In the previous post we met my great grandfather, William, and discovered that he had the use of two different surnames: Walock and Genders. Keen to discover why, I looked back a generation for answers. It turns out the mystery didn't begin with WIlliam. His father, John, also had use of both names, and on occasion double-barreled them into Wheelock-Genders.
Now you may have noticed that Walock and Wheelock are different. Wheelock, as a surname, is a minefield of miss-spellings and variants. I have traced many of my Wheelock ancestors and found the name appear as Whillock, Willicks, Welock, Waylock, and this is just a small sample, so you get the idea. It's a tricky name to work with.
Why John used Wheelock and William used Walock is a little odd though. It's possible that the spelling Walock was a byproduct of the Brummie accent and that William just embraced it later in life. It appears on his baptism record in 1886 when he was 12. I don't know who provided the spelling. The alternative name, Genders, is also miss-spelt on this record as Jenders. So maybe these were transcriptions of spoken names rather than prescribed spellings.
William's parents were John Wheelock-Genders (1848-1912) and Sarah Goode (1855-1914). As the surname mystery clearly comes from John we will concentrate on his story here. I won't sugarcoat it. John's life was extremely tough and full of personal tragedy that can be difficult to digest.
I shared William's birth record in the previous post. He was born at 6 Court, Pritchett Street, Birmingham in 1874, and on the record it gives John's name as John Genders and tells us he was a gun barrel filer. If you search for a man of this description in the 1871 census, however, you won't find him. Likewise you won't find a 7-year-old William Genders in the 1881 census. John, like William, made use of both surnames. In the census records he appears therefore as John Genders (1851), John Whelock (1861), John Whelock (1871), John Wheelock (1881), John Genders (1891), John Wheelock (1901), and John Wheelock (1911).
Elsewhere, John appears as John Whilock (birth record), John Genders (marriage record), and John Wheelock Genders (burial record). As far as I can tell, John was never baptised.
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| John's birth record: 1848 |
It is in John's birth record that the source of the Genders name reveals itself. His mother. Hannah Genders. Why did he adopt her name as well as that of his father, William Wheelock? Well I strongly suspect William and Hannah never married. Hannah may have registered John with the name Whilock and claimed she was married to William, but I'm pretty sure she was fibbing. Firstly I have found zero evidence that such a marriage took place, and secondly, there may have been a very good reason for that which we will get to in the next post. The fact that in 1851, John is 2 and living in the same household as his father, but that the two men take different surnames (Genders and Wheelock), suggests that William was pretty upfront about the fact John was illegitimate.
So, mystery of the two surnames solved. However, as I learnt more about John's life two things became apparent. 1) There was no sign of his mother. 2) There was no obvious sign of any of the Genders family. Not knowing anything about Hannah I initially assumed that this was yet another personal tragedy that John had been dealt and that his mother had died while he was still young, and maybe his Genders relatives lived in another county? Sadly a detailed look at John's life yields few clues.
John was born in 1848 at 8 Henrietta Street, Birmingham. By the time of the 1851 census, however, he was living in the Wheelock household at 86 Weaman Street. His grandfather, Thomas Wheelock (1785-1852), a patten ring maker, was the head of the household. Then there was his wife, Hannah (nee Collier) (1786-1853), then Jane (1811-1890), William (1817-1893), Jane's son James (1835-1900), and William's son, John Genders.
By the 1861 census, John's grandparents had died and the remaining household had had to relocate. William had moved to a lodging house at 11 John Street and gave his occupation as patten ring maker. His son, however, is with his cousin, James, at Snow Hill, Court 8, House 1. He is 12 years old, a scholar, and described as a visitor. With an absent mother for whatever reason and a father who was either unable or unwilling to look after him, Johhn relied on extended family in his formative years. He would go on to name several of his own children after aunts and uncles, probably because they all had a hand in raising him in their more stable households.
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| John and Sarah's marriage record: 1874 |
In 1871 John was 22 and employed as a gun barrel smoother. He was living at 17 Court, House 1, Weaman Street, where he was a lodger in the Abbott household. On 1st June 1874, John married Sarah Goode in St Stephen's Church. Both were living on Pritchett Street, which is where William was born soon after. Between 1874 and 1896 John and Sarah had 13 children and tragically they lost 9 in infancy. To make matters worse their youngest surviving child, Elizabeth died in 1913 aged just 18 due to complications of childbirth. John had passed away the year before, but her poor mother lived to experience this final tragedy before dying the following year.
They lost their children variously to scarlatina, croup, infection, inanition, bronchitis, and marasmus. All imply harsh living conditions with poor medical provision. Disease was easily spread in the close quarter living endured by thousands in Birmingham's back to backs. Marasmus, a severe form of malnutrition, certainly hints at a household that was struggling to get by. The children were all buried in common, unconsecrated graves in Witton Cemetery. I do not buy into the notion that nineteenth century parents would have been accustomed to the loss of children and therefore not hit as hard. This is as ridiculous to me as the notion that Victorians didn't muck about or laugh because they look serious in their photographs. These misconceptions dehumanise our ancestors. They may look very stern and upright in their photos, but they still turned the air blue when they stubbed their toes. Of course the loss of children hit them hard. I don't believe for one minute that the ninth was easier than the first. John and Sarah endured more personal tragedy than my brain can compute. They must have had extraordinary strength of character just to get up some mornings.
Over the years the Wheelock-Genders family lived variously on Manchester Street, Staniforth Street, Price Street, Bagot Street, Ward Street and Brearley Street. All are short walks from each other, and all are close to John's Wheelock relatives. Interestingly, the family's religious stance seems to have been pretty fluid. Some of their children were baptised at the C of E Church of St Nicolas which was on Lower Tower Street. The others, though, were baptised at St Chad's Catholic Church. The baptism record for their son Thomas in 1881 at St Chad's states that John and Sarah were "acatholici", or not Catholic. I suspect the reason for the different baptism locations may be as simple as proximity to where the family lived.
John worked as a gun barrel smoother his whole life. In the 1911 census he states he is working on his own account, in other words, neither an employer nor employed. The world John inhabited was pretty brutal. He appears in The Birmingham Mail on 27th May 1889 as a witness to a vicious fight that resulted in one man dead and the other on trial for manslaughter. The men, including John, had been drinking in the Prince of Wales on Cliveland Street, near where John lived. The men involved had been playing cribbage and it seems the altercation started as a dispute over money. Obviously it turned violent with a fatal outcome.
Sarah also appeared in The Birmingham Daily Post on 4th October 1894. She was a witness to a case of serious child neglect by one of her neighbours at 7 Court Ward Street. The defendant was prosecuted on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He, his crippled wife, and their two children were living in a workshop above a wash house, which was allegedly crawling with vermin and had several broken windows. The childrens’ heads were covered in sores and bandaged, their clothes were utterly filthy, and they didn't have any beadclothes. Sarah stated that she had known the neighbour for about five months, that the children were in a dreadful state and were usually fed by the neighbours, probably including herself. I only mention this sad story to illustrate the high levels of poverty that permeated John and Sarah's world. Life was tough.
But what of John's mother, Hannah Genders? Where was she? To tackle that mystery we need to meet the individual who knew her best, John's father, William Wheelock and we shall do so in the next post.
In memory of:*
Sarah Ann Wheelock-Genders (1877-1878)
Thomas Wheelock-Genders (1881-1882)
John Wheelock-Genders (1886-1891)
James Wheelock-Genders (1888-1889)
Arthur Wheelock-Genders (1888-1891)
Thomas Wheelock-Genders (1890-1890)
Henry Wheelock-Genders (1892-1892)
George Wheelock-Genders (1896-1897)
*John is clear in the 1911 census that he had 13 children and lost 9 of them. Of the children who survived to adulthood there was William, Maria, Kate, and Elizabeth. This leaves one unaccounted for. It is possible the child was stillborn, in which case its birth would not have been registered.
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