Mrs W. Fitz-Henry's trunk

I was absolutely delighted to receive an email from Dodi Turney in North Carolina containing photos of a metal trunk which she had recent acquired. Dodi has an Esty shop for her antiques and collectables business, and more photos of the trunk are also featured on her Instagram account.

Dodi wondered if the Mrs W. Fitz-Henry, whose name was painted so elegantly on the front of the trunk, could have been Barbara Morrison, wife of Captain William Fitz-Henry of the 60th Royal Rifles Regiment (see this post here), and owner of this beautiful beetle-wing dress. 

It would have been brilliant if this had been possible, but unfortunately "Griffiths, McAlister Ltd. of London & Liverpool" the company who made the trunk wasn't formed until 1880, three years after Barbara's death.

Barbara and William's eldest surviving son Dr William George (or George William, he used the names interchangeably) Fitz-Henry married Isabella Cooper and spent some years in Lyttleton, New Zealand. 

They had four children and the eldest son William Cooper Fitz-Henry spent his professional career in the British Colonial Service in the former Rhodesia. William Cooper Fitz-Henry married Mary Christine ("Lassie") MacDonald in London, England in 1919 and I believe this trunk belonged to Lassie during her posting in Rhodesia. I have previously written about Lassie and William in the "Out of Africa" series.

Lassie and William had one child, Mary Isabel Christine ("Christine") Fitz-Henry, who married George Prendergast in Surrey, England in 1941. The Prendergasts subsequently settled in Charlotte, North Carolina. Christine either took the trunk with her, or inherited it on Lassie's death in 1971. Christine died in 2012.

If any of the Prendergast family wish to contact me with more information about the trunk or wish to be put in touch with their Fitz-Henry cousins in England and Canada, please contact me directly or leave a comment below.

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Henrietta Fitz-Henry, daughter of William Fitz-Henry of Ashtead

When I obtained the will of William Fitz-Henry of Ashtead (1830 -1885) I wondered why his eldest daughter Henrietta (by his first wife Barbara Morrison) was not mentioned, even though she was still alive. All his other living children by Barbara (George William, Norman and Annie Eliza) were provided for, and his four surviving children by his second wife Martha Eagles were still too young to be independent from her.

Brian Bouchard, who has done extensive research onto the local history of Ashtead sent me the text of William's army service record. This showed that Henrietta was born in 1855 but William and Barbara were not married until December 1856.

I knew that Barbara had been married before, so I asked the Channel Islands Family History Society to have a search around and this is what they came up with.

Barbara was originally married to Charles Le Sauteur who was a merchant in Jersey from an old Jersey family. He died of a fever on 11th October 1855.
They had at least 2 children. The elder Elizabeth Morrison Le Sauteur died on 23rd May 1855 aged 19 months.
The other was Henrietta Le Sauteur born 25th February 1855 in St Nicolas in the parish of St Peter, Jersey.

William and Barbara were married in St Saviour December 12th 1856. Here's the details from their marriage certificate:
William Fitz-Henry
aged 27 bachelor, Colour Segt. 60th regiment, resident in St Peters
Place of birth St Marys Dublin
Father: Robert Fitz-Henry, linen draper

Barbara Morrison, widow of Charles Le Sauteur
Aged 28 Widow resident in St Peters
Place of birth Inverness Scotland
Father Charles Morrison, gardener

This partially answers the question as to why Henrietta was not mentioned in William's will (although I can't believe this is the whole reason) as she was not actually his daughter. However, from the 1861 census onwards she is always referred to as Henrietta Fitz-Henry and referred to as a daughter rather than a step-daughter. She did not marry as far as I am aware, so I can't check on a marriage certificate if she knew who her father really was.

The other striking thing is the name and occupation of William's father. In this marriage certificate, his father is Robert a linen draper. In his second marriage to Martha Eagles from the wealthy and socially superior Eagles family, his father is Hester a Dublin lawyer. I have several other anomalies like this in my research - in fact my great great grandfather was a dock porter in the East End, but all 5 of his daughters put on their wedding certificates that he was a master butcher!

I also wonder if there was another Fitz-Henry child between the marriage and the birth of George (1859) as this pair were quite prolific. If they had another child in this 1856-1859 gap, this child would have died before 1861, as he or she is not mentioned in the 1861 census when the family are resident in the Winchester barracks.
In order I have so far:
George 1859-1860
Alexander 1861-1862
George William 1862-1940
Charles Robert (knowing the names of William and Barbara's parents this now makes sense!) 1864-65
Norman Edward 1865 -1901
Annie Eliza 1865 - after 1885 (mentioned in her father's will)


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The missing Winchester and Aylesbury Fitz-Henrys

I've been piecing together two Fitz-Henry families over the past few months, one based in Winchester, Hampshire and the other in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
The common link is William Fitz-Henry, a soldier born in Dublin in 1830 whose father was a lawyer called Hester Fitz-Henry.
William came to the Winchester Peninsular barracks sometime around 1859, when his regiment the 60th Rifles was stationed there. His wife Barbara was a Scottish woman whose maiden name was Morrison, and had previously been married to a man called Le Sautair (or so it looks on the birth certificate - it would fit as this is a French sounding name and William and Barbara's first child was born on the island of Jersey so they might have met there).
They had seven children but only four survived
Henrietta b. 1855 on Jersey
George b. November 1859 and d.1st quarter 1860
Alexander b. 1st quarter 1861 and d. 2nd quarter 1862
William George b. May 1862 - became a surgeon
Charles Robert b. 1st quarter 1864 and d. 4th quarter 1865
Norman b. June 1865 and still alive in 1881
Annie Eliza not registered but christened in October 1867. At least that's what I thought until this evening when I was scouring the fantastic facility that is FreeBMD, and having put Annie, Winchester and 4th quarter into the search engine it turns out that she had been registered as Annie Eliza HENRY.

Barbara died in 1877 and by the end of the year, William had married again to the splendidly named Martha Eagles from an old monied family in Aylesbury Buckinghamshire. I'll do more about the Eagles family and their legacy to the Fitz-Henry family with regard to their names in another post.
William and Martha had another 4 children, and then seemed to disappear off the face of the earth after the 1881 census.
The children were
Hester Cordelia b. 1878
Rowley Steavens b.1879
Harry Duncombe b.1882
Woodfield Duncombe Thomas b.1883

However, having persuaded myself that William had been posted abroad and died overseas, tonight I've found both him and Martha safely ending their days in the south of England via the FreeBMD search engine. William died in 1885 in Epsom and Martha in 1889 in Wycombe. Somehow I had missed them both when I was hand transcribing the indexes at the Family Records Centre in London. Their certificates have been ordered!