Archie Belaney was born in 1888 in Hastings, Sussex, not that far from Littlehampton where my grandfather was born in the same year. His father was also Archibald, and his mother was Juliana Mary Henrietta Jackson; in the census of 1891 he was living with his grandmother, Juliana and aunts Janet and Julia in Hastings. Janet and Julia, both single were living on their own means, wealthy young ladies apparently. Young, they were not so young, Janet was 29 and Julia was 31; their mother Juliana was 53 and a widow. A curious thing occurs over the next ten years, the daughters age less, the mother ages more, because in the 1901 census, Juliana (now Julia) is 75, whereas you would have expected her to be 63, and Janet is is now 36 not 39, and Julia is 38 not 41! Maybe the daughters were happily unmarried, maybe not, but by 1911 they were still living with their mother Juliana, now aged 86 and in Battle; Julia Caroline is 51 and Janet Adelaide is 49 – so their ages are the same as twenty years ago now; what had happened? A careless enumerator, or the sisters trying to belie their age? The following year must have been very sad for the sisters, their mother Juliana Mary Henrietta dies aged 87, a good age, and leaving £256 11s 8d to Julia, about £25,500 in today’s money. The daughters must have had her longevity genes, Janet died in 1946, aged 85, and Julia two years later in 1948, aged 89. Julia had looked after her inheritance well, when she died she left the equivalent of £181,000
Juliana had married Archibald Belaney in 1856 in Marylebone, London; they had a son George Furmage in 1857, and then the two daughters. Archibald was born in Scotland in 1824 and was in banking, a fund shareholder; he was in Exeter when his daughters were born. Tragically, Archibald died in 1865 and the family returned to London where George went to boarding school in Wandsworth when he was old enough. George is in Norfolk in 1881; he gets married! I think he marries an American, Kittie, and they have a son Hugh Cockburn … but wait a minute, Kittie is only 19, she couldn’t have married George in 1881, she would have been 9 years old! So who did George marry in 1881, and what happened to her,and where is young Archibald in all this? Well, as I mentioned, Archibald was living with his grandmother in Hastings. I can’t find any trace of a Mrs Belaney dying between 1881 and 1891, but a young baby Rose Ethel Belaney died in Suffolk in 1882.
Another mystery… or is it just the enumerators again? Kittie, now Kitty in 1901 is living near her mother-in-law, in Worthing. her birth place is now stated as Suffolk, yes, Suffolk in England and she was born in Colchester. her ‘condition’ is married and she is living with her son, Hugh but George is not with her… I wonder where he is. She has four young children boarding with her, the Brigden family from India, Tom, Harry, Nelly and Elsie, whose ages range from six to thirteen; I hope they were companions for little Hugh… little Hugh who was born in 1890, but now is mysteriously two years younger… tut, tut, these enumerators… or are they merely writing down what they have been told? Hugh dies in 1956… and on his death certificate his date of birth has changed again, to 1893. He must have been used to changing when he was born; he signed up in 1914 for the Great War and gave his age as 18 years and 10 months; in fact he was 24 years and ten months…
Then there is the mysterious travel documents; Kittie/Kitty/Katie travels from Queenstown (in Ireland) to new York in 1890, aged 22 on board the Brittanic, Hugh and his father George travel to Quebec on the Kensington in 1903, their ages given as 16 and 23, when really they were 13 and 46… now there is no way a 46-year-old could be mistaken for a 23-year-old, so someone somewhere wrote the wrong thing down…
This round-about story was triggered by an article on the BBC website about Archibald Stansfeld Belaney who as I mentioned was born in Hastings in 1888, travelled to Canada, first in 1906 on the Canada, to Halifax, then on the Empress of Ireland in 1907 to Quebec (where maybe his father and brother still were) After a life full of amazing adventures, several marriages and several children, he died in Canada at the relatively young age of 49, in 1938. By the time of his death he was known as Grey Owl, and many people thought he actually was a member of the Ojibwa tribe. he had a colourful life, a very colourful life, and wrote many books but is chiefly remembered as a conservationist, and early environmentalist.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-24127514
Lois Elsden 