PART EIGHTEEN

The Main Suffolk Line - 1830 to 1870

This is the fourth of five sections of Part 18 of the Collett family

Updated August 2011

18P1	Harriet Anne Collett was born at Ubbeston in 1829, where she was baptised on 09.08.1829, the eldest of the four children of Anthony Collett and Harriet Pett Hannam. The village of Ubbeston in Suffolk lies midway between Framlingham and Halesworth. By 1841 Harriet was 11 years old and was still living at Ubbeston with her family. Not long after that, the family moved to Bury St Edmunds, where Harriet was 21 in 1851.
	She later married the considerably older, Reverend John Ley, Rector of Waldron in Sussex, and the couple initial settled in Devon. According to the Torquay census of 1881, John Ley, age 76, was Clerk in Holy Orders for the Care of Souls who had been born at Ashprington near Totnes in Devon.
	His wife was described as Harriet Anne Ley, age 51, a clergyman’s wife from Habberton (meaning Ubbeston) in Suffolk. The couple’s address was given as Tor Church, Beechcroft Road in Tormoham, where they were supported by two female servants.
	At that time Harriet’s unmarried sister Maria (below) was still living with their mother at Dover. However, during the 1880s, Harriet’s husband and her mother both died, at which time the two sisters lived together at Torquay, as confirmed by the census in 1891 when Harriet A Ley was 61 and her sister Maria was 57. That arrangement continued for a further three years, until 1894 when Maria died.
	Following the death of her sister, Harriet left Devon when she moved to Guildford in Surrey, where she spent the remainder of her years. This was confirmed by the census returns in 1901 and 1911; in the first of which she was listed as Harriet Anne Ley, age 71 and from Ubbeston, who was living on her own means, and again in 1911 when she was 81.
18P2	Maria Collett was born at Ubbeston in late 1833 and was baptised there on 11.01.1834, the second child of Anthony and Harriet Collett. She was seven years old in the Ubbeston census of 1841. Over the following years her family went to live in Bury St Edmunds where she was living with them in 1851 at the age of 17.
	With the death of her father during the 1850s, Maria’s mother moved to Dover St James where the family was recorded in 1861 and 1871, when Maria Collett was 27 and 37 respectively.
	She never married and in 1881 she was still living with her widowed mother Harriet Pett Collett and her sister Frances Ellen Collett (below) at 6 Camden Crescent in Dover St James. Her place of birth in the census that year was given as Ubbeston Green.
	After the death of her mother during the 1880s, Maria moved to Torquay to live with her widowed sister Harriet (above). It was there in 1891, at the age of 57, that Maria was living within the Newton Abbot & Torquay census registration district with her sister. Also staying nearby at a lodging house in Torquay at that time was her brother Anthony (below). It was just three years later that Maria Collett of Ubbeston died in 1894.
18P3	Anthony Collett was born at Ubbeston in 1835, where he was baptised on 13.11.1835, the only son of Anthony Collett and Harriet Pett Hannam. He was five years old in the Ubbeston census of 1841, but shortly after his family moved to Bury St Edmunds, where he was still living with his family in 1851 aged 15. He was initially educated at Bury School under Doctor Donaldson, and then on 3^rd March 1854 Anthony Collett from Ubbeston entered Trinity College in Cambridge. He was 18 years old and the son of Anthony Collett of Bury St Edmunds. He gained his Bachelor’s degree in 1859 and his Master’s degree in 1869.
	Upon completion of his BA, Anthony was ordained as a deacon at Canterbury, and in 1860 he was ordained a priest. From 1859 until 1874 he was the curate at St Mary’s Church in Dover. It was after the death of his father during the late 1850s, that Anthony and his sisters Maria (above) and Frances (below), travelled with their mother to Dover St James where they were living in 1861, when Anthony was 25. Anthony and Maria were still living with their mother at Dover St James ten years later in 1871, when Anthony was 35.
	From 1880 to 1895 Anthony Collett was Rector of Hastingleigh with Elmsted, and Vicar of Bredhurst from 1895 to 1905. Hastingleigh and Elmsted are adjacent villages to the east of Ashford in Kent. By the time of the census in 1881, bachelor Anthony was 45 and was living at The Rectory in Hastingleigh. His place of birth was recorded incorrectly as Abbeston in Suffolk. At The Rectory he had two servants, housekeeper Mary A Hedge age 30, and George Wyborn, groom and gardener age 24.
	Whether because of the recent death of his eldest sister’s husband, Anthony Collett was temporarily staying at Endsleigh House, a lodging house in Church Road, Torquay in 1891, not far from where his eldest sister Harriet Anne Ley was living, and with her their sister Maria. The census that year also confirmed that Anthony was 55 and from Ubbeston, and that he was Rectory of Hastingleigh.
	Three years later his sister Maria died at Torquay, and by March 1901 Anthony was living at Boxley near Maidstone in Kent with his youngest sister Frances. Anthony Collett, age 65 and from Ubbeston, was a Church of England clergyman, while his sister Frances E Collett from Bury St Edmunds was 52. The two siblings were still living together ten years later, but by then they were living at Canterbury. Anthony was 75, and his sister was 61.
	Towards the end of his life Anthony resided at Barton Fields in Canterbury, and it was there also that he suffered a tragic end to his life, when he was found dead in his bath on 10^th December 1924. The following obituary appeared in the Kentish Express newspaper two days after the discovery.
	The Reverend Anthony Collett, aged 89, was found dead in the bath at his Canterbury residence. At the inquest a verdict of natural causes was returned. The reverend gentleman was formerly Curate at St Marys Dover, Rector of Hastingleigh, and Vicar of Bredhurst.
	Eight days later the same newspaper ran the following article on 20^th December regarding his funeral at Elmsted: As briefly announced in our last issue, the Rev. A. Collett M.A. of Ellerslie, New Dover Rd., Canterbury was found dead under tragic circumstances at his residence on Thursday week. The deceased gentleman, who was 89 years of age, was apparently in his usual health considering his advanced years and had walked into the town with Miss Blofield who was staying with him. They subsequently had dinner and prayers and after, saying Good Night, Mr Collett went to his bath. About midnight Miss Wilson, a maid, not having heard Mr Collett leave the bath room, became anxious, woke up the other maid and they went to the housekeeper’s room. The housekeeper receiving no response to her knock at the door, called Miss Blofield, who called in Mr Simmons living nearby. He, bursting open the door, found Mr Collett lying face downwards in the bath with his head covered with water.
	The bath was emptied, the deceased gentleman removed, and Dr Stewart Wacher sent for, who on arrival found that death had taken place an hour or so earlier. At the inquest at which a verdict of Death by Natural Causes was returned, Dr. Wacher said death might have been due to accidental drowning or a heart attack before falling into the water. He had attended Mr Collett for the past three years for giddiness due to a weak heart action. The late Mr Collett, who was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and ordained in 1859, had spent the whole of his active ministry (over 47years) in Kent. He was Curate of St Marys Dover until 1874, Curate of Hastingleigh with Elmsted 1874-1880, Rector of Hastingleigh with Elmsted 1880-1895 and Vicar of Bredhurst 1895-1906. Since his retirement he had resided at Canterbury, where he had frequently assisted at church services. He was a member of several societies and took a keen interest in the Kent and Canterbury Hospital and other charitable institutions; he was highly respected and beloved by many.
	During the time he was at Elmsted the reverend gentleman was instrumental in carrying out many much needed improvements to the churches. In the years 1877 and 1879 both the Elmsted and Hastingleigh churches were completely restored and re-seated, and later a new organ was installed at Elmsted. Mr Collett was responsible for the erection of the new Elmsted Vicarage, at Bodsham, and presented the village with the splendid Parish Hall at the Parish Room, Tamley Lane in Hastingleigh.
	The funeral took place on Monday at the little church on the hill at Elmsted. The service, which was of a very simple nature as befitted a man of such unostentatious character, was conducted by the Rev. H Hammond of Elmsted and the Rev. G.C. Clairmonte of Petham. The hymn ‘On the Resurrection Morning’ was sung and as the cortege left the church for the graveside while Miss Emily Hayward, the organist, played the Dead March in Saul. The coffin was of plain unpolished oak, with a small brass plate and a large wooden cross on the cover. The immediate followers were Mr and Mrs Hamman, Mrs J Harvey, Mr J D Harvey, Miss Blofield, Mr and Mrs Collett Mason, Mr and Mrs J Reeves, and the household servants, while those present in church and at the graveside included Colonel Irby, Messrs CF Tappenden (Cubison Tapenden) ,S Hopkins, J Taylor, W Wetherell, the school master of Bodsham, and H Hopkins, the Misses Kirke-Smith, Mrs Spicer and Mrs M Hopkins.
	Floral tributes were received from Mr and Mrs Reginald Collett, Tony and Bernard, LCAJ and MC Blofield, Mr J S and Mr J D Harvey, Mr and Mrs F M Furley and Mr Walter Furley, Mrs C H Wilkie, Mrs Rogers, Misses Helen and Catherine Collett, Mr and Mrs Collett Mason, Miss Upton, A H Garnon-Williams and Lottie, G J Thompson, Mr and Mrs Reeves, Mr Ley, Mr and Mrs P J Hannam, Ellen and Winifred the housekeepers, managers of St Paul’s Church Schools, Samaritans Committee of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, and scholars and teachers of St Paul’s School in Canterbury.
	At the same hour, a short service was held at St Alphege Church in Canterbury, where the late Mr Collett was a regular worshipper. The Rev. A A Carter (Rector) officiated, and the lesson was read by the Rural Dean (the Rev E L Ridge). Among those present were the following ladies of the Samaritan Fund Committee of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, Mrs G K A Bell (president), Mrs E L Holland, Mrs Brunker, Mrs Williams, Mrs Rogers, and Miss Edwards. Others present included Admiral Sir R Henderson and Lady Henderson, with Admiral Sir W Henderson, Canon T G Gardiner, Rev. J T Hales, Rev. J G Kemp, Rev. C H Barton, Miss Wilkie, Miss Blomfield, Mrs Graham Wills, Mrs R G Hodgson, Mrs Skinner, Mr F P Carroll (secretary of the Kent and Canterbury Hospital), Miss Purchas (matron at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital), Mr T A Bowen, Mr R Stanbridge and others.
	The Rev. Collett’s elder sister Maria is also buried the graveyard of St James Church at Elmsted, together with his other sister Frances Ellen, both not far from his own grave which lies under the shade of an ancient Yew tree to the left of the main entrance to St James Church. Inside the church is the commemorative plate shown here, the inscription on which is reproduced below. In addition to which Collett Close, in the neighbouring hamlet of Bodsham in Kent, is named in his honour.
	In Memory of Rev. Anthony Collett, M.A., Camb. Who for 20 years Was in Spiritual Charge of the parishes of Elmsted and Hastingleigh and by whose efforts both these churches were restored He died at Canterbury on 10^th Dec 1924 aged 89 years and was buried in this church yard
18P4	Frances Ellen Collett was born at Bury St Edmunds in 1848, the youngest of the four children of Anthony and Harriet Collett. It is curious that, unlike her three older siblings, no baptism record for her has been found, particular bearing in mind the family’s close connection with the church. It was as Frances Collett age two years that she was listed with her family in the Bury St Edmunds census of 1851.
	With the death of her father sometime in the following decade, the remainder of Frances’ family moved to Dover St James, where Frances, age 12, was living with her mother Harriet, her brother Anthony, and one of her sisters, Maria, in the census of 1861.
	It has not been determined where Frances was ten years later in 1871, but after a further ten years, and at the age of 30 (rather than 32), she was still not married and was living with her widowed mother Harriet Pett Collett and her sister Maria Collett at 6 Camden Crescent, Dover St James in Kent.
	Following the death of her mother during the 1880s, Frances E Collett, age 42 was living at Elham in Kent, five miles inland from Folkestone. During the next decade she was reunited with her brother Anthony, and by March 1901 the siblings were living together at Boxley near Maidstone in Kent, when Frances E Collett from Bury St Edmunds was 52.
	The April census of 1911 listed Frances under her full name of Frances Ellen Collett from Bury St Edmunds, by which time she was 61. On that occasion she was still living with her brother Anthony but, by that time, the two of them had left Boxley and instead were living in Canterbury.
18P5	Thomas Trusson Collett of Ringleton, which may have been Ringleton Manor, was born in 1840 and married his cousin Georgiana Collett (below) in 1865. She was born at Monkton in Kent in either 1836 or 1837. It would appear that, following their wedding, the couple initially settled down to live at Upper Clapton in London Borough of Hackney, where their first two children were born.
	Sometime in the early 1870s the family then moved to Kent where they lived in the village of Woodnesborough near Sandwich which was where their other two children were born. Surprisingly a search of the 1881 Census has so far not revealed the whereabouts of Thomas or Georgiana and the three youngest members of their family, although it is known that their children were educated in England and ended their lives in the country, where they also died.
	What the census does reveal was that their eldest son, Thomas Collett aged 13, was attending The Lines Private School at Sutton Valence in Kent as a boarder. This may be a reference to Sutton Valence Grammar School which was later attended by Thomas’ younger brother Charles Collett prior to going to Cambridge University. Their father, Thomas Trusson Collett, sadly died just over four months after the national census day that year, when he passed away on 19.08.1881, aged just 41, when Thomas and Charles were only 13 and 5 years old respectively.
	According to the next census in 1891, widow Georgiana was still living at Woodnesborough within the Eastry & Sandwich registration district in Kent. ‘Georgianna’ Collett was 44, and living there with her were all four of her child. Thomas Collett was 23, William G Collett was 21, Charles Collett was 15, and Katharine Collett was 12 years old.
	During the next ten years Georgiana’s three sons left the family home at Woodnesborough, so by the time of the census in March 1901 it was just her daughter who was still living there with her. Georgiana Collett from Monkton was 54, while Katharine Collett of Woodnesborough was 22. Neither lady was credited with an occupation.
	It was the same situation ten years later in April 1911, when Georgina Collett was 64, and still living with her Woodnesborough in Kent was her unmarried daughter Katharine Collett who was 32. By that time Georgiana’s son Charles had died from injuries he sustained in a cycling accident in 1903.
	18Q1	Thomas Collett			Born in 1867
	18Q2	William George Collett			Born in 1869
	18Q3	Charles Collett			Born in 1875
	18Q4	Katharine Collett			Born on 28.12.1878
18P6	Ann F Collett was born at Woodnesborough in 1842 and she never married. In 1881 she was living with her brother George Collett (below) at No. 5 St Mary’s Road in Camberwell in Surrey. She died in 1941.
18P7	James Tomlin Collett was born at Woodnesborough in 1843, the son of Thomas Collett and Jane Tomlin. Tragically he survived for less than a year, when he died at Woodnesborough in 1844.
18P8	George Collett was born at Woodnesborough in 1844, the son of Thomas and Jane Collett. He matriculated in 1862, following which he was accepted at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge on 26^th May 1862, when he was confirmed as the second son of Thomas of Ringleton, Woodnesborough in Kent. After four years he obtained his Bachelor of arts degree in 1866 and his Masters degree after a further three years in 1869.
	He was ordained as a deacon in 1874 and the following year became a priest in the city of Worcester. In addition to this he was the Curate of Lozells in Birmingham up to 1876, when he was appointed the Curate at Redhill in Surrey from 1876 to 1878. There then followed a four year term up to 1884 when he was the Curate at Peckham, after which he was the Vicar at Peckham until 1892. From 1892 he was the Vicar of Basildon in Berkshire, up until 1910.
	He never married and at the time of the census in 1881 George Collett was a Rochester Diocesan Clergyman, with a Master of Arts degree, living at 5 St Mary’s Road in Camberwell. Listed at the house with him was his older sister Ann F Collett (above), age 39, plus four servants.
	During the latter years of his life he resided at Dane Park House in Ramsgate, where he died on 8^th May 1918, at the age of 74.
18P9	Catherine Collett was born at Monkton in Kent in 1835. She married cashier wine trader Benjamin T Whittington around 1860. In 1881 the couple were living with their four children at 19 St Johns Road in Islington. The youngest child at the time was her 9 years old son Collett A Whittington. Catherine died a few years later in 1884.
18P10	Georgiana Collett was born around 1836 and 1837 at Monkton. She married her cousin Thomas Trusson Collett (above) of Ringleton in 1865.
18P11	George Collett was born at Walter’s Hall in Monkton in 1838, the eldest son of George Collett and Sarah Crofts King. Tragically he died in 1844 aged just six years.
18P12	George Alfred Collett was born at Walter’s Hall in Monkton in 1848 and was the son of George Collett and Sarah Crofts King. George was only two years old when his mother Sarah died in March 1850.
	At the time of the census in 1881 George was 33 when he was living with his father George Collett, his brother Cornelius Collett, and his sister Isabella Collett (below) at Main Road, Walter’s Hall in Monkton. The census stated that he earned his income from land.
	Shortly after the census date George married Georgina Ching Clemson who was born at Monkton in 1850. The couple’s first son was born at Camberwell, whereas their next two children were born at Ramsgate, and the last two at Monkton, where the family had settled by 1887.
	The census in 1891 for the Minster registration district, which included Monkton, listed the family as George A Collett 43, Georgina C Collett 40, George C Collett 8, Alfred Collett 7, Dorothy Collett 5, Harold W Collett 4, and Percy S Collett who was two.
	By the turn of the century, George and Georgina were still living at Monkton and, according to the census in 1901, George Alfred was 53 and he, and his eldest son George Clemson aged 18, were both listed as being farmers. George’s wife was recorded as Georgina Ching Collett aged 50 and from Monkton on the Isle of Thanet, and their daughter Dorothy was 15 and her place of birth was given as St Lawrence Ramsgate.
	The couple’s three sons who were absent from the family home on that occasion were Alfred who was 17, Harold aged 14, and Percy aged 12, who were all recorded as living within the Margate area, where it seems highly likely that certainly the two younger boys were attending boarding school.
	Following the death of her husband in 1907, widow Georgina left Monkton and moved the seven miles south to Woodnesborough where she was living in 1911. Georgina Collett of Monkton was 64 and her living companion was Katharine Collett (above) who was thirty-two.
	It seems very likely that the elderly Georgina was looking after her much younger niece ‘one-step removed’ because later that same year spinster Katharine Collett passed away. Also by this time Georgina’s son George and daughter Dorothy were both unmarried and living in London.
	The only other child of Georgina’s for whom a record has been found is Harold who had moved to Wokingham by 1911. No other record for any of Georgina’s remaining two children has so far been found.
	18Q5	George Clemson Collett			Born in 1882
	18Q6	Alfred Collett			Born in 1883
	18Q7	Dorothy Collett			Born in 1885
	18Q8	Harold Willis Collett			Born in 1887
	18Q9	Percy Stapleton Collett			Born in 1888 at Monkton
18P13	Cornelius Collett was born at Walter’s Hall in Monkton on 26.12.1857 and was the first son from the second marriage of George Collett to Elizabeth Smith, following the death of his first wife some seven years earlier. Cornelius attended Ewell School, and matriculated from there in 1878, following which, on 1^st October 1878, he commenced his higher education at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Upon entry, he was referred to as Cornelius Collett of Canterbury, the son of George Collett of Walter’s Hall, Monkton, Ramsgate in Kent.
	According to the census in 1881, Cornelius Collett, age 23, was unmarried and described as a Cambridge undergraduate while he was recorded living with his father George Collett and his brother George Alfred Collett (above) at Main Road, Walter’s Hall in Monkton. He later married Edith Solly.
18P14	Isabella Collett was born at Walter’s Hall in Monkton in 1859 when she was confirmed as the daughter of George Collett and Elizabeth Smith. Two years later she was baptised at Monkton on 30.01.1861, when her parents were once again confirmed as George and Elizabeth Collett.
	At the age of twenty Isabella Collett was living with her widowed father at Walter’s Hall on the Main Road in Monkton. As the senior lady in the house she had no occupation, instead it seem likely that she managed the two female servants on behalf of her father and her two half-brothers George Alfred Collett and Cornelius Collett (above).
	The two servants were Harriet Gilham who was 30 and the family’s cook, and 24 years old maid Sarah Setterfield.
	It would appear that Isabella never married and in 1891 at the age of 30 she was living within the Uckfield & Famfield registration district of Kent. Over the next ten years she left Kent and moved into London, where in March 1901 she was recorded as being forty years old and residing in the Kensington area of the city. On that occasion the census confirmed that her place of birth was Monkton, and that she was living on her own means.
	Ten years later she was still living in the Kensington district of London when she was fifty years old, although her name was recorded incorrectly as Esabella Collett from Monkton.
18P15	Emily Collett was born at Walter’s Hall in Monkton in 1861, the daughter of George Collett and Elizabeth Smith.
18P16	Alice Maud Collett was born at Walter’s Hall in Monkton in 1863. By 1881 and at the age of 18 she was attending a private school at 20 Sinclair Road in London, the establishment of the sisters Maria Jane Lambley and Emily Harriet Lambley of Hilmorton in Warwickshire.
	Alice Collett later married the Reverend T W Tidmarsh the Rector of Slapton.
18P17	Sophia Elizabeth Collett was born at Chelsworth on 12.11.1844, the eldest child of William Collett and Mary Cecil Augusta von Linsingen. She never married and in 1881 at the age of 32 she was a visitor at the home of Richard D Gough, the 81 years old Magistrate for Brecon at Yniscedwyn House in Lower Ystradgynlais in Brecon. She died on 15.08.1899, around the time of her fifty-fifth birthday.
18P18	Ellen Mary Collett was born at Chelsworth on 05.03.1846, where she was baptised on 01.06.1846, the daughter of William and Mary Cecil Augusta Collett. Her mother died in 1864, following which her father married for a second time, but this was short-lived since his second wife died in 1874.
	So by 1881 Ellen M Collett from Chelsworth was 35 and was the eldest child still living with her widowed father at the Rectory in Hawstead, just ten months before he died. Later in her life she was referred to as Ellen Mary Collett of Bury St Edmunds, and it was there that she was living in 1891 at the age of 45, when she was recorded as Ellen M Collett from Chelsworth.
	She was still living there in both 1901 and 1911. For the census in the first of these Ellen Mary Collett of Chelsworth was 55 and living on her own needs, and living with her was her half sister Leonora Julia Collett. It was the same situation ten years later in April 1911, when Ellen Mary Collett, age 65 and from Chelsworth, was living at Bury St Edmunds with her half-sister Leonora Julia Collett (below) who was 39.
18P19	Augusta Celia Collett was born at Chelsworth on 16.12.1847, and it was there also that she was baptised on 27.04.1848, the daughter of William and Mary Cecil Augusta Collett.
	She never married and was still living with her two-times widowed father at Hawstead in 1881 at the age of 33. Her father died ten months later, and it may have been as a result of that event, that Augusta was persuaded to emigrated to North America, to where her younger brothers Frederick William Collett and John Anthony Collett (below) had already planned to live.
	Although no record of her has so far been found in the US Census of 1900, it is established that she was living in Sonoma County near San Francisco in 1908. In the years running up to this, Augusta was instrumental, with others, including Mrs Anna Finlaw, in forming the Saturday Afternoon Club, a local church group. It was during 1908 that the ground-breaking ceremony took place to mark the commencement of the construction work on the clubhouse, as depicted in the photograph below. Mrs Anna Finlaw is holding the shovel and Augusta Collett is one of the ladies on the left of her.
	Augusta was still living in Sonoma County of California in 1910 when she was listed in that year’s census. Over the following years, it would appear that she devoted her life to the Church of the Incarnation in Santa Rosa, the history of which pays tribute to Augusta C Collett and Anna Finlaw for much of the carving within the church, including the altar, the choir stalls, the reredos (a screen behind the altar), and the litany desk.
	The building today is the oldest church structure in Santa Rosa, having been built in 1873. It suffered bulging walls during the earthquake of 1906, when it served as a morgue and a hospital for the devastated city of Santa Rosa.
	Augusta Celia Collett never took up American citizenship, and was described as a resident alien in the census of 1930. By that time in her life she was 82 and had living with her at Santa Rosa, her widowed brother Frederick W Collett (below) who was 73, and who died there early in the following year.
	All of the new information about Augusta and her brother Frederick was gratefully received in 2010 from Neil and Heidi Blazey of Santa Rosa, who currently live in the same house that was once occupied by Augusta Celia Collett, albeit not at the same location, since it was moved to its present site in 1924.
	It was on 02.11.1935 that Augusta Celia Collett died at Santa Rosa, where a gravestone bearing her name also includes her date of birth and the date of her passing. It simply reads ‘Augusta C Collett - Dec 16 1847 – Nov 2 1935’. On the day after she died, an obituary appeared in the Santa Rosa newspaper Press Democrat, which read as follows, under the headline, ‘Funeral services will be held Monday afternoon for aged woman’.
	Miss Augusta C Collett died yesterday in her little vine-covered Mendocino Avenue home surrounded in the summertime by its roses and other blooms of which she was fond, and in the fall and winter time with the vari coloured foliage. She lived and died in the atmosphere she loved the best. Since childhood she was a devoted member of the Episcopal church and throughout her more than forty years’ residence in Santa Rosa she was constantly engaged in the activities of the Church of the Incarnation, which stands near her home. Across the way from her home, in Tenth Street, is the clubhouse of the Saturday Afternoon Club, another environment in which she loved to linger. She was a charter member of the Saturday Afternoon Club.
	For many years Miss Collett was treasurer of the Church of the incarnation, a member of the vestry, president for a long period of the Altar Guild, and a member of the other guilds of the parish. Up to within six months of her passing, Miss Collett seldom was absent from the services of the church. Her childhood faith was long established. Her father was a distinguished clergyman of the Church of England and at one time was rector of one of the most famous parishes in England, Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. More than half a century ago, Miss Collett and other members of her family came to this state. During her long residence here she made several journeys back to the old home land.
	She was a gifted woman, well educated and particularly devoted to art work. She did the principal carving of the beautiful reredos and altar in the Church of the Incarnation and statuary of the Agngels at the entrance to the chancel. She also carried out the carving of the choir stalls. In this work she was assisted by a very warm friend, the late Mrs Anna Love Finlaw, who lived across the way from her in Mendocino Avenue.
	Miss Collett was a native of England, where she was born more than 87 years ago. A sister, Lenora Collett, still resides in England. A brother, John Collett of Seattle, survives and was here with his sister at the time of her passing. Her death yesterday was particularly reviewed by many of the older members of the local parish and it recounted among other traits her great and sincere devotion to her church and its activities.
	The funeral rites will take place at 2 o’clock Monday afternoon from the Church of the incarnation, with the Rev. Egbert B Clark Jr. Officiating. The choir of the church will sing. Pallbearers will be R S Knight, Dawson Dixon, W W Shuhaw, Attorney Fred W McConnell, J Y Bittel, and John Lamb. The body is at the Hampton- Burgen undertaking parlours. It is thanks to Neil Blazey that we are able to publish this newspaper article.
	Although no details of any Will are available at this time, it is understood that Augusta left a substantial bequest to the Church of Incarnation in Santa Rosa.
18P20	Mary Louisa Collett was born at Bury St Edmunds in 1850 and in 1881 she was thirty-one and was still a spinster living with her widowed father William at The Rectory in Hawstead. Upon the death of her father during February in 1882, Mary travelled to south London to live with her brother William Charles Collett (below), taking her half-brother John Anthony Collett (below) with her. It was while she was living there that she later became a Deaconess in London.
	According to the census in 1891, unmarried Mary Collett, age 39 rather than 41, was living at Wimbledon with her unmarried brother William C Collett who was actually 39, and their half-brother John A Collett, age 17, who was one of the two children of their father’s second marriage.
	While William remained living in the Wimbledon area, Mary Louisa Collett moved to the Hackney area of London during the last decade of the century, and it was there that she was living in March 1901. The census return for Hackney described her as Mary Collett, age 51 and from Bury St Edmunds, who was a deaconess of the Church of England.
	She was still living in Hackney ten years later in April 1911, when the census that month listed her as Mary Louisa Collett from Bury St Edmunds who was 61. It is therefore assumed that she lives her whole life as a single lady.
18P21	William Charles Collett was born at Bury St Edmunds on 02.08.1851. In 1881 he was 29 and was a colonial managing clerk working in Wimbledon, where he was in lodgings at 13 Ridgeway, the home of master tailor William Kearns. Following the death of his father in February 1882, William was joined at Wimbledon by his sister Mary Louisa Collett (above) and his half-brother John Anthony Collett (below), as confirmed by the Wimbledon census of 1891.
	The census that year confirmed that William C Collett from Bury St Edmunds was 39, that his sister Mary Collett was 39 (sic) and also from Bury, while their half-brother John A Collett from Hawstead was 17. Sometime after that William’s sister moved to Hackney and his half-brother emigrated to America.
	For William he remained living in the Wimbledon area, where he was recorded in both of the next two census returns. According to the North Wimbledon census in 1901 he was working as a manager for a fibre merchants at the age of 49, while his place of birth was again confirmed as Bury St Edmunds. Ten years after that William Charles Collett age 59 and from Bury St Edmunds was unmarried and was living alone at Wimbledon within the Kingston-upon-Thames area of south London.
18P22	Agnes Maria Collett was born at Bury St Edmunds in 1854. She married the Reverend A Woodforde, the Vicar of Locking in Somerset.
18P23	Frederick William Collett, who was born at Hawstead in 1856, was the youngest child of the Reverend William Collett and his first wife Mary Cecil Augusta von Linsingen who died when he was eight years old. He was educated at Dedham Grammar School where, in 1871 he was a pupil at the age of 14. Sometime after leaving school, and certainly prior to 1879, he emigrated to North America. This was confirmed by the census in 1880, in which Frederic Collett from England was working in an auger shop, while he was living with William Coon and his wife Maria at Hamden in New Haven, Connecticut.
	This would indicate that, on his arrival at New York during the previous years, he did not travel very far, before securing work and settling down. What is curious is that he gave his age as 22, rather than 23. It was two years later that Frederick married Emily who was born in England around 1860, of English parents.
	This was confirmed by the US Census in 1910, by which time Frederick and Emily had two children living with them who were both born while the couple was living at New Haven in Connecticut. The ages of the two children may indicate that there could have been two older children born around 1883 and 1885, plus others between 1888 and 1893.
	The New Haven census of 1910 listed the family of four as Frederick Collett, age 53, who was working as a grocer with his own store, his wife Emily E Collett who was 49, and their daughters Grace A Collett, age 23, who was unmarried and employed as a nurse, and Hazel M Collett who was 16. The census return also confirmed that Frederick and Emily had been married for 28 years, and that they were then both nationalised American citizens.
	It is known that, by that time, Frederick’s older unmarried sister Augusta Celia Collett (above) had sailed from England to America, but that she had travelled across the country to live in California. In 1910 she was recorded in the town of Sonoma, just north of San Francisco.
	During the next twenty years Frederick’s wife died, and by the time of US Census of 1930, which was conducted on the first April that year, widower Frederick W Collett, age 73, was living at the house owned by his sister Augusta in Santa Rosa township in Sonoma County. At that time in his life he was recorded as having no occupation.
	It was almost eleven months later that Frederick William Collett died at Santa Rosa on 28.02.1931.
	18Q10	Grace A Collett	Born in 1887 at New Haven, Connecticut
	18Q11	Hazel M Collett	Born in 1894 at New Haven, Connecticut
18P24	Leonora Julia Collett was born at Hawstead in 1871, the eldest of the two children of the Reverend William Collett, Rector of Hawstead, and his second wife Charlotte Stowiczek. And it was at The Rectory in Hawstead that she was living with her widowed father at the time of the census in 1881 when she was nine years old. Ten months later her father died on the first day of February 1882, although it has not been determined exactly what happened to her following his death.
	Ten years later, at the time of the census in 1891, Leonora J Collett of Hawstead was 19 and was living in the Brentford area of north London. She later returned to Bury St Edmunds to live with her older half-sister Ellen Mary Collett, with whom she was living in March 1901 when she was recorded as Leonora Julia Collett, who was unmarried at the age of 29, and who was working as a daily governess.
	It can be deduced from the next census in 1911, when she was still unmarried and living at Bury St Edmunds at the age of 39, and from the obituary for her half-sister Augusta Celia Collett (above) published in a Santa Rosa newspaper on 3^rd November 1935, that Leonora never married and would appear to have lived the remainder of her life at Bury St Edmunds with her other half-sister Ellen Mary Collett (above).
18P25	John Anthony Collett, who was born at Hawstead near the end of 1873, was the younger of the two children of the Reverend William Collett, Rector of Hawstead and his second wife Charlotte Stowiczek. Tragically his mother died shortly after he was born. Subsequently he was recorded as John A Collit, who was seven years old, at the time of the census in 1881, when he was living at The Rectory in Hawstead with his widowed father, his sister Leonora (above), and his four much older half-sisters.
	At the age of 17, and according to the census in 1891, John A Collett from Hawstead was living in the Wimbledon area of south London with his older half-brother William Charles Collett (above), having been taken there by his half-sister Mary Louisa when he was only eight years old, following the death of their father in February 1882. During the years after 1891, it would appear that John emigrated to North America, where he was known later to be living in Washington State. He was still alive in November 1935 when his older half-sister Augusta Julia Collett (above) died, since he was referred to in her obituary as John Collett of Seattle.
18P26	Alfred Master Collett was born at Weymouth in 1858, the only child of Daniel Collett and his first wife Lizzie Master. By the time of the census in 1861 Alfred M Collett was two years old and was living with his parents at Radipole near Melcombe Regis. Ten years later, in 1871, the family was still living at Radipole, at 7 Grosvenor Road, when Alfred M Collett was 12.
	His mother Lizzie P Collett was only 40 years old on that occasion, but during the years following the census that year she died. It was also after that sad event, and during the 1870s, that his father remarried.
	During that same decade Alfred was educated at Keble Collage in Oxford where he matriculated on 15^th October 1877 aged 18. He later gained a BA in 1880 and an MA in 1884. By the time of the census 1881 he was at home with his stepmother Mary Sherwood Collett at 7 Grosvenor Road in Radipole in Weymouth, his father being a civil engineer who was working in London at that time.
	Alfred later went on to become the Reverend Alfred Master Collett, and apparently he was never married. His absence from the country at the time of the census in 1891 might indicate that he was working abroad. By 1901 he was living in Cheltenham, where his stepmother was also living at that time. The census confirmed that his place of birth was Weymouth, that his age was 42, and the fact that, like his stepmother, he was living on his own means.
	And it was the same situation ten years later, it that he was still living in Cheltenham, except that for the first time in any census return, he was recorded as Alfred Master Collett age 52. At that time his stepmother was living at Lambeth in London.
18P27	Emily Collett was born at Beverley in 1861, where her recently married parents were living at that time. She was however, baptised at Brightwell Church in Brightwell-cum-Foxhall near Ipswich on 18.08.1861 where her grandfather was the Reverend Woodthorpe Collett, the father of Emily’s mother Elizabeth. The baptism record for Brightwell-cum-Foxhall confirmed that Emily was the daughter of Trusson and Elizabeth Charlotte Collett. Emily and her parents continued to live in Beverley for a few more years before they moved into London where they were living in 1881, although their whereabouts ten years earlier has not been determined.
	The census in 1881 confirmed that Emily and her parents were living at 178 Goldhawk Road in Hammersmith, where her father Trusson’s occupation was that of a clerk. Emily’s place of birth was Beverley and, although she was nineteen years old, she was listed as a scholar which would indicate that she was participating in higher education.
	Whilst Emily was a spinster at twenty-nine and was still living with her parents on the fifth of April 1891, shortly after and during that same year she married Leopold Hansburg Norton. Leopold was born in 1865 and sadly the marriage only lasted for three years when he died in 1894, but not before the marriage had produced a daughter for Emily.
	The couple’s daughter Dorothy Annis Norton was born at Chiswick in 1892. Tragically when she was only two years old her father, who had epilepsy, died of tubercular meningitis while the family was living at Chiswick in London. Up until that time Leopold had worked as an insurance clerk.
	Such was the grief that Emily felt following the loss of her young husband that she never recovered, and just over six years after his death, she too passed away while staying with relatives in Suffolk. This apparently happened just prior to the March census in 1901 in which Emily’s orphaned daughter Dorothy A Norton aged eight years and from London was recorded as still visiting the Rope family at Blaxhall in Suffolk.
	Following the death of her mother, Dorothy was looked after by her elderly grandparents Trusson and Elizabeth Collett at their home in London. This was confirmed in the census return for 1911, when eighteen years old Dorothy Annis Norton of Chiswick was living at 21 Cavendish Road just of the A5 Edgware Road between Brondesbury and Kilburn. Also living in the house was Trusson Collett and his wife Elizabeth Charlotte Collett, together with two domestic servants. Dorothy was described as a scholar since, at that time, she was attending a boarding school in Richmond. The photograph on the right was taken midway between the 1901 and 1911 Census years when Dorothy Annis Norton was around thirteen years of age.
	Nine years after the census day in 1911, Dorothy Norton married Frederic Paul Marcel Tallet at Brondesbury on 02.06.1920. Frederic was of French parents and was born in 1872, and was therefore twenty years older than Dorothy. Once married the couple settled in Maida Vale to the south of Brondesbury and were living at 23 Bloomfield Court at the time of the birth of their two children.
	Gerald Paul Marcel Tallet was born in 1921 and his sister Margaret Pauline Tallet was born four years later in 1925. The children’s father Frederic died in 1954 at the age of eighty-two, while their mother Dorothy, who lived to be ninety-seven when she died in 1989, continued to manage her own affairs right up to the end of her life.
	Her son Gerald died two years later in 1991, while her daughter Margaret is married with a daughter of her own, who was born at Aylesbury in 1971. This is Katerina Antalopoulos, and it is Katerina who kindly provided the information that has enabled the story of her mother and her grandparents to be told.
18P28	Frances Mary Collett was born at Gillingham in Dorset during 1844, the eldest child of William Lloyd Collett of Little Ilford in Essex and Frances Harriet Smith of Charlton in Kent. Possibly because of the birth of the family’s fifth child in 1850, Frances and her two younger sisters Anna and Mary were staying with their grandparents at Charlton in 1851, where they were six, five, and three years old.
	Frances M Collett of Gillingham was 16 in 1861 when she was living with her family at St Stephen’s Parsonage in Hammersmith, although it is not known where she was at the time of the census in 1871 at the age of 26. She has also not been located in 1881, even though it is established that she never married.
	By the time of the census in 1891 Frances M Collett, age 47, was once again living with her parents in Hammersmith and, following the death of her father in 1896, Frances and her mother left London and retired to Brighton. That was confirmed by the Brighton census in March 1901 when Frances was 56. In addition to her mother, Frances’ unmarried sister Catherine (below) was also living there with them, as was Frances’ uncle John Collett of Westerham, her father’s younger brother.
	With the death of her mother some time during the following decade, Frances Mary Collett, age 66, was still living in Brighton in April 1911, and living with her at that time were her two unmarried sisters Helen Clara Collett and Catherine Hester Collett.
18P29	Anna Sophia Collett was born at Gillingham in Dorset in 1845, where she was also baptised on 02.11.1845, the daughter of William Lloyd Collett and his wife Frances. At the age of five she was staying with her grandmother Susette Smith and her grandfather Henry Smith at Morden College, and with her were her two sisters Frances (above) and Mary (below).
	In 1861 Anna S Collett was 15 and was attending school in Hammersmith, while she was living with her family at St Stephen’s Parsonage. By the time of the next census in 1871, Anna would have been 25, and with no record of an Anna Sophia Collett in that census or any thereafter, it must be assumed that she had become a married lady by then.
18P30	Mary Collett was born at Gillingham in Dorset in 1847 and was baptised there on 01.08.1847, the daughter of William Lloyd and Frances Harriet Collett. At the time of the census in 1851 Mary Collett, age three years and from Gillingham, was staying with her grandparents Henry and Susette Smith at Morden College, where Henry was the college treasurer. No further record of Mary has been found after that time, so it is assumed that she very likely suffered a childhood death.
18P31	Helen Clara Collett was born at Dover in 1848 where she was baptised on 11.04.1849, the daughter of William Lloyd Collett and his wife Frances Harriet Smith. She was two years old at the time of the St Pancras & Kentish Town census of 1851, but was absent from the family in 1861 when they were living at St Stephen’s Parsonage in Hammersmith, when she would have been 12.
	At the age of 22 she was once again living with her family in Hammersmith, but with no listed occupation, which probably suggests that she was supporting her mother. By 1881 Helen was still a spinster at 32, and was still living with her parents in the vicarage on Coverdale Road in Hammersmith.
	It is unsure where Helen was during the next three decades, but in 1911 she was living on her own means in Brighton with her sisters Frances (above) and Catherine (below), when she was described as unmarried Helen Clara Collett, age 62.
18P32	Catherine Hester Collett was born at Winkfield in Berkshire in 1850, the fourth daughter of William and Harriet Collett and was under one year old in the St Pancras & Kentish Town census of 1851.
	Over the following over her family settled in Hammersmith where she was 10 in 1861 and 20 in 1871. According to the next census in 1881 Catherine H Collett from Winkfield in Berkshire was a certified schoolteacher. On that occasion she was unmarried at the age of 30, and was a lodger at 7 Church Street in Farnworth, Lancashire, the home of coal agent William Farnworth and his wife Ellen.
	In 1891 Catherine Collett, age 40, was again living with her elderly parents at Hammersmith, where her sister Frances (above) was also living at that time. With the passing of her father five years later, Catherine and her mother, together with her sister Frances, moved to Brighton where all three were living on their own means in 1901, when Catherine was 50. Also living there was John Collett, the brother of their late father.
	Shortly after that Catherine’s mother pass away, at which time a third unmarried sister Helen, joined Catherine and Frances at Brighton. That was confirmed in the census of 1911 when Catherine Hester Collett was 60.
18P33	Robert William Collett was born at Shepherd’s Bush in the Hammersmith area of London during 1852, the eldest of the three sons of William and Harriet Collett. It was as Robert W Collett, aged eight years, that he was listed living with his family in the Hammersmith census of 1861. He was still there ten years later when he was still attending school (medical college) at the age of 18.
	He eventually qualified from medical college, when he became a physician and a surgeon with the following initials after his name M R C S L R C P. After an initial spell working in London, Robert spent a short while at Wick near Bristol, before securing a position at Yarmouth Hospital in Deneside, Great Yarmouth, where he was working in 1881. By that time, as Robert William Collett, he was 28 and was a House Surgeon from Hammersmith.
	According to the census in 1891 Robert Collett, age 38 and from Shepherd’s Bush, was married and a Doctor of Medicine (London), but on that occasion he was lodging in a boarding house at 7 Lower Rock Gardens in the Kemp Town district of Brighton, not far from Brighton Pier. Living with Robert’s family at Hammersmith in 1881 was Robert’s aunt France Collett and her brother, uncle John Collett. They were an older sister and a younger brother of Robert’s father, and by 1891 they too were living in the Kemp Town area of Brighton, so it is possible Robert was visiting them for health reasons.
	Where his wife was, or who she was, remains a mystery, since no record of the family has been clearly identified in either of the later census returns in 1901 and 1911. It is also very likely that there were children from their marriage, and one of these may have been Robert William Cecil Collett who also became a doctor, who was later based at Loddon Hall Road in Twyford, near Reading.
18P34	Alfred Collett was born at Shepherds Bush in 1854 and was a twin with his brother Arthur. In the Hammersmith census of 1861 Alfred and Arthur were both six years old when living with their family at St Stephen’s Parsonage. Ten years later they were both still living with their family when they was 16, at a time when the family was then living in St Stephen’s Vicarage in Hammersmith.
	By the time of the next census in 1881 Alfred Collett, age 26, was listed as a civil engineer who was still living at the home of his father the Reverend William Lloyd Collett at the vicarage in Coverdale Road in Hammersmith. It is not known at this time, as to the whereabouts of his twin brother Arthur Collett, of whom no records have been found in any of the British census records after 1871.
	Alfred Collett was a Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers (M.I.C.E.) and it may have been his work that resulted in him sailing to South America in the early 1880s, where he was later joined by his sister Jessie Susette Collett (below).
	And it was in Argentina at St John’s Anglican Cathedral in Buenos Aires on 29.04.1886, that Alfred married Ida May Wilkinson, following the publishing of banns at that church. Ida was the daughter of James Wilkinson. The witnesses at the wedding did not include Alfred’s sister Jessie, suggesting that she had travelled to South America after that time.
	The cathedral record confirmed that Alfred and Ida were both from England, that they were both residents of Buenos Aires at the time of their marriage, and that the witnesses were W. Tudor, John Joseph Bithell, Mary Tudor, Agnes Woodhouse, Catherine Tudor, Augusta Lennox Robertson, Henry Dickinson, and Chas. B. Wilkinson, with the service being conducted by the officiating minister Arthur George Lennox Robertson, assistant chaplain.
	18Q12	Reginald Collett			Born after 1886 in Argentina
18P36	Isabel Augusta Collett was born at Shepherd’s Bush in 1856 and was four years old in the Hammersmith census of 1861, when she was living at St Stephen’s Parsonage with her family. On that occasion she was listed as Isabella A Collett. It was ten years later that she was recorded as Isabel Augusta Collett, age 14, who was living with her family at St Stephen’s Vicarage in Hammersmith.
	By 1881 Isabel A Collett, age 24 and unmarried with no stated occupation, was still living with her parents at the vicarage in Coverdale Road in Hammersmith. However, sometime after that she headed north to Oxford, where in 1891, she was listed as Isabel A Collett, age 34 and from Shepherd’s Bush, living within the St Clement & Headington census registration district.
	It would appear that, like three of her sisters, she never married and by 1901 she was still living in Oxford St Giles when, as Isabel A Collett, she was 44 and from Shepherd’s Bush with no stated occupation. During the first decade of the new century Isabel left Oxford and retired to Devon, where she was living in 1911.
	The census that year recorded Isabel Augusta Collett, age 54 and from Shepherd’s Bush, living alone in Newton Abbot on the south coast of the county.
18P37	Jessie Susette Collett was born at Shepherds Bush during June 1860, and was ten months old in the Hammersmith census of 1861. She was the youngest of the nine children of William Lloyd Collett of Little Ilford in Essex, the Vicar of St Stephen’s Church in Shepherd’s Bush, and his wife Frances Harriet Smith of Charlton in Kent.
	Ten years later, in the census of 1871, when she would have been 10 years old, she was missing from the family home at St Stephen’s Vicarage in Hammersmith. However, ten years after that in 1881 she was one of four children still living with her parents at the vicarage on Coverdale Road in Hammersmith, when she was 20 years of age.
	It would appear that, before the next census in 1891, Jessie may have been persuaded to leave England for South America by her brother Alfred (above), who had already travelled to that distant continent sometime before 1886.
	She was not a witness at Alfred’s wedding in April that year, perhaps indicating that she arrived in the country after 1886. What is known though is that she married James Collett Mason by the publishing of banns at St John’s Anglican Cathedral in Buenos Aires on 20.08.1887, and that her brother married Alfred Collett (above) was a witness at the ceremony.
	The cathedral record confirmed that Jessie Susette Collett from England was a resident in the Belgrano district of the city, while James Collett Mason, who was also from England, was living in Santa Fe Province. The witnesses at the service were recorded as J. Palmer Smythies, Alfred Collett, John Joseph Bithell, O. P. S. Nancy, J. G. Russell, and T. W. Hubbard. The officiating minister at the ceremony was Waite Hockin Stirling, the Bishop of the Falkland Islands.
	Research undertaken by Avryll Sixtus has provided the proof that Jessie and her husband James were in fact distant cousins with their union being the end of a loop that started with the marriage of Mary Collett of Eyke and William Wallis Mason back in 1783 at Westcote near Stow-on-the-Wold.
	Jessie’s and James’ first child, their daughter Margaret Marion Collett-Mason, was born while the couple were living in Buenos Aires, while their next four children were born at Rosario in Argentina. It was the couple’s youngest child, William Collett Mason, who inherited everything from his father to the detriment of his siblings.
	It was sometime after the birth of the couple’s last child that James Collett Mason and his family returned to England where her became a Justice of the Peace. Burkes Landed Gentry [2001] states that he lived at Nieuport Hall in Eardisley in the County of Herefordshire, whereas the 1963 version of Debrett when listing his daughter Asceline Frances Collett Mason, referred to him as the late James Collett Mason JP of Ashurst Place, Langton Green in Kent. It was also at the time of the marriage of his eldest daughter in 1918 that his address was given as Nieuport Hall, Eardisley.
	Certainly at the time of the census in Great Britain in 1911, Jessie Susette Collett Mason was recorded as Jessie Suseth Collett Mason, head of the household at The Hoo in Aspley Guise in Bedfordshire. She was 50 and had been born at St Stephens, Uxbridge Road in London. Living there with her were her two daughters ‘Aseclin Francis’ and Kathleen Lucy who were both listed as being 19 and born in Argentina. At that same time Jessie’s youngest son William, age 15, was attending a school in Kent.
	It was on Saturday 14^th December 1929 that Jessie’s husband died while the couple were living at Ashurst Place, Langton Green to the west of Tunbridge Wells. The following announcement of his passing was printed in The Times newspaper on Tuesday 17^th December 1929:
	On December 14, 1929 at Ashurst Place, near Tunbridge Wells, of pneumonia, James Collett Mason, loved husband of Jessie Collett-Mason, aged 76. Funeral service today (Tuesday) at Langton Green Church, Kent at 2.30 p.m.
	18Q13	Margaret Marion Collett Mason			Born on 16.06.1888
	18Q14	Ascelein Frances Collett Mason			Born on 08.04.1890
	18Q15	Kathlees Lucy Collett Mason			Born on 23.03.1892
	18Q16	Augusta F Collett Mason			Born circa 1893/4
	18Q17	Guillermo Wallis Collett Mason			Born on 25.08.1895
18P38	Phyllis Carthew Collett was born at St Mary Abbot in Kensington, London in 1873, the eldest child of Charles Preston Collett and Lucy Ellen Daniels. Around 1875 her family left London and moved to Devon where in 1881, they were living at Highclere House on the Warberry Road in Tor-Moham, a parish of Torquay, where Phyllis Carthew Collett was seven years old.
	Following the death of her family during the 1880s, it would appear that Phyllis may have been educated at Cheltenham, since that was where she was recorded in the census of 1891 when she was 17 years old. However, no further record of his has been found in 1901 or 1911, by which times she may have become a married lady.
18P40	Charles M Collett was born in 1876 at Torquay, just after his parents arrived there from London. At the age of four years, Charles M Collett was living with his family at Highclere House, Warberry Road in Tor-Moham. His father died when Charles was around ten or eleven years of age, and by the time of the census in 1891 he was being educated at Upton-on-Severn in Gloucestershire when he was 14.
	It is unclear what happened to Charles after 1891, with no record of him located within either of the census returns from 1901 and 1911.
18P41	Laura Lesley Collett was born at Torquay in 1878 and was two years old at the time of the census in 1881 when she was living with her family at Warberry Road in Tor-Moham in Torquay. Almost ten years later her father Charles Preston Collett died and so by April 1891 Laura was 12 and was living with her widowed mother and younger brother Arthur (below) at Highclere in Tor-Moham, Torquay.
	No trace has been found of her mother, but by April 1911 Laura Lesley Collett was 32 and was living at Lewisham in London.
18P42	Arthur Preston Collett was born at Torquay on 10.09.1880, the son of Charles Preston Collett and his wife Lucy Ellen Daniels. He was seven months old on 3^rd April 1881 when he was living with his family in Warberry Road at Tor-Moham in Torquay. Ten years later, and following the death of his father, Arthur was recorded as being 10 years old when he was still living with his widowed mother and sister Laura (above) at Highclere in Tor-Moham, Torquay.
	Around the time he was nineteen, he was admitted as a scholar into Queens College in Cambridge, when he was confirmed as the son of high court judge Charles Collett of Madras. Prior to going to Cambridge, Arthur had attended Malvern College, from where he matriculated. He entered the I.C.S. during 1903 and served in the United Provinces as Magistrate and Collector. By 1911 he was Deputy Commissioner, and in 1914 was Joint Magistrate. Arthur was appointed Private Secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor in 1915, and was on military service during the Great War from 1916 to 1919. On leaving the army he continued to work as Magistrate and Collector in 1920, a post he held until 1827. During the years from 1928 to 1932 he was the Opium Agent and Commissioner of Income Tax in the United Provinces, after which he retired and resided at The Lodge in Hollesley, near Woodbridge in Suffolk.
	It addition to all of this, it is known that Arthur Preston Collett married Sheila, with whom he had at least two children. Sadly for the couple, they were living at Felixstowe in 1945 when they receive the news that their daughter Phyllis had been killed during the Second World War.
	18Q18	Candace Collett			Date of birth unknown but after 1911
	18Q19	Phyllis Anne Collett			Born in 1922
18P43	Edward Pyemont Collett was born in Leicestershire in 1862, the eldest of three sons of Henry Pyemont Collett of Suffolk and Isabella Lamb Frazer of Wolverhampton. Shortly after he was born his parents moved to Norfolk, and in 1871 they were living within the Wisbech & Terrington St Clement district of the county when Edward was eight years old, but was listed in the census as Edward Pyewood Collett.
	Ten years later, at the age of 18, Edward from Leicester, was a medical student studying dentistry at Hastings, where he was living with his family at 12 Springfield Road. On that occasion his mother and youngest brother were both absent, so it was just his father and his brother Henry (below) who were there at that time.
	Around five years later, Edward married Aurora from London, and the couple settled in the Chorlton-cum-Hardy district of Manchester where Edward took up work as a dentist. It was while they were living there that Aurora presented Edward with two children.
	In 1891 the family of four living at Chorlton-cum-Hardy was recorded in the census return as follows. Edward P Collett was 28, his wife Aurora B Collett was 27, and their two children were Nora Collett who was 3, although she was incorrectly noted as Flora, and Henry R P Collett who was under one year old.
	Both of the children were sent to private schools, so in March 1901, it was only Edward and Aurora that were recorded as living at Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Edward P Collett, age 38, from Hinckley in Leicestershire, was a dentist, while his wife Aurora B Collett from London was 37. Their daughter Nora Collett, age 13, was attending a school in Sussex, with her brother Robert at a school in Harrogate at the age of ten. Both children were confirmed as having been born at Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
	By the time of the next census in April 1911, the family had moved to Bucklow near Knutsford in Cheshire, and also by that time, Edward’s daughter Nora was married to John Cooke and they were living at Tynemouth in Northumberland. Living at Bucklow were Edward Pyemont Collett 48, Aurora Beatrice Collett 47, and their son Henry Robert Pyemont Collett who was 20.
	18Q20	Nora Collett			Born in 1887
	18Q21	Henry Robert Pyemont Collett			Born in 1890
18P44	Henry Francis Collett was born in 1864 after his parents, Henry Pyemont Collett and Isabella Lamb Frazer had moved to Norfolk. In the census of 1871 the family was recorded as living within the Wisbech & Terrington St Clement registration district, where Henry Francis Collett was six years old. However, during the next few years the family moved to Hastings on the south coast.
	By 1881 Henry F Collett from Norfolk was still attending school at the age of 16, while he was living at the family home at 12 Springfield Road in Hastings St Leonards.
	What happened to Henry after this time has not yet been discovered, but no record of him has been found in the census returns for 1891, 1901, and 1911.
18P45	John Anthony Collett was born in 1866, the youngest of the three sons of Henry Pyemont Collett and Isabella Lamb Frazer. There is some confusion concerning his place of birth. The favoured option is Norfolk, since it is known that his father was attached to the Church of St Mary in Tilney-cum-Islington near King’s Lynn in 1867, where the family was living in 1871 when, as John Anthony Collett, he was four years old.
	The confusion arises from the next census in 1881 when John A Collett, age 13, was attending Norton House College at Luton in Bedfordshire, and the census return gave his place of birth as Leicester. This may have been an error on the part of the college, although it is established that his older brother Edward (above) was born in Leicestershire.
	Perhaps for reasons of military service, no record of John has been located within the census of 1891, but in March 1901 he was still a bachelor at 34, when living at Dawlish in Devon. Following the death of his father sometime during the previous few years, John was living with his widowed mother Isabella, who was described as living on her own means, while John had no stated occupation.
	With his mother passing away just after 1901, John moved from Dawlish to Bristol, where he was recorded in April 1911 as John Anthony Collett from Norfolk who was unmarried at the age of 44.
18P46	Charles Hubert Edgar Collett was born at Brightwell-cum-Foxhall in Suffolk on 30.12.1862, and was baptised there on 12.07.1863, the son of Charles and Eliza Collett.
	According to the census in 1881 Charles Hubert Edgar Collett was born at Paddington in London in 1862. The census return also indicated that he had followed his father into the world of finance and at the age of 18 years he was a stockbroker’s clerk working in London while living at the family home in 13 Windsor Road in Ealing.
18P47	Anthony Keeling Collett was born at Cromhall near Wootton-under-Edge on 22.08.1877, the eldest son of the Reverend William Michael Collett. He was aged 3 years in the census of 1881 when he was living with his family at The Rectory in Cromhall. Ten years later, following the death of his father and at the age of thirteen, Anthony was living with his widowed mother at Axbridge in Somerset.
	He was educated at Bradfield College in Berkshire and on 26^th January 1896 was an elected scholar at Oriel College in Oxford on payment of £10. It was at Oriel College where he matriculated on 22^nd October 1896. Two years later in 1898 he obtained a Third Class in Classical Moderations and, after a further two years, a Second Class in Final Classical School in 1900. 1900 was also the year he was made Bishop Fraser’s Scholar. During this period he also attended the University of Berlin.
	The following year Anthony was twenty-three and was living at Theale in Berkshire where he was working as a journalist. Following this he worked for The Globe and four years later in 1905 he was on the staff of the St James’ Gazette.
	He was later employed by the magazine County Gentleman and this was followed by over twenty years writing for The Times. He was initially a writer on nature, but held the position of leader writer from 1908 to 1922.
	He lived most of his adult life in London, but travelled to Italy, Wales and Scotland. During the First World War he enlisted as a private with the Post Office Rifles. After gaining a commission, Anthony saw active service in France where he was involved in the battle at Vimy Ridge. Following an injury, he was invalided back to England and spent the last part of the war in the Historical Section of the War Office.
	His love of nature lead to him writing a number of books on the subject. He never married and died on 22.08.1922 of a wasting illness while attending a London nursing home.
18P48	John Colet Collett was born at Cromhall on 30.08.1880. From 1893 to 1897 he was educated at Rossall School in Fleetwood, following which he became a Civil Engineering Student studying at Heysham in Lancashire, as confirmed by the Census of 1901 in which he was listed as being aged 20 years and of Cromhall.
18P49	Ada Wright was born on 08.08.1884 at 2 Craven’s Terrace off Albert Street in Kingston-upon-Hull. She married Walter Benson on 27.07.1907 at the Newport Registration Office in Monmouthshire. Walter was the son of Thomas Boulton Benson and Selina Stanton Mumby and was born on 29.11.1885.
	Once they were married Ada and Walter moved to Scotland and it was while they were in Glasgow that their first child was born. Shortly after the family of three moved to the Manchester area and while they were living at 11 Walton Road in Blackley their second child was born.
	A final move took the family just one mile from Blackley to Harpurhey where Ada’s and Walter’s remaining children were born.
	During his life Walter was a musician and it was his work that eventually was the cause of his death. Tragically on 06.10.1926, while working as a musical director for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), he was killed in a motorcycle accident in Aberdeen where he was buried.
	Ada remained living at Harpurhey after her husband’s death and, twenty-five years later, it was there that she passed away on 18.05.1951 aged 66.
	18Q22	Selina Benson				Born on 03.06.1908
	18Q23	Ernest Walter Benson				Born on 09.05.1910
	18Q24	Francis William Benson				Born on 19.07.1912 (twin)
	18Q25	Edna Benson				Born on 19.07.1912 (twin)
	18Q26	Hector Benson				Born on 21.10.1913
	18Q27	Myra Benson				Born on 18.03.1917
18P52	Florence Mary Collett was born at Edmondsley near Chester-le-Street in County Durham 1874, the eldest child of Charles Collett and Elizabeth Field. Not long after she was born her parents moved to Sunderland, but by 1881 the family was living at 4 Johnsons Place in the Holy Trinity district of Hull, where Florence was recorded as being six years old.
	They were only at Hull for a short while, as the family finally settled in Ipswich where they were living at the time of the census in 1891. However, by that time Florence had already left the family home and was living at 53 Lordship Park in Stoke Newington, where she was employed as a general servant to Otto Schallert, a journalist editor who was born in Germany, and his wife Barbara from Essex.
	Five years later, in 1896, she married James Johnson at Billericay in Essex with whom she had six children up to 1910. They were all born while the couple was living at Chelmsford in Essex, and they were Charles Thomas Johnson (born 1898), Frederick Edward Johnson (born 1899), Annie May Johnson (born 1901), William Henry Johnson (born 1904), Elizabeth Mabel Johnson (born 1907), and Florence Lydia Johnson who was born in 1910.
	By the time of the census in 1901 Florence and her husband James were living at Friars Place in New London within the Moulsham area of Chelmsford with four children; Albert Ernest Johnson, age 14 who was James’ son from his first wife Annie Sophie Jacobs who died in 1893, Charles Johnson who was three, Frederick Johnson who was two, and Annie Johnson who was just five months old. Both James and his eldest son were coach painters.
	It would appear that, after the birth of their sixth child, the family moved the very short distance to 4 Spains Croft, The Chase in Widford, just outside Chelmsford, where they were living in April 1911. With Florence and James on that occasion were five of their six. They were Charles 13, Frederick 12, William who was seven, Elizabeth Mabel who was four, and Florence Lydia who was one year old. James Johnson was still a coach painter, but by that time, he was working on his own account.
	Their missing eldest daughter Annie May was staying at her grandparents' house in Ipswich, where she was recorded simply as May Johnson, who was ten years old. It is thought that Florence Mary Johnson nee Collett died at Chelmsford in 1933, when she was 59.
18P53	Elizabeth Honor Collett was born at Sunderland in 1876 and moved with her family, first to Hull and then to Ipswich where they were living in 1890. It was nine years later that she married William Hallows at Islington in London in 1899, William having been born at Romford in Essex in 1877.
	In March 1901 Elizabeth and her husband were living in Romford with their first child, William Henry Hallows, who was only two months old. Over the next decade Elizabeth presented William with three more children, but sadly only one of their four children survived. The aforementioned William Henry Hallows was born at Romford in January 1901, but he died at Camberwell in 1906.
	By March 1911 Elizabeth, age 34, and her husband William, age 33, were living in the Camberwell area of London. They were described as having been married for twelve years, during which time they had had four children although only one of them was still alive. That was Walter Hallows who was two years old, who had been born at Camberwell.
	It is very likely that the couple’s missing two children were Cyril Joseph Hallows, who was born at Romford in 1903, the same year that he died there, and Charles Frederick Hallows, who was born at Camberwell in 1904, and who died there in 1906, during the same quarter of that year as their first child William Henry Hallows.
	It was in 1937 at Romford in Essex, that a William Hallows died at the age of 60, and he may have been Elizabeth Honor’s husband. In addition to this, a Walter Hallows married Ann C Stanton at Romford in 1932. There then followed the births of three children at Romford for Walter and Ann, they being Brian D Hallows (born 1933), Ann Hallows (born 1935), and Patrick Hallows (born 1939).
18P54	Charles Frederick W Collett was born at Sunderland in 1879 and two years later his family were living in the Holy Trinity district of Hull at 4 Johnsons Place. In 1890 the family had returned to their Suffolk roots and were living at Vine Cottage in St George’s Ipswich.
	Ten years later Charles at the age of 21 was still living with his family in the St Margaret’s area of Ipswich where he was working as a coach painter.
18P56	William Collett was born in 1847 and was buried at Mettingham on 24.12.1848, the likely eldest child of William Collett and his wife Mary Ann Bradnum.
18P57	Matilda Collett was born at Mettingham in 1848, her birth being recorded at Wangford during the first quarter of the year. She was the eldest surviving child of William Collett of Mettingham and Mary Ann Bradnum of Kirby Cane. She was three years old in the census of 1851 when she was one of only two children living at Mettingham with her parents. The second child was her sister Harriet (below), and not her brother Benjamin who was older than Harriet.
	Upon leaving the village school in Mettingham it would appear that it was arranged for Matilda to enter domestic service with the Boggis family at Home Farm in Gorleston. This was confirmed by the census in 1861 which placed Matilda Collett, age 13 and from Mettingham, as a servant to James and Charlotte Boggis.
	Home Farm was 200 acres and James Boggis employed eight men and two boys to help him manage the land. It would also appear that the Boggis family had only moved to Gorleston three or four years earlier, since the two eldest children had been born at Kirby Cane, where Matilda’s mother was born. So it is likely that it was through this connection that Matilda was taken on by the family.
	Within the next ten years Matilda made her way to London and by 1871 she was working in domestic service at the home of ‘factor of paper hangings’ Charles Weedon and his wife Maria at 323 Caledonian Road in Islington. It also seems very likely that she secured work for her two younger sisters since they were both working together in Islington by 1881.
	According to the census of 1881 Matilda was still a spinster at the age of 34, when she was still working as a domestic servant for Charles Weedon, but at 13 Thornhill Square in Islington. Her place of birth was confirmed as Mettingham. It was also around that time in her life that Matilda became pregnant with a so far unknown gentleman, the children being born at Gorleston later that same year.
	Following the birth of her son Matilda returned to live with her parents who, in 1891, were living in Porter’s Lane in Burgh Castle. Matilda Collett from Mettingham was 44 and was working as a charwoman. The only other occupant at her parents’ home was George J Collett, age nine years and from Gorleston, who was described as the grandson to head of the household William Collett.
	However, just a few months prior to the next census in 1901 Matilda’s son, aged around 19, must have died by some means, since his death was recorded at Yarmouth during the last quarter of 1900. So the census in the following March listed just unmarried Matilda Collett, age 54 and from Mettingham, as continuing to work as a charwoman, while a servant at the home of farmer John H Chapman and his wife Susan at St Johns Road in Belton Entire in the parish of All Saints, just one dwelling from the Kings Head Inn.
	By the time of the census of 1911, Matilda Collett from Mettingham was still living and working at the home of the Chapman family in Belton. At that time Matilda was 65, while Susan Chapman, age 69, was a widow and had living with her, her daughter Beatrice Chapman who was 35.
	18Q28	George J Collett				Born in 1881 at Gorleston
18P58	Emma Collett was born at Mettingham on 14.09.1848, where she was buried three days later on 17.09.1848. It is understood that she was the daughter of William Collett and Mary Ann Bradnum.
18P59	Charlotte Collett was born in 1849, the daughter of William and Mary Ann Collett, who registered the birth at Mutford during first three months of the year. Curiously though, and the same as her brother Benjamin (below), she was not recorded living with her family in the Mettingham census of 1851. By 1861, at the age of 12, Charlotte Collett from Mettingham was already working as a servant at the Burgh Castle home of her uncle James Collett, and his wife Mary Ann Bradnum.
	She was still living in that same area ten years later, as confirmed by the Mutford & Gorleston census of 1871, when she was recorded as Charlotte Collet (sic), age 22. Just over three weeks after the census day, Charlotte married John William Jackson at Burgh Castle on 25^th April 1871. He had been born at Reedham in 1842, the son of agricultural labourer James Jackson and his wife Mary Ann Sales. Four year later Charlotte’s brother William Collet (below) married John’s sister Elizabeth Jackson.
	During the following decade Charlotte presented John with six children. The first three were born while they were living at Somerleyton in Suffolk, while the second three were born after the family had settled in the village of Cantley in Norfolk, where they were living at the time of the census in 1881. John Jackson, age 39, was a plate layer working on the railway which passed through Cantley, his wife Charlotte was 33 and from Mettingham, and their six children were Louisa 9, Matilda 7, Sarah 6, James 4, Dinah 3, and Kate who was one year old.
	Two further children were added to the family during the following five years, but by 1891 two of the couple’s older children had left home by then. So the family recorded in the census of 1891 comprised John 50, Charlotte 43, Matilda 17, James 14, Dinah 13, Kate 11, Alice 8, and Violet who was four years old.
	It is of some significance that Charlotte’s daughter Sarah Anna Jackson married Thomas William Collett (Ref. 18Q33) at Yarmouth in 1898, he being the son of Charlotte’s brother William Collett (below). Charlotte Jackson nee Collett lived a long life when she died in 1935, at the age of 85.
18P60	Benjamin Collett was born at Mettingham in early 1850, the second surviving child and eldest son of William Collett and Mary Ann Bradnum. The birth was registered at the Wangford Registrar’s Office during the second quarter of 1850. Curiously though, he was not listed with his family at the time of the census a year later in 1851, whereas he was 11 years old ten years later in 1861.
	By the time of the census in 1871, he had already moved out of his parent’s home, which by then was at Burgh Castle near Great Yarmouth. At that time in his life he was a seaman on board the fishing boat ‘Royal Oak’. Two years later Benjamin married Emily Turvey Pearson, when the marriage was registered at Mutford Registration District during the second quarter of 1873. Emily was born at Burgh Castle, the daughter of agricultural labourer James Pearson and his wife Mary Ann, and her birth had also been registered at Mutford R D during the second quarter of 1852.
	During the following years Emily presented Benjamin with four children, three of them born before the next census in 1881. According to the census that year, Benjamin Collett, age 30 and a fisherman from Mettingham, was living with his family at 12 Manor House in Burgh Castle. On that occasion he was the third hand on board the fishing boat ‘Allah’. His wife Emily was 28, and their three children were Selina Collett, who was six, George Collett, who was three, and Jessie Collett who was two years old, all three of them having been born at Burgh Castle.
	Also living with the family was Emily’s widowed mother Mary Ann Pearson aged 63 of Norwich. During the next ten years it would appear that Benjamin died as he was not listed in the census of 1891 or 1901.
	In 1891 his widow was still living in a dwelling in the High Road (High Street) at Burgh Castle, when the family was recorded as Emily J Collett, age 38, the head of the household and a laundress, her son George W Collett 13, Jessie Collett 12 and Louis Collett who nine years old. Ten years later it was only Emily, age 48, who was living at Holly Cottage in the High Street at Burgh Castle, with just her youngest child. Louis Collett was 18, and was not credited with an occupation, whereas his mother was described as a washer and laundress in that occasion.
	After a few more years Emily’s son Louis was married and started a family of his own. However, by April 1911, Louis and his wife and their two daughters were still living in the High Street at Burgh Castle, and still living there with them was his mother Emily who was 58.
	18Q29	Selina Margaret Collett			Born in 1874 at Burgh Castle
	18Q30	George William Collett			Born in 1877 at Burgh Castle
	18Q31	Jesse Benjamin Collett			Born in 1878 at Burgh Castle
	18Q32	Louis Arthur Collett			Born in 1882 at Burgh Castle
18P61	Harriet Collett was born at Mettingham during last months of 1850 or the first months of 1851, since she was still under one year old on the thirtieth March 1851 when she was living at Mettingham with her parents and her older sister Matilda (above). In addition to this, it is known that her birth was recorded at Wangford during the first quarter of that year.
	In the next census of 1861 Harriet was still living at Mettingham with her large family. However, sometime between 1866 and 1870 Harriet and her family left Mettingham, when they moved nearer to Great Yarmouth, to settle at Burgh Castle. With the family having twelve children, there may well have been an over-crowding issue in the new Collett household which prompted the older members to leave.
	Certainly by the time of the census in 1871, Harriet, age 19, and her younger sister Sarah (below) were living within the Yarmouth Southern district of the town. By that time both girls had entered into world of domestic service.
	Ten years later Harriet was still unmarried at the age of 29, but by then she was a domestic servant at the north London home of George Pavely and his wife Mary. George was a wholesale bookbinder employing 100 hands, while living at 132 Queens Road in Hornsey, Middlesex.
	It is possible that Harriet became a married lady after that time as no record of her as Harriet Collett has been found in any subsequent census.
18P62	Joseph Collett was born at Mettingham at the start of 1852, with his birth being registered at Wangford between January and March that year. He was nine years old in the Mettingham census of 1861 when he was still living there with his family. During the last years of that decade his parents, William and Mary Ann Collett, took the family to live at Burgh Castle where Joseph, age 18, was living and working in 1871, but by then he was not with his family.
	Joseph later became a fisherman, this may account for the reason that he has not been located in the next two census returns. However, according to the March census of 1901 Joseph Collett was a fisherman in Durness, at the most northerly tip of Scotland.
18P63	William Collett was born at Mettingham in 1854, and was baptised there on 02.09.1854, the son of William and Mary Ann Collett. He was eight years old in 1861 when living at Mettingham with his family. By 1871 the family was living at Burgh Castle where William was 17 years old.
	It was during the first quarter of 1875 that he married Elizabeth Jackson at Loddon in Norfolk, where the marriage was registered. Elizabeth was born at Reedham in Norfolk, the daughter of James and Mary Ann Jackson, and the sister of John William Jackson who married William’s sister Charlotte Collett (above). Once married, the couple spent the first few years of their life together living at Wheatacre, between Beccles and Lowestoft. And it was there that their first two children were born and where they were baptised at All Saints Church.
	They later moved to Lowestoft where two further children were born before 1881. By the time of the census that year William, age 28, was employed as a fisherman and was living with his family at 2 Hervey Street in Lowestoft. His wife was 27 and their four children at that time were their two sons Thomas who was five and Frank who was three, both born at Wheatacre in Norfolk, and their daughters Frances Beatrice Collett who was one year old, and Dinah Daisy Collett who was just three months old. Both girls had been born after the family had moved to Lowestoft. Tragically it would appear that Frances Beatrice died shortly after 1881, since the very next child born into the family was also named Beatrice Collett.
	A total of five children were born into the family during the 1880s, so by the time of the census in 1891 Elizabeth Collett was 38 and was then living at 26 Trafalgar Road in West Gorleston with her eight surviving children. They were Thomas W Collett 14, Frank Collett 13, Daisy Collett who was nine, Beatrice Collett who was eight, Ethel Collett who six, George Collett who was five, Louis Collett who was four, and Albert Collett who was one year old. No record has been found of her husband William in 1891 so, as a fisherman, he may well have been at sea on the day of the census in 1891, since he was back with his wife and family at Gorleston for the census in March 1901.
	At the age of 47, William Collett of Mettingham was working as a skipper at the local seaman’s mission in Gorleston, while he and his family were residing at 150 Bells Road in Gorleston. His wife Elizabeth was 47 and from Reedham, and the children still living with their parents were Ethel 16, George 15, Lewis 13, all three of them born at Lowestoft, and Albert 11, and Jessie who was nine, both of them born at Gorleston.
	Ten years later in 1911 the family was still living in Gorleston where William and Elizabeth were both 57, and the only children still living with them on that occasion were Lewis 23, Albert 21, and daughter Jessie who was nineteen.
	18Q33	Thomas William Collett			Born in 1876 at Wheatacre
	18Q34	Frank Ernest Collett			Born in 1877 at Wheatacre
	18Q35	Frances Beatrice Collett			Born in 1879 at Lowestoft
	18Q36	Dinah Daisy Collett			Born in 1880 at Lowestoft
	18Q37	Beatrice Frances Collett			Born in 1882 at Lowestoft
	18Q38	Ethel Maude or Mary Collett			Born in 1884 at Lowestoft
	18Q39	George Collett			Born in 1885 at Lowestoft
	18Q40	Lewis James Collett			Born in 1887 at Lowestoft
	18Q41	Albert Collett		Born in 1889 at Gorleston
	18Q42	Jessie Collett		Born in 1891 at Gorleston
18P64	Sarah Collett was born at Mettingham in 1855 and was recorded as being six years old in the Mettingham census of 1861 where it is known she and her family were living up to 1866. Unlike her siblings, no registration of her birth has been found to date. In the years there 1866 the family moved to Burgh Castle, but perhaps because of the cramped conditions, Sarah and her older sister Harriet left home to enter domestic service in Great Yarmouth.
	The 1871 census for the Yarmouth southern district listed Sarah Collett, age 15 and from Mettingham, as a servant living and working at the King Street home in Yarmouth of house builder James Howard and his wife Bessie. Her obvious absence from the next census in 1881 as Sarah Collett very likely indicates that she was married during the second half of the 1870s.
18P65	Henry Collett was born at Mettingham in 1856, where he was baptised on 21.03.1856, the son of William and Mary Ann Collett. Tragically it was exactly two weeks later that he was buried there on 4^th April 1856.
18P66	Dinah Collett was born at Mettingham in 1857 and was baptised there on 08.11.1857, the daughter of William and Mary Ann Collett. Dinah was five years old in the Mettingham census of 1861, following which her family moved to Burgh Castle in the late 1860s, where Dinah was 13 at the time of the Burgh Castle census of 1871. Dinah later joined up with her sister Jemima (below) and the two of them headed for London to find work, where their older sister Matilda was already gainfully employed.
	Matilda was working in the Islington area of London and it may have been Matilda who arranged for her two younger sisters to enter into domestic service in that area. By 1881 Dinah was aged 23 and of Mettingham, and was working as a nurse to four years old Cecil J Benson at the home of his parents Joseph and Rebecca Benson at 57 Hilldrop Road, where he sister also worked.
	Joseph Benson was a Baptist minister, while both he and his wife were credited as being the managers of a firm of coal merchants.
18P67	George Collett was born at Mettingham in 1858, and it was there also that he was baptised on 14.11.1858, the son of William and Mary Ann Collett. George was two years old in the 1861 Census for that village and was living there with his parents. He was still with his parents ten years later when he was 12, by which time the family was living at Burgh Castle.
	Burgh Castle overlooks Breydon Water on the eastern edge of the Norfolk Broads and close to the North Sea, so it made sense that George’s occupation was that of a fisherman.
	Around 1880 he married Eliza who was born at Belton in 1859. According to the 1881 Census, fisherman George Collett and his wife Eliza were both 22 and were living less than two miles north of Belton in Burgh Castle at 3 High Road. Also living in Burgh Castle at that time were George’s parents William and Mary Ann Collett, and his brothers Benjamin and Joseph (above).
	George and Eliza have not been located in 1891, but by March 1901 Eliza Collett, age 42 and from Belton, was a widow living at St Johns Road in Belton Entire with her son George Collett who was 13. His place of birth was given as nearby Gorleston. Eliza was described as a laundress and a washer with her own account at home.
	Ten years later in April 1911, Eliza and her son had left Belton and moved into Great Yarmouth. The census that year recorded the couple as Eliza Collett of Belton who was 52, and George B Collett of Gorleston who was 23.
	18Q43	George B Collett			Born in 1887
18P68	James Collett was born at Mettingham in 1860, where he was baptised on 14.10.1860, the son of William and Mary Ann Collett. He was listed as being under one year old in 1861 and was 10 years old in 1871 when, for the later census, he was living with his family at Burgh Castle.
	It is possible, although not confirmed, that James married Elizabeth of Burgh Castle who was a few years older than James, and that they had a daughter before James was twenty years of age. James may also have been a fisherman like his brother George (above).
	In the census of 1881 Elizabeth Collett was twenty-five and was living at 5 Manby Road in Gorleston, near Burgh Castle. While Elizabeth was recorded as being married, she was also listed as head of the house and a charwoman. The absence of her husband may indicate that he was a fisherman and that he was away at sea on that occasion.
	Listed with Elizabeth were her two daughters, Susan Collett who was two years old and born at Burgh Castle, Mary Ann Collett who was just three months old and who had been born after the family had more to Gorleston from Burgh Castle.
	No further record of any member of this family has been discovered in any subsequent census.
	18Q44	Susan Collett			Born in 1878
	18Q45	Mary Ann Collett			Born in January 1881
18P69	Jemima Collett was born at Mettingham in 1862, and was baptised there on 12.10.1862, the youngest daughter of William and Mary Ann Collett. Her parents moved to Burgh Castle in the late 1860s and it was there she living with her family in 1871 aged eight years. Sometime during the 1870s Jemima and her sister Dinah (above) followed their older sister Matilda into London for the purpose of seeking work.
	Both girls were lucky enough to be taken on by coal merchant and baptist minister Joseph Benson and his wife at their home at 57 Hilldrop Road in Islington. Jemima was listed as being aged 18 and of Mettingham and was employed as a domestic servant.
	It would appear that Jemima never married, since at the age of 48, Jemima Collett of Mettingham was living in the Islington area of London.
18P70	Cornelius Bradnum Collett was born at Mettingham in 1863, the son of William Collett and Mary Ann Bradnum. It was also at Mettingham that he was baptised on 10.04.1864. During the late 1860s the family moved to Burgh Castle near Great Yarmouth where he was listed as being seven years old in 1871. On leaving school he joined the crew of the ‘Joseph & Henry’ a fishing boat sailing out of Great Yarmouth, as recorded in the 1881 Census when he was sixteen years old.
	A little while later he gave up being a fisherman and made the long journey north to Durham with his brother Henry (below) and was recorded as living at West Hartlepool at 27 in the census of 1891. It was also after he had moved to the north of England that he met his future wife.
	A short while after that, during the third quarter of 1892, Henry married Elizabeth Taylor at South Shields, with whom he had three children. The first child was born at Gorleston but was baptised seventeen months later at Kirkley near Lowestoft. Just after the middle of the 1890s the family of three made the journey north back to Hartlepool. This was confirmed by the census in 1901 when Cornelius Bradnum Collett, age 37 and from Mettingham, was recorded as being a man-in-charge of a wheeling steel works in West Hartlepool.
	His wife was confirmed as Elizabeth, age 28 and from Crook in County Durham, and their children were Elizabeth who was seven and who had been born at Gorleston, Grace who was three, and Mary who was two years old, the two younger children having been born after the family had settled in West Hartlepool.
	Living with the family and working with Cornelius was his nephew George (William) Collett (Ref. 18Q30), age 23 and from Burgh Castle, who was a steel millwright and the son of Benjamin Collett (above).
	During the next decade the family left West Hartlepool and moved to Tynemouth. And it was in the Tynemouth registration district that Cornelius and his family were living in April 1911. Cornelius B Collett of Mettingham was 47, his wife Elizabeth of Crook was 39, and just two of their daughters were recorded with them. These were Grace and Mary who were 13 and 12 and both confirmed as born at West Hartlepool. No record of their eldest daughter has been found at all.
	18Q46	Elizabeth Julia Collett			Born in 1893 at Gorleston
	18Q47	Grace Hilda Collett			Born in 1897 at West Hartlepool
	18Q48	Mary Ann Collett			Born in 1898 at West Hartlepool
18P71	Henry Collett was born at Mettingham on 24.11.1865 and was baptised there on 11.02.1866, the youngest son and last of the twelve surviving children of William and Mary Ann Collett. Sometime after he was born his family moved to Burgh Castle where he was recorded as five years old in the 1871 Census. In 1881 Henry was the only child still living with his parents at 14 Butt Way in Burgh Castle.
	At the age 15, he was working as a general labourer and the place of his birth was confirmed as having been at Mettingham. Towards the end of the 1880s Henry travelled north to Durham with his brother Cornelius (above) and they both settled down to live at West Hartlepool.
	It was there that Henry met Mary Timms, whom he married in 1890 and, by the time of the census in 1891, their marriage had produced their first child. The census return for West Hartlepool confirmed Henry Collett as 25, his wife Mary Collett as 22, and their baby daughter as Matilda Collett who was not yet one year old. Over the next eight years a further four children were added to the family, although sadly one of them, the couple’s second daughter, did not survive.
	Ten years later, according to the March census of 1901, the family of six was still living at West Hartlepool where 35 years old Henry Collett was employed as a jobbing bricklayer, and his place of birth was confirmed as Mettingham. The age of his wife Mary was given as 30 and her place of birth as West Hartlepool in Durham.
	All four of their children were recorded as having been born at West Hartlepool and they were Matilda Collett, age 10, William Collett who was eight, John Collett who was five, and Charles Collett who was two years old. These were added to over the following decade when three more children were born into the family.
	Around the middle of that decade the family moved from West Hartlepool to Hartlepool, where the couple’s last two children were born. This was confirmed in the Durham census of 1911 for the Hartlepool district when ‘Harry’ Collett of Mettingham was 45 and was living there with his wife Mary Timms Collett who was 41 and from West Hartlepool
	Of their oldest four children only William, who would have been 18, was missing. He has not been found anywhere in Great Britain at that time, so there is a chance that he was in the army and possibly undertaking military service abroad. The couple’s other three older children, who were all born at West Hartlepool, were recorded as, Matilda Mary Collett, age 20, John Arthur Collett who was 15, and Charles Albert Collett who was 12 years old.
	Of the three youngest children, only the first of these, eight years old Albert was born while the family was still living in West Hartlepool. The two latest arrivals, George, who was three, and Cecil who was one year old, were both confirmed as having been born after the family had moved to Hartlepool.
	In 1940 Harry’s and Mary’s son George Richard Collett was killed while serving with the Royal Engineers during the Second World War. His parents and his wife were named within the military records, which indicated the Harry and Mary lived in Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham.
	In January 2011 new information about this family, and the youngest son Cecil Benjamin Collett, was received from Sue Hammler nee Collett, Cecil’s daughter. The source of the information was the Family Bible which she holds, together with a conductor’s baton inscribed with the name of her grandfather Henry Collett.
	The baton, decorated in silver and inscribed with the words "Presented to Mr H Collett in 1889" was handed down to Sue from her father, who indicated that it had been given to his father by an orchestra from either Philadelphia or Pittsburg. So in addition to being a bricklayer, Henry Collett may have also been an accomplished musician. However, it seems unlikely that he was presented with the baton in America during the year prior to his marriage to Mary Timms, so it is more likely that the orchestra was visiting England at that time.
	18Q49	Matilda Mary Collett			Born on 15.03.1890 at West Hartlepool
	18Q50	William Henry Collett			Born on 20.01.1893 at West Hartlepool
	18Q51	Maud May Collett			Born in 1894 at West Hartlepool
	18Q52	John Arthur Collett			Born on 25.11.1896 at West Hartlepool
	18Q53	Charles Albert Collett			Born on 26.01.1899 at West Hartlepool
	18Q54	Albert Edward Collett			Born on 12.04.1902 at West Hartlepool
	18Q55	George Richard Collett			Born in 1907 at Hartlepool
	18Q56	Cecil Benjamin Collett			Born in 1909 at Hartlepool
18P72	Mary Ann Collett was born at Mettingham in 1843 just seven months after her parents were married there. She was baptised at Mettingham on 14.04.1843, the eldest child of Henry Collett and Maria Myall, and was eight years old in 1851 when she was living with her family at Low Road in Mettingham.
18P73	Maria Collett was born at Mettingham in 1844, where she was baptised on 29.12.1844, the second daughter of Henry and Maria Collett. Sadly Maria did not reach her first birthday, when she died and was buried at Mettingham on 03.10.1845.
18P74	Eleanor Collett was born at Mettingham in late 1846 or early 1847, and was baptised there on 07.02.1847, the only surviving daughter of Henry and Maria Collett. In 1851 Eleanor was listed with her parents and her sister Mary Ann (above) and her brother James (below) at Low Road in Mettingham as Ellen Collett aged four years.