Samuel Symonds (1836-1909) and Ann Maria Masterson (1836-1912).
My 3rd great-grand uncle and aunt.
Samuel was born to Charles Robinson Witchingham Symonds and Susannah Waters baptised on 20 July 1836 at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.
He married Ann Maria Masterson there on 28 December 1856. She was also a Yarmouth native, born to parents Benjamin and Elizabeth Masterson and baptised at St Nicholas’s on 4 July 1836. She sometimes went by the name Maria in the census records.
Samuel is harder to pin down because there were several men by the name in the town at the time. However, he’s most likely the Samuel Symonds who was at sea at the time of the 1861 Census, on board the William & Benjamin and listed as a married seaman aged 24. His wife was recorded at home in Napoleon Place, Great Yarmouth, with two of her children. But did he then become a beachman and get caught up in a case reported in the Norfolk News of 24 September 1864? Judging by subsequent census records, he did.
Beachmen were a mix of lifeboat men, salvage experts and ferrymen, employed at Yarmouth to bring fish from trawler to shore. It was often a dangerous job, especially when the men went out in severe weather to rescue cargo and crews from stricken vessels. The court heard that Symonds was among a group of men found guilty of stealing 33 pairs of sole and three haddock as they worked to unload a vessel, spotted through binoculars by the owners. They were each sentenced to 21 days hard labour – rather than the usual six months – after calls for leniency by both the prosecuting and defence lawyers. The court was told that the men were of good character. It emerged during the hearing before Yarmouth magistrates that the trawler’s captain had not objected to the men putting away a small piece of his catch and the men claimed that in fact this was a widely accepted perk of the beachman’s job.
By 1871 Samuel was living with his family at Back Crown Place in Yarmouth. The Norwich Mercury of 26 July 1876 reported on his life-saving heroics on Yarmouth’s North Beach. He was the attendant there when a gentleman took a bathing machine out into the water, but about 100 yards offshore he was seized with the cramp, began sinking and started shouting for help. Samuel grabbed a lifebelt, rushed into the water and rescued him. His bravery earned him a “handsome testimonial on vellum” from the Royal Humane Society. The Norfolk News of 30 September 1876 reported that “on several previous occasions, Symonds had been instrumental in saving the lives of men who but for his courage and promptitude would have drowned”.
The Norfolk News of 10 February 1877 carried a report of the presentation of the testimonial at the Police Court. The Yarmouth Mayor described how Samuel was employed during the summer by Pestell’s bathing machines and over three years had saved six lives, a seventh attempt being unsuccessful. Samuel thanked the magistrates for paying to have the testimonial framed for him.
The 1881 and 1891 censuses showed Samuel and his family living in Tyrolean Place in Great Yarmouth, the former listing Samuel as a general labourer, the latter as a boatman. In 1901 they were at 8 Nettle Hill East, close to the beach, with Samuel once again described as a beachman.
Samuel died of cancer on 30 March 1909, his address given as 2 Greenacres Passage, Nelson Road, Great Yarmouth. He was buried on 3 April. Ann Maria died in January 1912 and was buried on the 31st of the month.
The couple had a large family:
- Samuel Benjamin Symonds (1857-1935). Born in Great Yarmouth on 27 September 1857 and baptised there on 9 May 1858, Samuel married local woman Ellen Bloom there on 16 September 1887. Census records and over the course of his life worked as a fisherman (1891), labourer (1901) and worker at the local Lacon’s brewery (1911 and 1921). He and Ellen raised a family in Great Yarmouth, and for some years lived at the oddly named ‘Laughing Image Corner’ in Yarmouth. He died on 1 December 1935 and was buried in town on the 6th. Ellen died in April 1940.
- Agnes Caroline Symonds (1859-1941). Born in Great Yarmouth on 29 December 1859 and baptised there on 1 February 1861, Agnes worked as a net maker. She then married Essex-born fisherman Joseph William White in Yarmouth on 5 June 1892. The 1901 Census placed them in Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, with Joseph described as a port missionary there. Ten years later Agnes and her children were in Grimsby, where Joseph was a missionary at the Fishermen’s Institute. During the First World War he served in the Royal Naval Reserve after the vessel he was skippering was commandeered. In 1921 the couple were in Gorleston just south of Yarmouth, Joseph listed as working for the charitable support organisation the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. Various newspaper reports over the years pointed to him being the master of their Hospital Mission ships (for example Norfolk Chronicle 7 October 1905). Agnes was widowed in 1928 – the Yarmouth Independent of 17 November reporting that Joseph died on 13 November after an operation. The paper noted his extensive career at sea, his work as a port missionary for the Royal National Mission, and his father’s work as a skipper out of Gorleston. Agnes was living in Watford in Hertfordshire at the time of the 1939 Register and died in Barnet, Herts, on 20 September 1941.
- Benjamin Charles Symonds (1862-1896). Benjamin was born on 9 June 1862 in Great Yarmouth and baptised there on 3 August that year. The 1881 Census recorded him at home with his parents and working as a twine spinner. He married Annie Eliza Lacey in Yarmouth in 1886 and settled in the town. She came from further up the coast at Happisburgh. Benjamin died young in 1896, his address given as Trafalgar Road in Gorleston, and was buried in Great Yarmouth on 27 February that year. Annie died the following year and was buried in Great Yarmouth on 6 November 1897.
- Henry John Symonds (1865-1931). He was born in Great Yarmouth on 15 April 1865 and baptised there on 2 June that year. Census returns suggest he stayed in the town the whole of his life. He married Yarmouth-born Eleanor Tillyer there on 14 August 1887 and raised a family. Henry was working as a fisherman at the time of his marriage, but subsequent census returns listed him as either a general or bricklayer’s labourer. He died in Yarmouth on 10 January 1931 and his funeral was held on the 15th. Eleanor may have died in 1959 but I cannot be sure.
- Alice Elizabeth Symonds (1868-1947). Born in Great Yarmouth on 15 January 1868 and baptised there on 6 March of that year, Alice married North Walsham-born James Dunton Eastoe in Great Yarmouth on 30 January 1888. They had children and he worked as a shoemaker (1891 Census) and a newsagent & tobacconist (1901). But from the 1911 Census (and perhaps earlier) she was no longer living with him. In 1921 and at the 1939 Register she was listed as a housekeeper and was living with widower Charles Robert Thorpe – a man roughly her age. I assume they were a couple in all but name even though she was still described as married. James ended up in New Zealand – various passenger lists showed him travelling to and from the UK and New Zealand in the 1920s. Electoral rolls placed him in Auckland, living with another woman. He was sometimes listed as a draper, at other times a musician. He died on 22 November 1946. Alice died in 1947 in Yarmouth.
- Albert Clement Symonds (1870-1942). Albert was born in Great Yarmouth on 26 June 1870 and baptised there on 23 October 1875. He married local woman Rose Ellen White in the town on 25 December 1894 and had children. From at least the 1891 Census he worked as a twine spinner but by 1901 the family was living in Elswick, Northumberland – a suburb of Newcastle Upon Tyne. The record described him as a boatman labourer. But from 1911 he was listed as a cranesman. Rose died in their adopted city on 29 February 1940, Albert in 1942.
- Ethel May Symonds (1879-1928). Ethel was born in Great Yarmouth in 1879 and married local man John Logdon Bartram there on 30 November 1902. He worked as a labourer and they raised children together. Ethel died young in 1928 and was buried in Great Yarmouth on 28 September. John died in the town in August 1955.
Sources:
Birth, marriage, death and burial records, including civil registrations, census and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society.
British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).
David Higgins book on The Beachmen (published by Terence Dalton, 1987).