Walter 1852

Walter MARGRETT

Ancestral line as currently established:           Walter 1852,  Stephen 1825,   John 1796,   John 1771,   Thomas 1732,   Thomas 1711,   Thomas 1682,   Thomas 1658,   ?.............Family Tree number 20

 Born:                                  29JAN1852 in Shurdington, Gloucestershire, England

          First of eight children of -

Father:                               Stephen Margrett

Mother:                             Maria Cox

Walter's first marriage: about 1871

First spouse:                    Annie Smith who died before 1881

Two Children:                  Florence Maria, 1895

                                             Ann, 1879

Second marriage:            22MAY1881 @ Lea Bailey, Gloucestershire/Herefordshire

Second spouse;                Ellen Holmes

Ten Children:                    Alvin,                1882

                                             Elizabeth Mary, 1883

                                             Walter Stephen, 1887

                                             Alfred Cornelius, 1888

                                            Thomas George, 1890

                                            Mary Ann,          1893

                                            Edith Ellen,        1894

                                            William Henry,    1897

                                           Raymond David,  1898

                                           Albert Edward,    1901

Died:                                 09JUL1936, in Ponts Hill, Ross, Herefordshire, England aged 84

We are blessed with a first-hand account of this great man written in the 1980's by Albert, Walter's youngest.  "As a schoolboy, I remember Walter Margrett, as a grand old man with a white bushey beard who hardly ever moved from his fire-side chair, but he had a very active past and walked to and fro from work 12 miles each day, as a miner in the Forest of Dean.   He still found time to till the two acres of garden which embraced the freehold of the family home at Herbert Cottage, just off the Dancing Green on the Northern fringe of the Forest, and to raise a family seven sons and five daughters, an effort that was truly prodigious."

"He always insisted that his proper name was William and not Walter and compromised by calling himself "Will" after blaming the crass stupidity of a Registrar of Births for what he considered to be an insult to his dignity."   Walter certainly had no reason to blame the Registrar of Births.  When his Mother registered his birth eleven days after his birth on the 29th January 1852, she and/or her husband had not made up their minds on what to call him because his birth certificate has no name recorded, and merely catalogues that the baby was a male.  His argument was in fact with his parents, because in Shurdington they presented him to the Incumbent to be Christened on 29th February 1852 (a Leap Year note) and he was given the name Walter.

Nine years later, his father is aged 36 and working on the local farms at Badgeworth in Gloucestershire. As well as Walter as he is recorded in the 1861 Census, there are three siblings in the house. Walter himself is aged 9 and works as a "carter's boy" and has left school.  We have yet to trace Walter in the 1871 census when he would have been 19. He must have married before the end of 1875 because the first child of he and Annie was born in May 1876.  This was a girl who they called Florence Maria.  She married some 19 years later to Horace Tomkins and it was this couple who brought into the world Ernie Tomkins who flew in the youngest of the armed services in World War One in France. (Ernie Tomkins appears in Margrett Magazines number 6 (1991), 7 (1992), 13 (1999)).

By the time of the 1881 Census, when Walter would have been 29, his first wife, Annie, must have died because we know he married Ellen Holmes 22 May 1881 in Lea Bailey, in the Forest of Dean. It is believed that he was living in a cottage with a lodger by the name of Smith which was also his first wife's family name. Nearby, just three cottages away lived the Holmes family of whom his new wife is part. Their first child, Alvin, arrived soon after in January 1882.

Aged 39, Walter was not yet calling himself "Will" because the Census enumerator has recorded him as Walter and would only have known what they recounted to him at the door on the Census visit. Walter's two children by his first marriage are not at home. Florence would be 15 and Ann 12 years old. Ellen, his wife is 32 and looking after her five children, 'Elvin' (Alvin) aged 9, Elizabeth 7, Walter Stephen 4, Alfred 2, and Thomas aged 4 months. On this occasion in 1891 they are living at Bailey Brook, East Dean, Westbury on Severn in the Forest of Dean. But the declared birth-places of these five children give us a map of the movements of Walter after he married and also the timing by the ages of the children; East Dean, Gloucestershire nine years ago, Weston under Tanyard, Herefordshire seven years ago, and back to East Dean for the last 4 years.

In the Census of 1901 Walter can blame the enumerator who describes the family as Margretts and this is repeated by a Registrar of Births giving rise to a family line with that spelling. Walter is now aged 49 and a coal-hewer. They still live at East Dean, Gloucestershire. Their sons Walter aged 14 and Thomas aged 10 are described as stone masons labourers but the black marks around the occupation of the ten year-old may suggest a mistake and the description might have been only for the 14 year-old. But Walter aged 14 is the eldest at home so, Alvin aged 19 and Elizabeth aged 18 are living elsewhere. Other siblings at home are Mary Ann aged 8, Edith Ellen 6, William Henry 4, and Raymond David aged 2.

A member of the family records that in the early years of the century "meat was very scarce; we only had it once a week. We had to walk all the way to Ross (about 5 miles) to obtain it.  Father nearly always ate what was left of the joint for his Sunday night supper. I suppose he had to keep his strength up to do the awful manual labour that he had to do to keep us all in clothes and feed us."

The 1911 Census returns are very valuable to researchers because the document available is the one completed by a member of the household, often the head of house, who also confirms how many years they have been married, and how many children have been given to them and how many lost. 

The Census page that Walter completed shows them living at 3 May Cottages, Bartwood Lane, Ponts Hill, near Ross on Wye. It is a dwelling with 5 rooms, including the kitchen but not including "scullery, landing, lobby, closet, bathroom". Walter is 59, and he and Ellen have been married 29 years with all ten of their children still living. Tom (Thomas George) is the eldest at home now and he works at the flour mills as a horse driver. Raymond is 12 and presumably at school as will be Albert aged 9. Walter, however is no longer underground but is employed as a shepherd on a local farm out in the clean air of the most beautiful country in the world.

 We've got one more 'snapshot' of Walter and his family, ten years later, on Sunday 19th June 1921.  They are living, according to the Census, at Palmer Flote, Palmer's Flat, Hope Mansell. Walter has completed the return saying that their home has 4 rooms in addition to scullery, landing, closet, bathroom etc.  He is 69, working as a labourer at Hopes Ash Farm, Hope Mansell. Ellen aged 62, and three of their children are there too. Alfred aged 31 recording as married but without any wife here. His occupation is "T(raining?) Cadet with the Auxiliary Division of the R.J.C. but on leave, sick. More strag still, his home from the Beggars Bush Barracks, Dublin, a long-away land from Hope Mansell.  Edith Ellen, 26 unmarried is helping Mother, Ellen in running the home.  Raymond now 22, is also unmarried having followed his father underground describing him as a coal-hewer with Harrow Hill Colliery, but unemployed now. 

We know nothing of the life enjoyed by Walter from 1921 until he dies in 1936 aged 84. Perhaps one day a family member will add to our biography of this remarkable individual. 

Aspects of Walter's life were recorded in Margrett Magazines number 2 (1987), 9 (1995), 15 (2002), 23 (2009), published and deposited with the British Library in those years under I.S.S.N 0269-0284.