This week I have been trying out making my own family tree template to create better graphics of the family detail in my postings. It is a work in progress but this is a better way than using tables all the time.
In previous posts about the Spilletts I have explained that Henry, my Great Grandfather, had two families. His first wife, Ada, my Great Grandmother, died of cancer in 1895 after bearing three children. Mabel, Ada, my Grandmother, and Henry. A year after Ada’s death, Henry married Sarah Lynn and they had three children together. George, William and Laura.
Henry Spillett’s family in Oxted. He married Ada in 1880 and then Sarah in 1896
This is the Spillett family that had arrived in Oxted by 1900, apart from Laura who was born in 1906. They were all living in Oxted High Street. It might have been a tad tight with five children but by the time of the 1901 Census, Mabel had left home and at the age of 17 was living with a Bakers family in West Croydon and working as a Domestic Servant.
Henry took up his trade as a Coach Painter and then eventually took over the Wheatsheaf pub as the Landlord. The Wheatsheaf stayed in the Spillett family hands for several years, while next door, my Great Uncles Henry and William (whom my father always called his Uncle Frank) took over a shop next door to the pub and ran it as a Bicycle shop.
Old postcard of Oxted High Street. The Wheatsheaf pub and the Spilletts shop next door. Although it states Coach Builder on the shop sign, I suspect that this was where Henry and Frank ran the Bicycle shop. This photo may have been taken before the First World War. Note the absence of motor cars and the horse dung on the road.
Between 1901 and 1906, Henry brought his Mother from Canterbury to Oxted to live with his family. Esther Spillett worked most of her life as a Charwoman in the old Longport area of Canterbury, in Ivy Lane. She was still there in 1901 and listed in that years Census return as having an elderly lodger. Either through poverty or illness, Henry persuaded his mother to come and stay with him and his family. In 1906 she died and was buried in a paupers grave in Oxted Parish Church. I make that assumption because I have found an entry in the Parish Union register applying for money for her funeral.
Burial register entry for Esther Spillett who died aged 75 years old.
My Grandmother, Ada was still at school in 1901 but when she left school she went to work in a local commercial laundry as a Laundry Hand. She was still working there until she married in 1911. She and Clarence Carver were together for 55 years until she died in 1966. I remember her as a woman with poor mobility because of the rheumatoid arthritis that she lived with for many years. This particularly affected her hands and fingers.
Ada Spillett with her husband Clarence (George) Carver. Photo dated around the early 1960’s. (Photo from my personal collection).
Her step brother George spent the whole of the First World War serving with the Royal Navy. He will become the subject of another post in his own right.
My Father, Bill Carver, was born in 1912 and here is a picture of him at the Oxford Village School in Beadles Lane, Oxted, when his Aunt Laura was the May Queen.
Laura Spillett, born in 1906, in the middle of the back row. She is the Oxted village May Queen. My Father, Bill Carver, is on the front row third from the right. I have dated the picture from around 1920. (photo from my personal collection).
Ada and Clarence had three children, William, John and Ken and lived in the Limpsfield are all of their married life. This is a small village adjacent to Oxted. The extraordinary thing is that, other than my Grandmother Ada, I personally only knew one person out of this family tree of the Spilletts, the wife of George, my Aunt Doris, who died in 1989. I remember visits to Doris in her cottage in Hurst Green which was an area of Oxted. Other than me, my three remaining siblings and two cousins, there are no other members of this Spillett generation that I know of. I can only remember Ada Spillett and Doris Spillett. That may change with future research.