Elizabeth Davis was baptised in December 1793, in Eastcombe, in the Parish of Bisley a few miles to the east of Stroud in Gloucestershire where Davis is an extremely common name at the time. A daughter of William Davis (her mother’s name is not recorded) she may well have had a sister Louisa born twenty years later in 1812 in Saltford, on the River Avon between Bristol and Bath. In 1816 Elizabeth married James Poulson, a widower (who previously married Hester Ridler who died in 1814). His father John Poulson (his mother’s name is also not recorded) was probably born in Bisley around 1760. Between them, Elizabeth and William had four daughters Hester (1816), Eliza (1818), Mary (1820, but died 1831) and Ann (1822), then a gap to three more with Jesse (1831), Emma (1833) and James (1839), all baptised in Bisley.
By 1841 they were living in Cheltenham, but a year later disaster hit the family, possibly a cholera outbreak, in which both James and Elizabeth died, along with three of their children, Hester, Jesse and James all died. The surviving three daughters would have been looked after either by Eliza who was 24 by then, or by other family members. The eldest, Eliza married a Carter, John Lane in 1843 and the following year Ann married a local gardener, William Cook. The youngest, Emma went to live with her Aunt Louisa as a dressmaker for the next 60 years, and like her aunt, never married.
John Lane was the son of John Lane and Sarah, for whom we have not yet ascertained a maiden name. Although the early census returns show the birthplace of John to have been Cheltenham in 1818, later when he was 72 the 1891 census officer appears to have pressed him into saying it was in Staverton, a small village between Cheltenham and Gloucester just north of today’s Gloucestershire Airport. Although we have not identified a record of a marriage of John Lane and Sarah the Church records show there was such a couple who had two sons William and a John christened at The Old Pheasant Inn near Staverton (today just between the M5 and the GCHQ building) on 22 Jan 1824 with the entry coming just before a Joseph and Hannah Lane had christened Frederick and William on the same page. Perhaps John and Joseph were brothers, and maybe they all earned their living as carters or waggoners. In neither case are the ages of the baptised children given. That said, we have DNA evidence linking us with the John Lane who married Eliza Poulson at St John the Baptist Church in Gloucester in 1843 where it was probably John’s sister Anne Marie who acted as a witness.
The problem with being a waggoner or a carter back then was that you had few roots – your life could be spent crossing the country often with your family delivering goods wherever you were paid to do so, Perhaps for this reason John and his family do not show up in a Census return until 1861. They had six known children and we have DNA evidence of links to three of them. George was their firstborn, in 1845 near Cheltenham, then came William born in 1847 in Kendal, Westmoreland. Around 1848 they appear tohave settled in the Black Country because the next child Mary Anne was born in Tipton in 1849, Sarah in Smethwick in 1853, John in Wednesbury in 1856 and finally Thomas in West Bromwich in 1860.
Despite the maturing systems of canals and railways, John continues to be shown as a Carter or Waggoner in the Census returns up to the age of 72 in 1891. There is no confirmed trace yet of the fate of the two daughters, but the 4 sons all entered the iron and steel industry becoming shearers and puddlers and working in furnaces. Shearing and puddling was hot work involving stirring the molten iron with long rods to remove the impurities that previous methods had left behind and then cutting the molten steel into the correct size lumps for subsequent working.
William and his family we think emigrated to Wisconsin USA in 1884, and Thomas followed with his family to Rhode Island in 1908 after his Father died. This left the eldest son George and his brother John both to stay and marry in West Bromwich where they brought up their respective families. In 1871 George Lane married Caroline Disturnal descended from a family of Huguenot refugees who had arrived in Birmingham (Darlaston and Yardley) 150 years earlier with knowledge of the metal trade. Over the next 23 years ten children were born to this marriage – eight daughters and two sons – either in William Street or Great Bridge Street in West Bromwich. Of these a number died young and one perhaps emigrated to Ohio, USA but it was the 6th child Florence Lane who in 1902 married Edwin Clarke, a Jeweller from Hockley, Birmingham bringing this branch of the Lane family to an end. Both George and Caroline died in West Bromwich before the Great War started, George in 1909 and Caroline in 1913. With Edwin, Florence had 8 children over the next 16 years although one died in infancy, another from Scarlet Fever aged 10 years, and Hilda died aged 24 possibly from complications in childbirth. Florence Clark (nee Lane) was outlived by her son Herbert, three daughters Flo, Beat & Madge, and by her youngest son Jack. She lived to be 75 and died in Erdington in 1956.
In May 1924 Herbert Clark left his job in the jewellery trade in Birmingham and went to Canada with the intention of moving there permanently. His 1925 diary opens in January showing him out of work living at 598 Young Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba with his Uncle Tom. He also got work off his Uncle Jack. He received birthday presents from Auntie Elsie amongst others who may or may not have been related. I have not yet identified these relatives but assume them to be from the Lane family many of whom moved over the sea to the Americas in the early 20th century. I have photographs of Herbert in Canada with his uncle George Edward Lane and his auntie Clara (nee Parker). Herbert returned to Birmingham in October 1925. George and Clara returned sometime before 1934.
But Came They All to Birmingham 