A-Z Challenge 2016: T is for Thomas Alfred Murch 1877

Thomas Alfred Murch first appears on the 1881 census, living with his family in Llanfaelog, Wales.  His father, John, was a coastguard, which explains why there are seven children under the age of 10 (in 1881), yet their births are in different places: Somerset, Cork (Ireland), St Mawgan (Cornwall), and Llanfaelog. Thomas's mother, Jane, also came from Cork.

But that's where the trail goes cold.  Thomas does not appear in the 1901 or 1911 censuses, and the entire family does not appear in the 1891 census (then later they are in Holyhead, Anglesey).  I cannot find an early death for Thomas.  Is it possible that he became a coastguard like his father and moved all over the place?  Were the family in Ireland in 1891, visiting family?

Thomas features in the Murch Surname Study.

© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved

A-Z Challenge 2016: J is for Jerom Murch 1807-1895

Jerom Murch was born in Honiton in 1807.  He married Anne Taylor in 1830 and on the 1841 census he has been enumerated as a 'Dissenting Minister' (this was Unitarianism), living in the Parade in Bath, Somerset, England with his wife, three children, and four servants.

By the 1851 census, none of the children is recorded as being at home (although the four servants are still there), and Jerom is now recorded as a 'Unitarian Minister of Lewins Mead Chapel, Bristol'.

By the 1861 census, he has now become 'Magistrate for Somerset'.  On the 1871 census he is recorded as a 'Landowner Magistrate', and his servants, instead of being merely 'male' or 'female', are now recorded as 'Butler', 'Lady's Maid', 'Cook', and 'Housemaid'.  He became Mayor of Bath 1863, 1864, 1876, 1877, 1886, 1890, 1892.

On the 1881 census, now aged 73, he has added a footman to his staff, and Jerom is described not only as a Magistrate, but also Deputy Lieutenant and Alderman.  When aged 83, he is now described as 'living on own means' on the 1891 census.  Jerom was knighted on 21 May 1894.

Sir Jerom died in 1895.  There is an excellent (short) article on his life at Murch Family Worldwide

Sir Jerom features in the Murch Surname Study

© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved

A-Z Challenge 2016: D is for Daisy Blanche Murch 1892

Daisy Blanche Murch was born in late 1892 in Greinton, Somerset, England.  The youngest girl of six children, she can be found on the 1901 census, living with all her siblings, her parents (Albert Charles Murch and Ellen Harrington Murch) and her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Wood, in Greinton.

Her father, Albert Charles, was a farmer from Chilton Polden, also in Somerset.  Her mother, Ellen, was the only 'foreigner', having been born in Tiverton, Devon.  Also in the house were a visitor, Charlotte Salter, and a servant, eighteen-year-old Fanny Godfrey.  The farm was quite large, being 380 acres and, in Albert's father's time, needing eight men to work it, although fifty years previously it had been a third of that size.

By 1911 Albert was no longer farming the land, and he, his wife, three of the children had moved into Bridgwater, 17 Queen Street to be exact.  Daisy Blanche is recorded as a student at eighteen years old, which suggests she may not have been at school, but at college or even university.

She features in the Murch Surname Study.

Further details of Daisy Blanche's life are covered by a 100-year privacy rule.

© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved