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Saturday, 06 September 2008
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The Anderson Family: Detailed History

My great-great-great grandfather, Robert Snr. Anderson, was a sheep farmer from Blackford, Perthshire, Scotland; his date of birth and parentage are not known. Robert Snr. married Helen Gray in Blackford on 4 November 1805, the month after the battle of Trafalgar. She may have been the Helen born to John Gray and his wife Louisa (formerly Eadie) and baptised in Blackford on 1 October 1783 but this is unproven. Robert Snr. and Helen lived at Cockpl(e)ay farm, south-west of Blackford, and had seven children, the youngest of whom was my great-great grandfather, Peter Anderson, born at Cockplay, Blackford, and baptised on 13 August, 1820. No records have been found of the deaths of Robert Snr. and Helen but they were not living in the Blackford area at the time of the 1841 census, suggesting they were either dead by then or had perhaps moved elsewhere.

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Peter Anderson and his Family

Peter Anderson, a baker, moved to Edinburgh some time before 1846. He married Jane Veitch on 23 November 1846 in the parish church of St. Cuthberts in Edinburgh; the minister officiating at the ceremony was Rev. Thomas Guthrie, a very well known minister and social reformer, who still has a statue at the West End of Princes Street, Edinburgh. Jane was born in 1826/7 in the parish of St. Giles, Edinburgh, the daughter of James Veitch, whose occupation was variously described as “wright” or “joiner”, and his wife Elizabeth. Peter and Jane had nine children, the second of whom, and eldest son, was my great-grandfather Robert Jnr. Anderson, born on 31 October 1849; it appears from the census returns of 1851 and 1861 that some of their children died in infancy. Over the next 40 years or so, Peter and Jane are recorded as living at different addresses in Edinburgh, with Peter’s occupation variously described as baker or journeyman baker but not master baker, suggesting that he did not have his own business. Jane Anderson died on 13 March 1893, aged 68, of heart disease and bronchitis, and Peter Anderson died on 23 April 1903, aged 83, of cancer of the rectum and bronchitis. The informant of Peter’s death was his son-in-law, John Bonthron Light, the husband of Jane Veitch Light, Peter and Jane’s third child; Peter had been living with John Bonthron Light and Jane Veitch Light since at least the time of the 1901 census. I acquired the above information from the Scots Ancestry Research Society, whom I had commissioned to research the Anderson family history.

Further research by the Scots Ancestry Research Society revealed that John Bonthron Light, a Railway Wagon Inspector, and Jane Veitch Light (formerly Anderson) were married in Edinburgh on 25 November, 1881. They had eight children, two of whom died in infancy. Their fifth child, Janet McEwan Light, a dressmaker, married David Marshall Glen Berry, a general labourer, in Edinburgh on 25 July 1925. Their son, also called David Marshall Glen Berry, who became a training and development manager, was born on 13 June 1926 and married Isabella Matheson Thomson on 14 June 1952; Isabella died on 20 June 1998 but her husband, David, is still alive. In October 2003, I rang David, having been provided with his phone number and address by the Scots Ancestry Research Society. After making my initial introductions, I was astounded when David suddenly asked whether I came from Wanganui. It emerged that my grandfather, Alfred Anderson, had visited David when he returned to the U.K. for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and had tried to persuade him to emigrate to New Zealand to join the family furniture business. This was all news to me! I subsequently wrote to David, enclosing details and a photograph of the Anderson family, and was pleasantly surprised and pleased when he wrote back, enclosing a number of original photos and other family documents for me to keep, presumably because he has no children. He remembers his grandmother, Jane Veitch Light, who died on 18 September 1941, as a “charming, kindly and wonderful woman”, and clearly recalls her lying in bed, about a year before she died, crooning “The Lord’s my Shepherd”, with him joining in.

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Robert Jnr. Anderson and his Family

Jane Veitch Light’s brother, my great-grandfather, Robert Jnr. Anderson, moved south to the London area some time between 1861 and 1971. He married my great-grandmother, Martha Williams, on 23 June 1878 in the parish church of St. James in Hampstead Rd., London. Prior to their marriage, at the time of the 1871 census, Robert was living in what appears to be a male hostel in Chapel St. Marylebone and Martha was a servant in the home of Aron De Sola in Prescott St., Whitechapel. Martha was born in the White Lion Inn, Stowmarket, Suffolk, on 13 March 1852 to James Williams and his wife Eliza (formerly Tricker); James was the innkeeper at the White Lion from 1839 to 1859 and Eliza was his second wife, whom he married on 16 November 1850. James died on about 1 December 1865 but the date of Eliza’s death is unknown. It may be that James’ first wife was Lydia Tricker, the aunt of Eliza Tricker; this Lydia, born in 1806, did marry a James Williams on 13 February 1826 and she subsequently died in 1830. Tricker is a well-known name in the Stowmarket area, and a member of the Suffolk Family History Society has traced the Tricker family tree back to 1535. It is of particular interest that Eliza Tricker’s father, my great-great-great grandfather Isaac Tricker, was a maltster. Both he and Eliza’s husband, my great-great grandfather, James Williams, were therefore associated, as I was, with beer and the pub and brewing industry. Isaac Tricker and his wife Mary (formerly Markwell) died on 7 March 1882 and 29 December 1882 respectively. It is also of interest to read the history of the White Lion Inn in the Stowmarket History and Heritage website. This indicates that the inn was closed in 1892 and the last remnant of the building demolished in the 1990s to make way for a road development. A final point of interest, this time relating to Eliza Tricker, is that I have a book entitled Scripture History, with the following inscription obviously hand-written by her: “Martha Williams. A Birthday Present from Her Mother. March 13th 1857”.

Robert Jnr. and Martha Anderson had thirteen children, of whom my grandfather, Alfred, was the fifth. Robert, a journeyman cabinetmaker, is said to have worked for a time at Waddesdon Manor, the home of the Rothschild family, during its construction in the 1870s; it is believed he built a staircase there but this cannot be substantiated. My most prized possession is a balloon-backed and intricately carved occasional chair in maple wood that was made by Robert and left to me in the will of my great-aunt, Violet Anderson. Robert and his wife lived at various addresses in the London area until his death on 12 July 1920 at the age of 70. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, Square 186, Row 5 and his gravestone has the inscription “A light is from the household gone, a voice we loved is stilled, a place is vacant in our home, which never can be filled”.

The family of Robert obviously had something of a wanderlust. Alfred, an upholsterer, went first to Canada in the early 1900s, where he upholstered seats in Canadian Railway coaches, before returning to England and then sailing to New Zealand. One of Alfred’s brothers, Ernest Robert, emigrated to the USA in 1905 in the ship Lake Erie, perhaps accompanied by Alfred? Ernest subsequently married Theresa, whose mother was German, and had a daughter, Florence. He became a naturalised American in 1915 and worked in Detroit, initially as a motorman for Street Railway and then as a labourer/machinist at an automobile factory. In 1930, Florence and her husband Raymond R. Noble (a book-keeper in a bank, whom she had married in 1929), were living with Ernest and Theresa, still in Detroit.Theresa was still alive in 1940 but when she and Ernest died is unknown. In 1940, Raymond Noble was a salesman at the Detroit CocaCola Bottling Company and, in 1953 and 1958, was a salesman with Metopolitan Life Insurance, Detroit.. Florence and Raymond Noble died in May 1987 and November 1987 respectively in Plant City, Hillsborough, Florida.

Two of Robert Jnr.'s other children, Helen (Nell) and Arthur Harold , sailed separately to New Zealand in 1921, Helen on the Shaw Savill ship Pakeha (leaving Southampton on 16 June 1921) and Arthur Harold on the Shaw Savill ship Ionic (leaving Southampton on 20 October 1921). Helen stayed in New Zealand, initially running a shop in Wanganui selling porcelain, and then marrying Harrison Handley. Arthur Harold ran a motor engineering business in Wanganui before returning to live permanently in England in about 1924. Another brother, William Walter went with his family to New Zealand in about 1930 but he died in Riccarton Hospital in 1931, of shell shock resulting from first world war service, and his wife and daughter then returned to the U.K. After the death of Robert Jnr., his wife, Martha, also emigrated to New Zealand, in 1926, accompanied by her daughter Margaret Eliza. They sailed on the New Zealand Shipping Company ship Rimutaka (leaving Southampton on 17 July 1926). Martha died soon after her arrival in New Zealand, on 17 April 1927, in Porirua, New Zealand, at the age of 75, and is buried in the Wanganui cemetery. She is not remembered with much fondness by her grandchild, my aunt Jean, who found her something of “an old tartar”.

The remaining members of Robert Jnr. Anderson’s family stayed in the U. K., and a number of his descendants still live in the south of England. When I first came to the U.K. in 1967, I stayed briefly with his son, Arthur Harold, and daughter-in-law, Violet, who lived in Stanmore, Middlesex. I remain in regular contact with Robert’s grandson, Leslie William, the son of Charles Edward, who lives in Garston, Watford. Leslie and his brother and sister were orphaned at a young age when both their parents, Charles Edward and his wife Laura (formerly Honey), died in 1921; Charles Edward is buried in the same grave as his father in Kensal Green Cemetery, together with his sisters Janet and Alice. Charles Edward’s three children were brought up in various orphanages in North London and had no memory of their parents; however, Leslie does remember his grandmother, Martha, visiting him in the orphanage, just prior to her leaving for New Zealand, and offering him any present of his choosing, which was a cricket bat, ball and stumps. In 1931, at the age of 11, Leslie moved to the boys' training ship, Exmouth, anchored off Grays, Essex, where he was based for four years. He was awarded a bronze medal for "special good conduct and ability". At the age of 15, Leslie joined the Royal Navy and, after a year's training at Gosport, Portsmouth, sailed on HMS York to Bermuda, where he was based for 2 ½ years. In April 1939, he received training in photography at Chatham Barracks. At the outbreak of the second world war, he joined the destroyer HMS Intrepid. His flotilla commander was Lord Mountbatten, based on HMS Icress. Leslie spent much of the war on HMS Intrepid, seeing service at Dunkirk and during the D-day landings; his ship also escorted the aircraft carrier Ark Royal off Murmansk. During his time on Intrepid, Leslie attended an anti-submarine course at Greenock, Glasgow. He left the Royal Navy in 1946.

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Alfred Anderson and his Family

My grandfather, Alfred Anderson, emigrated from England to New Zealand in 1908 on the steamer Ionic, meeting my grandmother, Florence Britton, on the voyage.They were married in Wanganui on 1 August 1908 and apparently spent their honeymoon canoeing on the Wanganui River. My investigation into the background and early life of Florence Britton are described in detail in the separate section of this website.

Following his marriage, Alfred Anderson settled in Wanganui and set up a furniture manufacturing business with two colleagues. He and Florence had seven children of whom my father, Eric Robert, was the eldest, born on 19 July 1909. Alfred died in Wanganui on 13 January, 1954 at the age of 69, and Florence died there on 29 March 1963 at the age of 82. Eric Robert Anderson moved to Wellington in the 1930s where he qualified as a pharmacist, working at the first overseas branch of Boots the Chemist. It was in Wellington that he met my mother, Hazel Emily McCauley, who was working at the time in the Reserve Bank, and they married in New Plymouth on 22 January 1938. Eric Robert received a letter from the General Manager of Boots (N.Z.) Ltd., dated 16 November 1940, telling him that, "As a mark of appreciation of the way in which you have been doing your work we propose increasing your salary to £6/12/6 commencing week ending 23 November 1940". In the early 1940s, my father returned to Wanganui with his wife and joined the family firm as managing director at the request of his father, Alfred. My sister, Patricia Rae, and I were born in Wanganui on 17 December 1943 and 20 February 1942 respectively. At 10 a.m. on the day of my birth at the Cairnbrae maternity home, my mother wrote to her sister, Olive Rae McCauley, as follows:
“My Darling Ginger, Well, can you believe it! Woke Eric at 12.30 p.m. (a.m.?)—came here at 1.30 p.m. (a.m.?) and produced a wee son at 4.30 p.m. (a.m.?) (according to Sister the quickest on record for a 1st). I’m so thrilled Ginger, I could cry and cry—I gave orders under the anaesthetic that you and Mrs. A (Anderson?) were to be rung immediately. Eric didn’t know till 8.30 p.m. (a.m.?). Robert John has had his first feed—yells lustily, weighs 7 lbs 13 ozs—has lots of black hair—a fat face—yawned 4 times and sneezed 5 times—he is a pet—I think he is not very handsome but Dr. and nurses say he is a perfect specimen. I must have some sleep, darling, but had to drop you a line. Eric has been here for an hour—is thrilled”.

My father was struck down with rheumatoid arthritis in March 1965 and died in Wanganui on 5 September 1967 at the age of 58. My mother subsequently remarried in 1969; her second husband, Keith Armstrong Atkinson, died in July 1988 and she herself died in Auckland on 29 January 1990, of cancer, at the age of 79. My sister, now Patricia Rae Bowden, lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Jean is the only one of Alfred’s and Florence’s seven children still alive. She is a widow living in Wanganui. The family business stopped manufacturing furniture in the 1970s and is now run as a furniture retailer by two of my cousins, John and Geoffry Anderson, the sons of Ian Charles. I do, however, have two mahogany armchairs and a mahogany music cabinet made in the factory in the 1950s, as well as a German chiming mantle clock owned by Alfred and Florence.

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