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When I was about 9 years old, my father got a job at Dowty's, and we moved here from London. We lived here for about 4 years before we moved away. For various reasons, I returned here to finish my final year at school, and then left again. I met my partner and in 2000 came back to Cheltenham to live again, and it looks like I'm here to stay.
When I retired I started looking into my family history, starting with my father's family from Essex. The first census I looked at, 1871, showed his grandparents living there, but his grandmother, (he didn't even know her name), was born in Cheltenham! I think I nearly fell off my chair at that discovery. I knew her name was Georgina Bannister Searle, born in 1840 but couldn't discover her maiden name.
I got my Grandmother's birth certificate which told me her maiden name of Gardner. Eventually I found a marriage for Henry Bannister Gardner in Cheltenham, born 1833, and concluded that that was her brother. I couldn't find a birth certificate though. I found Sarah Bannister, working as a servant in Berkely Place Cheltenham in 1841. I supposed that was Georgina and Henry's mother, although it's doubtful that she was married, as she wouldn't be working, in that era, especially if she had children to look after. Who was their father? A George Gardner certainly, from her marr iage certifiacte but it being a common local name where should I start to look. Where were the children living?
I looked on the 1841 census and the only Georgina Gardner, 10 months, was in Painswick with a William and Mary Gardner. There was no Henry there. That couldn't be her! I'd hit a brick wall which stayed up for a couple of years. Then a friend, who volunteers at the Family History Society, helped me. We found George Gardner at Upton St Leonards, (I live in Shurdington only a couple of villages away), living with his elderly parents, and a 7 year old boy called Henry! George was a journeyman carpenter. He must have met Sarah when he worked at the house where she was a servant and they had 2 children, but I'll never know why they didn't marry, or register their births.
It must have been Georgina who was living with George's relatives in Painswick. What did it cost Sarah to give her up? Eventually Sarah got a job at Hardwick Court, near Quedgley, as housekeeper to Thomas Lloyd Baker, a JP and Deputy Lieutenant of Glos, where she was in 1851. I can't find Georgina on the 1851 census, and can only think that she was secretly with her mother at Hardwick Court.
In 1861 Georgina was working as a house maid to Dr John Curtiss Hayward at Quedgely House. He was a friend of Thomas Lloyd Baker, according to Rev Francis Witts, in 'The Diary of a Cotswold Parson', 1783-1854. Gerogina was married in 1870, in London. She was James Searle's second wife, and they had 7 children in 10 years. They lived in Essex.
I think I can call myself a local girl now, can't I?
Bridget Farrer
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