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A Fine Yorkshire Romance – The Ellams’ Wedding Night

Yorkshire romance? Given that the good folk of Yorkshire are proud of their plain-speaking and pragmatic ways, is this an oxymoron? Given that I missed the ‘Valentine’ theme associated with Valentine’s day for the 52Ancestors challenge, I decided to think a little more laterally for my late contribution than to talk about the day itself.

I recently made a little breakthrough with finding a record that solved part of a mystery about our Ellam family. Firstly, a little background. Neither one of the couple in this article was born in Yorkshire, but life brought them there. Several generations of their descendants lived there and were proud Yorkshiremen (and women!).

William Ellam

William Ellam was born in 1839 in Whitechapel, London to Samuel Ellam, a gunmaker and his wife Ann (nee Barnes). Sadly, Samuel died when William was just 11, and by the time of the 1851 Census William was living as a pauper inmate of the St Marylebone Workhouse. His mother was no longer an inmate, but was living alone very close to the Workhouse and working as a nurse, quite probably in the Infirmary there. Still there in 1853, he left the Workhouse to take up a parish apprenticeship with George Stubbs of Barking on his fishing vessels. This was the making of William, and when his apprenticeship was over, he headed north to Hull in Yorkshire where there was a thriving fishing industry.

Ann Maria Herbert

Ann Maria Herbert was born in 1840 in Coventry, Warwickshire. Her father was William Herbert. He never married her mother Jane Perkins, who was 26 years his junior, though they were all living together in the 1841 Census, she using her maiden name. By 1851, great upheavals had happened in Ann Maria’s life. At some point, they had moved to Hull, where William had collected a new ‘wife’ before moving on to York. Ann Maria remained in Hull, where she was a 10-year-old servant in the household of Mr John North. No trace of her mother has yet been found beyond 1841.

Yorkshire romance?

One could understand these children being hardened by their early circumstances. Nonetheless, they found one another and married in 1861. Try as I might, I could not find them on the 1861 Census. Then I noticed the date they married. April 7th. Census day. “AHA!!!”, I thought. “A bit of ‘Yorkshire romance’ was taking place, it was their wedding night!” And I stopped looking for this document for many years…

William Ellam Ann Maria Herbert marriage 1861
Marriage of William Ellam and Ann Maria Herbert, census day 1861

…until I checked on The Genealogist. I remembered this weekend that they’re very good for anything to do with people working on boats. I was actually looking for other items about William and up popped his entry on the 1861 Census under ‘Crew Lists’. Many other sites don’t have this category for the censuses, which is why he still doesn’t show up on searches on those other sites. This is much like the breakthrough I got when I found a census entry for Nora Vaughan that was missing from Ancestry but was on FindMyPast and ANOTHER reminder for us to check all the sites!

William Ellam 1861 Census
William Ellam, finally found on the 1861 Census, spending his wedding night aboard a fishing boat!

It appears that William said his ‘I do’ then immediately rushed off to board the ‘Huntsman’ for a fishing voyage! Here’s where the romantic bit comes in. This census document is probably the first document where he ever described himself as a married man. Nawww.

I probably shouldn’t be poking fun at William racing off like that. These were hard-working folk beginning their lives together. Squeezing in their wedding between fishing trips was probably as good as he could manage at the time. At least he married her!

Yet more Yorkshire romance…

But perhaps there is a bit of true romance in the story after all. As you may recall, I am partial to a little FAN clubbing. The witnesses to William and Ann Maria’s marriage, James Hodgson and Eliza Vant married the following year. I like to think that maybe they met at the wedding, one his friend and one hers, and their courtship began after sharing their duties as witnesses.

Rescue the Spattered and Tattered Recipes!

Often some of our strongest family memories take place around food. Celebrations and other get-togethers invariably involved plenty of eating and drinking. There were always those within the family who had their own specialties, their ‘secret recipes’ that made the fare unique in some way to each family.

If we’re lucky enough we may even have tattered recipes from the ‘old country’! Image by Klaus Beyer from Pixabay 

Some people are lucky enough to have those secret tattered recipes. Perhaps they were handed down by their mother or grandmother. Sadly, too often those grotty pieces of scribbled-on, food-splattered paper are thrown out when a loved one dies. Please, if you ever get the opportunity to rescue the tattered recipes of your family, do so! Just because they contain no genealogical information, it doesn’t mean they have no value. Sooner or later someone, even if not you will pick up that paper again. They will recreate those flavours and smells that will take you straight back to grandmother’s kitchen. And with food come stories.

Here are a couple of memories not too far back in the distant past, that the ‘In The Kitchen’ 52Ancestors topic brought up for me last week… I’m just sad that I have no tattered recipes from past generations, but I will be passing some on when I ‘pop my clogs’.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law have their own forms of legendary status within the family for their culinary skills. Both had some pride in that status, though with vastly different approaches.

My Mum relished, even promoted, her reputation as a bad cook. We would never have known if she hadn’t announced that she was once again about to inflict something inedible upon us. She was determined that she wouldn’t be defined by her household management skills. Okay, so some things were not the standard restaurant quality, but by and large, she was a far better cook than she let on. I still miss some of her specialities (no one made better lasagna!). There is more than one tattered recipe that I wish had lived somewhere outside of her brain.

A particular favourite I have experienced nowhere else was a tart made with grated apple, sultanas and lots of lemon juice and zest to make it tangy. It was often accompanied by custard, which wasn’t a strong part of her repertoire, but I loved it. To the point that I do not enjoy custard that doesn’t form a thick skin on the top and have multiple lumps in it.

Her most famous annual disaster, which she almost revelled in, was The Birthday Cake. The cake itself could be anything, technically a sponge or a fruit cake, or…something. It was often very flat. It was invariably coated in some fluorescent layer of icing which was of a runny consistency. The icing would spread itself across the cake, plate and sometimes the table as we gazed on in delighted horror. Birthday parties were interesting if there were attendees who didn’t already know we were an eccentric lot.

My brother just loved his Mum-style cake!

Oh, how I wish we had captured some of these for posterity. I have not a single photo of her efforts. However, I did attempt to replicate her skill for my brother when he turned 16 so can offer a poor facsimile…it doesn’t do her cakes justice though as it almost looks like a real one.

My mother-in-law Brenda, on the other hand was a bona fide, traditional country woman, from a conservative town packed to the gills with the same. All and sundry passed judgment on the quality of one’s fare and the annual Show was where reputations were made and lost. Brenda was too down to earth to play the judgment game, and let’s face it, far too busy with a large brood of children to really care about entering the Show. But her baking was goooooooood. I had a special love for her neenish tarts and chocolate ripple cakes, but her specialty was her fruit cake.

My wedding cake, made by my mother-in-law

Not only did she do a fabulous Christmas cake every year, but any time the family acquired new members (either spouses or children), she would rustle up a beautifully decorated, rich, moist cake for the occasion. She made both my wedding cake and my son’s christening cake. Oh, and my 21st birthday cake too! Sadly, she has just turned 94 and her vision is too poor to continue safely baking, so we are living on the memories of those cakes now.

I cannot however think of Brenda’s cakes without thinking of the interloper that destroyed our traditional attempt to keep part of our wedding cake to use as the christening cake for our first child.

When we first moved to Melbourne, we lived in a large old double brick walled unit in a beautiful leafy garden in Ivanhoe. Above the stove was an exceptionally large, deep cupboard. It wasn’t easily accessible, so was the ideal place to store things that didn’t need to come out often. Such as (we assumed), the carefully protected top tier of the wedding cake.

One night we heard scratching sounds coming from somewhere in the kitchen. We investigated but found nothing. Again, a couple of nights later, ‘scratch, scratch, bump’. The third night it happened, we finally discovered what the noise was. The door of the cupboard above the stove was open, and fur was visible behind the microwave. The noisy brushtail possum had jammed himself behind the microwave and was now trying to convince us he was either dead or invisible. Carefully, he was wrapped in a tea towel and removed outside.

The cakemunching possum!

The next night we were ready and captured this photo. He had indeed managed to make his way into the cupboard again. Grabbing a stepladder, we peered into the depths of the cupboard and worked out how he was getting in. Right at the very back, one of the bricks had been dislodged. He had been making his way down between the two layers of brick and coming in that way. He had also managed to break open the container holding the fruit cake. Not a skerrick remained. We think he’d begun venturing out of the cupboard in search of more of Brenda’s amazing baked goods.

Our son Jacob was born four years later. We celebrated his christening with a freshly baked brand-new fruit cake from Brenda’s kitchen.