was described
as the wife of Henry Herbert Collett. Present
at her death was George W Coster, son-in-law, of Oakleigh, Breakspear Road in
Ruislip. A month later, an additional note had been written on her death
certificate as follows: “A clerical
error in column 5 has been corrected on 27th January 1944 by me (the
deputy registrar) in the presence of H Collett, widower of the deceased, on
the authority of the registrar general”. It would appear that Henry
had gone out of his way to include ‘Hawkins’ into his list of forenames,
seemingly wishing to acknowledge the name of his father. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Eight years after
being widowed, Henry Hawkins Herbert Collett died at 8 Breakspear Road in
Ruislip on 2nd August 1951, when he was 79 years old. Present at his death was his son Ernest R
Collett of 54 Hatherleigh Road in Ruislip.
His death was recorded at Harrow register office (Ref. 5f 279) under
the name Henry H Collett. The sons and
daughters of Sidney Arthur Collett, his youngest son, were never told of the
illegitimacy of their paternal grandfather, which appears to have been a
secret that has only been revealed by researching the family history. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q38 |
Herbert
Alfred Collett |
Born in 1896 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q39 |
Thirza Winifred Collett |
Born in 1897 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q40 |
Violet Lilian Collett |
Born in 1899 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q41 |
Gladys May Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1902 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q42 |
Ivy Emily G Collett |
Born in 1904 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q43 |
Ernest Reginald Collett |
Born in 1905 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q44 |
Percy
James Collett |
Born in 1905 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q45 |
Irene
Vera Collett |
Born in 1908 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q46 |
Elinor Creasey Collett |
Born in 1910 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q47 |
Sidney
Arthur Collett |
Born in 1914 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q48 |
May Hilda Collett |
Born in 1918 at Hill End, Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P29 |
Margaret Sarah Collett was born at
Marston Moretaine near Bedford, either at the end of 1867 or early in 1868. It was also at Marston Moretaine that she
was baptised on 3rd March 1868, the daughter of James Collett and
Ann Smith Fells. In 1881 she was 13
when she was living with her family at Park Lane in Harefield. She was still living with her parents after
the start of the new century when she 33, unmarried, and working as a
domestic nurse in March 1901. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P30 |
Harriet Collett was born at
Harefield in 1868, another daughter James and Ann Collett, her birth recorded
at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 37) during the third quarter of that year. No record of her or her family has been
found for the census conducted in 1871, while by 1881, eleven-year-old
Harriet Collett from Harefield was living with her family at Park Lane in
Harefield. She was not living with her
family at Harefield ten years later in 1891.
During the previous year, a certain Harriet Collett married Philip
Joseph Poulter, the event recorded at Brentford in Middlesex (Ref. 3a 107)
during the third quarter of 1890.
However, she may not have been Harriet from Harefield, because she was
said to have been born at Brentford. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P31 |
Sarah Ann Collett was born at Harefield towards the
end of 1871, the third child of James and Ann Collett. In 1881 Sarah was nine years old when she
and her family were living at Park Lane in Harefield. However, on leaving school she left her
family in Harefield when she took up employment as a domestic servant at a
private house in the High Street in Rickmansworth. The census in 1891 recorded that Sarah A
Collett from Harefield was 18 years old and a general servant, where she was
working alongside Edith Heard, aged 22, who was nurse supported by nursemaid
Minnie Allum who was only 11 years of age. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It may have been
around three years later that Sarah Ann married George Henry Nicholls, who
was born at Hayes in Middlesex in 1867, the son of Benjamin and Mary
Nicholls. One year later Sarah
presented George with what appears to be their only child, George Henry
Nicholls junior. By 1901 the family of
three was living in the Ruislip area where George was 35 and a labourer at a
brick field, Sarah was 29, and their son George was seven. Ten years later the same family was still
residing within the Ruislip registration district. George Henry Nicholls from Hayes was 43,
Sarah Nicholls was 38, and their son George Henry Nicholls was 16, both of
them having been born at Harefield. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P32 |
Rosina (Rose) Collett was born at
Harefield in 1876 and was five years old in the census for Harefield in
1881. Upon leaving school Rose entered
into domestic service, which caused her to leave her family home in Harefield
to take up employment in the Watford, where she was listed at Rosina Collett,
aged 16 and from Harefield, who was employed as a general servant with the Andrews
at their Queens Road home. The only
other members of the Collett family from Harefield that were living in that
same area on that occasion were Rosina’s aunts, the cousins Mary A Collett
(Ref. 41O1) and Harriet Collett (Ref. 41O22).
By the time of the census in 1901 Rose was recorded in the St George
Hanover Square area of London as Rosina Collett from Harefield who was 25. It was just over three years later that she
married John Oakley from Harpenden in Hertfordshire at All Saints Church in
St John’s Wood within the London Borough of Westminster on 15th
June 1904. The record of the marriage
confirmed that Rosina Collett was 28 and the daughter of James Collett, while
John Oakley was 25 and the son of James Oakley. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Over the
remainder of that decade Rosina gave birth to four children although
tragically only two were still alive by the time of the census in 1911. On that occasion the family of four was
residing in St Albans where it was Rosina Oakley from Harefield who was 35
who signed the census return. Her
husband of six years was farmer labourer John Oakley who was 33 and their
three-roomed accommodation may have been provided by his employer. Their two surviving children had both been
born at Redbourn in Hertfordshire and were Dorothy Oakley who was five and
already attending school and Ivy Oakley who was two years old. Whether she was a casualty of the Great War
or a victim of the flu pandemic that followed, the death of Rosina Oakley was
recorded at St Albans register office during the last three months of 1918
when she was 42. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P33 |
Walter Herbert Collett was born at
Harefield near the end of 1877, with his birth recorded at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 33)
during the first three months of 1878. He was the sixth child of James Theophilus Bolton Collett and Ann
Smith Fells and was three years old in the 1881 Census for Harefield. He was still there with his family ten
years later in 1891, when his age was recorded as 15 (sic). Nine years later, the marriage of Walter
Herbert Collett and Florence Bedford was recorded at the Uxbridge register
office (Ref. 3a 66) during the last three months of 1900. It was as Flora Bedford that her birth was
recorded at Derby during the second quarter of 1878 who, by 1881, was living
within the Camberwell area of London. A
few months after their wedding day the pair was residing at Hallowell Road in
Ruislip where, in the census conducted in 1901, they were recorded as Walter
H Collett from Harefield who was 23 and working as a domestic coachman, and
Florence Collett from Derby who was 24, with no stated occupation. It would also
appear that the couple had a long wait for the birth of their first child,
who was born nearly ten years later, although it is possible there had been
earlier children born to the couple who did not survive. Certainly, the census in the April 1911,
confirmed that the family of three was living in the Lambeth district of
London. Walter H Collett from
Harefield was 32 and employed by a railway company as an electrical machine
attendant. His wife Florence Collett
from Derby was also 32, while their son Herbert Collett of Stockwell was recorded
as one-year-old when he
was nearer to becoming two years of age. Staying with the family that day was
Florence’s younger brother Frederick Bedford from Derby who was 30. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Between 1901 and
1910, quite a few births of Collett children were recorded at Uxbridge, where
their deaths were also recorded shortly after they were born, some of which
may have been the earlier children of Walter and Florence. The birth of son “Herbert Collett at Stockwell” was recorded at Lambeth
register office (Ref. 1d 400) during the second quarter of 1909 as Herbert
David F Collett. With war
raging in Europe during the following decade, in which Walter may have been
involved, it is not surprising that the couple’s last child was born six
years later in 1917, when his birth was recorded at the Marylebone register
office in London, with his mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Bedford. Many years later, Walter was living in Kent
when he died, the death of Walter Herbert Collett recorded at Maidstone
register office (Ref. 5b
520) during the third quarter of 1955, when he was 77 years old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41Q49 |
Herbert David F Collett |
Born in 1909 at Stockwell |
||||||||||||||
|
41Q50 |
Reginald J Collett |
Born in 1917 at Marylebone |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P34 |
James Thomas
Collett was born at Harefield in 1880 another son of James and Ann Collett, whose birth was registered at
Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 256) during the last quarter of the year. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P35 |
Reginald Richard Collett was born at
Harefield on 12th February 1887 where he was baptised on 24th
April 1887, the son of gardener James Collett and his wife Ann. He was living there at Park Lane with his
family at the time of the census in 1891 when he was incorrectly recorded as
Bignal Collett aged four years. Ten
years after that he was still living with his parents at Harefield where he
was working as a farmer’s boy at the age of 14. After a further ten years, according to the
census in 1911, Reginald Collett of Harefield said he was 28, unless that was
a misinterpretation of 23, which was his actual age. By that time, he was still a single man
living at Harefield with his parents James and Ann Collett. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41P36 |
Daisy Beatrice
Collett was born at Harefield on 23rd March 1889 and was the last child of James Theophilus Bolton Collett and Ann
Smith Fells. Her birth, like those of her older siblings, was
registered at Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 240) during the first three months of that
year. On leaving school, she entered
domestic service and by 1911 Daisy Beatrice Collett from Harefield was 22 and
one of the four live-in servant at the Slough home of the Hornby family when
she was a parlour maid. Upon being
married she became Daisy Beatrice Cutts who was residing at Sutton in Surrey
where her death was recorded (Vol. 15 69) at the start of 1975 at the age of
85. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q1 |
Herbert Henry Collett was born in London during the
summer of 1881, with his birth registered at Westminster St Margaret (Ref. 1a
513). This may have taken place at Golden Square
in Soho where his parents, Henry James Collett and Harriet Goodman, were
living at the time of their wedding in the latter part of 1881. Ten years later the family was living
at 6 Monkton Street in Lambeth, where Herbert was recorded as being ten years
old. After another ten years Herbert was
still living with his parents, by which time the family had left Lambeth and
instead was living in Block 6 at Victoria Dwellings in Battersea, as
confirmed by the census in 1901.
Herbert Collett from Soho was described as being 19 years of age
when his occupation was that of a plumber’s labourer. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Two years later,
the marriage of Herbert Henry Collett and Edith Young was recorded at
Wandsworth register office (Ref.
1d 1057) during the second quarter of 1903. Their marriage produced eight children, the
first three of which were born while the couple was living in Battersea,
where Edith had been born, the daughter of Richard and Martha Young. In 1911, the family of five was still living
in Battersea and was recorded as Herbert Collett from Westminster who was 29
and whose occupation was that of a rougher at an optical glass works, his
wife Edith Collett who was 26, daughters Louise Collett who was five and Rose
Collett who was three, and son Herbert Collett who was one year old. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The births of
the couple’s last five children were also recorded at Wandsworth register
office, when their mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Young, and they too
may have been born at Battersea.
Interestingly, a child named Kate Collett was credited to the couple,
but no record of such a child has been found.
Edith Louise Collett of 22 Westover Road in Wandsworth was already a
widow when she died there on 10th December 1946, her death
recorded at Wandsworth register office (Ref. 5d 751), when she was 61 years old, but
only as Edith Collett. The
administrator for her estate of £73 12 Shillings and 6 Pence was confirmed in
London on 23rd January 1947 as her son Herbert Henry Collett, a
moulder. It was five years prior to
her passing that the death of her husband Herbert Henry Collett was recorded
at Barnstaple register office in North Devon (Ref. 5b 1334) during the first quarter of 1941,
when he was 59. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R1 |
Louise Margaret Collett |
Born in 1905 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R2 |
Harriet Rose Collett |
Born in 1907 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R3 |
Herbert Henry Collett |
Born in 1909 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R4 |
Leonard Sidney
Collett |
Born in 1911 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R5 |
George A Collett |
Born in 1913 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R6 |
Edmund Victor Collett |
Born in 1915 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R7 |
Nellie E Collett |
Born in 1917 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
41R8 |
Ruby Isabel Collett |
Born in 1919 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q2 |
Louisa Ellen Collett was born at St
Martin’s in Soho in 1884, the eldest daughter of Henry James Collett and his
wife and cousin Harriet Goodman. By
the time she was seven years old her family was living at 6
Monkton Street in Lambeth. Louisa was in
her teenage years when she married William Joyce, although this had not
happened by the time of the March census in 1901, when she was still Louisa E
Collett, aged 16. She had left the
family home by then and was employed as a general domestic servant while was
living and working in the Battersea area, not far from where her parents were
living. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Her marriage to
(1) William Joyce, took place sometime during the early years of the new
century, and produced four children for the couple. Louisa and William were living in the
Wandsworth area by 1911, not far from her older brother Herbert Collett (above)
and his family. However, it was during
the First World War that William Joyce died, leaving his widow Louisa with
her four children, Dorothy Joyce, Kitty Joyce, Billy Joyce,
and Jessie Joyce. This picture
of Louisa was taken during the war and, with her in the larger picture from
which it was extracted, was her mother, her father, and her brother Ted, who
was home on leave from the army. Two
of her mother’s Goodman nieces were also included in the photograph. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
After
the war, Louisa married (2) Harry Palmer and moved, with her four children
and his two sons from his previous marriage, to 62 Landseer Street in
Battersea, to be near to her parents at 31 Landseer Street and right next
door to her sister Irene at 60 Landseer Street. Unfortunately, Harry Palmer turned out to
be a terrible alcoholic and,
sadly, Louisa Ellen Palmer suffered a premature death when living at Balham
in South-West London, after which she was buried at Streatham Cemetery, Wandsworth
on 6th April 1922 aged 37. Her
passing was recorded at London register office (Ref. 1d 815). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Louisa’s
mother Harriet Collett could not face Harry Palmer being responsible for her
grandchildren, so she persuaded the War Office to treat them as war orphans
and were subsequently taken from their stepfather. As a direct result of that action the
children grew up much happier under the guardianship of their grandmother
Harriet and their Uncle Ted Collett, Louisa’s younger brother (below)
who jointly took on responsibility for their future welfare, he having no children of his
own. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q3 |
Harry Collett was born at St Martin’s in Soho in
1885. Apart from being recorded as six
years old in the Lambeth census of 1891, when he and his family were living
at 6 Monkton Street in Lambeth district of Newington, no further
record of him has been found, and his absence from the family in 1901 would
suggest that he may have died during the 1890s. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q4 |
Dorothy Mary Collett was born at
Westminster in 1888, although her birth was recorded at the Islington
register office (Ref. 1b 248) during the fourth quarter of that year. She was three years old in 1891 when she was
living at 6 Monkton Street in Lambeth with her family. During the 1890s the family moved again, so
by March 1901 Dorothy was twelve years old and was living with her family at
6 Victoria Dwellings in Battersea. Like most of the
other members of her family, the whereabouts of Dorothy has not been traced
in the census of 1911. However, before
she was 20 years old, she had given birth to two illegitimate
daughters following relationships with two American soldiers during the Great
War. Happily, the second of the two
GIs returned to England from America after the war to marry Dorothy, and to
take her and her two daughters, Maisie Collett and Sybil Collett,
back to America to live with him. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q5 |
Edmund John Collett was one of a set of twins born at
Battersea on 29th July 1895 and throughout his life he was known
as Ted. In the census of 1901 Ted was
listed as Edmund Collett and at that time he and his family were living at 6
Victoria Dwellings in Battersea. As
stated earlier in this family line, and rather strangely, no record of Ted or
any member of his Collett family has been found in the census of 1911. It is known that he served with the British
Army during the war. However, while
on front-line duty, he was injured and had to have a silver plate put into
his head. The operation was carried
out at Northallerton in Yorkshire in 1916. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It
was also around that time when his brother-in-law William Joyce, the husband
of his sister Louisa (above), was killed in action. Whilst his sister Louisa re-married after
the war, she too died after a few years, at which point Ted, and his mother
Harriet, took over the care of Louisa’s four children. By November 1925, he had found work as a
part-time postman in Wandsworth. This eventually became a full-time job,
which he loved, and he eventually received a long-term Service Medal from
Queen Elizabeth II during 1961. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It
was in October 1926 that Ted married Doris Carletta at Grampound in Cornwall,
with the wedding of
Edmund J Collett and Doris C Paynter recorded at St Austell register office
(Ref. 5c 211) during the last quarter of that year. The couple had moved to Cornwall to be
nearer to Doris’ family. Their
marriage produced no children of their own, but this was compensated for by
the couple continuing to look after the welfare of the orphaned children of Ted’s
sister Louisa, as if they were their own.
Doris had been
born at Grampound in 1896, a daughter of Thomas and Mary Paynter, and it was
in 1963 that the death of Doris C Collett aged 67 was recorded at Cornwall
register office (Ref. 7a 223). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By 1978 Edmund was a widower living in Cornwall, when
the West Briton & Cornwall Advertiser carried the following article on
page 9 of the newspaper. “Man (81) Dies After Collision – An 81-year-old widower,
Mr Edmund John Collett of Glencot, Old Hill in Grampound, died after he was
in collision with a car outside St Mewan School near St Austell on Monday
Evening. The driver was Mr Martin
Hamilton Pease, of 82 Eglos Road, Shortlanesend, Truro. Police are appealing for witnesses,
particularly the driver of which turned right from the main road towards St
Mewan at the time of the accident.” |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The newspaper cutting was supplied by Jonathan Leyland
and from which the record of the death of Edmund John Collett has been
located at Cornwall register office (Vol. 21 0554) during the first quarter
of 1978. This confirmed his date of
birth, as given above. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q6 |
George A Collett was born at Battersea on 29th
July 1895 and was a twin with his brother Ted (above). In March 1901 he and his family were living
at 6 Victoria Dwellings in Battersea, when he was listed in
the census as being George Collett of Battersea aged five years. As with the other members of his family, no record of
George has been found in the census of 1911.
However, at the outbreak of war, when George was 19, he joined the
Royal Fusiliers. He became Private G A
Collett No. 134918 and served on the frontline, but was
taken prisoner and was put to work in the salt mines. He returned to England after the war but
was very weak and died on 20th November 1920 during the flu-pandemic
which killed so many of the men who had survived the war. His army record showed that his next-of-kin
was his farther Henry James Collett and his mother Harriet Elizabeth Collett
of 31 Landseer Street in Battersea. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q7 |
Irene Harriet Rose Collett was born at
Battersea on 28th September 1896 and was four years old by
the time of the March census in 1901.
At that time Irene and her family were living at 6 Victoria Dwellings
in Battersea. Irene would have been 14
in April 1911 but so far, no record of her has been found. What we know however, is that Irene was still living
in the Battersea area in 1914, since it was there on 4th April
1915 that she married Joseph Holland Malins, who was
a lorry driver and a porter. He was
partially disabled while still a child, when a costermonger’s large
wheelbarrow ran over his leg. The
broken leg was incorrectly set at the time of the accident and, as a result,
he had a raised boot to level out his walking. Irene therefore took in ironing to earn
extra money for the family. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Irene
and Joseph both loved music; Irene sang and knew all the latest songs, while
Joseph played the piano in the local pubs.
Immediately after they were married Irene and Joseph lived first at 60
Landseer Street, right next door to her sister Louisa, and not far from her
parents at 31 Landseer Street. They
had eight children and, after living at Landseer Street, the family moved to
a house in the adjacent road of Longhedge Street. Landseer
Street has been replaced by Parkfield Industrial Estate, while Longhedge
Street survived the redevelopment and is still there today, just off
Battersea Park Road (A3205). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
During
the Second World War Joseph Malins was employed in the Home Guard and also
worked for the American Army, driving trucks out of the large Blandford camp
in Dorset. Irene and the Malins family
were evacuated from London and placed in the relative safe of Bournemouth, to
be nearer to her husband. After the
war Joseph was diagnosed with cancer at St Guy’s Hospital in London. On being discharged from the hospital, he
went and played the piano in the Duke of Cambridge public house on Battersea
Bridge Road. Joseph Holland Malins
died in 1947 while he was living at 87 Stewart Road in Bournemouth. Irene knew that he would prefer to be
buried in London, so she arranged for his body to be taken to South London,
to be buried at the Garrett Lane Cemetery in Tooting. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Following
the death of her husband, Irene continued to live at 87 Stewarts Road, which
she shared with her second youngest daughter and her husband. Eventually four of her daughters emigrated
to America with their husbands so, in the early 1960s, Irene decided to
follow them in order to be able to visit them when she wanted. A few years later in 1965, when she was
living in America, Irene received the news that her eldest son Walter was to
become the first Mayor of Battersea and Wandsworth. She then made a permanent returned to
England in 1966, just in time to attend the mayor’s reception and
dinner-dance with the Lord Mayor of London. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
And it was sixteen years later that
Irene Harriet Rose Malins nee Collett died at Bournemouth in May 1982. Of her children, Irene’s eldest son Walter
Malins married Johanna Sheehan and was the first Mayor of Battersea and
Wandsworth during 1965-1966. On his
retirement he moved to Bournemouth, and at the start of the twenty-first
century he was living in Tunbridge Wells.
Walter Malins is the grandfather of Rebecca Humphreys who, together
with her grandfather and her father Peter, kindly provided all the family
details and photographs for the family of Henry James Collett and his descendants. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Irene’s eldest daughter Violet Malins
married Bill Halliday and the couple lived in London with her sister Irene
and her husband. Violet and Bill later
moved to Bournemouth and then to York, where widow Violet was still living in
2010. Daughter Irene Malins married
Ted Andrews and lived in London with her sister Violet, before she and Ted
emigrated to America, where they settled in Indianapolis. Joining them in America were Irene’s three
sisters: (a) Sylvia who married American GI Herman Paige, who initially lived
in Arkansas, before settling in Indianapolis; (b) Loretta, known as Mickey,
who married Ken Symes who lived in Bournemouth before moving to Indianapolis;
and (c) Dorothy who married another GI, Richard Clifton, this couple settling
first in Texas, and then in Michigan. The
remaining two children were Edmund Malins who married Joan Fletcher, and
Josephine Malins who married Ian Drummond, both siblings making their
respective homes in Bournemouth. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q8 |
Violet C Collett was born at Battersea in 1899 and a daughter of Henry
James Collett and Harriet Goodman. She was two years old and living at 6
Victoria Dwellings in Battersea in March 1901. Violet later married Harry F Jennings, a Canadian
who had stayed on after the end of the First World War and had become a Major
in the Canadian Army. Their wedding was recorded at Wandsworth
register office (Ref. 1d 1112) during the second quarter of 1919, sometime
after which they made their home in Canada.
Their marriage produced one daughter for the couple, Betty Jennings,
and all three of them returned to England to visit the Collett family during
the 1930s. The family recall that they
appeared to be extremely glamorous, with their fancy clothes and luggage, in
comparison to their poorer English relatives. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q9 |
Laura Julia Collett was born at 6 Victoria Dwelling in Battersea
on 19th March 1901 and was just twelve days old at the time of the
census on 31st March that year.
During the middle of the Great War, and unbeknown to
anyone in the family, Laura fell pregnant and to everyone’s amazement she
went into labour during 1916, giving birth to her first son, Johnny
Collett. The identity of the boy’s
father has always remained a secret. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Laura
eventually married John Levis with whom she had a further two sons, George
Henry Levis and Jimmy Levis. Laura and
her family occupied the top floor of her parents’ house at 31 Landseer
Street. John Levis was an ardent
communist who had lively debates with his father-in-law Henry James
Collett. George Henry
Levis was born in 1922 and at the outbreak of the Second World War he joined
the Royal Marines. Two years into the
conflict he was attached to the cruiser HMS Galatea which was part of the
Mediterranean Battle Fleet for Operation Landmark supporting the Libyan
offensive. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The ship sailed
out of Alexandra on 6th December 1941 and one week later was the
subject of a concerted assault by enemy aircraft on 14th December
1941. The attack from the air lasted
seven hours, by which time a German U-boat had arrived on the scene under
cover of darkness and fired torpedoes into the cruiser, sinking the vessel in
the early hours of 15th December.
Of the 600 crew on board HMS Galatea, only 120 men were rescued by two
destroyers from the same fleet. Sadly,
George Henry Levis was one of those who lost their life on that fateful
night, at the tender age of 19. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The naval record
confirmed that he was a Marine from Plymouth, with his service number being
PLY/X3729. The record also confirmed
that his next-of-kin was Simon John George and Laura Julia Levis of
Battersea, and that his name is one of many on Panel 59 of the Plymouth Naval
Memorial on The Hoe in Plymouth. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R9 |
John
H Collett |
Born in 1916 at Battersea |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q10 |
George William Collett was born at
Harefield on 22nd April 1875 and was five years old in the
Harefield census of 1881. Sometime
during the next decade George accompanied his parents when the family
emigrated to North America prior to the census of 1891. Around the turn of the century, he and his
family were living at Minnesota, but at the time of his death on 7th
March 1907 the family was living at Washington DC where George was
buried. His grave at the Glenwood
Cemetery in Washington was also used for the burials of his parents in 1913
and 1929, and his brother Lewis in 1914.
George never married and was 32 years old when he died. During his short life he worked as a
printer in a print shop with his younger brother Lewis (below). |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q11 |
Lewis |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q12 |
Beatrice Maude Collett, who was one half
of a set of twins, was born at Harefield on 31st January
1878. Around the age of ten years, she
sailed to |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q13 |
Cyril Henry Collett was born at
Watford on 15th December 1885 and shortly after, he and his family
sailed to America and initially settled down to live in Minnesota. Some years later the family move from
Minnesota to live in Washington, where both his older brothers and his
parents died and were buried. At the
age of just 20 years and eight days, Cyril Henry Collett married Narcissa
Laura Frazier on 23rd December 1905. After they were married the couple lived in
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R10 |
Cyril
Edward Collett |
Born in 1907 at Washington |
||||||||||||||
|
41R11 |
Emily
E Collett |
Born in 1909 at Washington |
||||||||||||||
|
41R12 |
Marguerite
I Collett |
Born in 1914 at Washington |
||||||||||||||
|
41R13 |
Robert
Lee Collett |
Born in 1919 at Washington |
||||||||||||||
|
41R14 |
Ralph
William Collett |
Born in 1921 at Washington |
||||||||||||||
|
41R15 |
Bradley
Lewis Collett |
Born in 1926 at Washington |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q14 |
George Albert Collett was born in Kingston-upon-Hull on 9th
August 1890 ten weeks after her parents were married, being the first of the
seven sons of Isaac Collett and Mary Ann Gubby. His birth was recorded at the Hull
Sculcoates register office (Ref. 9d 109) during the last quarter of that
year. He only survived for two months,
when he died on 9th October 1890, with his premature death
recorded at Sculcoates (Ref. 9d 87). Two
days later the tiny body of George Albert Collett was laid to rest at Hull
Borough Cemetery on Hedon Road. Six
months later, his parents were living at Withernsea Street in
Sutton-with-Stoneferry in Hull, where he may have been born. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q15 |
Isaac Collett (Isaac the younger)* was born on 7th June 1892
at Sculcoates in Hull where his birth was recorded (Ref. 9d 119) during the third quarter of
the year. He was the eldest surviving child
of Isaac Collett and Mary Ann Gubby, who was baptised at Hull on 3rd July 1892. It was there he was still living with his
family in 1901 at the age of nine and again in 1911 when he was 19 and
employed as a labourer at a manure works.
Four years later he was in Middlesex, the birthplace of his father,
when the marriage of Isaac Collett and Margaret Cain was recorded at Uxbridge
register office (Ref. 3a
138) during the last three months of 1915. Four children were born to the couple at
Harefield, with their births recorded at Uxbridge, when their mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Cain. Their only son,
Isaac, was a beneficiary in the 1923 Will of his father’s uncle Job Collett
(Ref. 41O14). In the Will (see
Will in Legal Documents) Isaac was named as the son of nephew Isaac
Collett. The Codicil to the Will in
1925 also referred to Isaac Collett, as the son of Isaac the younger*. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Isaac Collett
(the younger) died on 19th August 1939, at the age of 47, while
at Springfield House on Beechcroft Road in Wandsworth, with his death recorded at
London register office (Ref. 1d 462).
When administration of his personal effects was proved on 10th
October 1939 in London, his wife Margaret was named as the main beneficiary,
with the documentation also revealing that Isaac and Margaret had lived in
Plough Cottage at Hill End in Harefield.
That would mean Isaac the younger passed away before his father Isaac the
elder, and his mother Mary Ann who died in 1943. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R16 |
Winnie
Collett |
Born in 1916 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41R17 |
Isaac
Collett |
Born in 1924 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41R18 |
Mary
Collett |
Born in 1926 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41R19 |
Kathleen
Collett |
Born in 1928 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q16 |
George Thomas Collett was born at
Sculcoates in Hull on 6th August 1896, where his birth registered there (Ref. 9d 129). He was five years old and 14 years of age
in the two Sculcoates census returns for 1901 and 1911. It is established that he married Mary Elizabeth and, at the end of
their lives together, they were living within the London Borough of
Hillingdon, where they died within thirteen days of each other. Mary Elizabeth Collett was born on 15th
September 1892 and was 78 when she died on 3rd January 1971. George Thomas Collett, born in 1896, died
on 16th January 1971, with them being buried together at Breakspear
Crematorium in Ruislip.
George’s death was recorded at Hillingdon register office (Ref. 5c 987) during
the first quarter of 1971 at the age of 74. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q17 |
Thomas Alfred Collett may have been
born at Benjamin’s
Terrace, Dalston Road in Sculcoates during the last three months of 1898,
with his birth
registered there (Ref. 9d 132), where he was three years of age in the
census of 1901. After that, he was 12
years old in the Hull census of 1911 when he and his family were still
residing in Hull. As soon as he was
old enough, and while he was still living in Hull, he enlisted with the 23rd
Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, with which he became Private Collett
G/71552. The Commonwealth War Graves
Commission listed him as T A Collett.
Tragically, at the age of 19, he was killed in front line action at
Mesnil in France on 1st April 1918 and was buried in the Mesnil
Communal Cemetery Extension. At the
time of his death, Alfred’s parents Isaac and Mary had returned to Harefield
in Middlesex, where his father had been born, their address there being 6
Waterloo Villas. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q18 |
William Collett was born at Sculcoates on 19th
October 1900, the fourth son of Isaac and Mary Ann Collett, who was baptised at Hull on 6th
January 1901. It was also at
Sculcoates that his birth was registered (Ref.9d 115) and was five months old
in the Sculcoates All Saints census in 1901 when he and his family were living
at Benjamin’s Terrace, Dalston Road.
Ten years later the family was living in Hull, when William was 10
years of age. He probably never
married and, together with his brothers George (above) and Sidney (below),
all three of them may have been living together in the Harefield, Hillingdon
area of Middlesex. It was there, in
the early 1970s when first George died in 1971, and was followed by William
who died there during the second quarter of 1972 and where, two years later
the death of Sidney was also recorded. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q19 |
Edward Joe Collett was born at
Sculcoates on 1st February 1903, where his birth was recorded as Edward Joe Collett
(Ref. 9d 131). It was also as Edward
Joe Collett that he was baptised in Hull on 19th February 1903,
another son of Isaac and Mary Ann Collett. At the age of eight years, Edward Collett
was living with his family at Hull in 1911.
As regards the
remainder of his life, it is known that he left Yorkshire and lived in Wales
where he was married and where he died.
He was in his late fifties, when the wedding of Edward Collett and widow
Alice Ann Mountford nee Ford (1904-1992) took place on 21st April
1960 at Clyford and was recorded at West Glamorgan register office (Ref. 8b
1347). They were married for seventeen
years when Edward died on 30th November 1977 when he was
living in the Haverfordwest area of Pembrokeshire. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q20 |
Sidney Collett was born at Sculcoates on 16th
April 1905, with his
birth recorded there (Ref. 9d 126).
He was six years of age in the Hull census of 1911 and was the sixth
and last child of Isaac Collett and Mary Ann Gubby. It seems logical that Sidney, and his two
older unmarried brothers George and William, eventually left the East Riding
of Yorkshire to seek their fortunes in London. Since it was at Harefield that Sidney Collett, born at Hull in April
1905, was residing when he died on 17th July 1976 at the age of
71. The death of Sidney Collett was
recorded at Middlesex register office (Vol. 13 0920) during the third quarter
of 1976. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q21 |
Thomas Alfred Collett was born at
Harefield either at the end of 1916, or early in 1917, the first-born child
of Thomas Alfred Collett and Lily Eunice Woodley. His birth was recorded at Uxbridge register
office (Ref. 3a 48)
during the first quarter of 1917, when his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed
as Woodley. He was a carpenter, like
his brother David (below), and in 1925 he was named as the son of
Thomas Alfred Collett in the Codicil to the 1923 Will of Job Collett (Ref.
41O14). It was with his brother David
that they built their two homes on the High Street in Harefield around
1963. The marriage of Thomas A Collett
and Jean P Lofty was recorded at Uxbridge register office (Ref. 5f 765) during
the first three months of 1947. Their
marriage produced one son who was born at the end of that same year, whose
birth was also recorded at Uxbridge during the last three months of 1947. Thomas and Jean were both living at 59 High
Street in Harefield when they passed away. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R20 |
Alan Thomas Collett |
Born in 1947 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q22 |
Joan Eunice Collett was born at Harefield in 1919, the
second child and eldest daughter of Thomas and Lily Collett. Her birth was recorded at Uxbridge register
office (Ref. 3a 51)
during the last three months of that year and, throughout her life, she was
known as Pink. It is within the
present-day family that it is known that Pink married Jack Newton, whose marriage
by licence was recorded at Uxbridge register office as Jack Newton and Joan E
Collett during the final quarter of 1949 (Ref. 5f 343).
Within a very short time, Joan had presented Jack with their only
child, when the birth of Leslie J Newton was recorded during the first
three months of 1950 at Uxbridge register office. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q23 |
John Edward Collett was born at Harefield on 11th
May 1922 and was another son of Thomas and Lily Collett. His birth was also recorded at Uxbridge
register office (Ref. 3a
84) during the second quarter of the year when his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
Woodley. He later married Jane Hearn,
with whom he had a daughter, their wedding day in Harefield recorded at
Uxbridge register office during the last three months of 1945 (Ref. 3a 450). At some time in his life, John worked at the Denham Film
Studios and was living with his wife and their daughter in the Staines area
at the time of his death. The death of
John Edward Collett was recorded at Slough register office in December 2006,
when he was 84 years old. Following
his passing, Jane and Madelaine were subsequently believed to be living
somewhere in Spain. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R21 |
Madelaine J Collett |
Born in 1947 at Watford |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q24 |
Constance Gwyneth Collett was born at
Harefield in 1924 when, previously, her parents Thomas and Lily Collett, had
been credited with two daughters, one Constance and a separate child being
Gwyneth. However, no such Gwyneth has
been found, so maybe she was known in the family by the two names, either
together or separately. Where there is
further confusion is she was referred as Gwyn, while as Constance, she gave
birth to a base-born son at Harefield.
The birth of Constance G Collett was recorded at Uxbridge register
office (Ref. 3a 75)
during the last quarter of 1924. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R22 |
Kevin J Collett |
Born in 1947 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q25 |
Eunice Evelyn Collett was born at
Harefield on 4th April 1927, the youngest daughter of Thomas and
Lily Collett, whose birth was recorded at Uxbridge register office (Ref. 3a 77) during the
second quarter of the year, when her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
Woodley. The later marriage of Eunice
Evelyn Collett and Peter I Pavey was recorded at Hillingdon register office (Ref. 5c 928) during
the third quarter of 1965, when Eunice was already expecting the birth of
their one and only child. The birth of
Susan J Pavey was also recorded at Hillingdon register office during the
fourth quarter of 1965, when her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
Collett. Sometime later in her life,
Eunice was living in the Rickmansworth area of Hertfordshire, while it was at
Watford register office, that the death of Eunice Evelyn Pavey was recorded
during the summer of 2006, when she was 79.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q26 |
David George Collett was born at Harefield on 6th
May 1929 and was the last of the six identified children of Thomas Alfred
Collett and Lily Eunice Woodley. As
with all his older siblings, his birth was also recorded at Uxbridge register
office (Ref. 3a 90)
during the second quarter of the year, with his mother’s maiden-name
confirmed as Woodley. He was only two
years old when his father died, his mother being much younger than his
father. David was a carpenter and he
later married Doreen Mary Ryder with whom he had a son and a daughter. Their wedding was recorded at Watford
register office (Ref. 4b
714) during the third quarter of 1953, where Doreen had been born at
the start of 1933. At the time of his
death, he was living at 57 High Street in Harefield, next door to his brother
Thomas (above). The two
adjacent houses of 57 and 59 High Street were built by the two brothers just
after 1962. The death of David George
Collett was recorded at Uxbridge register office when he died at Harefield on
17th June 2004 at the age of 75. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R23 |
David
George Collett |
Born in 1962 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
41R24 |
Michelle
Georgina |
Born in 1969 at Harefield |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q27 |
Grace Annie
Collett was born at Aveley near Thurrock in Essex in 1893, the eldest child of
Joseph Collett and Annie
Maria Cawdell. Her birth was recorded
at Orsett in Essex (Ref.
4a 317) during the third quarter of that year. Not long after she was born, the family
moved to Harefield where her father was born and where her sister Winifred (below)
was born, before they settled in Harlesden by the end of the century. It was at Buckingham Road in Harlesden,
Middlesex, that the family was living in 1901, when Grace Annie Collett from
Aveley was seven years of age and recorded with her mother and two younger
siblings, her father in hospital in London.
After a further ten years, and having left school, 17-tear-old Grave
Annie was employed by the local electricity company as an electric filament
paster, when she was once again one of the three children living with her
parents in the Willesden registration district of Uxbridge. Just over three years later, the marriage of
Grace Annie Collett and William Charles Towers was recorded at Willesden
register office (Ref. 3a
569) during the second quarter of 1914. William was born at Wanstead during the spring of 1890
and was the son of Charles Bridgeman
Towers and Martha Eliza
Towers from West Ham in Essex, where his birth was registered. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
It may have been
the onset of war that placed Grace and William in a difficult position, since
it seems highly likely that Grace was already carrying the first of the
couple’s four children on their wedding day.
It was during the third quarter of 1914 when the birth of Grace N E
Towers was recorded at Willesden register office. The births of the other three children were
also recorded there and in each case the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed
as Collett. They were Rose H W
Towers at the end of 1916, recorded in the first months of 1917, Charles
W C Towers in the summer of 1918, and Derek J Towers in the second
quarter of 1926. It was at South Ockendon
within the Thurrock area of Essex that the couple was living when William
passed away on 13th
January 1958, and was buried at South Ockendon Cemetery. The death of William Charles Towers was recorded
at Thurrock register office (Ref. 4a 983) during the first three months of 1958, when he
was 67. At some time later in her
life, Grace moved to Wiltshire with the death of Grace Annie Towers recorded
at Swindon register office (Ref.
7c 584) during the quarter of 1965, at the age of 71. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q28 |
Winifred Lilian
Collett was born at Harefield on 11th August 1896, the second of
the third children of Joseph and Annie Collett, her birth recorded at
Uxbridge (Ref. 3a 40)
during the third quarter of the year.
She was four years old in the census of 1901 when she and her family
were residing at Buckingham Road in Harlesden-with-Willesden.
They were again living with in the Willesden registration of Middlesex
in 1911, by which time Winifred had completed her education, but was still
living at the home without a stated occupation. Ten years later, when Winifred was twenty-four
years of age, she became a married woman, with the marriage of Winifred
Lilian Collett and Frederick C Salter was recorded at Willesden register
office (Ref. 3a 689)
during the last quarter of 1921. The
births of their two children were also recorded at Willesden, Doris J A
Salter during the third quarter of 1923, and Charles H F Salter
during the fourth quarter of 1924, on both occasions their mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Collett. The youngest
child was only thirteen when the death of his father Frederick C Salter was
recorded at Willesden register office (Ref. 3a 361) during the last three months of
1937, when he was only 37 years old.
Eight years after being widowed, the marriage of Winifred Lilian
Salter and William J Evans was recorded at Willesden register office (Ref. 3a 1223) in the
last quarter of 1945. Winifred was
living in the Brent area of London when she died, her passing recorded there,
early in 1987 when she was 90. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q29 |
Charles William Collett was born at Buckingham
Road in Harlesden in 1899, the third and last child of Joseph Collett and
Annie Maria Cawdell, his birth recorded at Hendon register office (Ref. 3a
335) during the second quarter of that year.
He was approaching two years of age on the day of the census in 1901,
when he was recorded as being one-year-old and was living at Buckingham Road within
the Willesden registration district of Middlesex. With him was his mother Annie and his two
sisters, while his father was a patient in hospital at St Marylebone,
London. Ten years later, Charles
William Collett from Harlesden was eleven years old and would appear to have
left school, but was not credited with a job of work, in the Willesden
(Harlesden) census of 1911. After
another eight years, the marriage of Charles William Collett and Lilian Emma
Kuhn was recorded Willesden at register office (Ref. 3a 683) during the second quarter of 1919. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Over the
following years, Lilian presented Charles with six children, all as listed
below, their births also recorded at Willesden, when the mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Kuhn. It was again at
Willesden register office (Ref.
5f 371) that the death of Charles William Collett was recorded after he had died on 9th
December 1957. He was 58 years
old and was buried at the
Willesden New Cemetery in the London Borough of Brent. No record of the death of his wife has been
found. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R25 |
Muriel Blanche Annie Collett |
Born in 1920 at Willesden |
||||||||||||||
|
41R26 |
Stanley
Charles William Collett |
Born in 1921 at Willesden |
||||||||||||||
|
41R27 |
Joyce Emma Collett |
Born in 1923 at Willesden |
||||||||||||||
|
41R28 |
Leslie A Collett |
Born in 1927 at Willesden |
||||||||||||||
|
41R29 |
David J Collett |
Born in 1931 at Willesden |
||||||||||||||
|
41R30 |
Vera R Collett |
Born in 1934 at Willesden |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q30 |
Amy Beatrice Collett was born at
Newbury in 1909 and was one year old in the April census of 1911 when she was
living with her parents at Shaw-cum-Donnington, where it is likely that she
was born. Following the accidental
death of her father Arthur Frederick Collett in 1913 at the age of 48, Amy
was cared for by her much younger mother Edna who was 30 at the time of his
death. Sadly, for whatever reason, it
was only daughter Amy that stayed with her mother. When she was 13 her two brothers Raymond
and Arthur were both taken into the care of the local Doctor Barnardo’s Home
for orphaned children, even though they were not strictly speaking orphans. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Amy married Norman Parker with whom she had a son
Derek. What happened to her husband is
not known, but Amy and Derek sailed to Canada, where Derek died while in
Northumberland County. Amy later
married Herbert Kane who was born in 1897 and who died in 1974. Amy was eventually reunited with her
brothers who had been subject to a Barnardo’s Home children’s transfer to |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q31 |
Raymond Bernard Collett, who was referred
to as Ray, was born at Newbury on 18th February 1912, just over
one year before his father died from a work-related accident. That tragic event ultimately resulted in
both Raymond and his brother Arthur (below) being taken into a
Barnardo’s Home, leaving just their older sister Amy still living with their
mother. Doctor Thomas |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Ray was one of
many children sent to |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
A little while
later he appears to have settled in Toronto where he married Reta Mary Ratz
on 22nd November 1947. Reta
was born in |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Following her death at Lakefield on 14th September 2004,
Reta was buried in the United Church Cemetery at Crediton in Ontario. And it was there also that Ray was buried
on 3rd November 2007 following his death from an extended illness
on 26th October 2007 at South Lake Regional Health Centre in
Newmarket, Ontario. For the six months
prior to his passing, Ray lived with his daughter Kathy and son-in-law Wayne
Mundy in Keswick. At the time of his death,
he had two granddaughters and three great grandchildren. Ray's career in business and
consumer-relations spanned nearly fifty years. Following the war years, he worked in
advertising, marketing and was a management executive in |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R31 |
Robert Collett |
Born circa 1948 at Toronto |
||||||||||||||
|
41R32 |
Catherine Collett |
Born circa 1952 at Toronto |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q32 |
Arthur Frederick Collett, who was referred
to as Art, was born at Newbury on 27th April 1913. Just one month after he was born his father
tragically died from a fall off a ladder while at work on |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
The following year, upon reaching his tenth birthday, Art was also sent
to |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Once in Canada,
Art was employed on various farms in Ontario and, when he was in his early
twenties, he met his future wife Reta Hutcheon. Just over eighteen months before the
outbreak of World War Two, he married Florence Reta Hutcheon on 19th
February 1938 at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Campbellford, Ontario. The photograph of Art (above), was
taken on the day of his wedding. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
By the time of
their marriage Art had already elected (in the 1930s) to add an ‘e’ at the
end of his surname. The reason for
this was to avoid the name being incorrect pronounced and incorrectly spelt,
which is probably a sentiment shared by many of those worldwide with the
Collett surname. And it was in that
way that the marriage was registered in the name of Arthur Frederick Collette,
as was the later registration of the births of the couple’s two children, who
were both born in Ontario. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Reta’s family
had originally emigrated from |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Following the arrival of their two sons, the family of four later moved
to Peterborough, where Art opened a grocer’s shop. And it was while there that a surprised Art
received his call-up papers to enter the war.
He joined the Cameron Highlanders and was part of the occupation force
in Germany, for which he was awarded the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal
with bar, and the Victory Medal. The
Cameron Highlanders were disbanded upon completion of their duties. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Art is known to
have driven ammunition trucks during the war and at the end of which he was
working in Signals tracking down German units which refused to
surrender. By the time he returned to
Canada he was fairly fluent in the German language. After the war the family returned to
Campbellford and Art open his own insurance and real estate business. He joined the British Empire Service League
which eventually became the Royal Canadian Legion with whom he served in
various roles over fifty-five years, and for which he received the Legion’s
Certificate of Merit. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
In 1954 the
family moved again, on that occasion to Trenton, where Art ran his successful
real estate business until 1965, at which time, he joined the Federal
Government’s Department of Public Works.
During that time, he worked in Timmins, North Bay and Toronto until
his retirement, when he and Reta moved to Belleville. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Although it was
never mentioned by him, Art was probably unhappy and bitter, like his brother
Ray, about being separated from their mother and sister at such an early
age. However, the two brothers were
reunited for the first time since their separation and that joyous event
happened during the Second World War.
Their sister Amy also eventually sailed to |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Towards the end
of the twentieth century Art and Reta were living at Belleville in Hastings
County where Reta died on 29th January 1998 and was cremated and
buried at the Burnbrae Cemetery. Just
over four years after the death of his wife, Arthur was returning home from
his brother Ray’s birthday party when he was killed in a motoring accident in
wet driving conditions. And it was at
Campbellford, where his sister Amy had lived and died eight years earlier,
that Arthur died on 22nd February 2002. And like his wife, Art was cremated and
buried at |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R33 |
John
Arthur Collette |
Born in 1938 at Ontario |
||||||||||||||
|
41R34 |
Gerald
Irvine Collette |
Born in 1944 at Ontario |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q33 |
Ethel Eveline Collett was born at
Merstham on 23rd July 1903, with her birth recorded at the nearby
Reigate register office (Ref.
2a 199), the first of the five children of Bernard Bolton Collett and
Beatrice Annie Holmes. Soon after she
was born, her parents moved to Nutfield, where her siblings were born and
where they were all living in 1911, when Ethel was seven years old. She later married Alfred William Spall who
was born on 19th November 1903, the wedding of Ethel Eveline
Collett and Alfred William Spall recorded at Lambeth register office (Ref. 1d 996) during
the third quarter of 1936. The
marriage resulted in a son, Dennis Spall, who was born on 3rd
May 1939 and who later married Beryl Christine Witherick. His birth was recorded at the Surrey
North-Eastern register office, when his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
Collett. Ethel Eveline Spall died on
14th February 1959; her death recorded at the Surrey North-Eastern
register office (Ref. 5g
724). Twenty years after being
widowed, the death of Alfred William Spall was recorded at Sutton Surrey
register office (Vol. 15
0618) after he had died on 29th December 1979. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q34 |
Ivy Elizabeth Collett was born at
Nutfield on 24th May 1905, her birth recorded at Reigate register
office (Ref. 2a 208). She was living with her family at Nutfield
in 1911 aged five years. Twenty-two
years later the marriage of Ivy Elizabeth Collett and Rodney Jackson Beaumont
was recorded at Lambeth register office (Ref. 1d 475) during the last three months of
1933, with whom she had two children.
Rodney was a few years older than Ivy having been born at Dulwich on 26th
May 1899. Their daughter Thelma
Beaumont, who was born on 5th January 1935, married Michael
Holliday who was born on 29th January 1930. Ivy and Rodney’s son Rodney Charles
Beaumont, who was born on 15th November 1941, later married
(1) Stephanie Crimmins and (2) Delia Hindmoor. All of Ivy’s and Rodney’s four
grandchildren came from their son’s first marriage. Ivy Elizabeth Beaumont died at Canterbury in
January 1985 and was followed by Rodney Jackson Beaumont, who died two years
later on 29th August 1987 at Chatham in Kent. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q35 |
Leonard Archibald Collett was born at
Nutfield on 5th March 1907, his birth recorded at Reigate register
office (Ref. 2a 217),
the third child of Bernard Bolton Collett and Beatrice Annie Holmes. He later married Lilian Maud Holiday, with the
event recorded at the London Lambeth register office (Ref. 1d 264) during the first three
months of 1933. The first of their two
children was born in London nine months later, with the second born after the
family settled in Surrey. Lilian had
been born in London on 15th June 1909, her birth recorded at
Camberwell register office (Ref.
1d 909). and who presented her
husband with two children. Leonard
Archibald Collett died on 27th December 1969, with his passing
recorded at the Surrey Sutton register office (Ref. 5e 592) during the first
quarter of 1970, when he was 62 years old. Just under nine years after being widowed,
Lilian Maud died on 19th July 1978, her death also recorded at
Sutton register office (Vol.
15 0482), when she was 69 years of age. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R35 |
Brian
Arthur Collett |
Born in 1933 at Wandsworth, London |
||||||||||||||
|
41R36 |
Valerie
Jill Collett |
Born in 1947 in Surrey |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q36 |
Herbert Charles Collett was born at
Nutfield on 30th December 1910, his birth recorded at Reigate
register office (Ref. 2a
220) during the first quarter of 1911, another child of Bernard and
Beatrice Collett. Prior to, and during,
the Second World War he served with the Merchant Navy and was involved with
the Atlantic and Russian convoys. He
later married Jean Sophia Kemish whose birth was recorded at Lambeth register
office (Ref. 1d 519)
during the third quarter of 1921, being nearly ten years younger than
Herbert. Their marriage was recorded
at the Surrey North-Eastern register office (Ref. 2a 172) during the second quarter of 1944,
and resulted in the birth of two children.
The birth of the first of them at Bath register office, the second at
Lambeth. The mother of Jean Sophia Kemish
had the surname Holmes and is understood to have been related to Herbert’s
mother Beatrice Annie Collett, nee Holmes.
Herbert Charles Collett died on 9th December 1988, with his
death recorded at the Surrey Sutton register office (Vol. 15 264). His widow Jean Sophia Collett was still alive
in 2009. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R37 |
Paul
Charles Collett |
Born in 1946 at Bath, Somerset |
||||||||||||||
|
41R38 |
Margaret
Ann Collett |
Born in 1950 at Lambeth, London |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
41Q37 |
Arthur Richard Collett was born at
Nutfield on 23rd December 1912, his birth recorded at Reigate
register office (Ref. 2a
406) during the first quarter of 1913, when his mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Holmes. He was the
last child born to Bernard Bolton Collett and Beatrice Annie Holmes. Arthur was twenty-five years old when his
marriage to Doris May Hawkins was recorded at St Margaret’s Church in
Westminster, London (Ref. 1a 1463), during the second quarter of 1938. Their
two children were born either side of the Second World War, suggesting that
Arthur served in one of the armed forces.
The births of their children were recorded in Bristol, where their
daughter was later married, that being the part of the country where Arthur
and Doris they spent the rest of their life.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Arthur was only
54 years old when he died on 27th December 1966, the death of
Arthur Richard Collett recorded at Bristol register office (Ref. 7b 122) during
the first quarter of 1967. It was at
Keynsham Cemetery where he was buried on 4th January 1967. Doris died just over five years later, on 8th
March 1972, and was laid to rest with her husband at Keynsham Cemetery. The death of Doris May Collett was also
recorded at Bristol register office (Ref. 7b 567) when she was 56 years of age, with
her earlier birth recorded at the London Lambeth register office (Ref. 1d 572) during
the last three months of 1915. |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
41R39 |
Carol
Joan Collett |
Born in 1939 at Bristol |
||||||||||||||