PART FORTY-NINE

The London to California Line

July 2009

This is the family line of Brian Richard Collett (Ref. 49R4) of San Francisco

Although every effort has been made to progress this family line back beyond 1846, unfortunately at this moment in time no reliable record has been found of builder Charles Collett who was the father of Henry George Collett.

49N1	CHARLES COLLETT. All that is so far known about Charles is that his name appears on the 1866 marriage certificate of his son Henry George Collett. On this document his occupation was stated as being that of a builder. From this Charles could have been born any time between say 1805 and 1825 depending on whether son Henry was an early child or a late child in his family.
	Three sources of information have been found that provide an approximation of the date of birth for his son Henry. The first of these was the same marriage certificate in which he was described as being twenty-one.
	The second is the passenger list for his voyage to New Zealand in 1868 when he was 22, and the third is the 1880 Census return for the state of California which gave his age as being 33. These would indicate that he was born in 1845, 1846, or 1847, so the average of 1846 has been assumed.
	A search of the UK Census returns prior to 1866 has revealed just two Charles Collett with a son called Henry, but neither of these was a builder and each of these has been discounted anyway for the fact that the Henry in each case was still residing in England in 1871, by which time Henry had emigrated to New Zealand.
	Of the many other Henry Colletts born around 1846, none had a father Charles, and the majority of these have already been placed in other Collett family lines, and therefore discounted as well.
	With such a lack of alternative information, there is a possibility that Henry Collett was not honest when he provided the details for his marriage certificate, either with his own age, the name of his father, and his father’s occupation. The fact that Henry’s first born son was named Charles is very likely a tribute to his father, and so perhaps this validates what was stated on the marriage certificate.
	Other than this, we have no details regarding where Charles came from or where his son Henry was born. All we have is that son Henry George Collett was married in London in 1866.
	49O1	Henry George Collett		Born circa 1846
49O1	Henry George Collett was 21 according to his marriage certificate of 1866 and was the son of Charles Collett who was a builder.
	The wedding took place on 12.10.1866 at St Michael’s Church within the parish of St Peter Pimlico in London. Henry George Collett, bachelor and a grocer of 13 Upper Ebury Street, married nineteen years old Sarah Shoubridge also of 13 Upper Ebury Street, whose father was artist William Shoubridge.
	It may be highly significant that the two witnesses to the wedding ceremony were William Varney Elliott and Anne Sinclair.
	Had the young couple married with the consent of their parents one might have expected to see a Collett or a Shoubridge as one of the witnesses. The fact that no apparent relative of either party was included may suggest that the marriage was not supported by the two respective families.
	There is another point worth making regarding this, and that is, had Sarah’s parents been happy for her to marry Henry Collett why was she not married within the parish where the bride was living at that time. In this case it is thought to have been fifteen miles to the west in the Hounslow/Teddington area.
	In 1861 William Shoubridge and his family were living in Hounslow and in 1881 at Teddington. Therefore the address at Upper Ebury Street would appear to be the young couple’s address, perhaps where they were lodging. It may also have even been the shop where Henry worked as a grocer.
	It is interesting to note that the Parish of St Peter Pimlico is situated on the north side of the River Thames and adjacent to the Westminster area of the city. Not far away is Ebury Street which runs parallel to Buckingham Palace Road. From old maps, Upper Ebury Street refers to the section of the road to the south-west near to Pimlico Road and Chelsea Barracks.
	Another discrepancy on the marriage certificate related to the bride’s name. This gave the name as Sarah, even though she was originally named Selina Sarah Shoubridge after her mother Selina Shoubridge nee Mott. It should be noted that in all later records she used another name, that of Salina.
	Her father William Shoubridge was born in 1811 at Hyde Park in London and was the son of James Shoubridge Esquire. He was educated at Cheam School and later went to Caius College in Cambridge where he studied architecture under the prolific British architect Decimus Burton who designed some of the buildings at London Zoo, and the Palm House at Kew Gardens which was the first large structural use of wrought iron.
	William Shoubridge received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1841 but then pursued a career as an artist in oil painting. And it was his interest in art that took him and his wife to Florence where their daughter Selina Sarah was born in 1847. By 1881 William Shoubridge was a widower living at 1 Colne Villa in Teddington in Middlesex with his three youngest children, all of whom had been born at Hounslow.
	At that time he was sixty-nine and was described as an ‘artist with a BA in oil painting’. The three children were Walter George aged 23, who was a civil engineering draughtsman, and Lucy Ann 24 and Beatrice Emily 20, who were both described as housekeepers.
	Twenty years earlier according to the 1861 Census (and five years before Henry Collett married Sarah Shoubridge), Sarah was recorded as Selina Sarah Shoubridge aged 13 and was the eldest daughter of William and Selina Shoubridge whose family was living at Hounslow within the Brentford & Isleworth registration district of London.
	The full family at that time was listed as William 49, his wife Selina 36, and their children William 15, Selina 13, Sydney Garrett 9, Lucy Ann 5, Walter George 3, and Beatrice Emily who was under one year old.
	With this type of family background, it is perhaps likely that the Shoubridge family were ranked in a higher class than the family of Henry George Collett, and this may have been why the two young people were married without any of either family being present, and gives rise to the fact that their consent was not given.
	Henry Collett and Sarah Shoubridge were blessed with the birth of their first child in London during the year following their wedding and she was named after the town in Italy where Sarah had been born.
	Shortly after the baby’s arrival, the couple were making plans to emigrate to a new life in New Zealand. And so it was that on 14^th November 1868 the family of three sailed out of Gravesend on the clipper ship ‘Percy’ skipper by Captain James Cooper.
	The ship’s passage list recorded the family as Henry George Collett 22, his wife Selina Sarah 21, and their daughter Florence who was 1-2 years old. The voyage last three and half months, and they finally docked at Auckland on 3^rd March 1869.
	Shortly after their arrival in New Zealand, Selina gave birth to the couple’s second child Helen Wakefield Collett. The family may have been living in Wakefield near Wellington when the child was born, thus following a similar tradition set by the naming of their first child. Tragically though, the child was killed in a freakish accident when she was just fifteen months old.
	It would appear that the motivation for their move to a new life on the other side of the world was driven by the New Zealand gold rush of the 1860s. Certainly it has been established that Henry brought sufficient money with him from England to purchase five hundred shares of a mining company stock.
	Henry and Salina only lived in New Zealand for two years, during which time their third daughter Salina was born. It was in the latter half of 1872 that they sailed from New Zealand to the west coast of America, arriving at San Francisco in early 1873.
	The family then settled in San Francisco and it was there that five more children were born into the family. This was confirmed by the 1880 Census for San Francisco. This included the name of his oldest son who was named after Henry’s own father Charles Collett.
	Henry G Collett of England was 33 and a ‘col in a cigar factory’. His wife was Salina S Collett aged 32 from Italy who was described as ‘keeping house’. Of the six children born into the family by that time, only five were listed with their parents following the death of Helen ten years earlier.
	These were Florence E Collett from England who was 12 and attending school, Salina E Collett from New Zealand who was 9, Charles W Collett 6, Harry G Collett 2, and Clara L Collett who was just two months old. All of the three youngest children had been born in California.
	Also living with the family on that occasion was James P McSweeney aged 35 and from Ireland, who was a widower who was working as a lithographer.
	Over the next seven years two further children were added to the family, and these were also born while Henry and Salina were still living in San Francisco.
	Tragically when the couple’s youngest child Richard was only three years old, Henry George Collett died in a wagon accident in 1891 and the age of 46. His wife Salina would have been 44 at that time, but what happened to her after the death of her husband has not yet been determined.
	49P1	Florence E Collett		Born in 1867 in London
	49P2	Helen Wakefield Collett		Born in 1869
	49P3	Salina E Collett		Born in 1871 in New Zealand
	49P4	Charles William Collett		Born in 1874
	49P5	Henry George Collett		Born in 1878 in San Francisco
	49P6	Clara L Collett		Born in 1880 in San Francisco
	49P7	Richard Collett		Born in 1885
	49P8	Albert Collett		Born in 1887
49P2	Helen Wakefield Collett was born in New Zealand in 1869 and the birth appears to have taken place within a few months of her parents’ arrival in New Zealand. Three years after she was born her family left New Zealand and sailed to America.
	However, Helen did not make the journey with them as she had died when she was just fifteen months old. The exact details of her death are not known, except to say that she died in a freak accident.
49P4	Charles William Collett was born at San Francisco in 1874 shortly after his parents arrived there from New Zealand. He later married Henrietta Driscoll and the marriage produced two children for Charles and Henrietta, both born while the couple were living in San Francisco.
	49Q1	Charles Elmer Collett		Born in 1903
	49Q2	Edith Collett		Born in 1908
49P7	Richard Collett was born at San Francisco on 24.07.1885. The only other known detail relating to Richard at this time is that he died in January 1971.
49P8	Albert Collett was born at San Francisco on 21.06.1887. He later married Mary O’Brien with whom he had a son Albert Collett junior. The only other detail relating to Albert at this time is that he died in February 1975 while living at Daly City in Mateo in California.
	49Q3	Albert Collett	Date of birth unknown at this time
49Q1	Charles Elmer Collett was born at San Francisco in 1903. It would appear that Charles was married at San Francisco when in his mid-to-late thirties and just prior to America’s involvement in the Second World War. In the event Charles married Marjory Coutts and their marriage produced four children for the couple.
	Marjory Coutts was born in 1916 and was the daughter of Adam Mitchell Coutts (1881–1978) and his wife Elizabeth Reddie. The couple had emigrated to Canada at an earlier time and then inexplicably returned to Scotland around 1915 and 1916, during which time their daughter was born.
	The birth of Charles’ and Marjory’s four children took place while the couple were still living in San Francisco, but shortly after the arrival of their last child the family left San Francisco and moved to Mill Valley at Marin County in California where they spent the rest of their lives together.
	However, despite the family living at San Francisco, the birth of the couple’s second child Charles Elmer junior took place at Oakland in California. This was very likely as a direct result of a change of attitude by the navy’s benefit programme during the war years which allowed the families of enlisted personnel to choose the hospital where their child would be born.
	During his life Charles Elmer Collett was a captain of the Stanford water-polo team, and later the goalkeeper for the United States of America’s 1924 Olympic water-polo team that won the bronze medal at the Paris Olympic Games.
	As a result of his achievements in the world of water-polo, he was later honoured for his contribution to the sport by being selected for the USA Hall of Fame.
	Charles also saw active service during the Second World War when he was a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy. He was involved in the Pacific Campaign for which he received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
	He was eventually promoted to the rank of captain, and on leaving the navy he became a United States District Attorney which he did for about thirty years prior to his retirement. In addition to his interest in sport, he was also an actor in amateur dramatics and an accomplished piano player.
	Charles Elmer Collett lived to be sixty-five and died at Mill Valley in California in 1968 and was followed by Marjory seventeen years later, who died there in 1985 at the age of sixty-nine.
	49R1	Joan Adele Collett		Born in 1942
	49R2	Charles Elmer Collett		Born in 1944
	49R3	Cedric William Collett		Born in 1946
	49R4	Brian Richard Collett		Born in 1948
49Q2	Edith Collett was born at San Francisco in 1908 and survived her brother Charles (above) by eighteen years when she died at Pacifica in California in 1986.
49Q3	Albert Collett, whose date and place of birth are not known at this time, married Anne although there appears to be no record of any children.
49R1	Joan Adele Collett was born at San Francisco in 1942. Her educated had a parallel with that of her father, in that she too was a Stanford graduate. Following her graduation Joan entered the world of education and was a teacher for around twenty-five years.
	At some time in her life Joan married Fred Brown.
	Since the turn of the century, Joan has been an artist and has served with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation In Europe (OCSE) as an observer for elections in Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and East Timor.
49R2	Charles Elmer Collett was born at Oakland in California in 1944. Like his father before him, Charles also seems to have married fairly late in his life judging from the dates of birth of his two children.
	It was in his late thirties that Charles married Lisa Blackburn with whom he had the two children listed below.
	During his younger days, Charles Elmer junior followed in his father’s footstep with his interest in sporting activities. He was in the National Football League with both the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts, with a career that lasted around eleven years.
	More recently in his working life, Charles was and still is a fireman in California with his brother Cedric (below).
	49S1	Ramsey Collett		Born in October 1985
	49S2	Casey Collett		Born in July 1987
49R3	Cedric William Collett was born at San Francisco in 1946. He later married Maggie Lorenz with whom he had two daughters.
	Like his older brother Charles Elmer junior (above), Cedric has been a fireman in California for the past few decades.
	49S3	Jennifer Collett		Born in November 1984
	49S4	Lenka Collett		Born in October 1989
49R4	Brian Richard Collett was born at San Francisco in 1948. He later married Caru Bowns and their marriage produced one son for the couple.
	Today, Brian is a landscape architect with a practice in California.
	And it was Brian that kindly provided the details of the American end of the family that has enabled this family line to be compiled.
	49S5	Michael Charles Collett		Born in November 1985