jane fulcher + william whitmore
Jane was baptised at St Mary, Yaxley on 22 January 1815; she was the daughter of Thomas Fulcher and his wife Charlote.
Jane married William Whitmore in Colchester, Essex in the fall of 1838. William ran a draper’s shop on Tavern Street in Stowmarket, about 15 miles south of Yaxley, for over 20 years — the term draper was used to describe a dealer in cloth, either a retailer or a wholesaler. William was the son of Thomas Whitmore and Mary Oxborow and was born in the neighbouring village of Mellis in 1804. William's father was a yeoman farmer in Mellis and following his death in 1827, his wife Mary and son Charles continued to run the farm.
Their first daughter Jane was born on 29 November 1839 and Elizabeth was born two months before the 1841 Census. In 1841, William employed eight male shop assistants and two female servants but by 1851, he only employed four shop assistants as well as one house servant and a cook. Jane and William had two more children, son Thomas Henry was born in the summer of 1842 and baptised on 31 July and Ellen who was baptised on 26 July 1844.
Three months after the 1851 census was taken, William Whitmore died in Stowmarket leaving Jane to support their four young children. It is not known whether she continued running the shop but four years later, she had left Stowmarket and moved to a farm at Mellis Hall about 1 mile west of Yaxley. The 1844 Directory of Suffolk includes a description of Mellis Hall:
A small farmhouse at the west end of the green, is all that remains of the once extensive mansion of Poutney Hall, which was long the seat of the Clarkes and had a large park. The greater part of the hall was taken down many years ago.
The directory also lists several residents of Mellis including Jane’s mother-in-law, Mary Whitmore of Putney Hall; Mary was also recorded in the 1851 Census as a Farmer at Poutaney Hall along with her three adult children so she may have helped Jane obtain the lease on the farm — and it was not a small operation as the census records that Jane farmed 150 acres and employed six men and three boys.
Charlotte Fulcher had moved from Stowmarket to Mellis Hall along with her daughter Jane and lived there until her death. She died at Mellis in 1867, aged 87 years, and was buried next to her husband Thomas at St Mary, Yaxley on 23 September 1867.
Jane continued to farm approximately 160 acres at Mellis and employed 6 men to help with the operation. In 1871, her son Thomas Henry and his family were also living with her but his occupation was listed as Coal Merchant so it does not appear that he was involved in the farm.
Thomas Henry married Charlotte Jane Gedney in 1867 and they had five children. The family remained in Mellis and lived on the Green where Thomas was employed as the local Relieving Officer and Registrar of Births and Deaths — a local official responsible for receiving applications for parish relief, distributing the relief payments approved by the Board of Guardians and issuing orders to admit people to the Workhouse. The Poor Law Amendments of 1834 divided the country into georgraphic areas known as Unions and each Union elected a Board responsible for the administration of relief, including the Union Workhouse, in their area. Thomas and his family moved to nearby Yaxley by 1891 and finally south to the village of Gislingham by 1901 where he continued acting as the Registrar until his retirement. Thomas died in 1914 and his wife Charlotte died in 1938.
Jane’s eldest daughter Jane married George Eaton in 1861 and they had six children. When they married, George was working on his father’s farm in Mellis but later obtained a position as a Conductor with the Great Eastern Railway in Chelmsford, Essex. The Eatons later moved to Disraeli Road in Forest Gate near West Ham in east London where they remained for the next 30 years. George died in the early 1900s and by 1911, Jane had moved south of the Thames and was living with her youngest son, William Whitmore Eaton, in Croydon.
Farm in the centre and Pountney Hall on the left. Whitmore’s Wood,
at the top, is another indication of the family’s longstanding tenancy
in Mellis.
Elizabeth Whitmore married Daniel Gull in 1868. Daniel was 15 years older than Elizabeth and at the time of their marriage, he was farming 150 acres in Stanway, Essex but ten years later, Daniel gave up farming and was working as a Commission Agent. The family moved to Colchester and were living at 19 Roman Road in the parish of All Saints. Elizabeth and Daniel had four children, two boys and two girls, between 1870 and 1879. Five years after their move to Colchester, Daniel died aged 59 years. In 1891, Elizabeth was still living in Colchester and letting out apartments at Morvent House on Chapel Street along with her son William and daughter Elizabeth. She died in West Ham in 1897.
Ellen married William Henry Whitmore in 1874. William was most likely a distant relation although the exact family relationship between them has not been established. William was born in Rishangles, Suffolk in 1831, the son of Thomas Whitmore and Eliza Wroots.
The Second Whitmore family
Thomas Whitmore was born in Bedfield, Suffolk about 1798 and married Eliza Wroots in Tannington in 1821. Thomas was a successful farmer and managed a succession of large farms — 1600 acres in 1851 and 400 acres in 1861 — in Rishangles, Leiston, Capel St Andrew and Bruisyard. Thomas and Eliza had nine children but sadly five died in childhood or early adulthood. They were successful farmers and were wealthy enough to employ servants and send their sons to boarding schools in Yoxford and Stowmarket. Eliza Wroots died in 1856 and following her death Thomas remarried, to 52 year old Sarah Plant, in 1860.
Konigsberg c. 1875
After working as a Farm Bailiff for a numbers of years, William Henry Whitmore trained as a Draper and shortly after their marriage, Ellen and William moved to Konigsberg, Prussia to continue his work in the drapery business. Konigsberg was a major trading port on the Baltic Sea and the capital of East Prussia until 1945 when it was annexed by the Soviet Red Army and renamed Kaliningrad. Ellen and William had five children in Konigsberg before returning to Suffolk in the early 1880s. Their youngest son, Frederick, was born in Leiston in 1886 but they were soon on the move again and settled in Norwich where they ran a dairy on Esdelle Street for many years.
Ellen’s mother, Jane, appears with the family in the 1891 Census although she likely moved in when them some years before as she does not appear in the 1881 Census — she may even have moved to Konigsberg with Ellen.
Jane Fulcher Whitmore died in Norwich in 1897 aged 82 years. William Henry Whitmore died in Norwich in 1909 and following his death, Ellen moved to Streatham in south west London with her two daughters, Ellen and Marie. Ellen died in Wandsworth in 1918.