William Robert Green (1847-1882) and Ellen Lodge (1848-????).
My 2nd great-grand uncle and aunt.
William was baptised on 18 July 1847 at St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. His parents were William Mark Green and Elizabeth Maria Symonds. He lived as a child in Birmingham and Camberwell in Surrey with his parents and siblings before returning to the Norfolk coast with them.
His father died in 1854 and and his mother remarried in 1855. William was living with her and her new husband Robert Abel in Bermondsey Place West, Great Yarmouth, at the time of the 1861 census. The 1871 census described him as a caulker, responsible for sealing cracks in vessels and making them watertight, and listed him with the family in Ordnance Road. Later in the year, on 24 December, he married Ellen Lodge at St Nicholas’s. She’d been born in Great Yarmouth to Jersey-born labourer William Lodge and his wife Elizabeth in 1848.
Tragically though, and just like his father, William died young and in the Yarmouth Workhouse – probably in its capacity as a hospital. The cause of death, on 12 March 1882, was apoplexy, which was normally a reference to a brain condition such as a stroke or seizure. This is, again, reminiscent of his father’s death. William was buried in Great Yarmouth on 20 March. His widow Ellen (sometimes listed as Helen) remarried in Suffolk in 1883, her new husband James Nathan Howes, but she may be the woman who died in Yarmouth in 1891 a few months after the census showed her living with her family in the town.
William and Ellen Green had at least four children:
- William Robert Green (1872-????) was baptised in Great Yarmouth in 1872 married Norfolk native Kate Elizabeth Alden in 1898. By 1901 he was working as an attendant at the Great Yarmouth Naval Hospital, which was mainly used as a mental hospital, and 10 years later was still there – by which time he had had children with his wife. The 1921 Census and 1939 Register showed William and Kate living in Birmingham, Warwickshire, he described as a retired general labourer. He was probably one of the William Greens who died in the city in the 1950s. Kate died in Warwick Hospital in 1960.
- Herbert Ernest Green (1876-1957) was baptised in Great Yarmouth and married Minnie Amy Burgess in Worcestershire in 1899. They lived in Birmingham, Warwickshire, where he worked as a harness maker and saddler. Minnie died in 1927 and Herbert remarried in 1934, his bride being Florence Vernon. He remained in his adopted city and died there in 1957.
- Ellen Elizabeth Green (1878-1964) was baptised in Great Yarmouth and worked as a weaver in a silk factory before marrying Ormesby native John Gallant in 1902. He was described as a labourer, a paint sprayer, boiler attendant and an engine driver in various records over the decades but also served as a leading stoker in the Royal Navy during the First World War. They remained in the Great Yarmouth area and raised a family there. John died in 1940, Ellen in 1964.
- Edith Agnes Green (1880-1974) was baptised in Great Yarmouth and married Punjab-born soldier George Arthur Stainfield in 1912. He served in the Royal Artillery from 1899 and into the First World War, rising to the rank of Captain. He took a gymnastics course during his time with the military and the 1921 Census showed that he was the physical training organiser for Norfolk Council, based in Norwich. The couple moved to Eastbourne in Sussex, and the Eastbourne Herald of 16 March 1963 noted that he was the town’s physical training organiser from 1924 to 1950. In the Second World War he helped organise the evacuation of children. He died in 1963, Edith in 1974.
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. National Archives for John Gallant naval record reference BT 377/7/120327 and George Stainfield military record in the section British Army World War I Pension Records 1914-1920. British Newspaper Archive (titles in text).