The Granters
- from Devon to Bristol, London, Coventry and Australia, 1789 to 2008
John Granter, a farmer (labourer?) in Devonshire, married Mary Bater on 30th June 1811. Mary was pregnant with John, who was born on 2 October 1811, three months after the wedding. They went on to have eight more children between June 1814 and September 1832, all in or around Tiverton, Devon.
The first two after John were Joseph and Mary, twins born in June 1814. They both died in infancy, Joseph after less than a month and Mary in March 1815. Next came Jane in 1816 and Sarah in 1817. It is thought that Sarah died in 1818 but this needs to be confirmed. Next came Susan, born in 1820 who only lived to 1822, again exact dates need to be confirmed. So out of 6 children to date, only John and
Jane had survived.
Abraham was born in 1823 in Washfield, Devon [see Appendix 6 p.30] and was destined to be the ancestor of the London and Coventry Granters. His brothers James and Joseph followed on 3 October 1829 and 26 September 1832 respectively, in Cruwys Morchard, to the east of Tiverton [see Appendix 7 p.31]. By 1846 they had all moved to Bristol, leaving agriculture for the urban life.
James worked in the malt processing industry in Bristol and took a testimonial from his employer, written 9 days before sailing, to Australia when he was 23: (from Merran Adams)
The expression ?making himself generally useful? was to prove itself to be particularly apt as he set about his life in Australia! James had married Elizabeth Coles on 1 February 1852 and they had their first child John on board the ship John Davies almost exactly 8 months
later. They had set off ?on Thursday morning 22nd July between 2 and 3 o?clock in the morning? (Appendix 1) bound for Australia as Assisted Immigrants on the ship John Davies: Index to Assisted British Immigration 1839- 1871 This is an index to Registers of Assisted British Immigrants 1839-1871 3 results found.
Family Name Given Name Age Month Year Ship Book Page
GRANTER ---- INFANT WITH I NOV 1852 JOHN DAVIES 6 98
GRANTER ELIZABETH 25 NOV 1852 JOHN DAVIES 6 98
GRANTER JAMES 22 NOV 1852 JOHN DAVIES 6 98
There were 478 passengers listed ? search on
http://proarchives.imagineering.com.au/index_search_results.asp with no Family Name, just the ship and 'November' to see the complete list. Most were under 35 years old. They landed at Portland Victoria. See Appendix 3 p.23. The journey and early days in Australia are graphically described by a fellow-passenger in letters home (See Appendix 1.).
[With just the two other ships mentioned therein also arriving within weeks of the John Davies, this would make at the very least 478+500+383=1358 new arrivals. Was the gold rush of 1850 still going
on? ??..370,000 immigrants arrived in Australia in 1852.? See Appendix 2,p.22]
Meanwhile, back in England.......
Abraham, seven years older than James, had left Devon and married Charlotte Hill (Hale on Marriage Certificate) when he was 24. He was described then as a labourer, as was John, the father of all these
Granter siblings,. Abraham and Charlotte were married in St. Philips, Bristol, 6 years before James and Elizabeth set off for Australia. By the time they left, Abraham and Charlotte already had John 1849
and William 1850, but James would never have seen his nephew Alfred, born in1854. It was this Alfred who was the direct ancestor of the London and Coventry Granters. He married Sarah Ann Prince in Bedminster , Bristol in 1876 when he was 22 and she was 23. Abraham his father was described then as a fireman and would have been 54 years old. Sarah 's father was a carpenter, described as a chairmaker on her Birth Certificate of 4 December 1851 at 6 New Street Bristol.
By 1879 they had moved to Bethnal Green, East London, where their son Alfred George was born on 18th December 1879 and daughter Hester on 14 December 1881.
According to his Death Certificate, Alfred 'died of cirrhosis of liver; ascites (an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the abdomen due to liver disease); exhaustion' in 1900 at 60 Vyner Street,
Bethnal Green, London, aged 46, a bricklayer. We do not know yet why and when he and Sarah moved to London.Life in the East End of London around this time is superbly described and illustrated with
photographs in Jack London's The People of the Abyss.
Vyner Street scene, March 2004 ? all houses gone, art galleries, warehouses....
http://www.sublimephotography.co.uk/eastendphotos/whitechapel/pages/taxi.htm
By the 1901 Census Alfred's father Abraham, aged 77, was living with his wife Emily J at 89 Bath Road Bristol and is described as a retired railway engine driver! He was Alfred George's and Hesther's
grandfather, but we do not know if he ever met them before he died in September 1909.
Alfred George married Elizabeth Mary Ann Clarke on Christmas Day 1907when he was a piano polisher. Their first child Lillian was born on 29 March 1909 and died on 5 April 1909 in London, grave whereabouts unknown. By 1918 they are in Coventry, as their second child, Ivy Iris was buried in London Road Cemetery after dying on 27 October in the influenza epidemic of the time.
On 21st May 1922 Alfred George died at 49 Hollis Road Coventry of Acute Pneumonia Phthisis /Cardiac Failure. [When did he and Elizabeth, Ivy and Alfred move to Coventry? Must have been before Ivy's death in 1918 as she was first to be buried in above grave]. Apparently Alfred George benefited from sale of grandfather Abraham's houses which were in trust 'til he died in 1907, according to 'The Granter Family Story' by Merran in Australia. He left his widow Elizabeth with Alfred Arthur
Edward aged 9, James Walter aged 7, Winifred Florence aged 2 and Hettie who had been born 3 months earlier.
Five years later according to Admissions and Discharge Records in Coventry History Centre, we find Alfred Arthur Edward had left school and entered Coventry Workhouse on 18th September 1927, staying there until he was ?discharged to Mother? on 27th March 1928, a period of six months which included his 15th birthday on Christmas Day 1927.
What can it have been like to live in ?the Workhouse? in 1927-8? More research needed!![13..5.09]
A document in Coventry History Centre has the following sketch :
?In 1922 Coventry was regarded as a necessitous area and ranked as high as Sheffield in regard to unemployment assistance relief. This was brought about by many munitions workers coming into the city and being involved in the slump. When they had been in Coventry twelve months they had what was known as ?status of irremovability?(JN 362.5 113 1940 : 1949/10).
Just eight years later, on Boxing Day 1936, Alfred married Louisa Jane Tranter from Bedworth and they moved in to the house he had bought at 160 Middlemarch Road, Radford Coventry. He was by then a French polisher, living at 89 Paynes Lane in Hillfields, Coventry.
Louisa had been living at 147 Wootton Street, Bedworth and the 1911 Census, completed by her father Alfred, a boiler stoker at a colliery, shows her living in White Lion Yard, Bedworth, aged 2 months, with 7 brothers and her mother Jane, whose birthplace is written first as just India and then Darjeeling added. Her father was in the Army in India in 1872 . See more details below.
Informants from Genes Reunited show that Jane was Louise Jane and she and her husband were cousins!! Her husband Alfred's father married her Aunt Louise Green. She was daughter of Alfred's Uncle Charles Green. (Take it slow, it does make sense...)
Alfred Tranter and Louisa Jane Green were cousins when they married:
Thomas Green m. Elizabeth Newbold Charles Tranter m Louise Green Charles Green m.(1863) Jane Hynett Alfred Tranter ------- m. ---------- Louisa Jane (born India 1872)
Louisa Jane (1911) and 7 older brothers
Her brothers had been born variously at Coundon, Radford, Foleshill (all districts of Coventry) and Bedworth, presumably as their parents moved around. The oldest brother was Alfred, b.1895 and the
next two babies, Charles (b.&d.1898)and Lizzie (b1898 d.?) did not survive to appear on the 1911 Census. This Census shows 10 births and 8 survivors of Louisa (1897) and Alfred's children.
According to the 1871 Census, Louisa's father Alfred was born in 1869, the son of agricultural labourer Charles and ***Louise (Green), ages 27 and 24 respectively, living in the Civil Parish of Corley, near
Coventry. This Louisa Green, my grandmother, mother of Louisa Jane Granter, nee Tranter, was born in north east India in 1872, registered at Benares in the Army records, as daughter of Charles Green in
the 3rd Regiment (of what? See Military Births record below). The 1911 Census, apparently completed by her husband, has her born in Darjeeling,. Some idea of Army life in that region is given here. The
British Library's India Office Family History Search Department may be able to help here. (Judith French on Genes Re-united has birthplace as Benares. Clarification later, hopefully. Judith also shows
that Alfred married his cousin Louisa Jane Green, daughter of Charles Green, who was ***Louise's brother).
Picture shows Jim Granter, first Granter immigrant with his wife Elizabeth to Australia in 1852