The following information is based on the family research of Kay Rea who spoke to the Tytherington Local History Group in the late 1990's. Kay has kindly allowed us to reproduce her presentation here:-
The Bells of Itchington and Tytherington and Australia
My interest in the Bell family stemmed from wanting
to know more about my grandmother’s origins. I knew that her mother had
died when she was a baby and that she had been brought up by her
father’s family, the Rices, in Cam until, at the age of eleven, she had
gone to Tortworth, to live with her father, step-mother, and
step-brothers and sisters. She had a sister, Elizabeth, who had been
brought up by her mother’s parents, but little seemed to be known about
them.
In 1971, having eventually obtained my grandmother’s birth certificate,
I discovered that her mother, Sarah Ann Bell, had been born in
Itchington in April 1853. Her parents were John Bell, who was described
as a husbandman, and Louisa Bell, formerly Brown. This then led me
to look at the 1851 census for Tytherington which showed John and Louisa
Bell with three sons, Walter, George and Edward, together with two
lodgers, Thomas Hughes, an unmarried agricultural labourer of
Itchington, and Charles Reeves, also an agricultural labourer, who had
been born in Tetbury. John Bell gave his place of birth as
Cromhall, but by the time of the 1881 census he had decided that he was
born in Wickwar. By then he had also acquired more children, nine more
to be precise. Three of them were living at home. John was now 61 and
Louisa, now described as a potato dealer, was 55. The three children
living at home were: William, aged 19, Elizabeth, aged 14, and Francis,
aged 11. They were also bringing up their grand-daughter, Mary.
I now turned to the Tytherington parish registers where I discovered
more Bells. In the baptism registers I found the baptisms of John Bell’s
three youngest brothers and so found that his parents were called James
and Sarah. They had been living Itchington in 1829. James had indeed
lived in Cromhall and Wickwar between 1814 and 1827 where he was
variously described as a farmer and a labourer, possibly a reflection of
the economic situation at the time. The
1839 Tithe Map of Tytherington
shows James Bell, John’s father, living at
Feoffee’s Farm,
Itchington, where he was still living in 1851. The name feoffee is
used to describe one of a group of trustees appointed to manage an
endowed institution such as a charity school, in this case, I believe,
the grammar school at Thornbury. John and Louisa were living next door.
By 1861 James Bell was living by himself next to
Elmington Villa, Itchington Street and ten years later he was living
opposite Emletts,
Itchington, with his daughter, Nancy and her husband, William Cook.
James was buried in Tytherington in 1874, his wife, Sarah, having been
buried there in 1848. The youngest of John and Louisa’s children
was Francis, known as Frank. From my grandmother we knew that he lived
in the Forest of Dean, but where we did not know. In about 1990, my
sister was working in the Forest and read in the local paper about a
fire in the yard of a builder called Keith Bell. She wondered if there
might be a family connection. This eventually led us to make contact
with one of Frank’s daughters, Molly, who was born in 1911 and was the
ninth of Frank’s ten children and Keith’s aunt. Six of Frank’s
children were baptised in Tytherington
Church and he and his wife, Elizabeth Ann Beard of Cromhall, were
married there in 1896. His eldest daughter, Elsie, of whom we shall hear
more later, attended Tytherington School from
April 1903 until March 1907 when presumably the family moved to the
Forest
Meeting Molly was one of the most important events in researching the
Bell family. She was the agent in discovering much of the information
about John Bell’s children. Thinking that she had no other Bell
relatives still living, apart from her brothers’ and sisters’ children,
Molly was surprised and thrilled to discover these distant cousins. We
began asking questions!! Since Molly was about 80 when we first
met her, it was difficult for her to come up with all the answers we
wanted. On one visit to her she mentioned a cousin from Australia who
had come to stay with her some years previously and with whom she had
subsequently lost contact. The cousin had been a nurse, like Molly, so
she decided to write to Manly hospital in Australia where the cousin,
whose name was Esma Smith, had worked. Unfortunately by this time
Esma had died, but her younger sister, Marian, replied to Molly’s letter
which had been forwarded to her by the hospital. Marian told us of a
relative called Leslie Allison who was researching the Bell family in
Australia and New Zealand. In June 1992 we received the first of many
packages from Les Allison who lived in Melbourne. Les died in May 1993,
by which time he had sent copies of practically all the information he
had on the antipodean Bells who had originated in Itchington. How lucky
we were!
We now began to build up a picture of those who had emigrated from
Itchington to the other side of the world. In the early and
mid-nineteenth century assisted passages helped to colonise the new
settlements in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada. In 1834
the Poor Law (Amendment) Act provided for the passage of poor families
to the colonies at the expense of the Poor Law Unions. It was probably
under this scheme that the migration of the Bells began in 1854 when
Joseph Bell, younger brother of John, together with his wife, Elizabeth,
who was born in Westport St. Mary, Malmesbury, sailed from Plymouth on
the 6th October and arrived in Sydney, three months later, on 5th
January 1855. They had married in Bristol less than one month before
sailing. They were to have thirteen children of whom the fifth son,
John, was Les Allison’s grandfather.
On arriving in Australia, Joseph and Elizabeth Bell moved to the
Singleton area in the Hunter River Valley about 160 kilometres north of
Sydney. Here they stayed until their tenth child, Lewis, was born in
1870. Their eleventh child was born at Brundah Creek, near Grenfell, New
South Wales in 1873. (Lewis was a common name in the Bell family
and some of you may remember the visit of the County Archivist, Mr.
David Smith, when he recounted the story of the death of one Lewis Bell
in an accident at Lodge Farm, Alveston. He was in fact a son of John and
Louisa).
By now Joseph and his family had been joined by his younger brother,
William Walter Bell who had married Amelia Sophia Stinchcombe of
Alveston. I think she lived in Shellard’s Lane which seems to have been
a favourite haunt of Bells looking for husbands and wives. On 12th
February 1860 William and Amelia Bell, together with their two sons,
William and Walter, sailed from Liverpool, arriving in Sydney on 13th
July, a journey lasting five months. They eventually settled in the
Brundah Creek area, near Grenfell, sometime between 1870 and 1873.
William
Bell seems to have been the first person to settle in that particular
portion of land and it was known as the “Thornbury” farm. He owned about
100 acres and also mortgaged surrounding properties from the Bank of
Australasia. The original Thornbury farm consisted of about 1600 acres.
His brother Joseph came with his family to help run the farm and
together they became known as the “Beardy Bells” to distinguish them
from other Bells.
In the 1890’s the Thornbury farm failed as a result of several years of
drought combined with plagues of rabbits and kangaroos, added to which
periodical bush fires destroyed standing crops. The Bank foreclosed on
the mortgage and took over William’s original property. By 1899 all the
Bell families had left Brundah Creek. Joseph and Elizabeth’s families
had moved to Melbourne and William and Amelia to a smaller farm-holding
nearer Grenfell where they started a pig-farm. Amelia died in 1915 and
William in 1922.
Meanwhile back in Itchington, two of John and Louisa
Bell’s daughters, Maria, who was born in 1860, and Emma, born in 1865,
emigrated to Australia in 1883. Two young women of 22 and 18
respectively could not travel alone, so John Bell’s brother, James, and
his wife, also called Emma, sailed with them. They were both aged 58. By
the time that the ship arrived in Sydney on 13th January 1884, James’
wife had died. Having safely delivered the girls, James returned to
England alone. He died in the Thornbury Union Workhouse in 1902.
Maria and Emma both married cousins. Maria married Richard Bell, son of
William and Amelia, and Emma married Joseph, son of Joseph and
Elizabeth. No photographs of Joseph and Elizabeth exist because in
1857, some two years after arriving in Australia, Joseph converted from
the Church of England to the Christian Israelites, a sect based on the
teaching of John Wroe. (who featured in the series, “Mr. Wroe’s Virgins”
on the BBC in 1993). Apparently, male and female members of the sect
were required to go to church functions and worship wearing the type of
clothes worn in John Wroe’s day. Both men and women wore long hair and
men had full beards. The beliefs of the Christian Israelites did not
permit them to have their photographs taken.
A letter written by one Bell relative to another describes the arrival
of Emma and Maria and Emma’s meeting with Joseph:
“They (Emma and Maria) came out to Singleton and then went with bullock
wagon, goats and everything they needed, to Brundah Creek and it seems
that up there (Singleton) she (Emma) met him (Joseph).”
Maria
and Richard had seven children but Emma and Joseph had none. However
they did acquire their niece, Elsie, eldest daughter of Frank Bell, and
Molly’s eldest sister. Elsie, remember, had attended Tytherington school
in the early 1900s before her family had moved to the Forest of Dean. In
about 1912 Elsie was taken for a “holiday” to Australia by her Aunt
Elizabeth. Aunt Elizabeth did not bring her home!
Aunt Elizabeth was a rather formidable lady by all accounts. She was the
eleventh of the twelve children of John and Louisa Bell and was baptised
in Tytherington in 1867. She attended Tytherington school and eventually
trained as a nurse at Bristol General Hospital, where she worked as a
Staff Nurse from March 1889 until June 1890, and as a Sister on Theatre
and Female Surgical wards until March 1894, when she entered private
nursing. This would involve nursing people in their own homes as
those with money would not dream of going into hospital. Operations
often took place in drawing rooms or other suitable rooms of large
houses and the nurse had to prepare the room, as well as assist the
surgeon and then take care of the patient. It was a rather nomadic
existence and perhaps accounts for Elizabeth’s later difficulty in
staying in one place for very long.
At this point she evidently moved to London where she came into contact
with Dr., later Sir Frederick Treves. Sir Frederick was a renowned
surgeon to both Queen Victoria and King Edward the Seventh. He also
treated John Merrick, otherwise known as the Elephant Man. In 1902 when
the King was taken ill with peritonitis, and operated on by Sir
Frederick, Elizabeth was sent for to assist. For some reason she did not
go, but for many years she kept the telegram which had been sent to her.
She was one of the first British nurses to go to Austria and Switzerland
to accompany home skiers who had broken their limbs.
By 1911 she was running a boarding house in Weston-Super-Mare. It was
called “La Belle”. Later, after her mother’s death in 1917, she married
a man called Henry Acworth and they ran a private school on the Wirral
in Cheshire. After her husband’s death during the Second World War, she
returned to her roots and lived for a while in a little cottage in
Thornbury, near the Council school. She never really settled anywhere
though and spent time with various members of the family until she died
in hospital in Gloucester in 1956 at the age of 89. She had kept
in touch with her sisters and cousins in Australia by visiting them and
this she did on three occasions by working her passage as a ship’s
nurse. It was on one of these visits that she took her niece Elsie on
the one-way trip to Australia. Poor Elsie ended up living
with Joseph and Elizabeth, the Christian Israelites. Molly’s mother said
that Elsie’s letters often consisted of little more than passages of
scripture. However she did eventually marry and returned in 1919 to be
married at Littledean church as her father was by now farming at Baynham
Farm, Littledean. After her marriage, Elsie returned to Australia where
a daughter, Nancy, was born but little more is known of her. Molly
was also instrumental in helping us discover what had happened to the
eldest members of John and Louisa’s children.
Between 1847 and 1851 three sons had been born to the
Bells but we knew nothing of what had happened to them. Their names were
Walter, Edward and George. I knew from information given to me by Roger
that Edward’s daughter, Emily, had attended Tytherington school between
1885 and 1886 and that she had previously attended Earthcott school
Early in 1993, Molly received a letter from someone called John James.
He was researching his family tree and was writing to ask her for help,
as his mother had been a Bell before she married. We eventually
discovered that George and Edward Bell had both been miners. Edward, who
was born in 1851, had married Elizabeth Judge of Alveston (Shellard’s
Lane?). They had nine children, of whom the eldest was Emily. She
was born in Darfield, Yorkshire in 1878. This was part of the Yorkshire
coalfields and Edward had obviously gone there in search of work and
returned at some point to Tytherington where Emily had gone to school.
Eventually they too had gone to live in the Forest but in the 1881
census were living in Alveston. Their grandson, Oliver Wicks was for
many years Classics master at Marling School, Stroud and still lived in
the area. (Oliver died in 1999). Edward’s brother, George, married
Emma Louisa Woodman who, according to the 1891 census was born at
Patchway. They went to live in Ruspidge, Cinderford, and produced ten
children. George was a collier and haulier, later building up a
business, taking people out in wagonettes and brakes. His grandson was
the John James who wrote to Molly. (Photo right shows
Arthur Alexander Bell, son of William & Amelia, who went to live in New
Zealand which is where the photo was taken).
Of the eleven children who made up my great grandmother’s siblings I now
know something about all but three. The eldest, Walter, who was baptised
in 1848, Mary, baptised in 1857 and William John, baptised in 1863. The
process has taken me over 30 years and been rather like doing a jigsaw
puzzle to which I had only some of the pieces. However, other people had
pieces too, not only the previously unknown relatives, but others like
Roger Howell and the late Mr. Greenway of Tortworth, who helped me to
discover that the Bells had been leading lights in that parish in the
eighteenth century, but that’s another story!