Great, Great Grandmother
My great, great grandmother, Catharine Ann Bunce, was born on 8th September 1850 in Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, just four years short of one century before my birth.
Her father, William Bunce, was 34 at the time, and her mother Drusilla (nee Gifkins) was 25. They had married the year before in 1849 and Catharine was their first child.
William was a farm labourer and the family lived in a rented cottage and worked for one of the farmers in the area. Drusilla was a needlewoman, and probably took in work to help supplement the family’s meagre income.
The family grew quickly as was usual at that time. In 1853, William George was born, followed by Walter Henry in 1856, Owen John in 1857, Caleb in 1861 and Joseph William in 1865.
There may have been other pregnancies during this time which might have ended in miscarriage, still birth or early death of a child.
When Catharine was 21, her mother Drusilla, died aged 47. This could have been as a result of a late pregnancy or an infectious illness, or consumption, which was common in that particular rural area. At this time, Catharine was working on the land and would also have been required to take on caring for the younger children in the family, who were still living at home.
Also round about this time Catharine must have become romantically involved with a young man, because two years later she gave birth to a daughter, Laura Drusilla. She was not married and yet went on to have another daughter, Emma in 1876 and in 1879 a son Henry, Richard, who died the same year. These children were given the surname Belson Bunce, and as the Belson family also lived in Chalgrove, it can be assumed one of them was the girls’ father, possibly Richard Belson, who was unmarried at the time, but later went on to marry Julia Scarlett from Wimbledon in 1880 and to have several children with her.
Catharine went on living with her father William, her brother Walter and two daughters until after the 1881 census. William died in 1884 (aged 68) when Laura was 10 and Emily was 8, and this would have meant a change in their living arrangements. So long as Catharine’s brother, Walter was still working they would have been able to stay in the cottage. However, there is no mention of the family on 1891 census and Walter disappears from all records after the 1881 census, and sometime during that period Catharine and her daughters moved to Wood Green in London, the most likely reason being that Catharine’s brother Joseph was resident there, and was able to provide accommodation for them. Joseph may have moved before 1884 in pursuit of work as did many of the agricultural workers at that time owing to the agricultural depression and the increased availability of work in the towns and cities.
Joseph had married Lucy Ann Simonds in 1893 and by 1901 Catharine was living in Wood Green with him and his wife, three of their children and Catharine’s daughter, Laura and her husband Mark Simonds who was Lucy’s nephew, son of her brother John. They had married in 1901. Catharine’s other daughter Emma had also married a nephew of Lucy in 1897, Bert, who was the son of William, another of her brothers, so he and Mark were cousins.
By 1911 Catherine was living with Laura’s family in Edmonton. She died there in 1916.
