The death of Thomas Smith

Ancestry has a new feature you can use to look up wills and probate records. I just found Sarah's husband Thomas Smith. He died at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford on 19 September 1887. His estate was worth 96 pounds 7 shillings (not much even then). He was born in 1831, so was 56. He left everything to his second wife Elizabeth. His address was given as West St. Helen Street, Abingdon, the same place Elizabeth was living four years later in 1891.

Losing Grace

   Grace Ridge Cockram, Sarah's younger sister, was born in Stockleigh Pomeroy in 1819. She was nowhere to be found in the 1841 census, but surfaced in 1846 to marry James Wood at the St. Pancras Parish  church on Christmas Day 1846.  James was a carpenter whose wife had died leaving him with two children. He was from Plymouth, the son of a gardener. By 1846 older sister Faith Charity and her husband William Channon (also a carpenter) had already been living in London for at least five years. 1851 found Grace and James living at 32 Carlisle Street with three children, the eldest of whom was James' son by his first wife, also named James. Grace and James had two children of their own: three year old William and one year old Sarah Jane. Grace's brother John Cockram lived with them as well in their small two room place. He too was a carpenter.
   Within a few months of the taking of the 1851 census, the family fell on hard times. First, Sarah Jane died. I was devastated when I read the death entry, and can't imagine how Grace must have felt. In 1854 a cholera epidemic hit the area killing thousands and forcing many to flee.  The famous "ghost map" developed by Dr. John Snow shows Carlisle Street just at the edge of the affected area, with deaths at the end where number 32 was situated, but none at the other end nearer to Soho Square, where Sarah and her mother and sister lived. The cholera outbreak was traced to a pump on nearby Broad Street, so it would have been the nearest pump to Grace's household, but not to Sarah's.
   After 1851 I have not been able to find a trace of Grace. Her husband died in the Holborn Workhouse in 1855.  By 1861 their son was living with his uncle James Cockram at his farm in Shobrooke, described as a servant. He was still there in 1871, but was by then described as a nephew. James probably took him on as an apprentice, just as Sarah had been an apprentice on a farm in her early teens.
   So what happened to Grace. (tbc). James and Grace's marriage was witnessed by George and Jane Fletcher (she by mark only). These two were living at 41 Edmund Street in 1851. Edmund Street was the dress given on the marriage licence.

Carlisle Street

 When I was in London I went to Carlisle Street to check out #19, the house where Sarah, Mary Anne and Charity Cockram were living in 1851. The house is now an Irish pub, a tiny place with low ceilings and signs outside warning patrons not to bother the surrounding businesses when they spill out onto the street. The area around Soho Square, off which Carlisle Street runs, is mostly home to media companies. The pub is called The Toucan (not very Irish) and has been there since 1993. It's clearly the original house though. Aound the corner in Soho Square at # 6/7/8 used to be the Soho Bazaar. As Sarah and her sister were dressmakers, I can imagine that they may have had a stall at the bazaar, selling gloves and handkerchiefs, but I don't know for sure.

On Dean Street, which crosses Carlisle Street a few doors down from the Toucan, is another pub named for Karl Marx, who was living there in 1851. Considering that the easiest route to the reading room at the British Museum was along Carlisle Street, I'm sure the Cockram family saw Marx frequently.

Getting to know the Cockrams

we left Stockleigh Pomeroy and Cheriton Fitzpaine yesterday after four nights staying at a 14th century pub. I learned so much it's hard to believe. First, in the churchyard at Cheriton Fitzpaine, right next to the pub, the headstones of Richard and Robert Melhuish. then, in the graveyard at the church in Stockleigh Pomeroy, the headstone for James and Charity Cockram, with dates of death. I had wanted to know when the family left SP and whether or not Charity came back. Here was proof. James died in 1848, so they left after that (in the London census for 1851). Charity died back in Sp, but a church record of payments to the hard up (not paupers) showed her getting 2/6 in 1855 . We went in to Exeter to check the Devon Records Office and find James' father's will. Anthony Cockram wrote his will in early 1817 and died two days later. He left ten pounds to his son John, twenty pounds to his daughter Sarah, and all his goods and chattels to his son James. Anthony was a miller and his residence was described as Stockleigh Mill. We had seen the farm at Westwood, but now realize that what is there now is Upper Westwood, where his sister Sarah and her husband Phillip Yeandell farmed. Right next to that farm is a house with millstones in front, and I believe that to be Lowre Westwood. Anthony also left money to his granddaughter Betty, and she was the illegitimate daughter of Sarah---quite common in those days according to the records we looked at.

On the final day I went to take a look inside the church at CP early in the morning, and met the Vicar Stephen Smith. He told me that there were still records at the church in SP and offered to show them to me. We met him at the church and he took us into the vestry where a continuous death record has been kept in one book since the early 1800s. We saw many of the family in there, starting with Anthony, and it's clear that my family has deep roots in Stockleigh Pomeroy. Before we left I put a small bunch of lavender on the grave of James and Charity. my family!

Up the lift to the first floor

First two nights in Exeter and what a lovely city. It's like being in Italy. I have to translate from English to Canadian for Ron and he blindly hands over money. We walked the city wall and saw A Roman bridge. Today was Lamas Fair and we watched a small parade of school children and a few adults dressed in clothes from various centuries, or invasions. Romans, Vikings, Medieval, early and mid nineteenth century Victorian uniforms. The cathedral here is amazing. It was built in the 12th century, and rebuilt a hundred years later in the gothic style. it made me think of the book by Ken Follett, whose name I can't remember. There are real faces all along the side. The faces of al the saints inside were defaced during the Reformation. I took a photo of a carved panel depicting the birth of Jesus in which all the saint's heads had Ben lopped off, and the lone widwife retained her head. Itwillmake a great cover for my book, if iever write it.

In their own write

If you have access to the 1911 census (which I do) you can look at photocopies of the original documents and see the handwriting of your ancestors. My great grandfather had cramped, fussy looking handwriting, but everything was precise and correctly spelled. He did make one mistake though; he was supposed to fill in the number of years married and the number of live births and living children--his wife had. Instead, he filled the details beside his own name, then crossed them out. His wife was not there. She was in an asylum. If he hadn't made this mistake I wouldn't know for sure that in 1911 he still considered himself married. I also wouldn't have answered that lingering question I have about whether Flora had another child before Violet--a child that she had harmed in some way.

The disappearing Cockrams

I use Find My Past to search all the censuses from 1841 to 1911. In 1841 about fifty percent of the Cockram families in England lived in Devon.  Of 704 Cockrams in England in 1841, 376 lived in Devon, 101 of those in the Crediton area. By 1911 there were no Cockrams in Stockleigh Pomeroy,  just 26 in Crediton, 419 in Devon and 1633 in England. I don't know what this proves, although I believe that most of the Cockrams in England are probably related to us.

When Sarah and her sisters, brother, and mother left Stockleigh Pomeroy to go to London they left behind a brother (James, living on Down Farm). None of the children returned to Devon. James daughter Faith Charity, named for her aunt, seems to have disappeared and had no siblings.