Some photos from Mike Volante

Mike Volante has sent me some great photos of the Fitz-Henry branch that we are both descended from. I'll put two of them up here for a bit and see if anybody recognises them. If they're gone, I've moved them to the FitzhenryDNA website as we've got more space there! Click on the pictures for a larger version.

The first is of my great-great grandmother Caroline Thompson (1847-1924) who married my great-great grandfather John Fitz-Henry (1844 - 1924) and her eldest daughter Caroline "Carrie" Gilburns nee Fitz-Henry.
Carrie was the second child of this family (born 1872), the first being my great grandfather Thomas (born 1870) and a subject of a previous post. My dad tells me that apparently they were inseparable. Despite being from a poor dock-working family, their father paid for Thomas and Carrie to have an education at a "Dame School", where a single teacher would teach children the basics for a weekly fee. It is said that once the children had given their money to the dame on a Monday, they would bunk off school for the rest of the week.

Carrie married Thomas Gilburns, an Irishman who was also living in the Katharine Buildings tenement, in 1898. They had one daughter Teresa Caroline Gilburns born in 1900, the same year that Thomas Gilburns died of tuberculosis aged 29.
This was the second time in a year that tuberculosis had struck this family, as one of Carrie's younger brothers, Edward, died at the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest on the Isle of Wight in October 1899. The older Caroline may be dressed in black mourning clothes for that reason.


Mike's grand-father was Henry Fitz-Henry, Thomas and Carrie's younger brother (born 1882) and his picture is at the top left of the second photo. Mike says that when Henry was a young man he fell, breaking his nose and cutting his lip. He didn't like his photo taken after that and they have very few pictures of him. If anyone recognises this very smart gathering and any other people in it, please let us know. There is a woman amongst all the men - you can just make out her face in the bottom left hand corner.




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