Heller

Not only did Heller leave a messy will, an irate wife, and a mistress that died overweight and poor, he also left a nephew, whose identity was disavowed but to which I add this recent snippet. Make of it what thou wilt.

Water Under the Bridge

It sure looks as if I have abandoned this blog, but not so. A good two years of family crisis and the tempest therein has hacked away at my time, desire and nerves. I shall be posting again soon, not for the readers, of which there are none, but for the researchers as yet unborn that will be viewing the archive.

Sparrows and the China Cottage

In the boxing ring that is the frontal part of my mind there are two opposing corners at the moment: in one there are issues wearing the red satin boxer silks of part life memory; and in the other, the blue satin silks belonging to real-world research with stringent requirements.

I can remember things about my family from the 1840s until I left England in 1855, and I can recall things that were so, like two father figures, but one not an actual father, a cantankerous mother, interfering in-laws, money problems, past successes surviving as remembered glories, and the overarching, ever-present gloom of Dickensian poverty, ragged black bombazine and other clichés of the mid-Victorian aesthetic…at least as history likes to present it.

But I also have the detective work that must be carried out on the ground, in the present and carefully so, and always with one part of my psychic apparatus set aside for clues, corner-of-the-eye shimmers and the most subtle of indicators and sentiments.

My supposedly biological family, the Sparrows, wrote letters to their in-laws, the Morrises who had emigrated to Tasmania and the letters survive today, in Sydney. They are called rather charmingly, "The China Cottage Letters."Among the list of correspondents are many of the people whose names I have read in the research I have done upon the Sparrows. I could write a booklet on the Sparrow Tea Family and their in-laws the Phythians. Tea, tea, tea. Is this why I like tea cups, tea and the theatre around it, even though I am a coffee or hot-chocolate man?

Among these are Robert Sparrow (I think he was Robert Sparrow Smythe's real father) Frederick Sparrow ("his uncles paid for his education") and Henry who died in 1820, and who is most important but for what reason I cannot say, nor even guess. But that he is important is beyond debate. I also feel that I have got something slightly wrong and that the slight error has not-so-sleight implications.

The letters I hope will shed light on the family dynamic and what the heck was going on, and the fact that they are sitting in Sydney, unexamined is a great extravaganza of a tease.

Obviously, I can't wait to get my eyeballs on them, or at least a proxy set of eyeballs.

Whelans

Good Lord. I haven't posted in over six months.

I have been hard at coping with life's strange and unwelcome barrage while trying to get some information on my great grandfather John Whelan, seaman of Newmarket-on-Fergus, Clare, Ireland. He married Johann Scully in Melbourne in 1875, I think, and had two children: Patrick and John. Just where did all the family photos go?

-destroyed I expect, by the harridan who married Patrick after he was widowed because he had some money. She isolated him from his friends, made him move suburbs, farmed her step-children out as slaves to her sister and when he died, then bolted, taking no pains to secure the house (which was plundered) nor even tell my grandfather, John Whelan, hairdresser, that his father had died. Patrick's daughter thought her brother had ignored the funeral and there arose a lifetime rift.

A little bit of bitch goes a long, long way.

My chances of finding any pictures, which are usually good, are zero.

Sparrows, Bridges, Smith and Morrises.

This week has seen me try to put into some sane form, all the information of the Sparrow tea family, the Bridges of London (the family, not the architectural river spanning wonders), the ever puzzling Smiths and the family of Mrs. Frederick Sparrow, Ann, whose family were the Morrises, who were connected with Christopher Smith, Lord Mayor of London.

Its still a mess in my head but I am getting there.

Robert Sparrow looks as if he is the front runner in the R.S.Smythe paternity search.

Stay tuned.

Doom, gloom, glamour and sleep

Of late, I have been extremely run-down to the point of immobility. The cause of this agonizing lassitude is over concentration upon one thing. This is never a good idea. So I have decided that I should take a long break, a kind of sabbatical, even though I am not sticking to the regimented seven years. I need a break. Smythes, Sparrows, solitude and the minor brands of despair have been a bit too much, for too long.

But I shall still check in and post material I already have compiled. I'm not jumping ship: just moving my bed out of the bridge.

Rob-a-bob-Robson

Once again the Robsons have been occupying my time, while I wait for correspondent various other material replies from the land of lords, muffins and pounds sterling. Courtesy of mundia (subject to strange machinations of available data: accessible sometimes, and at others, not), google books, two census sites, nineteenth century databases, smaller armada of rabbit holes, and a voo-doo hex, I have been putting together a picture of Charles Robson around whom forces of family swirled, and quite forceful they were too—very driven.

NOTE: as of 2021, the under weitten may refer to another family, and not the one belonging to the Robsons that include Charles and Christopher. I will add a [§] at the sentence end to indicate possible error. Since the Robsons of Kelso are more or less all related, this branch may be consanguineous.

Charles had been born in Kelso where his father, the solicitor Charles Robson  [§] of Bridge Street, Kelso, and of "Greenhill" had been in business with John Smith, a senior man of the bar. Charles Robson Senior, was also an esquire—he had property: not only his residence, but properties that paid returns. One of these properties in Kelso itself, he gave while still living, to three sons, George, William and Charles. The latter two were living in London, the former (George) stayed in Kelso. [§: there were two Christopher Robsons at law, hence the confusion. ]

The family seems to have be bifurcated along the tines of law and printing. Christopher Robson, the London based Barrister of Clifford's Inn, had followed his father into law and an earlier William ( perhaps an uncle) started in printing/lithography in London at the rousing dawn of the 1800s. Charles' boys became master-printers, while two of Christopher's boys went into law.

I wondered from whence came the money to support these enterprises: it seems that Charles Rosbon Senior may have had other brothers, also in Law or other descendant trades of pen-craft. When I dug a little deeper, I found that in 1860, there arrived in Roxburghshire, a James Robson who brought with him, sheep—special sheep—sheep sufficiently special to be featured heavily in agricultural history of the area.

James Robson (and his famous sheep) had come from Northamptonshire, crossbred (the sheep, not James) with local breeds, became a success, and raked in the shekels. Is this the source of the Robson's generational wealth and perpetual opportunity?

What is sure, despite my above musings, is that both Christopher and Charles left large families—large enough to warrant aspirin when trying to piece it together.

Christopher Robson (who was by the way, the barrister for George Levey, Charles' partner) married twice: first to Caroline Jenkins Griffiths (connected to Jenkins and Button, barristers of 5 Tavistock Street?) who died in 1851, and who, I assume, bore Christopher lots of little Robsons, though, if she did I haven't found them. He remarried later in 1852, while poor Caroline was barely warm in the box, to Emma Sarah Dove, from whom he certainly did obtain a brood. She was very much younger than him: twenty-five years younger! There is some evidence that Charles Robson Senior had done the same thing—that is, marrying twice. When Christopher died in 1867, his widow married a widower and solicitor, Harman Edgar Tidy, who acted as step-father to the brood, with the addition of his own children. One of Christopher's boys, Charles (another Charles) eventually married his step-sister, Ada.

Charles Robson, printer, Christopher's brother, married once (as far as I know) to Caroline Druitt in 1842. This was actually quite late to marry for Charles (born in about 1806), so he too, may have had an earlier wife—though no facts have surfaced.

Stay tuned: I have nearly finished an exploratory tree, which is my way of saying it is merely a report of what I have found, with question mark icons all over the place. I am happy to say that a picture is beginning to form.