This is the world that Helen McKee\u2019s ancestors faced when they emigrated from Ireland in the 1830s. Helen lives in Egham in Surrey, and teaches medieval languages at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has been interested in family history since she was a teenager.<\/p>
\u201cI was delighted when Findmypast<\/a> released a tranche of Roman Catholic records from the Diocese of Westminster in 2017,\u201d she explains. \u201cThese revealed the exact area where my 3x great grandfather Patrick Curtain was born, which was Castleisland in County Kerry.<\/p> \u201cIn 1840, Patrick married Ellen Latch at the Roman Catholic Sardinian Embassy Chapel in Lincoln\u2019s Inn. They had four surviving children including my great great grandfather, Bartholomew. I\u2019ve had a wonderful time researching their lives. I\u2019ve known about Bartholomew for as long as I can remember, because we have a photo of him that was passed down from my grandmother. He had such an unusual name.<\/p> \u201cGranny had written on the back that Bartholomew was Irish and had emigrated to Canada<\/a>. However, when I began researching his life I realised that both these assumptions were wrong. He was born in June 1849 in Holborn, and was baptised at the Sardinian Chapel.<\/p> \u201cPatrick worked as a general labourer, and the family grew up in horrible poverty. Sadly, their eldest son John died of water on the brain when he was three.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cBartholomew must have had some education, because he could sign his name on documents. After leaving school he became a cigar-maker, which was the one constant in his life.\u201d<\/p> Cigar-making was a flourishing industry in Victorian London. It was a skilled job that was done by hand before mechanisation, and apprentices would have to train for two to three years before they could become proficient.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cWorkers sat in rows at long tables, rolling loose \u2018filler\u2019 tobacco into a binder leaf, then adding an outer wrapper and neatening the edges. They were paid by the number of cigars they produced.\u201d<\/p> Bartholomew married Helen Tinnock in 1870, and they had seven children. Infant mortality rates were high in London in that era, and the family must have been grief-stricken when three of their daughters died in infancy.\u00a0<\/p> The family must have been grief-stricken when three of their daughters died in infancy<\/p><\/blockquote> The last bereavement came in 1887 when their daughter Catherine passed away after suffering from diarrhoea and convulsions. Perhaps this sadness influenced the radical decision that Bartholomew took in 1889.<\/p> \u201cAll of a sudden, he emigrated to the USA \u2013 rather than Canada \u2013 leaving Helen and the rest of the family behind. He was almost 40, which seems late in the day to venture overseas. I don\u2019t know what was going on in Bartholomew\u2019s marriage at that time. Before he emigrated, they moved from Holborn to Nottingham which I assume was work-related.\u201d<\/p> By the 1880s, it was becoming harder for men to find work in factories because it was cheaper to employ women. Often a man would emigrate first, then his wife and children would follow. That wasn\u2019t the case with Helen, who stayed on in Nottinghamshire working as a charwoman.<\/p> Bartholomew worked in cigar-making factories in Virginia and Pennsylvania. He also crossed the border to Canada several times, which Helen found listed on Ancestry<\/a>.<\/p> \u201cThe next big reveal was his elopement. During the spring 2020 lockdown, I took out a subscription to Newspapers.com<\/a>, which includes US publications. I entered his name and an old newspaper<\/a> article appeared from an 1895 edition of a Pennsylvania newspaper called The Allentown Leader<\/em>.<\/p> \u201cThe article said that \u2018the little village of Tylersport, Bucks County, is all agog over the elopement of Miss Gussie Bandle, a well-known young woman of that neighborhood, and Bartholomew Curtain, a cigarmaker. The pair disappeared from Tylersport last Tuesday morning, and were seen to board a train at Telford. Nothing is known of their whereabouts. Miss Bandle is a bright young lady of 16. Curtain is 40 years of age.\u2019<\/p> \u201cIn fact Bartholomew would have been 46, and I was appalled to read that he had eloped with a teenager. Gussie gave birth to a daughter six months later in December 1895. You can guess who the father was. The relationship with Bartholomew didn\u2019t last, and Gussie and the baby returned to live with her parents in Tylersport.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> “I was appalled to read that he had eloped with a teenager”<\/p><\/blockquote> Bartholomew lived in the USA for over 30 years. \u201cHe seems to have had problems with alcohol, because newspaper reports listed him as being arrested for drunkenness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> He returned to Britain in 1919, a sick and elderly man. A year later he was admitted to the St Pancras Workhouse<\/a>, where he died in 1922.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cI find Bartholomew a fascinating character. I\u2019m sure that he worked hard, and I feel sympathy for the struggles he endured, but the elopement challenged my opinion of him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> Bartholomew\u2019s brother Thomas, who was born in 1843, also crossed paths with the law, and \u201cCriminal registers on Ancestry revealed that most of Thomas\u2019 convictions were for petty theft. At the age of 18 he stole a pair of boots, and received a six-month gaol sentence. He also stole fabric, skirts, jackets, a ham and tea.\u201d\u00a0<\/p> Thomas married Mary Ann Brown in 1869, and they had two children. \u201cIt\u2019s sad because Thomas\u2019 son Patrick died aged 12 weeks while he was in prison for larceny. They must have been desperately poor, because when Thomas wasn\u2019t in prison he also entered the workhouse.\u201d<\/p> Thomas\u2019 actions took a darker turn as he got older. \u201cI was amazed to find an illustration of one of his crimes in an 1899 issue of the Illustrated Police Budget<\/em> on Findmypast. He was sentenced to 12 months\u2019 hard labour for maliciously wounding a barmaid whom he threw a glass at.\u201d<\/p> Thomas\u2019 brother Daniel followed a very different path. In 1858, he enlisted for 10 years\u2019 continuous service in the Royal Navy and was based on vessels in Woolwich and Malta.\u00a0<\/p> After his service, he became a constable in the meat-market police at Smithfield. \u201cDaniel also appears in old newspapers, but for better reasons. In 1876, he apprehended a woman who stole a brisket of beef at the New Meat Market. He also arrested a man who stole four butchers\u2019 smocks.<\/p> \u201cDaniel must have been embarrassed by Thomas\u2019 crimes. This may be why he changed his surname<\/a> from Curtain to Curtian on official documents in the 1870s.\u201d<\/p> Daniel\u2019s first wife Frances Stanton died in 1882. He then married 20-year-old Maria Cribbett when he was aged 45.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cA fascinating story emerged when I began to research them. Maria and Daniel were married for 13 years before their son Daniel Patrick was born in 1898.\u00a0<\/p> \u201cIn the 1901 census, the family was living together in Seething Lane, near the Tower of London. However, six weeks later, Maria was an inmate of the City of London Union Workhouse. What had happened? Did she leave Daniel or was she kicked out?<\/p> \u201cI\u2019ll probably never solve this mystery, because there are no descendants on that line. Daniel Curtian senior died in 1902, and there was no mention of Maria in his will. Young Daniel Patrick was brought up in a children\u2019s home<\/a> and died in Flanders, Belgium, during the First World War.<\/a>\u201d<\/p> “Young Daniel Patrick was brought up in a children\u2019s home and died in Flanders, Belgium, during the First World War”<\/p><\/blockquote>Bartholomew’s siblings<\/h2>
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