My great aunt Katie Mary Edgar was born in Suffolk where our family had lived for at
least 700 years. But hard times had already fallen upon her father,Thomas,who had been forced to stop renting the family farm and work as a bailiff. Like
everyone else her life was touched by the tumultuous events of the
twentieth century.
She was born on March
11, 1881, probably at Stonham Aspel where
she was baptised on April 10 and where her father was working.
The 1881 Census shows Katie as three weeks old.[1]
But by now Thomas was struggling economically and the family had to keep moving
as he tried to stay in work. She began her education in Clacton, when her
family were living at Tendring 8.5 miles away, and entered Wetherden County
Primary School
The 1901
Census has her living with her parents at Stapleford Abbots. She's the oldest
of 6 children living at home; under occupation 'postman' has been crossed out
and rightly re-assigned to her brother Stanley. No alternative job is given,
but it's unlikely that as the oldest child in a impoverished family she was doing
nothing.
It's not certain what happened to her in the next ten years.
The 1911 Census has Katie Mary Edgar, a 27 year old shop
assistant working at home in the bakery and confectionery trade, born at
Milden and living in Woodford, West Ham. She's down as 'boarder' but 'Head' is
hand-written next to her. The lodger is 86 year old widow Susan Porter.
Is this 'our' Katie Mary Edgar?
If so, the age is wrong by about three years, but that's not
a huge problem as census ages are often inaccurate. But Milden is not part of Bosmere district where Katie's birth was registered and it is 17 miles from Stonham Aspal so the name
might be a coincidence. But there is no sign of a different Katie Mary Edgar
born in 1884 in the Find My Past or Ancestry records so my guess is that it is our relative.
Woodford is only 8.5 miles from Epping where she married on
September 1, 1913. Her father, Thomas,
signed the marriage certificate, The wedding took place at All Saints, the Theydon Garnon Parish
Church
Her husband was born in Chadwell Heath, Ilford, Essex on
December 14, 1886. At some point he took his engineering skills into the Merchant Navy and won a medal for his service in WW1
The Merchant Navy suffered dreadful casualties during WW11.
Joseph was to be one of them:
Chief Engineer Officer SS Tewkesbury, Merchant Navy Died 5th September 1943 Age 57 Commemorated ALL SAINTS CHURCH, THEYDON GARNON Son of Joseph Thomas Love and Alice Love; husband of Katie Mary Love, of Epping. On 4th May 1941 SS Tewkesbury loaded a cargo of beef at
I gratefully
acknowledge http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Essex/Epping.html for this account.
He died on September 5, 1943, aged 56, and he is commemorated in All
Saints Church, Theydon Garnon, where he and Katie had married thirty
years before and where her father had been a churchwarden.
Katie was granted probate of £1432 10s. 11d. She herself died of stomach cancer on May 31 1953 at 1 Mount Road but living at 12, Coopersale
Common - the two properties are only 1.4 miles apart.
The Mount Road address had been the home of her father and mother, so it must
have stayed in the family after Thomas died in 1929. Her son Joseph Edgar Love signed the death
certificate. Joseph had been born on July 2, 1914.
Apart from these bare facts, I know little about Katie. There are a number of photos on Ancestry and in one of them she's holding a small dog - that is the extent of my knowledge of her as a person!
The life of the wife of a merchant seaman must inevitably include long periods of loneliness. Katie surely experienced much additional anxiety when, soon after her marriage and the birth of their son, her husband was called to service in WW1. The second great war of the last century took him away from her for good.
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