My Grandpa’s

My grandfathers were George William Henderson and James Bussicott.

They’d both died before I was born. Or did they? Read on.

If you read my blog, ‘The Start of it All’, you’d have found out that George William Henderson was a bastard. So it seems was my other grandfather! But of a different type.

George William Henderson  

George William Henderson

My father seemed to spend little time with his family when I was young and I never found any photos of my father as a boy. In fact it wasn’t until I started to research my ancestors that I got to know people I’d only met as a youngster and even found living relatives I didn’t know existed. But that’s another story.

My grandfather was born on 29th December 1872 in Northumberland but in the 1891 Census his father (or step-father?), Harvey Henderson, had moved the whole family to Norfolk where he was working as the manager of a Saw Mill. George William was a draper’s assistant.

Soon afterwards my grandfather and his younger brother Tom John Henderson started dating two sisters, daughters of a Norfolk farmer. This was obviously a wealthy family as they were taken to weekly college in a horse and trap and even had their own cow at the school for milk. The Henderson brothers did well as they eventually married the two sisters.

My grandfather married Ada Mary Humphrey on 24th August 1902 in Streatham in London.

Grandma

They lived in Hammersmith, where my Dad was born in 1913. George William worked as a draper for John Lewis, a famous department store, but sadly died in 1932. So I never met him.

James Bussicott

My other grandfather had a different story to tell.

He was born in Battersea in London on 12th August 1880. His grandfather, also James, was one of the soldiers in the family described in my web site, who fought in the Crimea war etc.

He didn’t have a great start to life as his father (also James) died exactly six months later and his mother, Eliza, remarried to another James – Simms who moved into their house.

Aged 20 in 1901 he was in Dublin and married Annie, and they had a child Alice Maud who sadly died within three months.

Ten years later I find him in living at 39 Riley Street in Chelsea with the Batchelor family. Four years later in 1915, when he was a munitions worker in WWII,  he married my grandmother Henrietta Agnes Batchelor. I traced Annie, his first wife, and she had died in a mental home.

James and Henrietta went on to have four children, all born in Chelsea, including of course my mother.

James Bussicott & Children 2

I never met my grandfather and was told he was dead. Then when I was 20 I was told that he had contacted the family from Wells in Somerset and wanted to reconcile with them. Then the truth came out. He had stolen the family jewelry and money and vanished, leaving my grandmother with four children to support.  How she did that is another blog sometime, but I do know she had a hard life.

Henrietta Bussicott

I traced the probate of James Bussicott’s death and found he died on 28th September 1962 in hospital in Somerset and left his estate to a Miss M.A. Symes. So he was 82.

His net estate was £112. So virtually penniless.

And his family?

My grandmother, mother, aunt and two uncles decided they didn’t want to meet him so he died without ever seeing his family again. My grandmother died two years later.

 

 

Share this page:
Recent Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.