Maud Gonne and Thomas Charles March and the English wine merchants who brought us port

Who were these people?

OK, apologies to those of you who've been religiously keeping score. The rest of you, go back and read every single post since January 2011.

Oh, all right, I'll make it easier.

1. I recently figured out (the penny dropped) that I come from a vampire bloodline.
2. Decided to see if Bram Stoker (author of Dracula) was influenced by my vampire family.
3. Looked Bram and family up in the census returns for 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911, when they were in England.
4. Obsessively started figuring out not just where the Stokers lived, but who lived with them: the servants.
5. This led me to a man named Charles Jarrald, whose wife was the Stoker's nursery nurse in 1881. Charles was dead by then; his wife was a widow working for the Stokers.
6. Going back 10 years, I found Charles working on what turned out to be a pretty posh street. He was a servant at No. 27 Charles Street, Berkeley Square.
7. Since the street was crammed with the upper class in 1871, I decided to do a house-by-house analysis, starting at No. 1.
8. To keep everyone from falling asleep, I also decided to play Six Degrees of Separation with the people in the houses, figuring out how close the people are to (a) Queen Victoria and (b) Dracula, or at least, Bram Stoker.
9. At No. 1 Charles Street, was the family of Thomas Charles March, an interesting enough fellow who was one of the top non-political servants in the Royal Household of Queen Victoria, having a career that went from about 1840 (ish) to his death in 1898.

A few notes on the March family and the connection to Maud Gonne

Thomas Charles March was the second of six children, three boys and three girls.

His two brothers had equally distinguished careers, it appears, and at least one brother (George) moved in high society circles.

The parents, Thomas March and Mary Anne nee Gonne, were both born in Portugal in the late 1700s. I am fairly certain both fathers were wine merchants and also that both families were well off.

Thomas the father was a bankrupt, with a wife and six children, in the mid-1830s. This led to a lawsuit, which is a reported case I found online. It was all intra-familial and a little complicated in its details, but essentially Thomas's creditors (also family) tried to get the money Mary Anne brought with her as a marriage settlement, and which had been set up in a sort of trust to generate income for her and the children. The interesting social background is the law and attitudes about married women having property (or not). Also there is some ongoing intrigue and political scheming between Portugal and England during the period. Thomas's bankruptcy may have been the result of the Portuguese kicking the English merchants out. (I know very little about this but it's fascinating history.)

One of Thomas Charles March's sisters married a clergyman from a noble family in Yorkshire, and another sister lived with them at least for a time. The married sister and her husband had at least two sons.

I sort of lost the third sister and hope she will turn up one day.

The brother George worked in the diplomatic service, I think.

Now to switch to Maud Gonne, known variously as a political radical, Ireland's Joan of Arc, the mystic lover of the poet William Butler Yeats, and the mother of Nobel Peace Prize winner Sean McBride. You may have recognized the same last name, Gonne, as the mother of Thomas Charles March, Mary Anne nee Gonne.



At one point, when Maud was being attacked for her political views, she mentioned in a letter that eventually questions of her ancestry would be cleared up, and that her great-grandfather had been William Gonne, a wine merchant in Portugal.

I haven't constructed a chronology, and it's getting a bit too complicated to pursue it just now, but that William Gonne would fit the generation of Mary Anne's father, whose name was Thomas Gonne.  INCORRECT! Correction: Her father's name was William Gonne Esquire, possibly the same William Gonne as was Maud's great-grandfather.

Scholars of Maud Gonne, please, jump in any time and leave a comment if you know more about Maud's exact family tree. I am a lazy researcher working my way down the street, long before Maud was born, and not even the street where she lived. My Maud Gonne contribution may have to end here.

The Gonne and March families in the wine trade in Portugal would have been shipping port to England. A notable contribution to life there, wouldn't you say? I also suspect that the merchant community in Oporto may have done a little soft espionage on the side. Just a thought.


One more coincidence. Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee was in 1897. Maud Gonne protested against it. Her distant cousin, Thomas March, may have supervised the organizing of it, given his senior position within the staff of the Royal Household. Whether these two acknowledged each other as relatives, I don't know.

Thomas March is the first of many interesting people we will meet on Charles Street in 1871. His story starts with Thomas March of 1 Charles Street: One degree from Queen Victoria.


This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

Next: We leave No. 1 Charles Street, and move along to No. 2. On census night in 1871, this house was occupied by Henry Fleming and two servants.
No. 2 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London, in 1871.

Six degrees of Queen Victoria: How the Thomas Charles MARCH family were connected

To recap, this is a potted history of the people at No. 1 Charles Street in 1871. If you would like to see a fuller version, just look in the post archives and you'll see a series of posts before this one, about the MARCH family.

Thomas Charles MARCH was a lifelong member of Queen Victoria's household staff, finishing his days as one of the top employees. One of the highlights of his career, in the easy-to-find public records, was representing the Royal Household in the procession bringing the Duke of Wellington's body from Kent to London for a state funeral.

Arabella S. MARCH, nee Sarah COOPER, born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, was a spinster with a child (Arabella) when she married Thomas (who was 20 years older) in 1867. How she came to have a child and a house on Sloane Street, and funds before she married Thomas, I don't know.

Arabella MARCH, the daughter, born in St. Luke's, Chelsea, didn't marry and disappeared from my view after selling the family's country home, Forest Lodge in Ashtead, Surrey, around 1901.

Thomas C. MARCH in the 1871 census is Thomas Charles MARCH, who matches a boy who died at the age of 8.

Not shown in the 1871 census, because he wasn't yet born, Reginald George MARCH was the youngest child I'm aware of, and the only one with children, again, as far as I know. He was born at Holmwood, Surrey in 1874, was, like his father, a Clerk in the Lord Chamberlain's office, fought in South Africa with Lord Paget's Horse, was married, and had at least two children. He enlisted for the First World War but does not appear to have seen active duty outside the United Kingdom.

The only person I'm aware of to carry on the MARCH name from this family was Reginald's son, Thomas Charles MARCH, who matches a gentleman who died in 1999 in Winchester.

I promised I would play Six Degrees of Separation, in two forms, for these people:

Six Degrees of Queen Victoria
and
Six Degrees of Dracula.

The Queen Victoria numbers are from 1 to 3.

1, Personal connection to Queen Victoria

Thomas Charles MARCH. Having served so long and in such important positions, I'm guessing he bumped into Her Majesty the Small Queen at least once in a while.

His son Reginald George MARCH, based on his position in the Lord Chamberlain's office, which could be a stretch. If not a 1, he is a 2, like the rest of the family.



2, Personal connection to a person with a Queen Victoria number of 1

Connected through Thomas Charles MARCH:

His wife Arabella S. MARCH
His daughter Arabella MARCH
His son Thomas C. MARCH.




Next: The Dracula scores.
That takes a bit of explaining.

Thomas March is the first of many interesting people we will meet on Charles Street in 1871. His story starts with Thomas March of 1 Charles Street: One degree from Queen Victoria.


This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

Next: What was Thomas Charles March's Dracula number? Six degrees.

The end of Thomas Charles MARCH, his wife and children, apart from one important detail

The story so far:

Thomas Charles MARCH was a lifelong servant of the royal household during Queen Victoria's reign. He rose through the ranks of the Lord Chamberlain's office and by 1881 was Pay-master of the Royal Household. In sequential census returns, and in some of the other public records Ancestry.co.uk (Ancestry.com) has online, as well as what others have posted to the Web, I have been tracing Thomas and his family. The larger context started out with Bram STOKER and is explained in previous posts.

Bram Stoker and family in the 1881 English census

I looked more closely at the three servants:

Emma Barton, Bram Stoker's 15-year-old parlourmaid in 1881

Harriet Daw, Bram Stoker's Cook in 1881. The problem of a small spelling error

and

A brick wall: Elizabeth Jarrald, widow, Nurse to Bram Stoker's baby son in 1881.

Researching Elizabeth led me to the man I think she married:

Charles Jarrald, a well-placed servant indeed.

And then I got on to the MARCH family. I started using the common convention of putting surnames in ALL CAPS when I got to the MARCH family because it's too easy to confuse their name with the month of March.

Thomas Charles MARCH marries

Thomas Charles MARCH married Sarah COOPER in 1867. She brought with her a daughter, Arabella, who went by MARCH for the rest of her life. I think the daughter matches the Arabella MARCH who died in 1944. The probate records for 1944 are not yet available online but when I can get a look at them, I'll be interested to see the size of the fortune, or lack of it, that Arabella had when she died. I haven't found her in the census after 1891. I rather hope she was installed in a nice grace and favour apartment somewhere on the grounds of Buckingham Palace or even Hampton Court Palace for the rest of her days.

MARCH family life in the 1880s and later

Thomas and Sarah had two little brothers for Arabella, Thomas Charles MARCH, b. 1867, and Reginald George MARCH, b. 1874. Sadly, it appears little Thomas died at the age of 8.

By 1881, the MARCH family had decamped from London and were living at a very nice country house called Forest Lodge in Ashtead, Surrey.You can read a bit about it online, courtesy of the Surrey History Centre Archives and their website, Exploring Surrey's Past. They had probably left London for Surrey earlier, in the 1870s, as Reginald was born in Holmwood, Surrey in 1874, and the boy Thomas died, probably at Ashtead (Epsom registration district), in 1876. In 1881, Thomas (the father) was 61 and as mentioned, Pay-master of the Queen's Household.

Reginald was away at school in Cheltenham for the 1891 census. Thomas and the daughter Arabella were the only ones at Forest Lodge. This was Arabella's home until about three years after her father died (he died in 1898), when she sold it to Mr. Augustus MEYERS, who built a beautiful new home there.

Here is what the Surrey History Centre Archives' website says:

"In the early 19th century, the Haunch of Venison inn stood [where Forest Lodge was] but, during the 1860s, Henry Parsons converted it into a house, where, in 1871, he lived with a large household, including five servants. In the 1879 sale of Ashtead Park, Forest Lodge was bought for £3,700 on behalf of Lord Rosebery, although it was occupied at the time by Thomas C March, who held important positions in the royal household and who subsequently purchased the property. After his death, it was sold by his daughter, Arabella.

"Augustus Meyers purchased the estate in 1901 and lived there for nearly fifty years. Soon after he acquired the property, he built the present Forest Lodge, set well back from the road behind the site of the original inn, which had stood near the present entrance. The laying out of the grounds, including the demolition of the earlier house, had been completed by 1911."

Just a side-note about Lord Rosebery: he became Prime Minister of England. He was born in 1847 at No. 20, Charles Street, Berkeley Square. You may recall that Charles Street is what got us here. Thomas Charles MARCH lived at No. 1 in 1861.

There is a privately-published book called Photographic Views of Interior and Gardens, Forest Lodge, Ashtead, Surrey (1911) displayed on the website of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, as part of an exhibit called "Of Making Many Books There is No End", that will close on March 31, 2011. Only the cover and one photograph (the one the cover picture is based on) are pictured on the website. The book was, I assume, prepared for Mr. MEYERS and depicts his new house, but that is just my best guess.

Sarah, Arabella's mother, died at Forest Lodge on July 7, 1888. Probate was granted, not to her husband, but to her spinster daughter Arabella MARCH on August 13, 1888. Sarah's will may have been set up to name Arabella as executrix because, with Thomas being about 20 years her elder, Sarah expected to outlive him. Sarah's personal estate was valued at £633/0/11.

Before her marriage to Thomas, the 1861 census showed Sarah living at 78 Sloane Street, Chelsea with her occupation being "House and Funded Proprietor". If that means she owned the house on Sloane Street, her fortune could have been considerable. Maybe that was invested in Forest Lodge, or maybe she was less wealthy than I imagine. Students of women's history can perhaps shed some light on the situation of a married woman's property in 1888. Did it remain hers, or did it become part of her husband's wealth upon marriage? I would only be guessing if I answered that question either way.


Link to the map and Google Street View of present day 78 Sloane Street. Dorchester Court, the modern red brick building on the left, is No. 77 through 81.The white building with the blue plaques is No. 76 (at the end close to Dorchester Court).


View Larger Map

It appears Thomas worked for Her Majesty's household until his death in 1898. His occupation in the 1891 census was "Secretary of Board of Green Cloth, Queen's Household".  Probate was granted to Reginald George MARCH, his son, who was then a Clerk to the Lord Chamberlain, on August 10, 1898.

Thomas's estate was valued at £15,387/0/8.
 
In the National Probate Calendar (Ref: England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations),1861-1941 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010.Original data: Principal Probate Registry. Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England. London, England © Crown copyright.), Thomas was called Thomas Charles MARCH of 82 Ebury-street Middlesex C.B.

The C.B. was news to me, and stands for Companion of the The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, an honour bestowed by the Queen, to a senior civil servant. I have not been able to find details of when Thomas MARCH was given this honour.

Here is a link to the Google Street View and map for 82 Ebury-street (modern day; the black door on the right, with the two white squares of what looks like paper), in case the embedded map below is not visible. In the 1891 census, this was a lodging house kept by a widow. On census night the widow, two female servants, and one 21-year-old man, an Assistant Engineer in the navy, were there. I would guess this was a convenient place for Thomas MARCH to stay when in London on business, but not likely the sort of place his daughter would have moved to after selling Forest Lodge, if it catered to gentlemen civil servants.


View Larger Map

The two surviving family members, Arabella and Reginald appear, from the scanty collection of records I have seen, to have gone their separate ways. I don't mean they were estranged (who knows?), only that I haven't found them living together. I don't know where Arabella was between about 1901 (the sale of Forest Lodge) and 1944, her death.

I couldn't find Reginald in the 1901 census, either, but I did find a good explanation for that.

In 1914, when the First World War started, Reginald enlisted and gave his occupation as "motor lorry driver". That's rather unexpected for a Clerk to the Lord Chamberlain. The reason comes from his prior military service as a member of Lord Paget's Horse. This was a private regiment raised by Lord Paget to fight in the South African (aka Boer) War. It appears they were in South Africa on census night, 1901.

Lord Paget's Horse recruited gentlemen, and its official initials, PH, were jokingly said to stand for "Piccadilly Heroes".

Also mentioned in Reginald's First World War attestation papers is the fact that he was married, and the papers identify his wife and two children.

Reginald enlisted for "Short Service (One Year With the Colours)" on October 5, 1914 at the age of 30. As mentioned, his stated Trade or Calling was "Motor Lorry Driver". There was also a note "Speaks French fluently and German [illegible]". On November 17, 1917, he was discharged as being medically unfit for service, being over age. His service record shows that he was at Home (i.e., the UK), not sent abroad to fight.

He died in 1918, leaving £2,686/8/1 and naming his wife Ella and two solicitors as executors. It's possible Ella went on to remarry (I found a possible match in 1927 to John MAYLE) and also that she travelled to the U.S.A., and that she died in Winchester in 1973. I haven't tried to check those things out (too remote).

Of his children, the little bit of searching I did suggests (doesn't prove) that his daughter Marjorie Eva went to the U.S.A.  in 1930, for 3 months at the age of 19. The Marjorie MARCH who made that trip listed Mrs. MAYYLE [sic] as her mother on the ship's passenger list, so it all fits.

Reginald's son, Thomas Charles MARCH, matches the age and name of a gentleman who died in Winchester in 1999.

I have a little more information about Reginald that I won't put here; we've strayed rather far from Thomas, his father, already.

The MARCH family into which Thomas Charles MARCH the father was born did very well for themselves. I will show how well in a couple of posts from now.

Next time, I want to show the Six Degrees of Queen Victoria and Six Degrees of Dracula for the MARCH family we've looked at so far.


If you'd like to get these posts by email or RSS feed, just sign up using the buttons at the top right of the page. I would love to have you as a reader.

If you find these stories interesting, or have a question, please leave a comment. Let me know what catches your fancy and I'll find more.


Thomas March is the first of many interesting people we will meet on Charles Street in 1871. His story starts with Thomas March of 1 Charles Street: One degree from Queen Victoria.


This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

Next: Six degrees of Queen Victoria: How the Thomas Charles March family were connected.

Thomas Charles March, and his rise through the ranks at Queen Victoria's household

In 1871, Thomas Charles MARCH lived at 1 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, in London. (I usually use "London" to describe the modern metropolis. Many places were more properly described as being in Westminster rather than London, in the 19th century.) His career was spent in the service of Queen Victoria, and by the time he died in 1898, he was at the top of her household staff.

Thomas MARCH: One degree from Queen Victoria

I have traced Thomas and his family, mainly through the census returns using Ancestry.co.uk, as well as a few other online sources. At every turn I find something rather unexpected and interesting. Hope you find it so, too.

Where and what Thomas MARCH was in the census

1841: Don't know yet. I have looked, and looked, and looked. More to come about what I know of his family from about 1800 up to 1851.

1851: St. James's Palace, Stable Yard, No. 4, Thomas C. MARCH: unmarried, age 31, (occupation) Lord Chamberlain's Office, living with his two unmarried brothers, William (36, also of the Lord Chamberlain's Office) and George (22, No Occupation), and an unmarried woman servant, Elizabeth BARTLEY, age 70 (or possibly 40).

Census Reference (from Ancestry.com):   Class:  HO107; Piece:  1481; Folio:  10; Page:  12; GSU roll:  87806.

Modern Google Map for Stable Yard Road

The official website of the British Monarchy, "St James's Palace"



1861: St. James's Palace, Thomas C. MARCH, Head, unmarried, 41, [Clerk?] Lord Chamberlain's Office, living in a dwelling (not sure of what sort) with his brother William G. MARCH, unmarred, 43, "Ditto" (i.e., also a clerk in the Lord Chamberlain's office) and a 54-year-old widow, Sarah LOW, as their general servant.

Census Reference (from Ancestry.com): Class:  RG9; Piece:  56; Folio:  17; Page:  29; GSU roll:  542565

With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that Thomas rose through the ranks of the Royal Household to become what appears to be the top financial manager. The Lord Chamberlain, his boss for most of Thomas's years in service, was a political appointment. There were about 13 of them, some with multiple terms of office, during Thomas's career. I envision Thomas as the Victoria equivalent of Sir Humphrey Appleby.

(Link to video in case the embedded video is not showing.)









Sometime in the 1860s it appears Thomas got married. In the census returns before 1871, he was shown as unmarried. (This is not the same as widowed, which is usually specified.) I hard quite a hard time figuring out the identity of Thomas's wife. That's coming next.

Thomas March is the first of many interesting people we will meet on Charles Street in 1871. His story starts with Thomas March of 1 Charles Street: One degree from Queen Victoria.

This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

Next: Applying some Jane Austen logic to the marriage of Thomas Charles March, Queen Victoria's Pay-master

Thomas MARCH of 1 Charles Street: One degree from Queen Victoria

How did we get to Charles Street? Well, it started with a look at the 1881 census for the Bram Stoker family over in Chelsea, including the servants. One servant, Mary JARRALD, was a widow. In trying to find information about her husband, I followed a possible trail for Charles JARRALD. Since he died before 1881, I looked at 1871, and found him working as a servant on Charles Street.

Then I discovered just what kind of people lived on Charles Street and thought it was worth a little digging.

Eventually, we will get back to Bram.

In the meantime, I made up two games:

Six Degrees of Dracula
and
Six Degrees of Queen Victoria.

OK, on with the show.

Charles Street Berkeley Square in 1871 Census (In St. George Hanover Square, Mayfair, ED11. Starts at Ancestry p. 31.)
Cited as: Class:  RG10; Piece:  102; Folio:  75; Page: 31; GSU roll:  838762.

Link to page 31



Some of the links I use may require you to sign in to Ancestry.com to see the item. That is for the convenience of Ancestry users. If you don't use it, don't despair. I will give as much information as needed to tell the story.


No. 1: Thomas C. MARCH, marr, 50, Clerk Lord Chamberlain's Office, born London, Marylebone
4 Family

1. Thomas C. MARCH
2. Arabella S. MARCH, wife, marr, 32, born Basingstoke
3. Arabella MARCH, daughter, 14, born St. Lukes Chelsea
4. Thomas C. MARCH, son, 3, born London, St. Georges [Hanover Square?]

3 Servants

1. Agusta GERY, Servant, unmarr, 22, Domestic Servant, Lady's Maid, born Hanover (not a B.S.) [not a British Subject?] The spelling of both names looks suspicious. On this romp through the census I am not going to research the servants, even though it was a servant who led us here. Perhaps later.
2. Anne COOK, Servant, unmarr, 52, Cook, born Chicester.
3. Anne COOK, Servant, unmarr, 14, Housemaid, born London, Poplar.

On the first pass, I almost disregarded this household entirely. Clerk? That doesn't sound very high-falutin'. Mistake! I'm glad I went back for a closer look.

Thomas Charles MARCH was 50 in 1871. He was born on July 4, 1819 in Marylebone and christened there on August 14, 1819. Link to image of christening register. His father, Thomas MARCH, was an "Esquire", a gentleman, though I don't know his occupation. Thomas had at least two brothers, George Edward MARCH and William Gonne MARCH. His mother's name was Mary Ann GONNE. The parents, Thomas and Mary Ann, were British Subjects born in Portugal.

The 1871 census is the first time Thomas appears in his own home, at least the first time since 1851, when he was 30.

Thomas C. MARCH turns out to be, by the end of his life, one of the top people on the staff of the Royal Household of Queen Victoria. At various points, he was in the Lord Chamberlain's office, and also the Lord Steward's office. These two offices were for a time combined. The way some people describe it, the Lord Chamberlain's office deals with formal matters while the Lord Steward is concerned with "below stairs": the servants who make the day-to-day matters of living go smoothly.

The Lord Chamberlain's office dealt with the awarding of the Royal Warrant to approved suppliers of goods and services, and with organizing state funerals, to give two examples.

As Chief Clerk of the Department of the Lord Chamberlain of Her Majesty's Household, Thomas was alone in the second carriage of mourners who brought the remains of the Duke of Wellington from Walmer Castle in Kent, by horse-drawn carriage and then by special train from Deal, to London for the state funeral in 1852. The Duke's son was in the first carriage.

Here is an extract from the Order of Service for the funeral and the attendant arrangements.





I have lots more to say about Thomas and his family coming up in the next post.

This article is one in an ongoing series, starting with Bram Stoker, author of Dracula in public records: BMD (Birth, Marriage, Death).

With this article we move a little away from Dracula for a while and focus on the residents of Charles Street in 1871. An amazing collection, really.

Next: Thomas Charles March, and his rise through the ranks at Queen Victoria's household