#3 Louisa Sheaf - Great Aunt by name, great Aunt by nature.

Great Aunt Lou was something of a legend in the Sheaf family, both at Honeybourne in England and in Australia. Although having no husband or children of her own, she was firmly enmeshed in the daily lives of those around her and a personage of some importance!

Louisa Sheaf was the youngest child of William Harbidge Sheaf and Mary Tomes Holland, my 3 x great grandparents. She was born in 1835 and had 10 older siblings. Her father was a farmer at Bickmarsh in the parish of Welford on Avon. When Louisa was only 2 her father died suddenly. According to a distant family connection Ian Tomes in England, who has a large collection of Tomes family documents and memorabilia, he drowned at Weston Lock in the Avon river. I have not yet been able to confirm this from documentary sources, but he certainly died intestate, which does rather suggest a sudden death.

Louisa's mother Mary must have been an amazing woman as she carried on the family farming business until her death in 1846; as well as providing for her large family.

After her baptism at Welford on Avon in 1835, the next record I have for Louisa is in the 1841 census. At only 6 years of age, she was living with a cousin's family in Badsey. John Sheaf, his wife Sarah and their grown up daughter Margaret had three little children living with them, and it appears from the 1840 Bentley's History and Directory of the Borough of Evesham that Sarah and Margaret ran a small preparatory school for infant children.

In 1851, Louisa was living and working in Northampton as an apprentice to a distributor of religious tracts! Apparently, Northampton was considered fertile ground for the Baptist movement and prodigious amounts of tracts were distributed weekly in a well organized and systematic mission.

 I don't know how long Louisa remained with the Cooper family in Northampton, but by 1861 she had moved again and was working for a Jewish family, the Myers, in Edgbaston, Warwickshire. This was to be a long lasting relationship for Louisa who remained with the Myers family for at least 20 years as a domestic servant and then a nurse domestic. Maurice Myers, his wife Mathilda and their children must have come to greatly love Louisa, as in the 1901 census she is visiting Mathilda at the home of her daughter Lella Samuels in Hampstead and is described as "friend". Another Myers child, Leopold, was eventually the executor of Louisa's will after her death in 1932 at the age of 98.

Interestingly, Louisa's impact on the Myers family possibly had far reaching consequences for many people in the broader community. In 1913, Leopold Myers gifted a country house at Cleeve Prior for use as a convalescent home for women. The home was known as The Gertrude Myers Convalescent Home, in memory of his own wife. Both Gertrude and Leopold had been directors of the Birmingham Hospital for Women and realized that a convalescent home providing fresh air, good food and rest could make a huge difference to the recovery of patients, especially for working women who might otherwise not get an opportunity to recuperate in peace and quiet. I can only imagine that Leopold's many years of association with Louisa, a perfect example of a hard working women, were instrumental in his choice of Cleeve Prior as the site for his charitable project.

As an unmarried woman of limited means, it appears that Louisa didn't ever have a home of her own. Once she had finished working for the Myers family, she lived with various relatives. In 1891 she was living with her much older brother Thomas Holland Sheaf, my 2 x great-grandfather and then in the 1911 census, she was recorded as living with her niece by marriage Kate Sheaf (Careless) at Sunnyside, Cleeve Prior. She also featured in stories of life at Honeybourne as told to my father by his mother and grandmother, as she was an aunt to both my great grandfather George Cornelius Sheaf and my great grandmother Louisa Sheaf. It is in fact quite likely that great grandmother Louisa was named for her.

Once great grandma Louisa emigrated to Australia leaving her husband and step-children behind, she kept in touch with her dear Aunt Lou.
I have a very short letter from Great-Aunt Lou to her niece Louisa in which she says:

"Just a line to wish you may have a Happy Bday and that you may spend many others and under much more happy circumstances. I am giving you a purse with initials which was given to me but which I have never used and which I hope you will accept with my love and best wishes for the coming season. A very Happy Xmas and a much brighter New Year when it comes. Aunt Lou."

I think this photo, taken at Honeybourne in 1921 on the occasion of a family wedding encapsulates what was probably a delicate position for Great Aunt Lou: biological aunt to both Louisa Sheaf on her right and Louisa's husband George Cornelius Sheaf on her left - caught in the middle of a difficult marriage with family loyalty going both ways.

To my mind, Louisa was the ultimate great Aunt. She supported herself from a very young age through hard work; she had the ability to build positive relationships with those around her and she lived to a great old age, becoming something of a legend in the process. Her headstone in the churchyard of Cleeve Prior simply reads "Oh Rest in the Lord". And rest is what I think she deserved after such a long and busy life. Here's to Great Aunt Lou!

Synchronicity!

When I first started researching several years ago, I got sidetracked onto a line that was only very indirectly associated with the family. I was interested in a man called Cotterell Corbett, who built the farmhouse that my grandmother Isabella grew up in. According to my mother, who has visited the house, Honeybourne Manor Farm House itself was built in 1831 (this is carved into the guttering). On the lintel of a door into the dining room is the following verse: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in - Thus runs the ancient proverb. This house was built by Cotterell, and now belongs to Robert." [The Robert mentioned would have been Robert Fletcher]

 The Cotterell Corbett of Honeybourne Manor Farm was a son of Michael Corbett and Rebecca Ashwin and was a second cousin several times removed of my Grandmother. I got a bit carried away and at one stage checked relationships and was getting things like "so and so is the uncle of the husband of the sister of......." Quite ridiculous really! I put it all aside and got back to more relevant research along the original Sheaf lines. Or so I thought....

Last weekend, after following up some more of the Fletcher/Smith family both Mum and I (who are in different states might I add) came up with John Smith marrying Muriel Corbett in Lower Quinton in 1708. Bells started to ring wildly and I searched through the data base and found that this was a marriage I already had discovered in the irrelevant Corbett line! Suddenly the woman who was the aunt of the cousin of the sister of the uncle blah blah blah was my 6 x great-grandmother! And the lesson from all this? If you do the research, keep it! Who knows how it might tie in.

Progress - one more generation.

I have been stuck for ages at the brick wall of the Robert Fletcher that married his "cousin" Muriel Fletcher in 1813. In a very round-about way using some information I had about a Robert Robbins Fletcher who was a very distant connection of the family in the Honeybourne area (he married Mary Ashwin, a sister of Phoebe Ashwin who married another Fletcher, Richard, also of Honeybourne), I was able to work backwards to the origin of the Robbins name. Why I thought that following that line would be helpful I don't know....call it a hunch! William Fletcher of Moreton in Marsh married Elizabeth Robins of Blockley in 1758. They had at least three children Thomas, Robert and Joseph. Thomas was the father of Robert Robbins Fletcher and his brother Robert, son of William, was the Robert who married Muriel. Wills, some online legal documents, and a whole lot of BDM data all seem to tie this in. It just seemed to be such a convoluted way to work one generation back; but when the direct way seems blocked I suppose there is no alternative but to try to sneak around it by a more circuitous route!Anyway, I felt very jubilant about cracking the puzzle!