Cart(t)er Family Tree

Going forward I have a new focus for some of my postings. I've been exchanging emails with all sorts of family members in doing some research into our family tree. People I've exchanged emails with include Lesley Low and the Goldhawks for the Cartter side and Denise Samuel in Florida for the van Gelder side. Nana (my gran) has also suffered some of my interviewing.

Finally I've made some breakthroughs on the Cartter side. As I make more I will report them in a series of posts. This will happen as and when I have time. But the important news first...

This week I finally received the death certificates for William Charles Carter and Harriet Elizabeth Carter (nee Barber) who were (my great grandfather) Frederick's parents. Note that they spelled their surname with only one "t". The additional "t" in Cartter seems only to have been added after Frederick arrived in South Africa.

We knew that Frederick and his 6 siblings had been orphaned in the late 1800s and I've finally found the details. William and Harriet died less than a year apart on 12 March 1885 and 18 April 1886 respectively. Frederick would have been 9 and the oldest children (the twins William Charles and Herbert Henry) would have been 17 when they were orphaned. The youngest child (Mable Annie) would have been about 6.

The death certificates show that William Charles (the elder of the twins by about 8 minutes according to the Cartter Family Bible) was present at both deaths which are recorded as being due to Phthisis 3 Months and 8 months respectively. After some research I found that Ptthisis is what would now be called pulmonary tuberculosis and that the "3 months" and "8 months" indicates how long they had each been suffering from the disease.

At his death William Charles Carter is listed as being a Hotel Proprietor living at Market Place (or Market Street according to Harriet's death certificate a year later) in Saffron Waldon in Essex. If you are interested in having copies of the certificates I have scanned them and posted them on Flickr so click on the pictures above. I'll post later about what I have pieced together of William's life from England census records. I found it quite fascinating to get a snapshot every 10 years.

I have also traced what I believe is the marriage certificate of William and Harriet. Unfortunately when I ordered a copy I accidentally transposed two of the reference numbers which meant that my request could not be filled, losing me a few ££s. I have now ordered the correct one and hope it will give us some information about William Charles' parents. I know that his father was called Charles and that he was widowed young. I have found the family in the England Census records going right back every 10 years from 1881 to 1841. However, I cannot find what his wife's name was. I know nothing of Harriet's family. More on this also later.

Please let me know if you are all in the least intrested in these details. I don't want to bore you but I also don't want to have too many individual email discussions with each of you as I suspect there is a more general (even if only passing) interest that is better shared.

And of course, I am very much interested in any help in digging further... I've still got the whole Fredanus van Gelder angle to figure out and that is proving close to impossible. Only the English obsession with keeping records has gotten me this far on the Cartter side.