Mary Ann Green (1853-1918), Frederick Rowland (1854-1881) and Daniel Robert Beales 1852-1909).
My 2nd great-grand aunt and uncles.
Mary Ann Green was born on 13 January and baptised on 17 April 1853 at St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, to parents William Mark Green and Elizabeth Maria Symonds. Her first husband would drown in a notorious autumn storm.
Mary Ann wouldn’t have known her father because he died the year after she was born. So she grew up with her mother and her new husband Robert Abel, who married in 1855. The 1871 census showed the family living in Ordnance Road, Great Yarmouth, and Mary Ann working in the textile industry as a crape weaver. Crape, from the French crepe, was a thin, gauzy silk or woollen fabric used for clothing.
She married Frederick Rowland on 14 August 1875 at St Nicholas’s Church and spent the next few years living the life of a fisherman’s wife. Frederick had been born on 31 October 1854 in Great Baddow, Essex, to parents Frederick and Elia Rowland, and was baptised at St Mary’s Church in the village on 3 February the following year. On the night of the 1871 census he was already working as an apprentice at sea, serving on the Ringleader out of Yarmouth. The couple had at least three children and the 1881 Census showed Mary Ann at home with them in Exmouth Road, Great Yarmouth. The same census showed Frederick at sea as Master of the vessel Pirate.
Just months later, on 14 October 1881, Frederick drowned on the vessel Mary Ann Matilda in violent storms that swept across the North Sea. His crew drowned with him – 42-year-old mate James Bishop, seamen Robert Spooner (23), Henry Knight (27) and George Robinson (19) and 16-year-old ‘boy’ Alfred Gooding. The storm cost the lives of people across Britain and caused considerable damage inland and on the coast as it swept through. As far as Norfolk was concerned, the Norwich Mercury of 26 October headline read ‘Nine fishing luggers and three smacks missing with about 120 men”. I cannot find a final tally of dead and injured but the paper reported that in the days after the Great Yarmouth disaster “several boats put in with the loss of one or more hands, while the destruction of nets and gear was pretty general through the fleet”.
While there was hope that at least some of the missing boats had been delayed in returning to port through problems with their nets and other equipment, it eventually became clear that there had been a fearful loss of life. As the newspaper reported: “The anxiety concerning these boats and crews became greatly intensified as Thursday and Friday passed without any sign of their return.” The paper noted that the families and friends of the missing gathered by the docks, seeking news, and I can imagine Mary there, perhaps with her children in tow. “On Friday and again on Saturday many distressing scenes were witnessed at the wharf, wives and children eagerly seeking for any news or tidings that could afford a ray of hope, but only to find unhappily cause for increased alarm and grief.”
The Mercury reported that a number of luggers involved in the drift or herring fishery were lost, probably each with a crew of 10 or 11 men. Frederick’s vessel, the Mary Ann Matilda, was listed as one of the missing smacks that would’ve been employed as trawlers.
The Norfolk Chronicle of 29 October listed Frederick’s boat as belonging to a Mr G Baker, while also reporting the return of several of the missing vessels. Doubtless to Mary Ann’s dismay, her husband’s boat was not one of them. Soon after the disaster, the close-knit community responded in the way it had often done in the past, by raising money for the widows and orphans. The Norfolk News of 19 November 1881 mentioned a collection at a lecture given in Gorleston on the area’s cliffs and beaches. The Eastern Evening News of 6 January 1882 reported that the London Fish Trade Association had collected more than £530 from its members for the relief of the widows and orphans in East Anglia but Yarmouth received the largest sum, of £390. The Norwich Mercury of 28 January 1882 included details of a meeting of the Great Yarmouth and East Norfolk and Suffolk Fishing Boat Owners’ Protection Association. Its members heard of the difficult year experienced by all, the loss of 130 lives but the generosity of local people in supporting the families of victims.
Mary Ann must have received compensation but it was difficult for a single woman to live without the support of a male income earner back then. So, on 31 January 1887, she married Daniel Robert Beales at the parish church in Great Yarmouth. He’d been born locally in 1852 and went to work as a fishmonger in Bermondsey, London, before returning to Great Yarmouth to work as a shipwright, his occupation at the time of the marriage. The couple had at least four children. In 1891 the family were in Victoria Road, Yarmouth and Daniel was described as a boat owner. Ten years later the census showed them living in Credon Road, Plaistow, Essex, with Daniel working again as a shipwright, perhaps in the London docks. He died on 16 December 1909 (Yarmouth Independent 25 December 1909). The 1911 census showed Mary still living in Credon Road with her son Daniel, a clerk to a grocer, and daughter Hilda, but she died there in 1918.
Mary Ann and Frederick’s children were:
- Mary Ann Elizabeth Rowland (1876-1967). Born and baptised in Great Yarmouth, Mary Ann married Thomas William Mays in 1900 in West Ham, Essex. He came from Kings Lynn in Norfolk and worked as a butcher, a role he undertook with the Royal Army Service Corps in France during the First World War. The couple had children before the war and settled in Great Yarmouth. They died there in a nursing home, Thomas in 1963 and Mary Ann in 1967.
- Alice Mary Maud Rowland (1879-1972). Born and baptised in Great Yarmouth, Alice was working as a milliner when the family were living in Plaistow at the 1901 Census. She married Londoner Alfred Robert Parker, an advertising and publicity agent, in Plaistow in 1906. They and their son Leslie lived in Ilford, Essex, for many years. Alfred died there in 1940. Alice’s death was registered in Ashford, Kent, in 1972.
- Frederick Charles Rowland (1880-1926). Born and baptised in Great Yarmouth, the 1901 census showed Frederick (pictured here) working as a steam engine maker but he then became a marine engineer and various records showed him crossing the Atlantic on several vessels, including the Lusitania in 1914. His merchant seaman record for 1918 described him as a chief engineer. He was 3rd engineer on the SS Mottisfont out of Falmouth in Cornwall on the night of the 1921 census. Frederick died in June 1926 on board the Empress of France at Southampton as a result of shock brought on by suffering severe scalds. He was acting as 4th engineer at the time and his home address was given as Southend in Essex. Frederick was married but I’ve yet to find a record.
Mary Ann and Daniel’s children were:
- Daniel Robert Beales (1888-1982). Born in Great Yarmouth, he was working as a grocer’s clerk and living in Plaistow by the 1911 Census. He served in the First World War from 1915 as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps and in 1921 was living with his sister Hilda’s family, employed as a clerk and bookkeeper. By 1939 he was living in Ilford, Essex, working as builder’s clerk. He married Gladys Mary Yorke of Streatham in 1943 and lived until 1982, his death registered in the London suburb of Richmond. Gladys died the same year
- Dora Susie Beales (1890-1891) was baptised and buried in Great Yarmouth.
- Arthur Gordon Beales (1890-1891) was baptised and buried in Great Yarmouth.
- Hilda May Beales (1893-????). Hilda was born in Great Yarmouth but later moved to the West Ham area in Essex with her family. She Henry Charles Johnston in Plaistow, Essex, in 1918. In 1921 they were living in East Ham with their child and by 1939 were in Redbridge, Essex. He was a school teacher. I’ve not been able to pin down their death years.
Sources. Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society. Thomas Mays’ and Daniel Beales’ military records are also on Ancestry and Find My Past via the National Archives. British Newspaper Archive (titles in text). Frederick Rowland’s merchant seaman career – cert number 118001 – at National Archives series BT350.