The Sutton Family Day Picture Gallery
The Sutton Family Day Picture Gallery
Totterdown Post Office - Wells Road
about 1918
My research into my family's past continues and it has become very exciting as more information becomes available. I am hoping that over the next few weeks, I will be able to put more of this information on my website. Please keep coming back from time to time to see more. All the pictures are shown as thumbnails! Click on any picture and it will enlarge.
I have always enjoyed looking at old family photographs and listening to stories about my grandparents, Harriet Ellen Booth, William Heyes, Ethel Beatrice Sutton and Edward Colston Shepherd. When my brother-in-law started researching his family history, it inspired me to do the same.
Nearly thirty years later I am pleased to be able to share my family's story with you. Who knows where it will lead? Perhaps your family is linked with mine? Perhaps my story will inspire you to carry out your own research? One thing I know, the more I find out, the more interesting it becomes and the more there is to find out.
I hope you will keep returning to my web site as I shall be adding to it regularly over time with updated information. I have just begun to write the story of my grandfather's career in the Royal Navy. This is proving to be as interesting and as absorbing as my research in to the WW1 Sutton family history.
The postcard photograph at the top of the page was taken outside my grandparents' Post Office and shop in Totterdown, Bristol. It was well known in the area for its selection of goods, including stationery, cards, toys and books. Standing on the edge of the pavement, in waistcoat and shirt sleeves, is my grandfather, Edward Colston Shepherd. Behind him, in the doorway, a young lad holding a football, that is my uncle Reg. By the shop window is a cart - used to carry parcels and letters. My father is sitting in the cart, his mother used it as a pram and my father spent many hours sitting there, when he was a baby! On the wall is a stamp machine, some people are using it. My father told me that below the machine was the coal hole grid. He used to go down to the cellar every week and collect the pennies and coins that had fallen down between the bars and pocket them!
Well the always hoped for, but never quite believed in, dream has come true! When I first published my website I hoped that someone would read it and contact me to say our families were linked. I have to admit I felt it was a very long shot. (Oh ye of little faith!) The following sequence of events prove the power of the Internet!
Just after Christmas 2005 I received an email from my Internet Provider to say someone was trying to contact me, but emails were being returned. I was in the middle of updating my email address and so quickly sorted it out and uploaded the new one. Within days I had received three emails from New Zealand! Can you imagine my surprise and excitement when I read that the writer thought his great grandmother, Harriet Jane Sutton and my great grandfather George Sutton were brother and sister? We exchanged details and indeed there seemed to be a strong possibility! Further research at the English end gave more information.
The Sutton family disappeared from the Alcombe/Dunster area after the 1861 census. George Sutton married Isabella Meehan, in Bristol, in May 1874. His mother, Sophia Sutton, was not showing on the 1881 census, although there was a possibility she may have remarried. My thoughts led me to think perhaps the whole family had moved to Bristol after George's father's death. Checking records that are now available online, I quickly found the death of a Sophia Sutton, in Bristol. Sending away for the death certificate I hoped this might be my Sophia Sutton. When it arrived it was quite clear that this was, indeed, my great, great grandmother. She died in Bristol, in June 1876, from Phthisis, a wasting away of the body from Consumption. Her daughter, Harriet Jane, registered the death. My assumption was correct, the family had indeed moved to Bristol. There is no record of Harriet Jane Sutton in England, after this date! If my Harriet Jane Sutton emigrated to New Zealand and was the same Harriet Jane Sutton, the wife of David Mills, then she would have arrived between 1876 and 1879 (the date of Harriet Jane Mills' first baby in New Zealand). Armed with this information my New Zealand "cousin" contacted the Immigration Office. He received a letter back very quickly to say one Harriet J Sutton, aged 20, a housemaid from Somerset, had sailed from Plymouth on 1st August 1877, aboard the Otaki, and had disembarked on 4th November 1877, in Auckland, New Zealand. We felt it had to be one and the same person! Other details were exchanged and this reinforced the connection, but one can never be entirely 100% certain.
Sadly Harriet Jane Mills (née Sutton) died, in 1889, of Consumption! (Had she brought the infection with her?) The marriage between Harriet Jane Sutton and David Mills must have been a very happy union, they had 5 children and when he died in 1934 his wish was to be buried with her, in Opotiki.
The tombstone reads “In loving memory of Harriet Jane, beloved wife of David Mills, died 9 September 1887 aged 33 years. Asleep in Jesus. In loving memory of David, beloved husband of Harriet Jane Mills, died 7 November 1934, aged 89 years. At rest”.
Author's Note: My very grateful thanks go to the descendants of Harriet Jane Sutton and David Mills in New Zealand, who have supplied me with all the New Zealand information, so readily. I also wish to acknowledge their willingness and very kind permission, to allow me to publish details of Harriet Jane's family.
Another family connection! Early in November 2005, I received an email from Australia! Yet another family member, this time a descendant of Isabella Adelaide Sutton. Her father had emigrated to Australia and Fay is tracing her ancestors. Surfing the net she found my website and made contact. Welcome to your English cousins Fay! It looks as if a trip down under is going to have to be made!
2010 marks the start of some serious research in to the Booth & Heys/Hayes families. This is my maternal side and I have been shying away from starting. Mainly because the families originated in Lancashire and I live in Bristol, so access to archives will mean trips up and overnight stays. I am looking forward to finding out more as the families were clearly cotton mill workers and life must have been very difficult for them.
Happy browsing!
email: philary@blueyonder.co.uk
Copyright © 2003 by philary
Updated August 2011
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