PART FORTY-EIGHT

The Dudley West Midlands Line

Updated July 2022

This is the family line of cousins John Paul Collett (Ref. 48Q2)

and Elizabeth Maysmor Trenchard nee Collett (Ref. 48Q3) of Somerset

as denoted by the names in capital letters

It is also the family line of Marilyn Stoddard nee Flanagan

who has kindly provided details of the fascinating life of

Sarah Collett (Ref. 48N25) of Sedgley who was married three times

Valuable new information received from Linda Binding in Australia in February 2011

has enabled the family of John Collett (Ref. 48M6) to be confirmed, where previously

there were two options included in an appendix at the end of the file.

In 2021, the second option was revealed as John Collett (Ref. 1M10), born in

Cricklade, the base-born son of Hannah Collett (Ref. 1L10), now inserted in Part 1

The following information is listed here in case it can be confirmed at a later date

Questions have been raised concerning Richard Collett of Dudley who would appear to have been married three times. Recent research has revealed that there were two Richard Colletts born around the same time who came from the Dudley area, both of whom were living in Dudley in April 1871. The only one previously included here in this family line was the Richard (Ref. 48M9) – the bricklayer, who was thought to have been married three times. The ‘new’ Richard Collett was baptised at St Bartholomew’s Church in Wednesbury (not far from Dudley) on 25^th July 1802. He was the son of Abraham Collett and his wife Ann Addich who were married at West Bromwich on 28^th March 1796. This begs the question, was Abraham Collett (Ref. 48L3) the brother of Samuel Collett (Ref. 48L2) who previously started this family line?

This discovery therefore reveals that Richard Collett, the bricklayer of Dudley, was NOT married three times, but just once, and that the other ‘two wives’ were in fact the wives of the second Richard, the farmer.

In 1871 Richard Collett, the bricklayer (Ref. 48M9), was married to Sarah and they were living at Walters Row in Dudley, while the other Richard Collett (Ref. 48M17) – the farmer, was living at St John Street in Dudley with his second wife Hannah and three of their sons.

This file therefore now includes both Richard Colletts in order to clarify all of the details relating to both of their families, the compilation of the first one having been aided by the fact that Richard’s brother George, and his son Noah (also of Walters Row), were also bricklayers.

~~~

Also, in a previous version of this family line there was reference to a Thomas Collett in the introduction who, at that time could not be placed within the family. However, new information gratefully received from Lavinia Phillips (see Ref. 48P10) confirmed the fact that Esther Collett (Ref. 48N13) married Benjamin Moss and in that previous introduction Mary Moss who married Thomas Collett turns out was the sister of Benjamin Moss. This information has therefore helped to tie in the family of Thomas Collett, although not as accurately as one would like. The father of Thomas Collett, who married Mary Moss, was another Thomas Collett, and his father has been revealed as John Collett, and it is he that starts this family line, alongside Samuel Collett from where the original line started. Lavinia Phillips, who died on 3^rd August 2016 when she was 89 years old, also supplied other information to assist in the compilation of this family line.

~~~

There are two other Collett families with a Dudley connection that have not yet been located within this family line and they are (a) William Collett aged 45, his wife Ann 45, and their children Henry Collett 18, Charles Collett 16, and Eliza Collett 14, all of whom appear in the Dudley Census of 1841, and (b) the larger family of Thomas Collett of Colborn Brook near Stourbridge which was living in Dudley in 1891. Thomas was 41, his wife Catherine was 39, and their Dudley born children were Thomas Collett 14, Caroline Collett 13, Clara Collett 11, Samuel Collett 10, Sydney Collett who was seven, and George Collett who was two years of age.

~~~

In addition to this line, there was another Collett family whose children were all born at Dudley after 1860, the details of which can be found in Part 14 – The Bourton-on-the-Water Line (Ref. 14N24).

The reference to Samuel Collett and Ann Clifford as possibly being the parents of Samuel Collett (Ref. 48L2) in the previous version of this file, has been removed and can now be found in the Appendix to Part 5 – The Tewkesbury Line. This follows the receipt from Marilyn Stoddard of a family tree produced by Betty Judge which shows the family of Samuel and Ann to be unrelated to the Collett families of Dudley. Instead, it is now being considered that, according to Alan Stanier, his parents were John Collett (Ref. 14K11) and Sarah Paxford whose family line is depicted in Part 14 – The John Kyte Collett Line.

The excellent Badsey Society website includes a record that might be a clue to the grandfather of John Collett who starts this family line. The earliest record for Wickhamford is that of the baptism of John Collett which took place at the Church of St John the Baptist on 28^th January 1699. He was the son of church warden William Collett and his wife Mary. It is possible that William and Mary had a son named William, since the next record at Wickhamford was the baptism of William Collett on the 19^th July 1730, and he was the son of William Collett and his wife Elizabeth. It is therefore likely that William, husband of Elizabeth, was the William Collett who was buried at the Church of St John the Baptist on 21^st August 1769, unless he was the son of William and Elizabeth.

Another, much later record that has not yet been positively placed, is the marriage by banns of Jane Collett and William Bishop which took place at Wickhamford on 22^nd April 1835, when both bride and groom were unmarried and residents of Wickhamford.

48L1	John Collett may have been born around 1770 and he may have been a cousin to Samuel and Abraham Collett (below), although it is possible that he was a brother to one or other of them, and even William Collett, mentioned in the footnote (below). Despite a thorough search, no suitable parents have been found for either John or Abraham (Ref. 48L3). There is however a common occupation that could link John and Abraham, since it is established that John’s son Thomas was a master gardener, while Abraham’s son Richard was a farmer and gardener.
	Around 1790 or just after, John Collett married Susannah and their known son Thomas was baptised at Throckmorton in Worcestershire. It seems very likely that other children were born into the family but, so far none have been found, apart that is from a Richard, who was baptised at Throckmorton on 14^th March 1802, but was the son of John and Mary Collett rather than John and Susannah. This therefore raises the questions, was he the same John Collett, and was Mary his second wife.
	Footnote: Mary Collett, the daughter of Richard Collett (Ref. 48M17) was born at Dudley in 1854 who, in 1871, was described as the niece of John Collett (Ref. 56m1), who said he was born at Throckmorton in 1808, with whom she was living that census day. John was the son of William and Jane Collett, William having been born in 1775, and so was possibly the younger brother of John Collett (above) born in 1770. It is therefore Throckmorton that is the direct link between Part 48 and Part 56 – The Alcester & Bidford-on-Avon Line.
	48M1	Thomas Collett		Born in 1796 at Throckmorton
	48M2	Richard Collett (not proved)		Baptised on 14.03.1802 at Throckmorton
48L2	SAMUEL COLLETT (Ref. 14L12) was born at Upper Slaughter in Gloucestershire around 1773 and was baptised at the age of four years at St Within’s Church in Worcester on 22^nd October 1777, the son of John Collett and his wife Sarah Paxford, as detailed in Part 14 – The John Kyte Collett Line, Ref. 14K11. Samuel Collett was married by banns to Esther Southall on 13^th January 1794 at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley with whom he had twelve children and all of them were born at Dudley. The wedding was conducted by banns and the witnesses to the church ceremony were W Bridgewater and Joseph Bond. It was also at St Thomas’ Church that all of their children were baptised.
	Esther Southall was the daughter of Joshua Southall and Elizabeth Evans and was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 30^th May 1773 when she was about five years old. The details would seem to suggest that Samuel and Esther were both born around 1770. Double baptisms of their children were carried out at the same church in 1796, 1802, and 1806. However, there is no evidence to indicate that the children involved were twins, and it is more likely that they were born separately when taking into consideration the years in between. Therefore, the dates of birth of the early children listed below are only an approximation, in the absence of any better information.
	Samuel Collett was still alive on the occasion of the first marriage of his youngest daughter Elizabeth Collett in 1839, but it was three years later that he died at Dudley during the second quarter of 1842. Five years prior to that his wife Esther Collett nee Southall had died at Dudley on 29^th July 1837 at the age of 69. That would place her date of birth around 1768, thus making her slightly older than Samuel. The cause of death for Esther was recorded as inflammation of the bowels, while the informant for the family was her son John Collett, who was a carpenter. It is also known that during his life Samuel Collett was a carpenter, as confirmed in the parish register for the baptism and the second marriage of his youngest daughter Elizabeth Collett.
	48M3	Ann Collett				Born in 1794 at Dudley
	48M4	Sarah Collett				Born in 1795 at Dudley
	48M5	Mary Maria Collett				Born in 1797 at Dudley
	48M6	John Collett				Born in 1800 at Dudley
	48M7	Richard Collett				Born in 1802 at Dudley
	48M8	Mary Maria Collett				Born in 1804 at Dudley
	48M9	Richard Collett				Born in 1806 at Dudley
	48M10	William Collett				Born in 1808 at Dudley
	48M11	George Collett				Born in 1810 at Dudley
	48M12	Joseph Collett				Born in 1813 at Dudley
	48M13	Mary Collett				Born in 1815 at Dudley
	48M14	Elizabeth Collett				Born in 1820 at Dudley
48L3	Abraham Collett, like John and Samuel (above), may also have been born in the early 1770s, although no records of his birthplace or parents have been found at this time. What is known is that on 28^th March 1796, Abraham Collett married Ann Addich at West Bromwich. Their three known children were baptised at St Bartholomew’s Church in Wednesbury, Wednesbury being just a short distance from Dudley, when the parents were confirmed as Abraham and Ann Collett. It would also be unreasonable to accept that Abraham and Ann only had those three children, so further work is required. For more information on the Collett families of Wednesbury, go to Part 15 – The Kenilworth & Coventry Line.
	48M15	Richard Collett				Born in 1796 at Wednesbury
	48M16	Martha Collett				Born in 1799 at Wednesbury
	48M17	Richard Collett				Born in 1802 at Wednesbury
48M1	Thomas Collett was born in 1796 and baptised at Throckmorton on 16^th October 1796, the son of John and Susannah Collett. By 1841 Thomas was married to (1) Elizabeth and living with them at Dudley was their son Charles. Thomas had a rounded age of forty, while his wife was older with a rounded age of fifty, and their son Charles was 15. It would appear that Elizabeth died during the following decade, at which time Thomas married the much younger (2) Phoebe with whom he had another son born at Dudley in 1849. No record of the family, or Thomas’ son Charles, has been found in the census of 1851, but by 1871 the family of three was living at 7 Rowley Road in Dudley.
	Thomas Collett of Throckmorton was 73 and his occupation was that of a master gardener at a local nursery. His wife Phoebe from Dudley was 63, and their twenty-one years old son Thomas was working as a whitesmith. As with the family of Abraham’s son Richard (Ref. 48M17), that Collett family also employed a servant at the house in Rowley Road, and that was William Wilkinson aged sixteen from Market Harborough in Leicestershire. During the 1870s, Thomas Collett senior died and also during that same period his son Thomas married Mary Ann Moss, the daughter of Reuben and Mary Moss of Dudley. Following the death of her husband, his widow Phoebe Collett, together with her widowed sister Mary Girzell, were recorded in 1881 as living with Thomas Collett and his wife Mary Ann at Wolverhampton Street in Dudley when Phoebe was 74. Phoebe Collett died during the next few years.
	48N1	Charles Collett				Born in 1825 at Dudley
	48N2	Thomas Collett				Born in 1849 at Dudley
48M3	Ann Collett was born at Dudley and possibly in late 1794. She was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 27^th March 1796 in a joint ceremony with her sister Sarah (below), when her parents were confirmed as Samuel and Esther Collett. She later married Joseph Smith and that took place at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 24^th April 1814 and happened two months after the birth of their first child. The marriage is known to have produced at least three children for the couple and all of them born at Dudley and baptised at the Church of St Thomas. William Smith was bapt. 20^th February 1814, Joseph Smith was bapt. 16^th August 1818 having been born on 31^st July 1818, and Samuel Smith was bapt. 26^th December 1819.
48M4	Sarah Collett was born at Dudley around late 1795. She was baptised in a joint ceremony with her sister Ann (above) on 27^th March 1796 at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley, when her parents were confirmed as Samuel and Esther Collett.
48M5	Mary Maria Collett was born at Dudley possibly in late 1797. She was baptised at the Church of St Thomas in Dudley on 4^th February 1798, the daughter of Samuel and Esther Collett. Sadly, Mary died during that same year.
48M6	John Collett was born at Dudley around 1800 and was baptised with his brother Richard (below) in a joint ceremony at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 19^th September 1802. He was the eldest son of carpenter Samuel Collett and it was logical that he followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a carpenter. His occupation was later confirmed in the death certificate for his mother Esther Collett, who died at Dudley in 1837, when her son John Collett, a carpenter, was named as the informant of her death. It was around twenty-three years prior to the death of his mother when John married Martha Chance at West Bromwich on 22^nd November 1824. Once married the couple settled in Dudley where the four known children of John and Martha were born. However, it may have been during the birth of a fifth child in the first half of the 1830s that Martha died, since she was not recorded living with John and his children in the census of 1841.
	The census that year confirmed that John Collett was a carpenter, and that he had a rounded age of 35 (sic). At that time in his life, he was living at the Minories in Dudley with his four children, John and Mary both aged 13, Catherine who was 11, and Harriet who was nine years old. The parish records confirm that all four of them were baptised at St Thomas’ in Dudley, when they were confirmed as the children of John and Martha Collett. The fact that there were no further children born to John after 1831 would seem to confirm that his wife had died after the birth of their daughter Harriet. In addition to the five members of the Collett family, the census also listed 25 years old Emma Perry as living at the same address, and she may well have been acting as the housekeeper to John Collett and looking after and caring for his children while he was at work.
	By 1851 John’s eldest daughter Mary was married and had already started a family of her own. Living with Mary and her family at 22 George Street in Dudley was John’s youngest daughter Harriet. No record of John or his other two known children have been located at that time in their lives. John himself would have been around fifty years old, but there is a possibility that he had died prior to the census in 1851.
	48N3	Mary Collett				Born in 1825 at Dudley
	48N4	John Collett				Born in 1827 at Dudley
	48N5	Catherine Collett				Born in 1829 at Dudley
	48N6	Harriet Collett				Born in 1831 at Dudley
48M7	Richard Collett was born at Dudley in 1802. He was baptised there in a joint ceremony with his brother John (above) at St Thomas’ Church on 19^th September 1802, the son of Samuel and Esther Collett. Sadly, within the next six months, Richard died at Dudley on 6^th March 1803.
48M8	Mary Maria Collett was born at Dudley around 1804 and was named in the memory of her sister who had already passed away. She was baptised with her brother Richard (below) on 6^th April 1806 at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley. Mary was the third child of the first six children of Samuel and Esther Collett to die within the space of just a few years.
48M9	Richard Collett (the bricklayer) was born at Dudley, and most likely around 1806. He was named after his brother who had died just three years earlier and was baptised at the Church of St Thomas in Dudley on 6^th April 1806 in a joint ceremony with his sister Mary (above) when his parents were confirmed as Samuel and Esther Collett. It was originally thought that Richard may have been married more than once during his life. However, the discovery of another Richard Collett with a similar age and birthplace has led to a complete review of the life of Richard the bricklayer.
	It is established that Richard Collett, the bricklayer, of Dudley did marry Sarah Pearson on 27^th February 1827 at Kingswinford just two miles west of Dudley, and that Sarah was born in 1804. A further link between the two families happened in 1864 when Joseph Collett, the son of Richard’s brother Joseph (below), married Mary Jane Pearson at nearby Stourbridge, just south of Kingswinford. In addition to those two connections, there was a further much later link to the Pearson family. That happened after Richard’s youngest sister Elizabeth Collett (below) married Thomas Whitehouse, and it was their granddaughter Emily Whitehouse who married James Pearson around the end of the century.
	The marriage of Richard Collett and Sarah Pearson initially produced three daughters and two sons prior to the census of 1841. In an earlier version of the family history, it was suggested that Sarah may have died after the birth of the fifth child and that Richard then married Sarah Bedall with whom he had a further two children, the first of which was born before the census of 1841, the other the year after. However, this has been discounted in the light of new research which shows that Sarah Bedall married James Norris at Kidderminster on 8^th September 1839, the same day and place she was previously believed to have married Richard Collett. It must therefore be assumed that Richard was only ever married to Sarah Pearson.
	Although this new information shows that Sarah Pearson survived to old age, there had been two known deaths in the Collett family between 1832 and 1841. They were Richard’s and Sarah’s two sons Samuel and Matthew, both of whom were missing from the family listed at Dudley in 1841. No actual record of the death of Samuel Collett has been found, but Matthew Collett was just over one-year old when he died at Dudley on 8^th April in 1838, when his parents were confirmed as Richard and Sarah Collett.
	For the process of updating this family history, it has been assumed that the Richard Collett who married Sarah Bedall during the third quarter of 1839 was Richard the farmer Collett (Ref. 48M17). The couple’s wedding took place at Kidderminster which does not correspond with the details given in later census records, which indicate that Sarah was of Dudley and not Kidderminster. By the time of the first national census in June 1841 the family of Richard and Sarah Collett was living at Church Field Row in Dudley, and comprised Richard and Sarah, both with a rounded age of 35, and their five surviving children, Sarah aged 14, Eliza aged 12, Esther who was six, and baby son Noah who was only three months old.
	According to the next census in 1851 bricklayer Richard Collett from Dudley was living there at the age of 48. His wife Sarah Collett was also of Dudley and was also 48. Living at Dudley with the couple was their five children, Sarah who was 19, Eliza who was 16, Esther who was 14, Noah who was 10 and Myra Collett who was seven years of age. Every member of the household was recorded as having been born in Dudley. Two years later, during the month of August in 1853, Richard’s daughter Eliza Collett was living at Queens Cross in Dudley from where she was the informant of the death of William Coulson, the second husband of Richard’s youngest sister Elizabeth (below).
	On the occasion of the following census in 1861, the family was incorrectly listed under the name ‘Collin’. Richard of Dudley was 57 and his occupation was that of a bricklayer, while his wife was Sarah who was also 57 and from Dudley. Only the couple’s two youngest children were listed as living with them at Vicarage Prospect on West Wellington Road in Dudley, and they were Noah Collett who was 21 and Myra Collett who was 19, both of them confirmed as having been born at Dudley. By that time Richard’s and Sarah’s three daughters Sarah, Eliza, and Esther were all married with families of their own.
	All of their children had left the family home by 1871, leaving Richard Collett, aged 67 and from Dudley, who was still working as a bricklayer. During the years since the previous census the couple had left Vicarage Prospect and, instead, Richard and Sarah were then living at Walters Row in Dudley, where Sarah Collett of Dudley was 69 (sic). Six years after that, Sarah Collett, nee Pearson, died at Dudley on 9^th February 1977 at the age of 73, following which she was buried at the parish church in Dudley on 15^th February. Her husband survived her by three years when Richard Collett, aged 77, died at Vicarage Prospect in Dudley on 25^th January 1880, after which he was buried with his wife at the parish church on 1^st February.
	48N7	Sarah Collett				Born in 1827 at Dudley
	48N8	Eliza Collett				Born in 1829 at Dudley
	48N9	Samuel Collett				Born in 1832 at Dudley
	48N10	Esther Collett				Born in 1835 at Dudley
	48N11	Matthew Collett				Born in 1837 at Dudley
	48N12	Noah Collett				Born in 1841 at Dudley
	48N13	Myra Collett				Born in 1843 at New Dock, Dudley
48M10	William Collett was born at Dudley possibly in late 1808 and he was baptised there at St Thomas’ Church on 6^th March 1808, the son of Samuel and Esther Collett. William later married Ann and by the time of the June census in 1841 the couple had had three children and were living in Dudley. William Collett, a stone-miner, and his wife Ann both had rounded ages of 30, while their children were Elizabeth Collett, who was nine, Ann Collett, who was five, and Emma Collett who was three years old. Two further children were added to the family, the first not long after the census day. However, just over a year later the couple’s last child was born at Dudley and just prior to the family leaving Dudley for the town of Witney in Oxfordshire.
	It was just after they arrived in Witney that William Collett died during the July to September quarter of 1842. Eight years later, according to the Witney census of 1851, Ann Collett, aged 43 and from Dudley, was a widow and a charwoman staying at the Witney Union Workhouse with four of her five children. They were Ann Marie Collett, aged 14, Emma Collett who was 12, Jane Collett who was 10, and John Collett who was eight years old.
	Ten years later in 1861, it was only Ann’s son John Collett [recorded as Callett] who was still living in the Witney area, when he was 17, and his place of birth was again confirmed at Dudley. No record of any other member of the family has been located, nor is it known what happened to them after 1851. It is also curious that the only baptism record so far found for the children of William and Ann Collett is their daughter Emma who was born on 28^th March 1838 and was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 15^th April 1838.
	48N14	Elizabeth Collett				Born in 1831 at Dudley
	48N15	Ann Marie Collett				Born in 1835 at Dudley
	48N16	Emma Collett				Born in 1838 at Dudley
	48N17	Jane Collett				Born in 1841 at Dudley
	48N18	John Collett				Born in 1842 at Dudley
48M11	George Collett was born at Dudley in 1810 and was baptised on 21^st October 1810 at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley, the son of Samuel and Esther Collett. When he was twenty-seven, he married (1) Jane Brickes and the marriage took place on 27^th December 1837 at Tipton just one mile from Dudley. Around nine months later and during the third quarter of the following year Jane presented George with the first of their two children, both of which were born at Dudley. By June 1841 the family of three was recorded in the census as living in the Cross Guns to Freebodies Lane district of Dudley. George had a rounded age of 30, Jane was 25, and their son Thomas was two years of age. All three were simply listed as having been born within the county of Worcestershire.
	Within two years of the census day in 1841 the size of the family was increased with the arrival of the couple’s second son in the first three months of 1843. Tragically when the new baby was just over two years old George’s wife Jane died leaving her husband with his two young sons to look after. The Dudley census of 1851 confirmed that George, aged 39, was a widower, and that living with him were his two sons Thomas, aged 12, and Samuel who was six years old. It is of interest that on the occasion of the census of 1841 and 1851, and at the registration of his wife’s death, the surname was recorded as Cullett whereas on all other occasions it was Collett. It would appear that George remained a widower for almost nine years that is, until he married (2) Eliza Turner at Dudley during the first three months of 1854. Eliza was the daughter of Arthur and Sarah Turner of Dudley.
	It is worth pointing out at this stage that Eliza Turner was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 28^th March 1802 and that she was around two years old at the time. It is very likely that she gave a much younger age in the census records because she was ten years older than George and was done to save embarrassment for the couple. Her greater age would also account for the reason why their marriage produced no further children for George, as Eliza would have been 54 compared to her husband who was 44.
	Six years later, at the time of the census of 1861, George was 49 and was working as a bricklayer. He and his family were living at Angel Street in Dudley where his wife was listed as Eliza who was 48 and born at Dudley. With the couple were George’s two sons Thomas 21 and Samuel 17. Also staying with the family at that time was George’s nephew, eleven years old Thomas Whitehouse of Dudley. He was the son of George’s younger sister Elizabeth Collett (below) and her late husband Thomas Whitehouse senior who had died in the early 1850s. It is interesting to note in both 1861 and 1871 that George’s sister Elizabeth Hill nee Collett, formerly Elizabeth Whitehouse (below) was also living in Angel Street in Dudley.
	It seems very likely that during the 1860s George died at Dudley since no record of him has so far been found in the census of 1871. Instead, his widow Eliza ‘Cullett’ was still living at Dudley and, on that occasion, she gave her age more accurately as being 70 years old. On that occasion, in April 1871, Eliza was living with her stepson Samuel and his wife Elizabeth at Dock Lane Court in Dudley, where Elizabeth’s mother Ann Haden was also living at that time. Eliza only survived for a further three and a half years when she died at Dudley during the last quarter of 1874 aged 74, thus confirming her year of birth as 1800.
	48N19	Thomas Collett	Born in 1838 at Dudley
	48N20	Samuel Collett	Born in 1843 at Dudley
48M12	Joseph Collett was born at Dudley in late 1812 or early in 1813 and was baptised there at St Thomas’ Church on 28^th March 1813, the youngest son of Samuel and Esther Collett. Joseph married Esther Hartshorn by banns at the parish church in Kingswinford on 12^th September 1838. The marriage certificate confirmed the following details for the couple. Joseph was a carpenter and bachelor of full age and was residing at Buck Pool prior to the wedding. Buck Pool was an area between Brierley Hill and Wordsley and was formerly known as Brewer Street. Joseph’s father was acknowledged as Samuel Collett carpenter deceased. Spinster Esther’s father was Edward Hartshorn a collier deceased, and her address was also stated as being Buck Pool. The witnesses at the ceremony were Joseph’s youngest sister Elizabeth Collett (below), and William Taylor.
	By June 1841 the marriage had produced the couple’s first child. At that time the family of three was living with Esther’s widowed mother sixty years old Hannah Hartshorn and her sister Sarah Hartshorn at Grave Yard in Sedgley, just north of Dudley, and within the Dudley, Wolverhampton and Seisdon registration district. Joseph and Esther were both listed with a rounded age of 25, while their son Samuel, who was named after the child’s grandfather, was one-year old. It is possible that Esther was with child on the day of the census, since later than same year she gave birth to a daughter Sarah who was born at Sedgley.
	The next child was also born at Sedgley but after that the family moved to Dudley where the couple’s fourth child was born. The census of 1851 recorded the family living at Dudley where Joseph was 37 and a carpenter, Esther was 35, their daughter Sarah was nine, and sons Joseph and Richard were seven and four respectively. The couple’s first-born child Samuel was not listed with the family on that occasion as he had died almost exactly one year after the previous census. At the time of the 1861 Census the name was spelt with just one ‘t’. The family was confirmed as living at Vicarage Prospect on the West Wellington Road in Dudley and comprised Joseph 47, his wife Esther 46, and their two sons Joseph of Sedgley who was 17 and Richard of Dudley who was 15, both working with their father.
	Joseph’s occupation was that of a carpenter and his place of birth was confirmed as Dudley, whereas his wife had been born at Sedgley. Living with the family was their married, but separated, daughter Sarah Guest, aged 19, who was expecting the birth of her second child and had with her, her one-year-old son Thomas Guest. The next census of 1871 confirmed that Joseph was 56, that Esther was 54, and that their son and his wife and their first child were living with them at Dudley. Richard Collett was 24, his wife Elizabeth was 23, and their daughter Sarah was not yet one-year old. Also living with them that day was Joseph’s twice married and widowed daughter Sarah Bowen (formerly Guest), aged 29, who had with her, her three children Rachel Bowen aged four, John Bowen who was one year old, and Joseph Collett Guest who was nine years of age.
	Six years later, on 10^th March 1877, Joseph died while he and Esther were living at 24 Cromwell Street on Kates Hill in Dudley. He was 63 and a carpenter and the cause of death was cancer in the stomach. Esther was present at his passing and it was she also that informed the authorities. Following the death of her husband, Esther went to live with her son Richard and his family. That was recorded in the 1881 Census when Esther was listed as a widow and a servant aged 66 while living at the Dudley home of Richard Collett. Also living in the house at 29 Price Street was two of Esther’s grandsons. The first was Joseph Guest, aged 19, the second child of her daughter Sarah from her first marriage, while the other grandson was John Bowen, the son from her daughter Sarah’s second marriage. Just over ten years later Esther died at 16 Price Street on Kates Hill in Dudley on 24^th December 1890 at the age of 74. The death certificate revealed that the cause of death was paralysis and bronchitis, and that the informant was her daughter Sarah Flanagan of 29 Stone Street in Dudley who was present at the death.
	48N21	Samuel Collett				Born in 1839 at Sedgley
	48N22	Sarah Collett				Born in 1841 at Sedgley
	48N23	Joseph Collett				Born in 1843 at Sedgley
	48N24	Richard Collett				Born in 1846 at Dudley
48M13	Mary Collett was born at Dudley on 15^th November 1815 and was named after her two older sisters, both of whom had died while very young. She was nearly three years old when she was baptised at Dudley in the Church of St Thomas on 1^st November 1818, the daughter of Samuel and Esther Collett.
48M14	Elizabeth Collett was born at Dudley in late 1819 or very early in 1820 and like all of her eleven siblings before her she was baptised there in St Thomas’ Church on 9^th January 1820, the last child of carpenter Samuel Collett and his wife Esther. During her life she had three husbands. On the first occasion she married (1) Thomas Whitehouse at the Parish Church in Rowley Regis in Staffordshire on 8^th July 1839, the witnesses being John Breasier and Edward Bridgewater. The parish register confirmed she was a spinster of Tividale (between Dudley and West Bromwich) and that her father’s name was Samuel Collett, a carpenter. That marriage produced three children for Elizabeth and Thomas, and they were Samuel Whitehouse, Emily Whitehouse, and Thomas Whitehouse. The census for Dudley in 1851 listed the family living at 183 Minories as Elizabeth 30, Thomas 33, and their children Samuel, who was five, Emily, who was three, and one-year old Thomas junior. However, not longer after that census day, Thomas Whitehouse senior died.
	It was just four months after his death that Elizabeth Whitehouse married William Coulson on 3^rd August 1851 at the Church of St Thomas in Birmingham. Both gave their place of residence as Washington Street, and while William was a bachelor and a saddler, the son of baker John Coulson, Elizabeth was curiously listed as a spinster rather than a widow. Tragically for Elizabeth, they were only married for two years, when William Coulson died on 9^th August 1853, aged 34. The couple was living at Queen’s Cross in Dudley at the time, and the informant of the death was Eliza Collett of Queen’s Cross. Eliza was the daughter of Elizabeth’s older brother Richard Collett (above).
	Six months later Elizabeth married (3) Eli Hill on 6^th February 1854 at Netherton within the parish of Dudley. On that occasion Elizabeth Coulson [Coleson] was recorded as being a widow aged 34, while Eli was a bachelor of 35 and his occupation was that of a miner. Both were listed as being residents of Queen’s Cross. Elizabeth’s father was again confirmed as carpenter Samuel Collett (deceased), and likewise Eli’s father was named as tailor William Hill (deceased). The witnesses at the wedding were James MacKay and Elizabeth Binal.
	That second marriage produced just one child for Elizabeth and Eli with the birth of a son. By 1861 the family was living at 21 Angel Street in Dudley and comprised Elizabeth, aged 42, and coal miner Eli also 42 of Wolverley, and their son William was four years old. Also living with the family were two of Elizabeth’s three children from her first marriage, they being Samuel Whitehouse and Emily Whitehouse. It was also in Angel Street that Elizabeth’s brother George Collett (above) was living at that time in 1861 and staying with him was Elizabeth’s other son Thomas Whitehouse.
	Elizabeth and Eli Hill were still living at Angel Street in Dudley in April 1871 when both of them were 52 and their son William Hill was then 14. Also living at the same house at 21 Angel Street but as boarders was Elizabeth’s son Thomas Whitehouse and his wife and child. It was on 2^nd September 1872 that Elizabeth Hill, formerly Coulson, formerly Whitehouse, nee Collett, died at 7 Angel Street in Queen’s Cross, Dudley at the age of 53. Present at her passing was her husband Eli Hill, and the cause of her death was stated as ‘scirrhus uteri’. By April 1881, Eli Hill, aged 62 and from Wolverley in Worcestershire, was recorded as a widower living at No. 52 Court, Queen’s Cross in Dudley with his son William Hill who was a bachelor of 24 from Dudley. Both of them were described as unemployed coal miners.
	48N25	Samuel Whitehouse				Born in 1845 at Dudley
	48N26	Emily Whitehouse				Born in 1847 at Dudley
	48N27	Thomas Whitehouse				Born in 1849 at Dudley
	The following is the only child of Elizabeth Collett by her third husband Eli Hill:
	48N28	William H Hill				Born in 1856 at Dudley
48M15	Richard Collett was born at the end of 1796 and was baptised on 26^th December that year, at the Church of St Bartholomew in Wednesbury, the eldest of the three known children of Abraham and Ann Collett. With a further son of the couple also given the name Richard, it is more than likely that their first son of the name died during the first few years of his life, although no such death or burial record has been discovered.
48M16	Martha Collett was born in 1799 and was baptised at Wednesbury on 8^th September 1799 at St Bartholomew’s Church, the daughter of Abraham Collett and Ann Addich. She was nearly thirty years of age when Martha Collett married Henry Boonham at St Bartholomew’s Church on 22^nd February 1929. In the first national census conducted in June 1841, Henry Boonham and his family were living at St Paul Street in Walsall, where he had a rounded age of 35. His wife Martha was 40 and their five children were Ann Boonham who was 15, Ellen Boonham who was 12, Joseph Boonham who was eight, Margaretta Boonham who was five, and John Boonham who was two.
	By 1851, Henry Boonham from Kingsbury, was 45 and a bridle cutter and licenced victualler, was residing at St Pauls Walk in Walsall with his family. Martha from Willenhall (Wednesbury lies within that area) was 50 and their children that year were Joseph who was 18, Margaret who was 14, John who was 11, William Boonham who was nine, James Boonham who was seven and Elizabeth Boonham who was four. All of the children had been born in Walsall. It was at St Peters Row in Walsall in 1861 where Henry was 55 and just a bridle cutter, Martha was 60, when the same six children were still living there with the couple, but ten years older. No record of Henry and Martha has been unearthed for the day of the next census in 1871, although four years later, the death of Martha Boonham was recorded at Walsall (Ref. 6b 414) during the second quarter of 1875 when she was 74. It was on 1^st May 1875 that she was buried at St Margaret’s Church on Chapel Lane in Great Barr. Just over one year later, the death of Henry Boonham was also recorded at Walsall (Ref. 6b 394) during the third quarter of 1876 when he was 71 years of age.
48M17	Richard Collett (the farmer) was born in 1802 and was baptised at St Bartholomew’s Church in Wednesbury on 25^th July 1802, the son of Abraham and Ann Collett. Richard was married when he was in his late forties and seems to have been a man of mystery in his younger years, since no record of him has been found in the census of 1841, or 1851 by which time it is known that he was married. Richard married (1) Esther Broad at Cheltenham during the first three months of 1850. Tragically, it would appear, that Esther died before the marriage produced any children for the couple, perhaps even during childbirth. Following the loss of his wife, it would seem, that prior to 1854 or at the start of that year, Richard married (2) Hannah Day with whom he had four children, three of which were born before the census in 1861. It also seems likely that Hannah was with child on the day of the census that year.
	On that day, April the seventh in 1861, the family was living at Dixons Green in Dudley. Richard Collett, aged 58, was no longer working as a farmer and his occupation was that of a gardener and day worker. His wife Hannah Collett, aged 48, had been born at Himley just south of Wombourne in Staffordshire, while their three children Mary Collett, who was seven, John Collett, who was five, and William Collett who was three, had all been born at Dudley. Richard’s place of birth was curiously listed as Thomastown in Worcestershire which was a reference to the area of Dudley known as St Thomas Town, so named after the parish church. It was perhaps Richard’s former occupation as a farmer that had brought some wealth to the family, since the census of 1861 also listed a nurse/housemaid living with the family. She was 16-year-old Ellen Hartill of Dudley.
	By 1871 the family was living at St John Street in Dudley where Richard was 67 and of Worcestershire, his wife Hannah was 58 and from Staffordshire, and the children still living with them on that occasion were their sons John who was 14, William who was 13, and Thomas who was nine years old, and all of Worcestershire. On that same day, the couple’s eldest child Mary Collett, from Dudley, was 17 with no stated occupation, when she was recorded at the Broom home of her uncle, shoemaker, John Collett and his wife Mary Ann Collett from Cropthorne in Worcestershire. Richard died just prior to the census in April 1881. The census return stated that Hannah was a widow aged 67 and that she was living at 47 St John Street in Dudley with her two youngest sons, William who was 23 and Thomas who was 19. Hannah’s place of birth was confirmed as Himley in Staffordshire.
	Ten years later in 1891 widow Hannah Collett from Himley was seventy-seven and was still living at 47 St John Street, and still living with her were her two bachelor sons William and Thomas. Also living with the family at that time was Amelia Lloyd, aged 13 and from Dudley, who was employed as a general servant. It must be assumed that Hannah passed away during the next few years, since no record of her has been found in the census of 1901.
	48N29	Mary Collett				Born in 1854 at Dudley
	48N30	John Collett				Born in 1856 at Dudley
	48N31	William Collett				Born in 1857 at Dudley
	48N32	Thomas Collett				Born in 1861 at Dudley
48N1	Charles Collett was born in 1825 and was the son of Thomas Collett and his first wife Elizabeth. Charles was fifteen at the time of the census on 1841 when he was living with his parents in Dudley, where it is likely that he was born, although no later census records have been found to verify this.
48N2	Thomas Collett was born at Dudley in 1849 and was the son of Thomas Collett and his second wife Phoebe. He first appeared in the Dudley census of 1861 at the age of thirteen, and ten years after he was twenty-one when he was living at 7 Rowley Road in Dudley with his parents. It seems highly likely that, prior to that date, he was introduced to the Moss family by his cousin Esther Collett (below) through her married in 1855 to Benjamin Moss the son of Reuben Moss. The Moss family comprised father Reuben who was baptised in Dudley at the Church of St Thomas on 29^th October 1809, his wife Mary who was born in 1810, and their two children Benjamin who was born in 1833 and Mary who was born in 1836. Reuben Moss was a whitesmith and, on leaving school Thomas Collett was probably employed by Reuben who taught him the trade of a whitesmith.
	A whitesmith is a person who works with "white" or light-colored metals such as tin and pewter. While blacksmiths work mostly with hot metal, whitesmiths do the majority of their work on cold metal, making things such as tin or pewter cups, water pitchers, forks, spoons, and candle holders.
	In 1871 the Moss family was recorded was residing in Dudley where Reuben was 61, his wife Mary was 60, and living there with them was their daughter Mary Moss who was 34. Thirty years earlier the complete family comprised Reuben 30, Maria 30, Benjamin, who was eight, and Mary who was five. Through his working relationship, Thomas Collett became friendly with Reuben’s much older daughter Mary Moss whom he eventually married during the 1870s, possibly around the time of the death of his father. Perhaps because of her advanced years, the marriage did not produce any children for the couple.
	By the time of the census of 1881 Thomas Collett of Dudley was 31 and by then he had taken over a draper’s shop at 177 and 178 Wolverhampton Street in Dudley. Living there with him was his wife Mary Ann Collett who was 44, together with his father-in-law Reuben Moss, aged 71, who was described as a whitesmith. Also living with Thomas and Mary was Thomas’ widowed mother Phoebe Collett who was 74 and from Dudley, and her widowed sister Mary Girzell who was 71. Working for Thomas Collett in his draper’s shop was draper’s assistant Emily Ward who was twenty-eight and from Dudley.
	What happened after 1881 is not known precisely but, in addition to the deaths of Thomas’ mother and his parents-in-law, it would appear that his wife Mary also died. All of that prompted Thomas to leave Dudley and he moved to Bradford. However, following the death of his first wife Thomas married another Mary Ann of Dudley who was four years younger than Thomas. It seems logically that the couple met while they were in Dudley, but whether they were married there has not been discovered. Thomas and Mary were living in Bradford from around 1885 and it was there, during the following year, that the first of their four children was born. All four children were born at Bradford where the family appeared to have settled for the rest of their life. In 1891 Thomas Collett of Dudley was 41, while his wife Mary Ann also of Dudley was 37, and with them were their two sons Frederick William who was four and one-year old Harry, and their daughter Edith Annie who was three. During the next ten years three more children were added to the family.
	Although one more child was added to the family before the end of the century, there was a tragedy in the family when son Harry died since he was not listed with the family in either 1901 or 1911. According to the Bradford census of 1901, Thomas Collett was 51, Mary A Collett was 47, and their children were Frederick Wm Collett 14, Edith A Collett who was 13, and Sidney was seven years old. Thomas’ occupation on that occasion was stated as being that of a commercial traveller in steel, so during his working life he had gone from whitesmith, to manager of a draper’s store, to selling steel items, perhaps the tin or pewter cups, water pitchers, forks, spoons, and candle holders, previously mentioned. By April 1911 the family was still living in Bradford where Thomas Collett from Dudley was 61, his wife Mary Ann Collett was 57, and the three children still living with them were Frederick William Collett, who was 24, Edith Annie who was 23, and Sidney Collett who was 17.
	48O1	Frederick William Collett				Born in 1886 at Bradford
	48O2	Edith Annie Collett				Born in 1887 at Bradford
	48O3	Harry Collett				Born in 1889 at Bradford
	48O4	Sidney Collett				Born in 1893 at Bradford
48N3	Mary Collett was born at Dudley towards the end of 1825, almost one year after her parents were married there in November 1824. Mary was only a few months old when she was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 12^th February 1826, the eldest child of John Collett and his wife Martha Chance. At the time of the census in 1841, Mary Collett and her brother John (below) were both recorded as being 13 years old, when in fact she was 15. On that occasion they were living at the Minories in Dudley with their father and their two younger siblings Catherine and Harriet. Mary’s mother had died during the previous decade, and she and her brother and sisters were being cared for by Emma Perry aged 25, while her father carried on the family occupation of being a carpenter.
	It was around 1847 when Mary was 22 that she married Sargent Parsons who was baptised at the Church of St Thomas in Dudley on 27^th April 1823, the son of John and Frances Parsons. By the time of the census in 1851, Mary had presented her husband with their first two children, when she and her family were living at 22 George Street in Dudley. Mary’s husband was recorded in error as Serjent Parsons, who was 27 and a shoe maker. Mary was 26, and their two daughters were Martha Parsons, who was two years old, and Harriet Parsons who was eleven months old. Living with the family was Mary’s youngest sister Harriet Collett, aged 20, who was a housemaid and described as sister-in-law.
	Over the following years, further children were added to the family, although no record of the family has been located in the census of 1861. Ten years later, Mary Parsons was 45 and was still living in Dudley were her husband Sargent Parsons, aged 49, her daughters Martha (Maria) Parson who was 23, and Amelia Parsons who was 12, and her son William Henry Parsons who was 14. In 1871, Harriet Parsons married William Dark at Dudley, the marriage producing three children for the couple. Ten years later the census in 1881, confirmed that Mary and Sargent Parsons and their family were living at Court No. 3 on Newhall Street in Dudley, from where Sargent, aged 56, was still employed as a shoe maker. Mary was 55, and the only children still living with them were William H Parsons, aged 24 and a clog maker, and Amelia Parsons who was 22 and a dressmaker.
48N4	John Collett was born at Dudley in 1827 and baptised at the Church of St Thomas on 15^th July 1827, the only son of John and Martha Collett. In the Dudley census of 1841, he was recorded by his widowed father as being 13 years of age, the same as his sister Mary (above) who was actually nearly two years older. No record of John, or his father or his sister Catherine, has been found in the census if 1851. However, it is known that John married Susan Smith at Stourbridge (Ref. 18 706) during the fourth quarter of 1851, the daughter of Mary Turner. The marriage producing a total of nine children within the following twenty years with the first six being born and baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley, when they were confirmed as the children of John and Susan Collett.
	By April 1861 the family was living at Bath Street in Dudley and comprised John who was 33 and a carpenter and joiner, Susan who was 31, and their children Mary Ann Collett who was eight, John Collett who was six, Sarah J Collett who was three, and nine-month-old twins Thomas and Edward. Every member of the family had been born at Dudley. Also living with them was Susan’s older unmarried sister Elizabeth Smith, who was 40 and also from Dudley. The surname was recorded as Collet in 1861, and just a year later the family of John and Susan was completed with the birth of their last child.
	It was on just over one year later, that John and his entire family travelled down to London, from where they sailed on 23^rd July 1863 on board the sailing ship Brother’s Pride, bound for New Zealand. The total cost of the assisted passage to the Provincial Government for the majority of each single man and woman was 13 pounds and 6 shillings. The cost of the voyage for the Collett family amounted to 66 pounds and 10 shillings. The 1236-ton ship, built at Sackville in New Brunswick, Canada in 1852 measured 179 feet long by 37 feet wide. The vessel’s passenger list recorded the Collett family as follows:
	John Collett, aged 36 and a carpenter, Susan Collett aged 35, Mary Ann Collett aged 10 years, John Collett who was eight, Sarah Jane Collett who was six, Edward Collett who was two, Thomas Collett who was also two, and Elizabeth Collett who was one-year old. The total number of passengers on board the ship was 371, of which only 120 were males of the aged 15 years and upwards. That included 69 from England, 48 from Scotland, and 3 from Ireland.
	The edition of The Lyttelton Times published on 8^th December announced the imminent arrival of the ships Bahia and Brother's Pride in the following way. “During the whole of yesterday the signals on the flagstaff at Diamond Harbour announced two vessels in sight. They were seen in offing on Sunday evening towards dusk. Early on Monday morning Captain Sproul left with his man, and on boarding the Bahia, and on enquiry made out the other to be the Brother’s Pride, both from London. They left at the latter end of July, about the 22nd and 23rd. The Bahia was seven weeks in getting to the line and was there becalmed. The Brother’s Pride met with similar drawbacks and, in addition, has had to put into the Cape for medical and other necessaries. The circumstances will, to some extent, account for their non-appearance earlier. The Bahia is anchored off Port Levy Heads, and the other some distance to the north of Godley Head. Captain Sproul is on board the Bahia; all her passengers are well. It is not intended to bring her to the anchorage till the south-west gale moderates.”
	The Brother’s Pride arrival at Lyttelton on 8^th December 1863 was the end of an horrendous 103 days voyage and, two days after the first published item in The Lyttleton Times (above), there was printed the following article in the same newspaper on 10^th December 1863. This read as follows:
	“On Tuesday last we briefly noticed the arrival of this vessel at the Heads, and although we possessed the information, since proved to be too true, respecting the amount of sickness on board, for the sake of the friends on shore we refrained from publishing the melancholy intelligence that forty-four deaths had occurred during the passage. In our columns will be found a list of sufferers as well as the number of births. We hear that Captain Sproul, on board the vessel, was refused the charge of the ship, and the offer of the pilot to place his boat and crew at the service of the ship to obtain fresh supplies for the sick children was also refused.
	On Tuesday evening the anchor was raised and sail made before half a gale of wind blowing from the south-west, and at daylight the next morning the vessel was out of sight. She returned yesterday morning when off Camp Bay, and was immediately ordered to hoist the Yellow Jack. This pre-emptory order of the Health Commissioner not appearing to suit this cavalier officer, in two or three hours the anchor was again up and, with the assistance of the light breeze from the north-east, the Brother's Pride was brought up just astern of the Lancashire Witch. We presume the authorities will not permit their orders, to be set at defiance, and the law treated with contempt.”
	Included in the 44 deaths that occurred during the voyage was that of the twins Thomas Collett, who died on 26^th November 1863, and Edward Collett who died on 29^th November 1863, within one week of the ship’s arrival in New Zealand. And tragically for the family, just three weeks earlier, John Collett, age 8½, died on 2^nd November 1863. Susan was expecting the birth of the couple’s seventh child on their arrival in Christchurch, and three months later she successfully presented John with another son, who was named John. Two more children were subsequently added to the family but in 1869 when the family was still living in Christchurch John and Susan’s daughter Elizabeth died at the age of 17, making her the fourth child death in the family.
	On Tuesday 29^th December 1863 The Lyttelton Times printed a long letter sent to the Editor from the Surgeon of the Brother's Pride, giving an account of what had happened during the voyage. Because the boat had been in quarantine for two weeks, all communication with the shore had been forbidden and he had not been able to respond to the remarks and gossip. There was an Inquiry into the voyage and conditions. Commissioners visited Camp Bay and a number of passengers made a statement, amongst them one from John Collett. He said, as a married immigrant on Brother's Pride that he had lost three children on the voyage. He further added, that the decks were always very wet, and when we were crossing the line (the Equator), six or seven sailors came into my berth and demanded money. (This referred to a practice of paying up or being shaved when crossing the line; and general conditions on the boat). In addition to this, the passengers of the Brother's Pride also prepared a written petition to the Provincial Government requesting that inquiries be made, a copy of which is available at the Christchurch Branch of National Archives.
	It is currently not known what happened to the family after their traumatic arrival in New Zealand, except that the family was residing at Canal Reserve in 1880/81 and at Devonport near Auckland in 1889 when their youngest son died. It was there also that John and Susan were living nine years later when Susan Collett nee Smith suffered a cardiac arrest and died on 26^th February 1908. She was followed six years later by her husband John Collett who died at Devonport on 4^th September 1914. His age at that time was given in error as 93, and that may be from a transcription error of the year he was born, being 1827, but misinterpreted as 1821. The death certificate also confirmed that his parents were John and Martha Collett, formerly Chance, and that he was a retired builder.
	A single headstone in the O’Neill’s Point Cemetery at Auckland includes the names of John, his wife Susan, and their eldest daughter Mary Ann, as follows: “In Memory of Susan, beloved wife of John Collett, died 26^th February 1908 aged 83 – a precious one from us is gone, a voice we loved is stilled, a place is vacant in our home which now cannot be filled – Also John Collett, dearly beloved husband of the above, died September 4^th 1914 aged 93 years – Also Mary Ann Collett, beloved daughter of the above, died April 5^th 1927 aged 74 years”. Also buried at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery was John and Susan’s youngest son John Collett, together with his wife Lucinda Ann and their unmarried daughter Mary Lucinda.
	It is very interesting that the death certificates for both John and Susan show that they only had one male child and two female children still living at the time of their passing, out of a total of nine children, and they were Mary Ann Collett, Sarah Jane Kelsall nee Collett, and the second John Collett. New information received in 2016 from Bruce Robertson of Canberra in Australia, a great great grandson of John Collett, indicates that John and Susan had rented land and built a house on it, which was burnt down, leaving the couple bankrupt and owing over 206 pounds. Included in that sum was an outstanding debt of 35 pounds, that being the final payment of the family’s sea journey to New Zealand.
	According to the G R MacDonald Dictionary of Canterbury Biographies in the Christchurch Museum, “John Collett, in 1869, lost everything in a fire and in 1870 he was declared bankrupt. He had rented a piece of land from Harman and Stevens and had built a house on it. Harman and Stevens had claimed the house for rent. There was no opposition and his Honour, Justice Gresson, made the final order of discharge in January 1871.
	48O5	Mary Ann Collett				Born in 1852 at Dudley
	48O6	John Collett				Born in 1854 at Dudley
	48O7	Sarah Jane Collett				Born in 1856 at Dudley
	48O8	Thomas Collett				Born in 1860 at Dudley
	48O9	Edward Collett				Born in 1860 at Dudley
	48O10	Elizabeth Collett				Born in 1862 at Dudley
	48O11	John Collett				Born in 1864 at Christchurch
	48O12	Eliza Collett				Born in 1866 at Christchurch
	48O13	Ellen Collett				Born in 1866 at Christchurch
	48O14	Thomas Edward Collett				Born in 1871 at Christchurch
48N5	Catherine Collett was born at Dudley in 1829 and was baptised there on 10^th May 1929 at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley, the daughter of John and Martha Collett. She was 11 years old in the census of 1841 when she was living at the Minories in Dudley with her family. After a further ten years, Catherine Collett from Dudley was 21 and an unmarried house servant at the home of Owen and Margaret Lewis from Anglesey on Everton Road in the West Derby area of Merseyside.
48N6	Harriet Collett was born at Dudley in 1831, where she was baptised St Thomas’ Church on 3^rd April 1831 the youngest of the four children of John Collett and Martha Chance. It seems highly likely that Harriet’s mother either died during the birth, or at the birth of a subsequent child who also did not survive. At the time of the Dudley census of 1841 Harriet Collett was nine years old, when she was living at the Minories in Dudley with her widowed father and her three old siblings. Following the marriage of her eldest sister Mary (above), it would appear that Harriet went to live with her married sister, where she was employed as a housemaid. That was confirmed in the Dudley census of 1851, when ‘Harriett’ Collett, aged 20 and from Dudley, was living at 22 George Street with Mary and her husband and their two young children. On that occasion Harriet was described as the unmarried sister-in-law of head of the household Sargent Parsons.
48N7	Sarah Collett was born in 1827 according to the census of 1841 in which she was listed with her family living at Church Field Row in Dudley at the age of fourteen. Whilst baptism records have been found at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley for her next three siblings, no such record has been found for Sarah. No record Sarah or her family have been found in the 1851 Census, but thirty months later she married Richard Hawkins at Dudley where the marriage was registered during the third quarter of 1853. Over the next decade Sarah presented her husband with the first four of their six known children.
	All of the children were born at Dudley and, in April 1861, Sarah and her family were living at Vicarage Prospect in West Wellington Road in Dudley, where her married sister Eliza (below) and their parents Richard and Sarah Collett were also living at that time. The census return listed the family as Richard Hawkins, a coalminer who was 38, and his dressmaker wife Sarah who was 34. The couple’s four children at that time were Sarah Hawkins, who was six, Eliza Hawkins who was four, Samuel Hawkins, who was two, and Alma Hawkins who was just two months old, with every member of the family having been born at Dudley.
	Sadly, baby Alma Hawkins did not survive beyond infancy, but the loss to the family was partially compensated by the birth of another daughter just after. So, by the time of the next census in 1871, the family comprised Richard who was 48, Sarah who was 44, and their daughters Sarah who was 16, Eliza who was 14, and Myra Hawkins who was seven. By that time the family had left Vicarage Prospect and was living at Furnace Row in Dudley, and although their son Samuel was not included with the family, he was back living with his mother by 1881. According to the Dudley census of 1881, Sarah Hawkins was a widow of 54, and living with her was her son Samuel, who was 22 and a bachelor working as a nail warehouseman, and her daughter Myra who was 17 and a machinist working in the boot trade. On that occasion the family was living at 14 Himley Street in Dudley.
48N8	Eliza Collett was born at Dudley in 1829 where she was baptised at St Thomas’ Church on 25^th October 1829, the baptism record confirming that she was the daughter of Richard and Sarah Collett. By the time of the census of June 1841 Eliza was recorded with her family aged twelve years when living at Church Field Row in Dudley. During the second quarter of 1853, Eliza married James Castle at Dudley but it would appear from the subsequent census returns that the marriage never produced any children for Eliza and James. By 1861 the couple were living at Vicarage Prospect in Wellington Road in Dudley, where Eliza’s sister Sarah Hawkins (above) and their parents were also living at that time. James Castle of Dudley was a shoeing-smith aged 35, and his wife Eliza was 31 and employed as a boot binder.
	Ten years later in 1871, the childless couple were 45 and 41 respectively and by then had moved to Furnace Row in Dudley, where Eliza’s sister Sarah and her family were also living on that occasion. By 1881 James and Eliza were still living at 5 Furnace Row where James was 55 and was still working as a shoeing-smith, while Eliza was 51 and was still working in the boot trade. The couple later moved house and ended up living very close to Eliza’s widowed sister Sarah. Sarah was living at 14 Himley Street in 1881, and it was at 45 Himley Street in Dudley that James 65 and Eliza 60 were living in 1891, when James was described as a blacksmith.
48N9	Samuel Collett was born at Dudley on 31^st August 1832 and it was there that he was baptised at the church of St Thomas on 16^th September 1832. His absence from the family in the 1841 Census probably indicates that he suffered an infant death, although no actual record has been found to confirm this.
48N10	Esther Collett was born at Dudley in 1835 and she was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 25^th January 1835, a daughter of Richard Collett and Sarah Pearson. By the time of the 1841 in June that year, Esther was six years old, when she was living with her family at Church Field Row in Dudley. The marriage of Esther Collett and Benjamin Moss was conducted at St Edmund’s Church in Dudley on 11^th September 1855, when Esther’s father was confirmed as Richard Collett, and Benjamin was named as the son of Reuben Moss. By 1861 the marriage had produced two children for the couple, who were living at Dixons Green in Dudley. The census that year described Benjamin as being of Dudley, aged 27, and with an occupation as a draughtsman working within a fire fender iron manufacturing company.
	His wife Esther of Dudley was 25, and their two children on that occasion were Reuben Moss who was two years and one-year-old Milton Moss, both sons having been born at Dudley. Two more boys were born into the family during the next decade and, during that period, the family left Dixons Green and moved to Vicarage Prospect in Dudley where Esther’s two sisters had been living ten years earlier. According to the 1871 Census, Benjamin was 37, Esther 36, and their eldest son Reuben who would have been 12 was not with them on that occasion. The only children with the couple were Milton 11, and the two newest members of the family, Benjamin W Moss who was eight, and William H Moss who was six. The couple’s last child was born at Dudley during the following year.
	By 1881 the Moss family had moved again, that time to Furnace Row in Dudley, near to where Esther’s sister Eliza was also living in 1881. At that time the complete family was listed in the census return, that being Benjamin 47 and a whitesmith, Esther was 46, Reuben was 22, Milton was 21, Benjamin was 18 – the three sons working as a whitesmith working with their father, William was 16, and Frederick Eli Moss was nine years of age.
	Within the passing of the next ten years, all bar one of the children of Benjamin and Esther left the family home to make their own way in the world. Another family move also took place during that time in their life, when the couple left Furnace Row to live at 91 King Street in Dudley. And it was there that they were living in April 1891. Head of the house Benjamin was 57 and was still working as a whitesmith, while his wife Esther was 55. The only child still living with them was their youngest son Frederick who was 19 and a whitesmith like his father. Esther Moss was 67 when she died, her death recorded at Dudley register office (Ref. 6c 310) during the second quarter of 1901.
48N11	Matthew Collett was born at Dudley on 21^st January 1837 and was the last of the five children born to Richard Collett and Sarah Pearson. Matthew was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 5^th March 1837 but he died just over a year later, his death being recorded at Dudley on 8^th April 1838.
48N12	Noah Collett was born at Dudley on 27^th February 1841 where he was baptised in St Thomas’ Church on 21^st March 1841, the baptism record confirming that he was the son of Richard and Sarah Collett. By the time of the census in June 1841, Noah was recorded as being three months old and living with his family at Church Field Row in Dudley. By the time of the census of 1861 Noah, who was twenty-one and was working as a bricklayer with his father Richard, was still living his family at Vicarage Prospect in West Wellington Road in Dudley. Just over six years later Noah married Elizabeth Davies who was born at Kidderminster in 1837. The wedding took place at Dudley during the third quarter of 1867, following which they are known to have had at least four children who were born at Dudley, the first named after Noah’s father and the second after his mother.
	Three and half years after they were married the family was confirmed in the Dudley census of 1871 as Noah aged 31 who was a bricklayer, Elizabeth was 34, and their two children at that time were Richard aged 2 and Sarah who was one-year old. It seems very likely that Noah and his family were living at Walters Row at that time, with his parents Richard and Sarah living close by, also at a Walters Row address. By 1881 the family was living at 33 Walters Row in Dudley and whilst their new son was listed with them, there was no trace of daughter Sarah or son Nicholas, who seem likely to have suffered in childhood deaths. Noah was confirmed as working as a bricklayer at the age of 40, his wife Elizabeth was 44, and his two sons were Richard, aged 12, Noah who was four years old.
	The family was still living at Dudley in 1891 and, although they were at a different address, they were still living in Walters Row. Their new address was Back 7 in Walters Row where Noah was 51 and a cow keeper, his wife Elizabeth was 50, and the only children still living with them were sons Richard who was 21 and Noah who was 14. Noah Collett died at Dudley less than four years later on 3^rd January 1895, and it was at the register office in the town (Ref. 6c 63) that his death was recorded during the first three months of 1895 when he was 54. Noah was then buried at the parish church on 8^th January.
	Six years after losing her husband, Elizabeth Collett was described as a widow still living at Walters Row in Dudley on the day the census was conducted in 1901. At the age of 60 years, she had taken over the job previously undertaken by her late husband, that of milk cow keeper. Living with her were her two youngest Dudley born sons, Nicholas Collett who was 29 and a stable man, and Noah Collett who was 25 and a brass bedstead fitter. Son Nicholas is a mystery. Where was he in 1881, and again in 1911? Also curious, is the fact that no baptism record has been found for any of the four children of Noah and Elizabeth Collett and only two records of birth have been unearthed, those of the eldest and youngest child.
	48O15	Richard Noah Collett				Born in 1869 at Dudley
	48O16	Sarah Collett				Born in 1870 at Dudley
	48O17	Nicholas Collett				Born in 1872 at Dudley
	48O18	Noah Richard Collett				Born in 1877 at Dudley
48N13	Myra Collett was born at New Dock in Dudley on 10^th July 1843, the last child of Richard Collett and Sarah Pearson. She was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 3^rd September 1843, the daughter of Richard and Sarah Collett. She was seven years of age in 1851 when she was attending school in Dudley, where she was living with her family.
48N16	Emma Collett was born at Dudley in 1838, the third daughter of William and Ann Collett. In 1841 Emma, aged three years, was living with her family in 1841, but by the time of the death of her father in 1842 the family was living in Witney in Oxfordshire. Whether because of the death of her father or not, Emma and her family were living in the Witney union workhouse in 1851, when Emma was 13.
	It was over eight years later that Emma married George Preston at Witney during October 1859, and not long after she gave birth to a daughter. The next census in 1861 placed the young Preston family residing at Turley Lane in Witney, where George Preston, aged 32 and from Hailey - two miles north of Witney, was a carter and an agricultural labourer, Emma Preston was 23 and from Dudley, and their daughter Mary A E Preston, also of Hailey, was two months old. Ten years later their daughter was referred to as Elizabeth Preston who was 10 and her parents were George, aged 43, and Emma, aged 36. Just after the census day Emma presented George with a son who was also born at Hailey.
	By 1881 the family had moved out of Witney and was living in the hamlet of New Yatt midway between Hailey and the village of North Leigh, just north-east of Witney. At that time their daughter Mary A Elizabeth Preston had left the family home, so the occupants of the dwelling were George Preston, aged 52 and born at Hailey, who was still working as an agricultural labourer, his wife Emma Preston, aged 49 and born at Dudley, who was a maker of leather gloves, and their son Frank who was a nine-years old scholar from Hailey. During the next decade the family returned to the town of Witney, and in 1891 they were back living in a dwelling in Turvey Lane. It may have been the lure of a new job for George, because on that occasion he was a shepherd at the age of 62. His wife Emma was 60, and their son Frank was 20 and a shepherd’s assistant, presumably working alongside his father. With no record of George and Emma in the census of 1901, it may be safe to assume that they both died during the 1890s.
48N19	Thomas Collett was born at Dudley during the third quarter of 1838 and by the time of the 1841 census he was listed as living with his parents in the Cross Guns to Freebodies Lane area of Dudley. It seems highly likely that the Cross Guns may have been an inn or a public house since there are three establishments with that name in that area of the West Midlands today. Sadly, Thomas’ mother Jane died in 1845 when he was seven years old and his brother Samuel (below) was two. Thereafter for the next nine years the two boys were brought up by their father.
	Six years after his mother died, according to the 1851 Census, Thomas was 12 and was still living at Dudley with his younger brother Samuel (below) and the boys’ father George. The family name was once again recorded as Cullett, as it had been ten years earlier in the census of 1841. Three years later in 1854 when Thomas was 15 his father marriage Eliza Turner at Dudley so, by 1861 Thomas was living at Angel Street in Dudley with his father George and his brother Samuel, together with his stepmother Eliza. Thomas was 21 and his occupation was that of a vice maker.
	Thomas has been difficult to locate in the years following 1861 simply because he left the family home in Dudley and moved to Manchester. He also changed his occupation and seemed to be confused as to when he was born, giving varying ages in the subsequent census records, in addition to which his surname was incorrectly spelt in the 1881 Census. In the first of them in 1871 he was a lodger at premises in Crown Street in Manchester, but by which time he was a carriage spring maker. On that occasion he gave his age as being 28 rather than 31 although his place of birth was correctly given as Dudley.
	Ten years later in 1881 Thomas was still a bachelor and was still living in Manchester where he was still working as a carriage spring maker. At that time, he was recorded as Thomas Collett of Dudley, whose age was more accurately recorded as 43. The address at which he was staying in Manchester on that occasion was 7 Gaythorne Street. The premises were managed by the widow Mary Smith nee Hooley aged 35 and her two younger brothers William and George Hooley. It must have been an enormous property since in addition to the three Hooleys there were also sixty-one male lodgers. Mary Smith was the only female living there.
	During the next decade Thomas may have lost his job as a carriage spring maker in Manchester and that may have prompted his return to the West Midlands. By the end of the decade, he was in Wolverhampton where he married Ann Glover during the first quarter of 1891.
	His wife Ann was six years older than Thomas, having been born at Broseley in Shropshire around 1832. From 1841, when she was 11, until 1871 when she was 38 and a milliner, she had remained living with her parents in Broseley High Street until their deaths, following which she took over looking after the family. By April 1881 Ann had moved to Barbers Row in Broseley where she was a dressmaker aged 52. The only relative still living with her was her nephew Edward Eyre aged 16 who was an unemployed general labourer from Bilston.
	The 1891 Census took place just a few weeks after Thomas and Ann were married, which placed the couple as lodgers at Court 7 on the High Street in Willenhall. Thomas’ occupation at that time was that of a blacksmith and, on that occasion, he gave his age as 48 instead of 53, although that might have been an error in transcription. Ann gave her age correctly as being 59.
	The couple were still together ten years later and had settled in Wednesfield near Willenhall. Thomas was listed in the 1901 Census as being 59 and from Wolverhampton (sic), while Ann gave her age as 64 which may have been a misinterpretation of 69, which would have been her correct age. Thomas was still working as a blacksmith, but that was then at a local colliery and the full description for him was ‘coalmine blacksmith’. The 1911 Census may reveal that Ann had died by then, since there was a Thomas Collett, aged 70 who had been born at Dudley, who was living there at that time.
48N20	Samuel Collett was born at Dudley during the first quarter of 1843. Just over two years after he was born his mother Jane died at Dudley so by the time of the 1851 Census, Samuel was six years old (sic) when he was living with his father George and older brother Thomas (above). His correct age would have been seven or eight. In 1854 Samuel’s father married for a second time, so by 1861, the family living at Angel Street in Dudley comprised George and his two sons Thomas and Samuel, and their stepmother Eliza. By that time Samuel was working as an agricultural labourer and was 17 years of age. Towards the end of 1867 Samuel married (1) Elizabeth Haden who was the daughter of William and Ann Haden, the event being recorded at Dudley in the final quarter of that year.
	Just over three years later Samuel and Elizabeth were living at Dock Lane Court in Dudley, although as before in 1841 and 1851 the couple’s surname was recorded as Cullett. At that time in April 1871, Samuel was 28 and Elizabeth was 30, and living with the childless couple were Samuel’s widowed mother Eliza Collett and Elizabeth’s widowed mother Ann Haden. No record of Samuel or his wife Elizabeth has been found in the census of 1881. Sadly, it would appear that Elizabeth died sometime during the latter part of the 1880s, following which Samuel married (2) Mary Jane Pettifer, the marriage being recorded at Walsall during the December quarter of 1890 under the name of Collett.
	However, as before, the census carried out during the next year recorded the couple’s surname as Cullett and listed them living at 24 New Hall Street in Dudley. Samuel was 48 and a labourer from Dudley, while his wife Mary who was born at Claverley in Shropshire was six years older at 54. Neither Samuel Collett nor Samuel Cullett has been located in the 1901 Census, and no trace has been found of his wife Mary Jane.
48N21	Samuel Collett was born at Sedgley on 10^th August 1839 and was the eldest child of Joseph Collett and Esther Hartshorn, who was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 26^th January 1840. In June 1841 he was listed with his parents and was one-year old. Tragically, just over one year later he died at Dibdale Bank in Sedgley on 26^th June 1842. His death certificate confirmed he was two years and ten months at the time he died, and that he was the son of carpenter Joseph Collett. The cause of death was ‘hydrophobia caused the bite of a mad dog’, or rabies. The informant was Henry Smith, the Coroner for Wolverhampton.
48N22	Sarah Collett was born at Sedgley on 2^nd October 1841 when her parents were living at the Grave Yard. They were carpenter Joseph Collett and Esther Harthorn. At the time of the Dudley census of 1851, she was nine years old and was living with her parents and two brothers (below). Towards the end of the next decade, she married (1) Isaac Guest and the wedding took place at Tipton near Dudley during the third quarter of 1859. Around nine months later she gave birth to a son, Thomas Guest, who was born at Dudley. By the time of the 1861 Census, as Sarah Quest, she was 19, when she was living with her parents at Vicarage Prospect, West Wellington Road in Dudley. Sarah’s occupation was that of a dressmaker and with her was her son Thomas Guest who was one-year-old. It would also appear that Sarah was expecting her second child by Isaac Guest since, shortly after the census day, she gave birth to the couple’s second son, Joseph Collett Guest.
	It would now appear that Sarah, by living with her parents, had already separated from her husband for the reason stated below. Previously written here in error, was the mention of the tragic death of Sarah’s husband, Isaac Guest, four years later at Dudley during 1865. However, the recently discovered record of the death of Isaac Guest shows that he was only six months old and the son of John Guest, the older brother of Isaac Guest. A second death certificate has now also been found, which confirms that Isaac Guest, who had been born in 1839 and the former husband of Sarah Collett, actually passed away at Snowhill in Dudley during 1893, at the age of 54. Isaac was a fender moulder from Snowhill and the cause of death was reported as a paralytic stroke.
	Therefore, back in the 1860s, when Sarah Guest had two young children to look after and support, she turned to (2) John Bowen, whom she married during the last quarter of 1865. That second marriage took place when Sarah was still legally married to Isaac Guest and consequently was not recorded in the parish register. Instead, the wedding was recorded under ‘select marriages’, a reference to civil marriages, and took place at Sedgley, just north of Dudley, when Sarah Guest was confirmed as the daughter of Joseph Collett. By the time Sarah was married to John, her ex-husband was back living with his parents, Joseph and Rhoda Guest, and was in lodgings in 1881 and 1891. The census in 1881 described Isaac Guest, aged 41 and from Dudley, as a boarder living at the Snowhill home of whitesmith Joseph Rodway and his family, who was an employer of three men, one of them being whitesmith Isaac Guest. By 1891 he was 51, when he was residing in Sedgley.
	As regards Sarah Bowen, she presented her new husband with a daughter who was born in 1867 and a son who was born in 1870, before Sarah was made a widow during the first three months of 1871 by the death of John Bowen. That was confirmed shortly after his passing by the census in 1871, which identified Sarah Bowen as a widow at the age of 29, when she was again living with her parents, at 25 Cromwell Street in Dudley. Living there with her was her daughter Rachel Bowen aged four years and her son John Bowen who was one-year-old. Also still living with her at that time, were her two earlier sons, Thomas Guest who was 11, and Joseph Guest who was nine years of age. Also living in Cromwell Street at that time was widower Patrick Flanagan, who was a lodger at 16 Cromwell Street, from where he was working as an upholsterer. It was within that close local community that Sarah must have been introduced to John Patrick Flanagan who was considerably older than Sarah.
	It is therefore established that, two years later, Sarah Bowen went to live with John Patrick Flanagan at 29 Stone Street in Dudley. As a consequence of that arrangement, Sarah gave birth to five further children in 1874, 1875, 1878, 1881 and 1883, all of them being fathered by John Flanagan. They were Elizabeth Flanagan, Patrick Michael Flanagan, King Roderick Flanagan, Daniel Flanagan, and Mary Flanagan, who were all born at 29 Stone Street.
	Of particular interest are the details on the birth certificates of those children. Elizabeth was born at 29 Stone Street on 6^th March 1874 to Sarah Bowen formerly Collett, a washerwoman living at 25 Cromwell Street. On 16^th August 1875, Patrick Michael Flanagan was born at 29 Stone Street, and again no father was named, just the mother as Sarah Bowen, mattress maker, living at 29 Stone Street. Next to be born to the couple was King Roderick Flanagan on 11^th May 1878 at 29 Stone Street, and on that occasion the parents were recorded as Patrick Flanagan and Sarah Flanagan, formerly Collett. Just one week after the census in 1881, Sarah gave birth to Daniel Bowen Flanagan at 29 Stone Street on 15^th April 1881, the child of Patrick Flanagan and Sarah Flanagan, formerly Collett.
	It is therefore not surprising that on the day of the census in 1881, when Sarah was due to give birth, that her two sons Joseph A Guest, aged 19 and a brass caster from Dudley, and John Bowen, aged 11, were living with Sarah’s brother Richard Collett and his family at 29 Price Street in Dudley. Also living there was Sarah’s widowed mother Esther Collett. Only one of Sarah’s two missing children has been located in 1881. By that time, Thomas Guest was a married man and was living with his wife Clara at 21 Brook Road in Sedgley. Both of them were 22, while Thomas’ occupation was that of a whitesmith. No record of her daughter Rachel Bowen, who would have been 14, has been found at all.
	According to the census of 1881, Sarah Bowen was recorded as Sarah Flanagan, who was married to upholsterer Patrick Flanagan, aged 53 and from Ireland, with whom she was living at 29 Stone Street in Dudley, even though the couple did not marry until 1894 – after the death of Sarah’s first husband Isaac Guest. Sarah was 38 and stated she was born at Gornal, Upper Gornal being an area to the south of Sedgley. Living with the couple were their three children, Elizabeth Flanagan aged six and attending the local school, Patrick [Michael] Flanagan who was five and also at school, and two years old Roderick, who was described as King Roderick Flanagan. All three children were confirmed as having been born at Dudley.
	Following the birth of her son Daniel Flanagan in mid-April 1881, Sarah suffered another loss less than two years later when Daniel Flanagan died on 6^th January 1883 at 29 Stone Street. The death certificate confirmed that he was the son of Patrick Flanagan, upholsterer, and that his death had been reported by his mother, Sarah Flanagan. The cause of his death was bronchitis and exhaustion. Almost exactly ten months after the death of her son Daniel, Sarah’s and Patrick’s fifth and final child was born. The birth certificate for Mary Flanagan, who was born at 29 Stone Street on 4^th November 1883, confirmed her parents as Patrick Flanagan and Sarah Flanagan, late Bowen, formerly Collett. And it was at that same address, nine years later, that Sarah was still living when she reported the death of her mother in December 1890. The death certificate confirmed the address of the informant, Sarah Flanagan, as being 29 Stone Street in Dudley.
	Sarah Bowen, formerly Guest nee Collett, married (3) John Patrick Flanagan at St John’s Church in Dudley on 17^th June 1894. The marriage certificate confirmed that mattress maker John was a widower of 65, and that Sarah was indeed the widow Sarah Bowen, who was 50. John’s father was named as Patrick Flannigan, a farmer deceased, while Sarah’s father was named as Joseph Collett, a carpenter deceased. The witnesses at the wedding were Benjamin Grundy and Elizabeth Williescraft. John Flanagan, who was born at Tulsk in County Roscommon in Ireland in 1830, was well-known in the Dudley area for establishing, with his brother Michael, the mattress factory that made Hushabye and Easibed, the company being passed down through three subsequent generations of the Flanagan family until its closure in 1970. Sadly, John passed away just shortly before the census day in 1901.
	It was at 29 Stone Street (next door to the mattress factory) that he died from bronchial asthma and exhaustion on 8^th March 1901, at the age of 70. The death certificate confirmed he was a mattress manufacturer, and that it was his daughter Elizabeth Paskin who was present at his death, she also being the informant. Elizabeth Flanagan, who was born on 6^th March 1874, had married Samuel Paskin on 22^nd February 1897 at the Roman Catholic Church in Dudley, their marriage producing two children, Elizabeth Paskin who was born at 29 Stone Street in 1897, and Samuel Patrick Paskin who was born in 1902. Just over three weeks later Sarah Flanagan was recorded as being 58 in the census held on the thirty-first of March 1901. She was still living at 29 Stone Street, while living with her was her married daughter Elizabeth Paskin and her husband Samuel Paskin. Sarah’s occupation was stated as being a case maker with her own account working at home, which indicated that she was producing the cases for the mattress factory. And again, she gave her place of birth as Gornal near Sedgley.
	According to the next census in April 1911, Sarah Flanagan, aged 64, was still living at 29 Stone Street. On that occasion she had living with her, her married daughter Mary Taylor and her husband Alfred. Alfred Taylor was a coal miner, and by that time Mary had presented him with two daughters, Jenny Patricia Taylor, who was four, and Ida Agatha Taylor, who was two years old. Sarah Flanagan was once again described as a case maker, working at home for the mattress factory. John’s widow Sarah survived for another sixteen years, when she died on 12^th August 1917 at the age of 73. At that time, she was living at 81 Park Lane in Tipton, and the cause of death was pernicious anaemia. The informant on that occasion was her daughter Rachel Curthrop nee Bowen at whose house Sarah had been living.
	For completeness, Sarah’s son Patrick Michael Flanagan, who was born on 16^th August 1875, married Florence Clarke during the first quarter of 1897, and between then and 1903 they had four children, Florence, John, Kathleen, and Bernard. The family was living at 4 Titchbourne Court in Dudley in 1899. Sarah’s son King Roderick Flanagan was born on 7^th May 1877, and he married Lottie Danks on 27^th December 1897 and they had five children, Eva, Nora, Roderick, Daniel, and Leonard. His family was living at 14 Cross Street in Dudley in 1899. Sarah’s last child, Mary Flanagan, was born on 4^th November 1883 and she later married Alfred Taylor at Dudley during the summer of 1906 with whom she had four daughters, May, Jenny, Fanny, and Ida. And it was Sarah Collett’s third husband, John Patrick Flanagan, who was the great grandfather of Marilyn Stoddard nee Flanagan of California, who kindly provided the details of her family back to Samuel Collett and Esther Southall, the grandparents of Sarah Collett.
48N23	Joseph Collett was born at Sedgley on 31^st December 1843, his birth recorded at Dudley during the first quarter of 1844. However, for some reason, he was baptised as an adult at the Dudley Church of St Thomas in April 1869, the son of Joseph and Esther Collett. Joseph junior was listed as being seven years old and 17 years of age in the Dudley census returns of 1851 and 1861. By the time of the latter, he had left school and was working with his father as a carpenter, while living with his family at Vicarage Prospect in West Wellington Road in Dudley. It was three years later when Joseph Collett married Mary Jane Pearson at Pensnett, two miles from Dudley, on 27^th March 1864. Mary Jane was born at Dudley during the second quarter of 1845. She was the daughter of John Pearson (deceased) and his wife Ann Hodgetts who, in 1861, was a tailoress and a widow living with her widowed mother Mary Hodgetts, a house proprietor, at her home at Vicarage Prospect in Wellington Road in Dudley – the same address as her future son-in-law. Mary Jane Pearson was listed as being aged 15 and a dressmaker.
	By 1871 the marriage of Joseph and Mary Jane had produced three children for the couple and all of them were registered with the name Pearson, as were all of the following children. Two years earlier, when Joseph was baptised, so to was his brother Richard (below), most likely in a joint ceremony. The census in 1871 revealed that Joseph and his young family were living at 13 Pensnett Road in Dudley where he was aged 28 and continuing his work as a carpenter, his wife Mary Jane was 26, and their three children were Martha who was four, Sarah who was two, and Mary who was under one-year old.
	During the next ten years a further four children were added to the family so, by 1881, the family living at Occupation Street in Dudley comprised Joseph aged 36 who was a carpenter, Mary Jane also of Dudley who was 34, and their seven children. They were Martha, aged 14, Sarah, aged 12, Mary, aged 10, Joseph who was eight, Richard who was five, Ada who was two, and baby John who was only eight months old. Four more children were added to the family during the next seven years, although it was also during that time when the three eldest daughters left the family, either to be married or to seek work.
	By early April in 1891 the family was still living at 10 Occupation Street in Dudley and was made up of Joseph 47, Mary Jane 46, Joseph 18, Richard 16, Ada 14, John 11, and new arrivals Ruth who was nine, Alice who was eight, Mabel, who was five, and son Horace who was three years old. Head of the house Joseph was still employed as a carpenter and working with him was his two sons Joseph and Richard. It was stated that every member of the family, with the exception of daughter Ada, was born at Dudley. According to the census record Ada was born at Birmingham. It is not certain that Mary Jane died during the 1890s but by 1901 Joseph was living in South Wimbledon with his son John and daughter Ruth. Joseph was a 56 years old carpenter, while his son was 20 and his daughter was 19.
	48O19	Martha Pearson Collett				Born in 1866 at Dudley
	48O20	Sarah Ann Pearson Collett				Born in 1868 at Wolverhampton
	48O21	Mary Pearson Collett				Born in 1870 at Dudley
	48O22	Joseph Pearson Collett				Born in 1872 at Dudley
	48O23	Richard Pearson Collett				Born in 1875 at Dudley
	48O24	Ada Pearson Collett				Born in 1877 at Birmingham
	48O25	John Jabez Pearson Collett				Born in 1880 at Dudley
	48O26	Ruth Pearson Collett				Born in 1881 at Dudley
	48O27	Alice Pearson Collett				Born in 1883 at Dudley
	48O28	Mabel Pearson Collett				Born in 1885 at Dudley
	48O29	Horace Pearson Collett				Born in 1887 at Dudley
48N24	Richard Collett was born at Dudley on 6^th November 1846 and was four years old in March 1851. Ten years later he was fifty years of age according to the census in 1861, when he was living with his parents at Vicarage Prospect in West Wellington Road in Dudley. Eight years later in April 1869 Richard and his older brother Joseph (above) were baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley in a joint adult ceremony and that event for Richard may have been prompted by marriage of Richard being planned for the following year. It was then that less than one year later when Richard marriage Elizabeth Warne at Pensnett near Dudley and recorded at Stourbridge during the first quarter of 1870. Once married, the couple settled in Dudley where their first child was born and where the family was living in April 1871, but at the home of Richard’s parents. The census recorded that Richard was 24 and a carpenter, Elizabeth was 23, and their daughter Sarah was not yet one-year old.
	It may be worth highlighting, that there was another Collett marriage recorded at Stourbridge during the first quarter of 1870 and that was between Richard Collett and Eliza Guest. This is of particular interest since Richard’s sister Sarah Collett (above) had married Isaac Guest at Dudley in 1859. Over the next few years two more children were added to the family. According to the census of 1881 Richard of Dudley was 34 and was working as a railway carpenter. He was living at 29 Price Street in Dudley with his wife Elizabeth who was 33 and who occupation was that of a laundress. Listed with them were their three children, Sarah, aged 10, Samuel, who was seven, Elizabeth, who was two, and all of them born at Dudley. Also living with the family was Richard’s widowed mother Esther Collett aged 66 and two of her grandsons. They were Joseph A Guest, a brass caster aged 19, and John Bowen aged 11, both of Dudley, who were two of the children of Richard’s sister Sarah who was twice married.
	Sometime later in that same year, but after the April census day in 1881, Elizabeth presented Richard with their fourth and last child. During the 1880s the family left Dudley and moved to Stourbridge where the complete family was living in 1891 at 88 Worcester Road. The census that year recorded Richard as 44, Elizabeth as 43, and their four children as Sarah 21, Samuel 17, Elizabeth 12, and Joseph who was nine years old.
	And it was at Stourbridge, that some members of the family were still living ten years later in 1901. Richard of Dudley was aged 53 and was still working as a carpenter for the railway company. His wife Elizabeth was 52 and her place of birth was simply stated as London. By that time their eldest daughter Sarah had left the family home and was married, but still living with their parents were Samuel aged 27, Elizabeth aged 22 and Joseph who was 19. All of them were confirmed as having been born at Dudley. In 1911 Richard was 64 and still employed by the Great Western Railway Corporation, his wife Elizabeth was 62 and still living them at Stourbridge were their two sons Samuel and Joseph. Also returned to the family home was their married daughter Elizabeth Wooldridge with her daughter Gladys.
	48O30	Sarah Collett				Born in 1870 at Dudley
	48O31	Samuel Collett				Born in 1873 at Dudley
	48O32	Elizabeth Collett				Born in 1878 at Dudley
	48O33	Joseph Collett				Born in 1881 at Dudley
48N25	Samuel Whitehouse was born at Dudley in 1845 and was aged 5 at the time of the 1851 Census when he was living with his family at 183 Minories in Dudley. Only a very short time after the census Samuel’s father Thomas Whitehouse died around the age of 34, leaving Samuel’s mother Elizabeth with three young children. Three years after the death of his father, his mother married Eli Hill at Dudley where the family continued to live. For the census of 1861 Samuel should have been 15. He had left school and was working as a glass cutter while living with his mother and stepfather at Angel Street in Dudley. Rather oddly, he gave his age as being 20, an error he also made ten years later in 1871 and again in 1881.
	According to the 1871 Census Samuel of Dudley was married to Elizabeth of Wolverhampton where the childless couple were living at Brook Street and where Samuel’s occupation was still that of a glass cutter. On that occasion he gave his age as 32, while his wife was 31 and was employed as a laundress. Ten years later the couple were still living in Wolverhampton but had moved to Peel Street where they were the residents of Court 4. Both Samuel and his wife gave their age as being 41 and their respective places of birth were again Dudley and Wolverhampton. Samuel had now given up being a glass cutter and instead was working as a gardener.
48N27	Thomas Whitehouse was born at Dudley in 1849 and was just over one-year old when his father died shortly after the Dudley census of 1851. Three years later Thomas’ widowed mother married Eli Hill with whom she had a further daughter and son, although it appears that the daughter did not survive. That might have been the reason why Thomas at the age of eleven was living at the home of his uncle George Collett just along Angel Street in Dudley from where his mother was living in 1861 and 1871. Towards the end of the 1860s, Thomas married Mary who was born at Stourport in 1847 and by 1871 their marriage had produced a son for the couple. In April 1871, Thomas and Mary, together with their one-year-old son William Whitehouse, were boarders at the Angel Street, home of Thomas’ mother in Dudley.
	Over the next decade a further four children were born into the family of Thomas and Mary, the first at Dudley but then around 1876 the family moved to Wollescote near Halesowen. By 1881 the family of seven was living at Brook Street in Wollescote from where 31 years old Thomas was an iron plate worker. With him was his wife Mary who was 33, and their five children – William aged 11, Thomas Whitehouse who was nine, Elizabeth Whitehouse who was eight, Mark Whitehouse who was three, and Emily Whitehouse who was one-year old. Shortly after the census day in 1881 the family moved again and that time it was the very short distance to nearby Lye where the couple’s last two children were born. Then, sometime between 1886 and 1891, the whole family moved to Mary’s home town of Stourport.
	According to the census in 1891 Thomas was still working as an iron plate worker and on that occasion he and his family were living at 26 Bagley Street in Stourport. Thomas and Mary were both recorded as being 32, while the couple’s two oldest sons William 21 and Thomas 19 were both working with their father as iron plate workers, and 13 years old son Mark was a blacksmith’s labourer. The remaining four children were confirmed as Elizabeth aged 18, Emily aged 11, Diana Whitehouse who was eight, and John Edward Whitehouse who was six years. Sometime during the 1890s the family moved again, that time from Stourport back to Wollescote where they were living just after the end of the century.
	The 1901 Census recorded Thomas as being 52 and from Dudley, living at Wollescote where he was still employed as an iron plate worker. His wife Mary was 52 and still living with the couple were sons William, Mark, and Edward who were all working with their father as iron plate workers. The only daughter still living with the family was seventeen years old Diana who was a tailoress. Also living close by to the family in Wollescote was Thomas’ and Mary’s married daughter Emily, now Emily Pearson and married to iron plate worker James Pearson. It may be worth pointing out that the census records for 1891 and 1901 both indicate the place of birth for Thomas’ last four children was Lye, which conflicts with information in the 1881.
	During the compilation of this Whitehouse family, an interesting discovery has been made. And that is, that in 1881, 53-year-old widow Mary Whitehouse, a dressmaker from Upton Warren south-west of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, was living at the home of Thomas Collett at Broomfield in Harborne midway between Halesowen and Birmingham. Thomas Collett was a shoe maker of 53 and had been born at Bromsgrove. His wife was Elizabeth Collett aged 50 who had been born at Upton Warren like her married but widowed sister Mary Whitehouse. Thomas and Elizabeth had four children and all of them born at Smethwick just north of Harborne. They were William Collett 18 (a turner), Laura 13, Jane 10, and Minnie who was six.
48N28	William H Hill was born at Dudley in 1856, the only son of Elizabeth Collett and her third husband Eli Hill. He was living with his parents at 7 Angel Street in Queen’s Cross, Dudley when his mother died during September 1872 when William was just sixteen years of age.
48N29	Mary Collett was born at Dudley during the third quarter of 1854. By the time of the census of 1861 Mary was seven years old and was living with her parents at Dixons Green in Dudley. Within the next ten years the family moved to St John Street in Dudley where Mary’s parents lived for the remainder of their life. When Mary was 17, according to the census return completed in 1871, she was not living with her family at St John Street in Dudley. Instead, she was described as the niece of shoemaker John Collett from Throckmorton and his wife Mary Ann Tail from Cropthorne, both in Worcestershire, at their home in Broom near Bidford-on-Avon. It was back at Dudley, nine years later and during the third quarter of 1880, that Mary Collett married John Vernon Orchard was recorded (Ref. 6c 55).
	The birth of John Vernon Orchard, the son of Joseph and Sarah Orchard, was recorded at Birmingham (Ref. 6d 17) during the last quarter of 1853. Six months after they were married the couple was living at a private house on Rectory Street in Kingswinford. Glass engraver John Orchard was 27 years old and had been born at Birmingham, while his wife Mary was 26 and her birthplace was confirmed as having been Dudley. Living with the couple was Mary’s younger brother John Collett (below).
48N30	John Collett was born at Dudley, where his birth was registered (Ref. 6c 103) during the third quarter of 1856. He was the second child of Richard Collett by his second wife Hannah Day. By 1861 he was listed as living with his parents at Dixons Green in Dudley when he was five years old. Ten years late the family was living in St John Street in Dudley by which time John 14. On leaving school he entered the world of education and by April 1881 he had moved to Kingswinford, near Stourbridge, where he was a schoolmaster at Wordsley School at the age of 24. At that time, he was a boarder at the home of glass engraver John Vernon Orchard at his home in Rectory Street in Kingswinford. Living with John Orchard was his wife Mary Orchard nee Collett who was John’s older sister. It is curious though, why the census record did not refer to him as the brother-in-law of John Vernon Orchard.
	Towards the end of the following year the marriage of John Collett and (1) Fanny Mary Holmes was recorded at Stourbridge (Ref. 6c 324) during the last three months of 1882. Fanny was born at nearby Clent during the fourth quarter of 1859 and was referred to as Kit by the family. Once married the couple settled in Wordsley, where all of their children were born. The family lived at New Street, running from Cot Lane and Barnett Lane, and midway between Wordsley and Kingswinford, from where John was a teacher at Wordsley School. Sometime later, and certainly by 1911, John was made the Headmaster of Wordsley School, a position he still held when he eventually retired.
	Historical note: The deputy headmaster at the school during the 1950s was another John Collett who was also a cabinet maker, so perhaps he was the woodwork teacher. Since then, the school has closed and been demolished.
	The 1891 Census for Kingswinford & Stourbridge, which included Wordsley, listed the family as John Collett aged 34, his wife Fanny who was 31, and their three children. They were Fanny Collett who was seven, Frederick Collett who was six, and Katie G Collett who was three years old. By that time their son Richard had already died two years earlier.
	Tragically, two years later, John’s wife aged 33 died during the birth of the couple’s last child in 1893, her death recorded at Stourbridge register office (Ref. 6c 132) during the first three months of that year. That left John, supported by his daughter Mabel, to bring up his children, while still continuing to be a teacher at Wordsley School. According to the next census in 1901, widower John Collett was 44 and from Dudley, a school master, living at No 1 New Street in Wordsley. Living there with him were four of his children, Mabel F Collett aged 17, who was his housekeeper, Fredrick J Collett aged 16, a watchmaker’s apprentice, Katie G Collett who was 13, and Tom H Collett who was eight years old. It was two years later that John Collett married (2) Ellen Perry from Birmingham, their wedding recorded at Aston register office (Ref. 6a 511) during the third quarter of 1903, although she was not readily accepted into the family by John’s children.
	Eight years later in April 1911 only two members of John’s family were still living with him and Ellen at Wordsley. At that time John Collett from Dudley was 54 and the headmaster of Wordsley School where he had been a teacher with Worcestershire County Council all of his working life. His new wife Ellen Collett from Birmingham was 52, and the two children from John previous marriage still living with them were his sons Frederick John Richard Collett who was 26, and Tom Herbert Collett from Wordsley who was 18. This photograph of John was taken around 1915, and sitting alongside him is his youngest son Tom, who was very likely preparing to leave home to take up active service in the Great War.
	Because of the difficulties with their stepmother, Fred and Tom eventually left the family home shortly after 1911 and emigrated to Australia but they returned to England just a few years later to serve King and country during the First World War. John Collett continued his teaching work at Wordsley School up until the time that he died there in 1931, following which he was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church in Wordsley. On the occasion of the marriages of his daughters Fanny and Kate, in 1922 and 1923, and his son Tom in 1925, all at Wickhamford, John was confirmed as their father, when he was described as a retired schoolmaster.
	48O34	Fanny Mabel Mary Collett						Born in 1883 at Wordsley
	48O35	Frederick John Richard Collett						Born in 1885 at Wordsley
	48O36	Kate Gwendolyn Pauline Collett						Born in 1887 at Wordsley
	48O37	Richard Collett						Born in 1889 at Wordsley
	48O38	Tom Herbert Collett						Born in 1893 at Wordsley
48N31	William Collett was born at Dudley in 1857 and was three years old and thirteen respectively in the Dudley census records of 1861 and 1871, when he was living with his family at Dixons Green and St John Street in Dudley. William’s father Richard Collett died around 1880, so in the following year he was living with his widowed mother Hannah at 47 St John Street in Dudley. William was 23 and was working with his younger brother Thomas (below) as a shop assistant in a local boot and shoe shop. Both of the brothers were listed as bachelors born in Dudley.
	By the time of the census of 1891, William was 33 and was still a bachelor working with his brother Thomas in the shoe shop, while they were both still living at 47 St John Street in Dudley with their mother Hannah. Almost exactly one year later William married Annie Elizabeth Cox at Dudley during the first quarter of 1892. Annie was born at Lye Cross in nearby Rowley Regis in 1859 and was the daughter of licensed victualler Joseph Cox and his wife Sophia.
	In 1881 Annie was 21 and was still living with her family at 35 Oakham (Road/Street) in Rowley Regis. The census return also included her sister Mary Sophia Cox aged 19 who, only a few months before Annie’s own wedding to William Collett, had married William’s brother Thomas Collett (below). Shortly after they were married Annie presented William with a daughter at Dudley, before they settled in Tipton, where two further children were born. By 1901, William’s brother Thomas and Annie’s sister Mary were also living in Tipton, at Tividale Road.
	According to the census in 1901, William was 43 and from Dudley when he was living at Tividale Road in Tipton with his wife Annie E Collett who was 41 and of Rowley Regis. Just as he had been ten and twenty years earlier, William had an occupation within the boot and shoe trade but, on that occasion, he had been elevated to manager of a boot shop, the same description given to his brother Thomas (below). On that day their three children were recorded as Annie G Collett who was seven and born at Dudley, Nellie S Collett who was five and William J Collett who was three, both of them confirmed as born at Tipton. It was only eight years after that day, when the death of William Collett was recorded at Dudley (Ref. 6c 18) during the second quarter of 1909, when he was 51 years old. Two years later his widow was still living in Tipton with her three children. Annie Elizabeth Collett was 51, Annie Gwendoline Collett was 17, Nellie Sophia Collett was 15 and William John Collett was 13.
	48O39	Anne Gwendoline Collett			Born in 1893 at Dudley
	48O40	Nellie Sophia Collett			Born in 1895 at Tipton
	48O41	William John Collett			Born in 1897 at Tipton
48N32	Thomas Collett was born at Dudley in 1861 but after the second of April that year as he was not listed with his parents on the day of the census. It seems very likely though that his mother Hannah was with-child on that occasion. He first appeared living with his family at St John Street in Dudley at the time of the census of 1871 when he was nine years old. Ten years later Thomas was 19 and was living with his widowed mother at 47 St John Street in Dudley. The census recorded that his place of birth was Dudley and that his occupation was that of an assistant in a boot and shoe shop where his older brother William (above) also worked.
	He was still living with his mother and his older brother William ten years later in April 1891 at the age of 29 and was still working with William as a boot shop assistant. It was during the final quarter of 1891 that Thomas Collett married Mary Sophia Cox, the daughter of Joseph and Sophia Cox of Rowley Regis and the sister of Annie Elizabeth Cox (above) who married Thomas’ brother William. Immediately prior to both weddings, the two Cox sisters were living with their parents at 1 Turners Hill in Wednesbury. Annie was a 31 years old spinster, while her spinster sister Mary was 29. The closeness of the relationship between the two couples continued after they were married, when they both ended up living at Tipton, as recorded in the 1901 Census.
	By that time Thomas was 39 and had risen to be a boot shop manager, the same as his brother William, and possibly at a shop they ran in joint ownership. Listed with Thomas was his wife Mary Sophia Collett aged 39 from Rowley Regis. Perhaps it was the premature death of his brother William in 1909 that caused Thomas to lose his job as manager of a shoe shop in Tipton and brought about his leaving the town. According to the census two years later, Thomas Collett was 49 when he was living at Wall Heath in Kingswinford with his wife Mary Sophia who was also 49, where he was described as an unemployed manager of a boot shop.
48O5	Mary Ann Collett was born at Dudley on 13^th September 1852, where she was baptised on 17^th October 1852, the eldest of the nine children of John Collett and Susan Smith. It was as Mary Ann Collett that she was recorded in the census of 1861, at the age of eight years, when she was living with her family at Bath Street in Dudley. On 23^rd July 1863 Mary Ann’s parents took the family on a sea journey of just over one hundred days, from London to Lyttelton in New Zealand. The voyage, on board the Brother’s Pride, ended tragically on 8^th December 1863, by which time three of Mary Ann’s brothers had died at sea.
	Fifteen years after arriving in New Zealand, Mary Ann’s younger sister Elizabeth (below) died at the age of 17. The only children of John and Susan Collett to survive to adulthood were Mary Ann (above), her sister Sarah Jane and her brother John (below). It is now established, from the record of her death, that Mary Ann never married, since it was as Mary Ann Collett, spinster, that she died at Devonport near Auckland on 5^th April 1927 at the age of 74, following which she was buried with her parents at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery in Auckland. The very brief notice of her passing, published in the New Zealand Herald on 7^th April, stated that she was residing at 16 Cameron Street in Devonport, but perhaps surprisingly, it did not mention her only surviving sibling, her youngest brother John Collett (below) who outlived Mary by twenty years.
48O6	John Collett was born at Dudley on 23^rd July 1854 and was baptised four months later on 19^th November 1854 at St Thomas’ Church, the eldest son of carpenter John Collett and his wife Susan. According to the census return for 1861 John, aged six years, was living with his family at Bath Street in Dudley. In 1863 John and his family emigrated to New Zealand to seek a new life in the colony. However, it was on board the ship Brother’s Pride, on 2^nd November 1863, after already spending seventy-two days at sea, that John Collett died on 2^nd November, one month before the ship arrived at its final destination of Lyttelton. Sadly, he was followed three weeks later by his brothers, the twins Thomas and Edward.
48O7	Sarah Jane Collett was born at Dudley on 7^th April 1856 and was baptised there at the Church of St Thomas on 24^th August 1856, the third child of carpenter John Collett and his wife Susan Smith. By the time of the Dudley census in 1861, Sarah J Collett was recorded as being three years old and was living at the family home in Bath Street. Sarah Jane was six years old when her parents decided to leave Dudley and emigrate to New Zealand. From Dudley the whole family headed south to London where, on 23th July 1863, they boarded the sailing ship Brother’s Pride, which was bound for Lyttelton just south-east of Christchurch.
	The terrible 103 days spent at sea had a dire effect on the young family, resulting in the deaths of all three of Sarah Jane’s brothers. In 1880 her younger sister Elizabeth (below) died, leaving just Sarah Jane, her old sister Mary Ann (above) and her youngest sister Eliza (below) still living with their parents. It was seven years later, on 4^th June 1887 at St Luke’s Church in Christchurch, that Sarah Jane Collett married Joseph Isiah Kelsall, with whom she had six children. Bachelor Joseph Kelsall was 44 and a farmer from Lancaster, the son of John Kelsall and Mary Dickinson. His bride was described as Sarah Jane Collett who was 29 and a spinster from Worcester. Both of them were recorded as residents of Christchurch. At the time of the birth of the couple’s fifth child in January 1895, the birth certificate also gave the age of the mother as being 38, which corresponds closely with the year that Sarah Jane Collett was born. It is further known from the death certificate for her father that Sarah was still alive in 1914.
	The six children of Joseph and Sarah Jane Kelsall were: Dorothy (Dolly) Anne Kelsall who was born on 9^th February 1889 at Palmerston North who married Frederick William Colson at Ashurst on 12^th April 1913 and who died at Tokoroa on 9^th December 1987; Winifred (Winnie) Kelsall who was born on 10^th April 1890 who later married Len Tremewan; Every (Ted) Kelsall who was born on 19^th July 1891 who married Ivy; May Kelsall who was born in 1893 and died in 1895 when her nightdress caught fire; Ruahine Kelsall who was born in 1895 and became Ruahine Robinson; and Ashton Kelsall who was born in 1897, married Pearl, and died on 15^th May 1964. And it was Ruahine, who was the grandmother of Linda Binding, who kindly provided all of the information that has enabled this family line to be included here, having previously only been listed in the appendix at the end of the file. Sarah Jane Kelsall nee Collett died at Levin in New Zealand on 22^nd July 1929 when her age was recorded in error as being 79, when in actual fact she would have been 73, so that might be an error in transcription. Eleven years earlier the death certificate for Joseph Kelsall indicates that he died from a valvular disease of the heart, an old standing illness, on 22^nd September 1918, after which he was buried at Palmerston North following a service in the Methodist Church.
48O8	Thomas Collett was one half of a set of twins born at Dudley on 12^th June 1860, where he was also baptised with his twin brother Edward (below) on 15^th July 1860, the son of John and Susan Collett. Thomas, and his brother, were both recorded as being nine months old in the census of 1861 when they were living at Bath Street in Dudley with the rest of their family. Thomas was just three years old when his family emigrated to New Zealand in July 1863. However, the arduous sea journey took its toll on the Collett family when, following the death at sea of his brother John (above), Thomas Collett died on board the ship Brother’s Pride on 26^th November 1863, just one week prior to the ship’s arrival at Lyttelton, and three days before his twin brother Edward passed away.
48O9	Edward Collett was the twin brother of Thomas (above) and was born at Dudley on 12^th June 1860. He was also baptised there in a joint ceremony with his twin brother on 15^th July 1860, the third son of John and Susan Collett. Edward, like his brother, was just nine months old when living at Bath Street in Dudley on the day of the census in 1861. Following his family leaving England for a new life in New Zealand on 23^rd July 1863, Edward died at sea on 29^th November 1863, nearly 100 days after sailing out of London on board the ship Brother’s Pride. His death was the third in the family on that fateful voyage, his parents having already lost his older brother John three weeks earlier and his twin brother Thomas just three days prior to Edward’s passing.
48O10	Elizabeth Collett was born at Dudley on 11^th April 1862, the daughter of John and Susan Collett. She was nearly nine months old, when she was baptised at St Thomas’ Church in Dudley on 25^th January 1863 at Dudley. When Elizabeth was just sixteen months old, her entire family emigrated to New Zealand, but sadly during the sea journey Elizabeth lost three of her brothers. Having survived the terrible voyage at such a young age, it appears that she only lived for a further sixteen years when she too passed away, making her the fourth child of John and Susan Collett to die while still very young. Within the New Zealand register of birth, deaths and marriages, is a record of her death which confirmed that Elizabeth Collett, aged 17, died at Christchurch on 16^th May 1880, the cause of death being diphtheria. The address at which she was living at the time of her passing was given as Canal Reserve in Christchurch.
48O11	John Collett, who was known as Jack, was born at Christchurch in New Zealand just three months after his parents arrived in the country from England. He was born on 28^th February 1864 and the registration of his birth confirmed that he was the son of John and Susan Collett formerly Smith, although the surname was spelt with just one t. He was one of nine siblings, while his three Dudley-born older brothers died on arrival in the country after their long sea voyage. His sister Elizabeth (above) died when John was sixteen, and he later lost his two younger siblings Eliza and Thomas Edward before the end of the century. The records at the Anglican Church in Christchurch confirm that John Collett was baptised there in 8^th January 1865, his parents being John and Susan Collett, a joiner of Addington.
	It was on 22^nd March 1894 at Holy Trinity Church in Devonport that John married Lucinda Ann Dunne, who was known as Lucy and who was born in 1865, the daughter of Richard Dunne and Jessie Fraser. Their daughter, born during the following year, was to be the couple’s only child. John and two of his sisters, Mary and Sarah (above), were the only children of John and Susan Collett who survived and were still alive at the time of the death of their mother in 1908 and their father in 1914. John Collett died on 12^th June 1947 at the age of 83. His wife Lucinda Ann Collett had died ten years earlier when she had passed away on 7^th August 1937 at the age of 72. Following his death, John was buried at O’Neill’s Point Cemetery at 122 Bayswater Avenue in Bayswater, Auckland on 14^th June 1947 when his body was laid to rest in Plot 137 immediately adjacent to his wife in Plot 136. It was also there that their daughter was buried three years after her father.
	Two identical headstones in red marble, set side by side, carry the following inscriptions: “In Loving Memory of John Collett, dearly beloved husband of Lucinda Ann Collett, died 12^th June 1947 aged 82 years”; to the left of which is: “In Loving Memory of Lucinda Ann Collett, died 7th August 1937, Also her beloved daughter Mary Lucinda Collett died 18^th July 1950 aged 53 years”.
	48P1	Mary Lucinda Collett				Born in 1896 at Devonport
48O12	Eliza Collett was born at Christchurch on 8^th March 1866, the daughter of John and Susan Collett. Eliza, or Nell as she was known, was baptised as Eliza at St Michael’s Church in Christchurch on 8^th March 1866. She later married Robert Stuart Foster in 1897 and, tragically, it was later that same year that she died, possibly during child birth. Prior to her marriage to Robert, Eliza gave birth to a son Tom Collett, about whom nothing is currently known.
48O13	Ellen Collett, who may have been a twin sister of Eliza (above), was born during 1866 at Christchurch, another daughter of John and Susan Collett. With her sister having been born two months in that year, there is a possibility that Ellen may have been born at the end of that same year. Ellen Collett married Edward Monahan, with whom she had nine children. Ellen Monohan, the daughter of John and Susan Collett, was 66 years old when she died in 1932. This new information, received in 2019, was kindly provided by Linda Binding.
48O14	Thomas Edward Collett was born at Christchurch on 21^st May 1871, the ninth and last child of John Collett and Susan Smith. He was named after his twin brothers, both of whom had died during the journey from England to New Zealand when they were just three years old. He attended Christchurch East School from January 1882, where he was recorded as the son of John Collett and living at Canal Reserve in Christchurch. He later attended Gloucester Street School, but only survived until his late teenage years when, like five of his siblings, he suffered a premature death. Thomas Edward Collett died at Devonport on 11^th August 1889 at the age of 18, following which he was buried at the Mount Victoria Cemetery, Victoria Road in Devonport, Auckland, Plot 249.
	It is also interesting that a certain Helen Collett, the daughter of John Collett of Canal Reserve, was admitted into Christchurch East School on 1^st February 1881, while her birth was recorded as 15^th January 1871. That was just four months before Thomas was born, which may indicate the date was recorded in error, while her last school was named as Bingsland School. The entry in the School Records may possibly refer to an older sister of Thomas, not currently listed as a member of his family, or may be a reference to his sister Nell (Eliza) above.
48O15	Richard Noah Collett was born at Dudley in 1869, his birth recorded there (Ref. 6c 116) during the third quarter of that year. As Richard Collett, he was two years of age in the census of 1871 and was 12 years old in 1881 when he was living with his family at 33 Walters Row in Dudley. By 1891 Richard was 21 and was still living with his parents at Walters Row in Dudley from where he was working as a coach builder. No record of him has been found within the census of 1901 and again in 1911. Perhaps he was just not living in Great Britain on those occasions, since it is now known that, at the outbreak of war, Richard Collett who was born at Dudley in 1869 enlisted for military service in 1914. He was 45 years old and assigned to the 1^st Garrison Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment, service number 9381.
48O18	Noah Richard Collett was born at 14 Himley Street in Dudley during the third quarter of 1877 (Ref. 6c 128). As Noah Collett, he was four years old in 1881 when he was living with his parents at 33 Walters Row in Dudley. Ten years later in 1891 he was still living with his family at Walters Row in Dudley at the age of 14 when he was still attending school. His father, Noah Collett died in 1895 and, on the day of the census in 1901 he one of only two still living at Walters Row with their widowed mother. As that occasion Noah Collett junior was 25 and working as a brass bedstead fitter. Apart from his birth record, the census of 1911 is the only other document found which provided his full name. That year, Noah Richard Collett was 33, when he was still living in Dudley, but at the home of the Turner family of James Turner and his wife Mary Skidmore. Noah’s occupation was similar to ten years earlier, since he was described as a brass fitter, while also being referred to as the cousin of James Turner.
	Within this family line there are two marriages between the Colletts and the Turners, the second of them being in 1898 when Sarah Ann Pearson Collett (below) married Alfred Turner. It is possible that Noah never married, the death of Noah R Collett recorded at Birmingham North register office (Ref. 6d 438) during the second quarter of 1930.
48O19	Martha Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1866 and like, all of the children of Joseph Collett and Mary Jane Pearson, was given Pearson as a christian name at the time of the registration of the birth. However, none of the children was ever recorded with the name in any subsequent census records. Martha was four years old at the time of the Dudley census of 1871 and was fourteen ten years later when she and her family were living at Occupation Road in Dudley. A further ten years later in 1891, her family was still living in Dudley at 10 Occupation Street but, by which time, Martha was not with them and was very likely married.
48O20	Sarah Ann Pearson Collett was born at Wolverhampton in 1868 and in 1871 she was aged two and was living in Dudley with her parents. Ten years later and aged twelve years, Sarah was still living with her family at Occupation Road in Dudley. A few years later, on leaving school, Sarah left the family home and went into domestic service and according to the April census of 1891 Sarah Ann Collett was 23 and was employed as a domestic servant by the Gray family who lived at 46A King Edmund Street in Dudley. During the third quarter of 1898, she married Alfred Turner and the wedding took place at St John’s Church in Netherton near Dudley. Sarah was 32 in 1901, but Alfred was not with her at that time, nor has he been located anywhere in the Great Britain that day. It therefore seems likely that he may have been aboard, for example with the army in South Africa. Alfred was born at Netherton in 1871 and he was a bricklayer. By 1911 the couple was living in Wolverhampton where Sarah was 42 and Alfred was 41.
48O21	Mary Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1870 and was under one-year old at the time of the 1871 Census for Dudley. By 1881 she was ten years old and living at Occupation Road in Dudley with her family. No further record of her as Mary Collett has been found which probably indicates that she was married just prior to April 1891.
48O22	Joseph Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1872 and was eight years old in April 1881. At that time, he was living with his family at Occupation Road in Dudley and was still living there ten years later, although the address was stated as being 10 Occupation Street. On that occasion he was 18 and was a carpenter working with his father and his brother Richard (below). During the next decade Joseph’s mother passed away and his father and some of his younger brothers and sisters moved to South Wimbledon. Those events also may have coincided with, or been the reason for, Joseph ceasing to be a carpenter, since by 1901 at the age of 28 his occupation was that of a house painter. He was still living in Dudley at that time as he was ten years later when he was 37.
48O23	Richard Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1875. He was five years old in 1881 when living with his family at Occupation Road in Dudley and was still living in Dudley ten years later aged 16. On leaving school he had taken up working with his father and older brother Joseph (above) as all three of them were listed as being carpenters in 1891. The family was then living at 10 Occupation Street in Dudley. Rather strangely, the baptism of Richard Pearson Collett and his sister Ada (below) took place at the Church of St James in Dudley on 25^th November 1889 when Richard was over twenty years of age. That happened two months after five of their siblings were baptised there in a joint ceremony. He entered military service and that may account for his absence in 1901 at the time of the Boer War, but by 1911 he was still serving with the military at the age of 34 and was based on the Isle of Wight.
48O24	Ada Pearson Collett was born at Birmingham in 1877 but was living at Occupation Road in Dudley by April 1881 and was three years old. She was twelve years old when she was baptised with her brother Richard (above) on 25^th November 1889 at St James’ Church in Dudley. Two years later she was 14 when she was still living at the family home in Dudley which was then described as 10 Occupation Street. No record of Ada has been located after that time, so it is assumed that by 1901 she had left home and was married.
48O25	John Jabez Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in August 1880 and was eight months old by the time of the April census of 1881 when he and his family were living at Occupation Road in Dudley. He was nine years old when he was baptised at St James’ Church in Dudley on 27^th September 1889, in a joint ceremony with four of his siblings. Two years later he was eleven years old and was still living in Dudley, although the family’s place of residence was recorded in the 1891 Census as being 10 Occupation Street.
	On leaving school and following the death of his mother during the 1890s, John followed the example of his older brother Richard (above) when he joined the army. By 1901 at the age of 20 he was a soldier based at South Wimbledon in Surrey. Listed with him at South Wimbledon was his father Joseph aged 56 and his sister Ruth (below) who was 19. It was while John was in Surrey that he met his future wife and the following year, during the fourth quarter of 1902, he married Constance Sarah Dowden at Kingston-upon-Thames. Constance was born at Wimbledon in 1882.
	Nine years after they were married the couple was living at Carshalton (Sutton), within the Epsom registration district of Surrey, by which time Constance had given birth to three children. John Jabez Collett from Dudley was 30 and working as a greengrocer and fruiterer. His wife Constance Sarah Collett from Wimbledon was 28 and listed in the 1911 Census with them were their three children. Constance Kate Collett was seven and Hilda Florence Collett was five, both of them born at Wimbledon, before the family moved to Sutton, where two-year-old Marjorie Gladys Collett was born. Staying with the family as a boarder, was John’s sister-in-law Mary Jane Dowden who was 24 and from Wimbledon.
	Three more children were added to their family over the next two decades, their births all recorded at Epsom register office, when the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Dowden. In 1915 John Collett, who was born at Dudley in 1880, enlisted for military service. At that time, he was still residing within the Epsom area of Surrey when he was 35 and joined the Army Veterinary Corps serving with the 11^th Battalion VES, service number SE/9420.
	48P2	Constance Kate Collett			Born in 1903 at Wimbledon
	48P3	Hilda Florence Collett			Born in 1906 at Wimbledon
	48P4	Marjorie Gladys Collett			Born in 1908 at Sutton (Epsom)
	48P5	Joan K Collett			Born in 1914 at Epsom
	48P6	Ivor John Collett			Born in 1923 at Epsom
	48P7	Josephine M Collett			Born in 1927 at Epsom
48O26	Ruth Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1881 and was living there with her family at 10 Occupation Street in Dudley at the age of nine in 1891. It was two years earlier that Ruth Pearson Collett was baptised at St James’ Church in Dudley on 27^th September 1889. Following the death of her mother sometime during the 1890s, Ruth’s father Joseph, together with the youngest members of the family, left Dudley and moved to London. By 1901, Ruth was 19 and was living with her father and her brother John (above) at South Wimbledon. She was not married and her occupation was that of an ironer at a local laundry. She later married George Goldsmith and by 1911 the marriage had produced three children for the couple. The family was living at Kingston-on-Thames where George was 30, Ruth was 29, and their children were Grace Goldsmith who was four, and the twins Joseph Goldsmith and Alice Goldsmith who were both two years of age.
48O27	Alice Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1883 and was baptised there on 27^th September 1889 with four of her siblings, the children of Joseph and Mary Jane Collett nee Pearson. She was seven years old at the time of the 1891 Census when she was still living at 10 Occupation Street in Dudley with her family. When her mother Mary Jane Collett passed away in the 1890s Alice moved to South Wimbledon with her father and brother John (above) and sisters Ruth (above) and Mabel (below).
	By the time of the 1901 Census, Alice was no longer living at South Wimbledon with her family, but instead had moved to North Wimbledon where she was in domestic service and was employed as a cook at the age of eighteen. According to the next census in 1911, Alice was still unmarried at the age of 27 and was still living in Surrey. But by then she had left Wimbledon and had moved to nearby Kingston-on-Thames where her married sister Ruth (above) was then living with her family.
48O28	Mabel Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1885, the birth being registered there during the third quarter of the year. She was nearly four years of age, when she was baptised on 27^th September 1889 at St James’ Church in Dudley, the same day as four of her siblings. In April 1891 Mabel was five years old and was living at 10 Occupation Street in Dudley with her family. Shortly after the death of her mother in the 1890s, the family left Dudley for South Wimbledon where her father was living in 1901. Although no precise details are known, both Mabel and her sister Alice (above) were employed in domestic service at North Wimbledon by 1901. Alice was a domestic cook, while fifteen-year-old Mabel was employed as a nursery maid.
48O29	Horace Pearson Collett was born at Dudley in 1887 and was baptised there at St James’ Church on 27^th September 1889, together with four of his older siblings, the youngest child of Joseph Collett and Mary Jane Pearson. He was three years old at the time of the 1891 Census, when he was living with his family at 10 Occupation Street in Dudley. However, no further trace of him has been found in any later records. It is established that his mother died before the end of the century and that his father, and some of his siblings, left Dudley for South Wimbledon.
48O30	Sarah Collett was born at Dudley in 1870 and was one-year old by April 1871. Ten years later she and her family were living at 29 Price Street in Dudley when Sarah’s age was given as being ten. She was still living with her parents in 1891 but by then they had moved to Stourbridge where she was 21 years of age. Towards the end of the following year, in the last quarter of 1892, Sarah married Abraham Merchant at Stourbridge.
	He was the son of Edward Merchant and Miriam (Maria) Garbett and was born at Stourbridge. The birth was recorded there during the final quarter of 1866, but under the name of Abel Merchant, even though in 1871 he was listed as Abraham Merchant aged 5 living at Bowling Green in Stourbridge. And again, in the census of 1881, he was recorded as being Abraham Merchant who was living with his family at 24 Bowling Green Lane in Stourbridge where he was already employed as a rope spinner’s labourer at the age of 14.
	Ten years later, and just eighteen months before he married Sarah Collett, he was once again referred to as Abel Merchant. On that occasion he was a bachelor of 24 whose occupation was that of a bricklayer living with his widowed mother Myra Merchant and younger brother at 24 Green Street in Stourbridge. After they were married, Abraham and Sarah continued to live at Stourbridge, and in 1901 the childless couple were recorded as Abel Marchant aged 32 of Stourbridge, who was still working as a bricklayer, and his wife Sarah Marchant who was 31 and from Dudley.
48O31	Samuel Collett was born at Dudley in 1873 and was seven years old in April 1881 when he was living with his parents at 29 Price Street in Dudley. Sometime during the following decade his family moved to Stourbridge where they were living in 1891 and 1901. Samuel was 17 and 27 respectively in the two census records and for the latter his occupation was listed as being a general carter. He was still unmarried in 1911 when he was again living with his parents at Stourbridge, when he was described as Samuel Collett who was 36 and a labourer.
48O32	Elizabeth Collett was born at Dudley in 1878 and was two years old by April 1881 when she was living at the family home at 29 Price Street in Dudley. By the time she was 12 she and her family had moved to Stourbridge where they were living in 1891. She was still living with her parents and her two brothers at Stourbridge in 1901 at the age of 22. Just a few days or weeks after that census day, Elizabeth Collett married Joseph Wooldridge, the event recorded at Stourbridge (Ref. 6c 292) during the second quarter of 1901. Joseph, from Stourbridge, was a labourer at an ironworks and the son of Charles James Wooldridge and his wife Eliza. Elizabeth was already with-child on the day of the census and was only a few months away from giving birth to a daughter on her wedding day.
	It is possible that her marriage to Joseph was enforced by the two families, due to her embarrassing condition. If it was a ‘shot-gun wedding’ then that may be the reason that Joseph eventually walked away from his wife and child because, in the next census, Elizabeth Wooldridge aged 32 was described as married but with a husband who ‘had left her’. On that day in 1901 Elizabeth and her daughter were staying with her parents Richard and Elizabeth Collett in Stourbridge, where Gladys M Collett was nine years of age. The birth of Gladys Maud Wooldridge was recorded at Stourbridge register office (Ref. 6c 191) during the third quarter of 1901.
48O33	Joseph Collett was born at Dudley after the census day in 1881, the youngest child of Richard Collett and his wife Elizabeth Warne, although his birth may have taken place during the first couple of months of 1882. When he was just a few years old his family left Dudley and moved to Stourbridge where they were recorded as living from 1891 onwards. At that time Joseph was nine. Ten years later the Stourbridge census of 1901 confirmed that Joseph Collett aged 19 was still living at the family home with his brother Samuel (above) and his sister Elizabeth. With the passing of another decade Joseph was still a bachelor living with his parents at Stourbridge by 1911, when he was 29 and a labourer like his brother Samuel (above), with whom he may have been working.
48O34	Fanny Mabel Mary Collett, who was known as Mabel and later as ‘Aunt Mab’, was born at New Street in Wordsley during the fourth quarter of 1883, the eldest child of John Collett and his first wife Fanny Mary Holmes. She was listed as being seven years of age in the Kingswinford & Stourbridge census of 1891. Two years later her mother died giving birth to Fanny’s youngest brother. So, by 1901, as Mabel F Collett, aged 17, she was acting as housekeeper for her widowed father and the rest of her family at 1 New Street in Wordsley. When her father remarried in 1903, Fanny and her sister Gwen (below) went to live in West Bromwich where, in 1911, Fanny Mabel Mary was working as a cookery teacher at the age of 27 when she and her sister were boarders at 14 Legge Street, the home of widow Ann Woodbridge.
	It is understood within the family that Fanny’s youngest brother Tom (below) was blamed by their father for the death of his wife during the birth in 1893. John Collett took the loss particularly badly and, in his grief, he virtually rejected his son Tom who, as a result, was cared for and brought up by his sister Fanny after John remarried. Perhaps it was because of her family commitments that Fanny was 39 by the time she was eventually married. The marriage, after the reading of banns, of Fanny Mabel Mary Collett and Alfred Lambourne King was conducted at Wickhamford parish church on 9^th December 1922. Both the bride and groom were residing in Wickhamford, when bachelor Alfred was 51 and a market gardener, the son of Alfred King, a Doctor of Music, and spinster Mary was confirmed as 39, the daughter of John Collett, a retired schoolmaster. during the fourth quarter of 1922 and that took place at Evesham. Alfred was known as Fred within the family. The witnesses at the wedding were three members of Fanny family, J Collett, S H Collett, and K J Collett, the first of them likely to be Fanny’s father, but the other two remain unresolved.
48O35	Frederick John Richard Collett, who was known as Fred, was born at New Street in Wordsley and his birth was registered at nearby Stourbridge (Ref. 6c 192) during the second quarter of 1885 by his parents John and Fanny Collett. He was listed with his family in 1891 as being aged six years and was only eight years old his mother died in childbirth during 1893. Eight years later in 1901, Frederick J Collett, aged 16, was living with his reduced family at 1 New Street in Wordsley, from where he was employed as a watchmaker’s apprentice. Two years later, in the summer of 1903, Fred’s father remarried but it was not long before there was turmoil within the family as the new wife was not welcomed into the family.
	By the time of the census of 1911 Frederick John Richard Collett from Wordsley was 26 and described as a farm pupil, involved with the farming industry, when he was still living in Wordsley with his father John, his stepmother Ellen, and his younger brother Tom (below). According to family stories, the past seven years had not been a particularly happy time for the new family and eventually Fred and Tom walked out on the family and went to live in Australia. That happened on 12^th April 1912, when they sailed out of the Port of London onboard the ship Orsova, bound for Brisbane, when Frederick J R Collett was 27 and an agriculturalist. However, their move down-under was short-lived when they returned to England to take an active part in the First World War and, during the second quarter of 1915, Fred married Constance Huggett at West Ham in London. Constance was a similar age to Fred having been born at Mile End in London in 1886.
	In 1901 Constance Huggett was 14 and was living at Hackney where she had already started work as a pupil teacher. She came from a family of teachers with her mother Emily being a school mistress and her brother Harry Percy, who was referred to as Percy, being a school master. Ten years later in 1911 Constance was 24 and was living in Lewisham in London.
	After they were married, Fred took Constance out of London during the war to the relative safety of Stourbridge in Worcestershire, where the birth of their first children was recorded. Once everything settled down again after the war, the family of three returned to London and were living in Walthamstow, where the birth of their second child was registered. Not long after he was born, the family elected to leave London again and, on that occasion, they moved to Wickhamford, just south of Evesham in Worcestershire, where Fred’s brother Tom was living with his new wife who was born there. Son John was then recorded as attending Badsey Infant School and after the Mixed Department of Badsey Council School, when the family’s home address was 7 Pitcher’s Hill in Wickhamford, where son Peter was also a pupil. Their address was also confirmed in the 1924 Electoral Roll 7 Pitcher’s Hill.
	Interestingly, the school record for John stated that he finished at Badsey County School on 26^th July 1929, when he moved on to his Secondary School education, by which time his parent/guardian was named as Constance Collett. That might have been an indication that her husband had died between 1921 and 1929. However, that was certainly not the case, because the much later death of Frederick John Richard Collett was recorded at Staffordshire register office (Ref. 9b 205) in 1969 when he was 83. Constance Collett also died that same year, when she was 82, with her death recorded at Worcestershire register office (Ref. 9d 154). To some extent, that was also confirmed by the Electoral Roll of 1924, when the name of Frederick John Richard Collett was listed as living at 7 Pitcher’s Hill in Wickhamford.
	At sometime in his life Frederick and his younger brother Tom (below) leased land for their joint venture as market gardens, which was referred to as garden land known as part of Hither Coombe Way for a rental of £15 11 Shillings 4 Pence. Later on, when Tom became a school teacher, Frederick entered into another lease agreement with R Turner for another plot of garden land known as Further Field for a rental of £14 4 Shillings 6 Pence.
	48P8	John Frederick Collett					Born in 1917 at Stourbridge
	48P9	Peter Harry Stanley Collett					Born in 1921 at Walthamstow
48O36	Kate Gwendolyn Pauline Collett, who was known as Gwen, was born at New Street in Wordsley, Kingswinford on 18^th July 1887, the birth being registered at Stourbridge during the third quarter of that year. She was the third of the five children of John Collett and his first wife Fanny Mary Holmes. It was also at New Street in Wordsley that she was living with her family in 1891, when she was listed as Katie G Collett who was three years of age. Sadly, just two years later, during the birth of Gwen’s youngest brother Tom (below) in 1893, her mother died. However, her father kept the family together at 1 New Street in Wordsley until he remarried in 1904.
	The census conducted in March 1901 confirmed that the family was still living at 1 New Street, where Katie G Collett, aged 13, was still attending school, possibly at the same school where her widowed father was a school master. Ten years later, Katie Gwendolyn was 23 and an elementary teacher boarding with her sister Fanny Mabel Mary (above) at the home of widow Ann Woodbridge at 14 Legge Street in West Bromwich. The photograph above was taken around 1913 when she would have been approaching 26, when she was referred to as Katie Gwendoline.
	It was also as Katie Gwendoline Collett, aged 35, that she married market gardener Francois Paul Peelman, aged 31, at Wickhamford on 23^rd May 1923. Both of them were previously unmarried, with both of residing in Wickhamford at that time in their lives. Katie was confirmed as the daughter of retired schoolmaster John Collett, and Francois was named as the son of Tobia Peelman, a farmer. The witnesses at the church were J Collett, H R F Collett, T W Collett, and M King. Their wedding day was recorded at Evesham register office (Ref. 6c 383) during the second quarter of the year. Francois was born at Brussels in Belgium on 13^th December 1891 and was a grenadier soldier in the Great War, during which he was injured and taken to England. His marriage to Gwen produced two daughters for the couple. Catherine Mary ‘Kit’ Peelman was born at Birmingham during the last three months of 1923 and was named after her grandmother Fanny Mary Holmes, while the second daughter was Rosemary Pauline ‘Bobbie’ Peelman who was also born in Birmingham during the first three months of 1925. Both daughters later travelled to Canada where they were both married.
	Once she was married Kit Peelman became Kit Pilgrim and she had a son Roderick ‘Roddy’ Pilgrim. He changed his name by deed pole to Roderick Knowles when Kit married her second husband Frederick J Knowles at Westminster during the fourth quarter of 1959. Fifteen years later, in 1974 as Catherine M Knowles, Kit married Arthur E Wilkes at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, where her mother was living at that time. Roddy Knowles, formerly Pilgrim, was a merchant seaman and in 2012 he is retired and is living in Australia.
	Gwen’s youngest daughter Bobbie, who was believed to still be alive in early 2009, lived in Canada for a while with her sister. It was on her return sailing to England in September 1956 that she met James D Stelle, a Canadian, whom she married at Honiton in Devon during the last three months of that year. She later married Kenneth Harry D Bole at Kingsbridge in Devon during July 1984, where they lived until his death in 1998. In 1940, The London Gazette published a notice that Francois Paul Peelman had changed his name to Francis Paul Peelman, which he used up until his death in Southport, Lancashire during the last three months of 1964 when he was 72. His widow Gwen Peelman nee Collett survived him by thirteen years and was living in Cheshire when she died during the December quarter of 1977, her death being recorded as Ellesmere Port.
48O37	Richard Collett was born at New Street in Wordsley during the third quarter of 1889, but sadly only survived for a short while as his death was registered at Stourbridge during the same quarter of that year.
48O38	Tom Herbert Collett was born on 24^th March 1893 at New Street in Wordsley and the birth was registered at Stourbridge during the second quarter of that year with the name of Tom and not Thomas. Sadly, at the time he was born his mother did not survive the ordeal and died giving birth to baby Tom. Tom’s father John Collett struggled to come to terms with his wife’s death and laid the blame for her passing with his young son. For that reason Tom was never permitted to celebrate his birthday and was virtually rejected by his father to such an extent that Tom was brought up by his oldest sister Fanny Mabel (above). In March 1901, Tom and his family were still living at 1 New Street in Wordsley when Tom was eight years old and was attending school there, perhaps even the same school where his father was a teacher. He was still living with his father, and his brother Fred (above), at Wordsley in 1911, by which time his father had remarried, when Tom Herbert Collett from Wordsley was 18 and employed by an ironmonger as his apprentice.
	Tom’s stepmother Ellen was also listed with the family at Stourbridge in 1911 and, over the years since their wedding day in 1904, there had been friction within the family as Ellen was not easily accepted by Tom and his siblings. The bad atmosphere in which they all lived eventually resulted in Tom and his brother Fred leaving England, when the pair of them emigrated to Australia. The story within the family is that Tom and Fred left with a ‘cart load of belongings’, some of which have been handed down through the generations and are still in possession of the family today.
	It was only as a result of the call to arms back home, that both sons returned to England at the outbreak of the First World War. See John Collett (Ref. 48N33) for a photograph of Tom, in his army uniform, sitting with his father in 1915. Like many of the men that took part in front line activities during the Great War, Tom was subjected to pepper gas attacks which resulted in him being advised to seek outdoor work.
	Nearly seven years after the end of the war, Tom Herbert Collett married Priscilla Marjorie Pethard at Wickhamford on 16^th April 1925 after the reading of banns. Priscilla was born there on 6^th April 1899 and was a 26-year-old spinster and the daughter of Edward John Pethard, a carpenter. Bachelor Tom was 32 and a market gardener, the son of retired schoolmaster John Collett. Both the bride and groom were residing in Wickhamford prior to their wedding day and, rather surprisingly, there were six witnesses. The first was Priscilla’s father E J Pethard, the second Tom’s father, followed by A G Pethard, F J R Collett, M King, and V F Ward. M King was also one of the witnesses at the 1923 marriage of Tom’s older sister Katie (above). Another marriage within the Pethard family, involved Vernon Joseph Byrd Pethard of Wickhamford who married Elizabeth Mary Collett Johnson of Cheltenham as St John the Baptist Church in Wickhamford during 1928.
	After their wedding day, the couple spent the rest of the life together at 17 Council Cottages in Wickhamford. During the previous twelve months, Tom and his brother Fred were once again reunited, when Fred and his wife, and their two children, left London to set up home in Wickhamford, close to where Tom and Priscilla were living. Tom and Priscilla’s first child was born at Wickhamford early in the year following their wedding, and the family of three was still living at 17 Council Cottages when their daughter was born. The 1939 Register also placed the family at 17 Council Cottages, later renamed as 37 Pitchers Hill, where Tom Herbert Collett was 46 and a handicraft teacher, his wife Priscilla M Collett was nearly 36, and their son Anthony J Collett was 13 years old and still at school. The fourth entry for the family, for daughter Pamela almost ten years of age, was redacted due to her being alive when the register was made a public document.
	Following his being gassed during the Great War, Tom was advised by his doctor that he would be better off seeking working in the open air, and it was that suggestion which led him to becoming a market gardener – see footnote below. Following the advice, Tom together with his older brother Frederick J R Collett leased garden land known in part as Hither Coombe Way for a rental of £15 11 Shillings 4 Pence. Later in his life, he became a school teacher at Blackminster School at Badsey where he taught woodwork until his retirement in 1959. The villages of Badsey and Wickhamford are approximately half a mile apart. Although known as Tom by most people, his wife always referred to him as Bert. This photograph of Tom was taken outside 37 Pitchers Hill in 1956.
	It was also in 1959, that the wife of Mr T H Collett was recorded in the Parish Review for that year as the treasurer for the Badsey Parochial Church Council. Fifteen years later, the couple was still living at the same house on Pitchers Hill, when Tom Herbert Collett died on 5^th January 1975 at the age of 81, following which he was buried at Cheltenham Crematorium. An item published in the Parish Magazine in February 1975 read as follows:
	“Mr Collett was not a native of Wickhamford, but his long residence here (he came here in the 20s) and his many years on the staff of Blackminster School, had made him known to a wide circle of people in the Vale. He was born in Staffordshire and, as a young man, he emigrated to Australia. On the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to England in order to join up with the Royal Artillery. He saw action in France and later had to be invalided back, having been gassed. It was this injury which made the doctors recommend that he take up market gardening, and so he came to settle in Wickhamford. Here he met his bride, Marjorie Pethard, and they were married in 1925 at Wickhamford Church. When Mr Collett began teaching, he was the first Handicraft teacher in this area, and he and the Domestic Science teacher had to share a classroom (box and cox fashion) as they travelled between the schools at Broadway, Badsey and Shipston. After Blackminster School was built, he joined the staff there, where he remained until his retirement. Always an active man, he enjoyed a busy retirement, working in his shed in the garden, and many of his friends can show evidence of his skill, particularly in woodwork. There is evidence inside the Parish Church too of his workmanship. We send his widow our deepest sympathy in her bereavement and assure her that she will be in our prayers. May he rest in peace.”
Footnote	It may be of interest to note that a market gardening family of Colletts lived in the village of Badsey between 1871 and 1911, although no connection has yet been formed with this family, which is believed to have originated just across the Gloucestershire boundary in village of Willersey, just two miles away. For further details see Part 57 – The Bakers of Abbots Morton in Worcestershire Line.
	48P10	Anthony John Collett				Born in 1926 at Wickhamford
	48P11	Pamela Ann Collett				Born in 1929 at Wickhamford
48P1	Mary Lucinda Collett was born at Devonport in Auckland during 1896, the only child of John Collett and Lucinda (Lucy) Ann Dunne. Mary never married and died at Devonport on 18^th July 1950, three years after her father, next to whom she was buried in O’Neill’s Point Cemetery at Bayswater, Auckland on 21^st July 1950, and in the same grave as her mother. Two adjacent headstones mark the graves.
48P2	Constance Kate Collett was born at Wimbledon in 1903, her birth recorded at Kingston-upon-Thames (Ref. 2a 401) during the third quarter of the year. She was the eldest of the six children of John Jabez Pearson Collett and Constance Sarah Dowden. It was around 1907 when her family left Wimbledon and moved to Carshalton, where they were residing in 1911. The census return recorded Constance K Collett as being from Wimbledon and seven years of age. Constance was twenty-five when she married George A Pearson, another link between those two surnames within this family line. Their wedding day was recorded at Epsom register office (Ref. 2a 15) during the third quarter of 1928.
48P3	Hilda Florence Collett was born at Wimbledon in 1906, with her birth also recorded at Kingston-upon-Thames (Ref. 2a 414) during the first quarter of that year. Hilda was one year old when her parents took the family to live in Carshalton, where Hilda was five years old in 1911. The later married of Hilda F Collett and Cyril J Fox was recorded at Epsom (Ref. 2a 27) during the third quarter of 1931.
48P4	Marjorie Gladys Collett was born at Sutton/Carshalton on 15^th May 1908 after her parents moved there from Wimbledon. Her birth was later recorded at Epsom register office (Ref. 2a 5) during the third quarter of 1908. The Carshalton census in 1911 included Marjorie from Sutton aged two years. As with her eldest sister, Marjorie was twenty-five when she married Alfred C G Pelling, the event recorded at Epsom (Ref. 2a 75) during the last three months of 1933. She was married for nearly thirty-even years, when the death of Marjorie Gladys Pelling, nee Collett, was recorded at Sutton Surrey register office (Ref. 5e 624) during the summer of 1970.
48P5	Joan K Collett was born in 1914, her birth recorded at Epsom (Ref. 2a 10) during the last three months of the year, when her mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Dowden. Three years earlier Joan’s family has been living at Carshalton, where she may have been born. It was during the last three months of 1943 when the marriage of Joan K Collett and George A Parry was recorded at Surrey Mid-Eastern register office (Ref. 2a 333).
48P6	Ivor John Collett was born in 1923, the only son of John and Constance Collett. His birth was recorded at Epsom register office (Ref. 2a 18) during the first three months of 1923, when his mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Dowden. Ivor was twenty-five when he married Yvonne D Miller, the occasion recorded at Croydon (Ref. 5g 57) during the second quarter of 1948.
48P7	Josephine M Collett was born in 1927, the last of the six children of John and Constance Collett. As with her three older siblings, her birth was also recorded at Epsom (Ref. 2a 38) during the first quarter of 1927, when again the mother’s maiden name was confirmed as Dowden. It was at the Surrey North-Eastern register office (Ref. 5g 1208) that the marriage of Josephine M Collett and Alan T Bruce was recorded during the third quarter of 1948.
48P8	John Frederick Collett was born at Stourbridge on 2^nd August 1917 but it might seem that the birth was registered at West Ham in London during the third quarter of that year. He was the older of the two children of Frederick John Richard Collett and Constance Huggett. He attended Badsey Infant School prior to starting at the Mixed Department of Badsey Council School on 1^st April 1925, when his home address was 7 Pitchers Hill in Wickhamford. His last day there was 26^th July 1929 and, on leaving to go onto secondary school, his parent/guardian was recorded as Constance Collett. John was twenty-two years old at the start of the Second World War and he enlisted with the First Battalion Durham Light Infantry. During his time with the British Army, he reached the rank of Private J F Collett 4919271. Tragically, just five months before peace was declared in Europe, John was killed in action at Forli as part of the Italian Campaign. He died on 15.12.1944 aged 27 and was buried at the Forli War Cemetery. His next-of-kin were named in the War Office Records as being Frederick and Constance Collett of Stourbridge in Worcestershire. Fred and Constance Collett, the parents of John Frederick Collett, are known to have visited the cemetery after the war.
48P9	Peter Harry Stanley Collett was born at Walthamstow in north London during the third quarter of 1921 and the birth was registered at West Ham like his brother John (above). He was educated at Loughborough Technical Collage and he later married Margaret Jean Neale at Leicester in 1949. The marriage produced two children for Peter and Margaret, both of which are living in 2009, one of them being John Collett who kindly provided the details relating to his family. Peter Harry Stanley Collett died on 26^th March 2004.
	During his life Peter recorded his experiences as a schoolboy attending Badsey School in the next village, north of Wickhamford, to where his family moved just after he was born and where his cousin Anthony (below) was born. The introduction to the story was written as follows: “Peter Collett was born during August 1921 and lived at 7 Pitchers Hill in the village of Wickhamford just over a mile from Evesham. He attended nearby Badsey Council School from 1926 to 1932 and then proceeded to Prince Henry’s Grammar School in Evesham after gaining a scholarship. He trained as a teacher and taught at a school in Kingswinford. He died in early 2004. His essay, ‘Memories of Badsey Council School’, has been lent by his former classmate Mrs Janice Gresty née Allard”. The full short story was published in the Monthly Collett Newsletter in August 2014 – Issued No. 98.
	48Q1	Ann Jane Collett				Born after 1954
	48Q2	John Paul Collett				Born after 1957
48P10	Anthony John Collett, who was known as Tony, was born at Wickhamford on 22^nd January 1926. He was 13 years olds in the 1939 Register when he was living with his family at 17 Council Cottages in Wickhamford. He later attended Loughborough Technical College where he trained as a school teacher. His teacher training enabled him to enter service with the Royal Navy, and in 1946 he took up a commission as an instructor and was given the affectionate nickname of ‘Schoolie’ of which he was very proud. During his twenty-five years in the navy, he served with nine different vessels, all as detailed below. Tony was first assigned to the shore-based training establishments at HMS St Vincent and HMS Ganges, before joining the aircraft carrier HMS Indefatigable. After that he served on board the battleship HMS King George V prior to returning to the land-based training camp of HMS Gamecock at Bramcote (near Nottingham) which was primarily for training navy airmen and aircraft mechanics.
	At the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956 Tony was serving with the cruiser HMS Jamaica. That vessel was a celebrity among the navy in that it was featured in the film ‘The Battle of the River Plate’ in 1956 and later that same year became the flagship of the Mediterranean when it led the attack on the beaches of Port Said during Operation Musketeer. This photograph shows Tony in uniform on board HMS Jamaica in 1956. After the conflict at Suez, HMS Jamaica returned to the UK at the end of 1957 when the cruiser was decommissioned. At that time Tony then joined HMS Barracks followed by another spell at HMS Ganges, before spending time with the frigate HMS Woodbridge Haven.
	Tony later served in the Far East during the Indonesian Confrontation of 1963 to 1966 which related to the island of Borneo. On that occasion he served on board the minesweeper HMS Manxman before returning to England to serve his final spell with HMS Vernon at Portsmouth. By the time he retired from the Royal Navy Tony had reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
	It was while he was serving with HMS Indefatigable that Tony met Josephine Nowill whom he later married at Holy Trinity Church in Brompton, London on 12^th October 1957. Josephine was referred to as Jo and was born in Athens in Greece on 4^th October 1931 and was baptised there at the Church of St Pauls by the Rev. Richmond Raymer, Colonel DSO. The marriage produced two children for Tony and Jo and it was their daughter Elizabeth, together with her aunt Lavinia Phillips nee Nowill and sister of her mother Jo, who kindly provided the detailed information relating to her family.
	Following his completion of service with the Royal Navy, Tony returned to his teaching background when in 1971 he took up the post of Science, Design and Technology lecturer at Cams Hill School of Fareham in Hampshire. This he continued to do for nearly the next twenty years, until his retirement in 1990. The photograph to the right was taken during that period in his life and shows Tony in 1984. Tony died at Southampton General Hospital on 29^th May 2004 and was cremated on 16^th June 2004 at Portchester Crematorium. His ashes were later buried, with those of his wife, in the churchyard of St Peter’s Church in Titchfield near Fareham on 18^th March 2005. At the time of his death Tony was living at Littlecroft, a house in Catisfield in Fareham.
	48Q3	Elizabeth Maysmor Collett				Born in 1960
	48Q4	Nicholas John Collett				Born in 1962
48P11	Pamela Ann Collett, who is known as Pam, was born at 37 Pitcher’s Hill (formerly 17 Council Cottages) in Wickhamford on 14^th November 1929. And just like her brother Tony (above), Pam also trained as a school teacher. On the occasion of the 1939 Register, her details were redacted because she was still living when the register was made available to the general public. She later married Charles William Amos on 19^th January 1964 at Wickhamford Church. He was known as Bill Amos and was born in Kent on 30^th August 1924. The marriage produced a daughter for the couple, Rosemary Anne Amos, who was born at Corbridge in Northumberland, and who was still alive in 2009, as was her mother, Pam Amos. Rosemary Anne Amos, who is referred to as Robey, was born on 15^th February 1964 and she married Peter William Moore at St Mary Magdalen Church in Ashford Carbonell near Ludlow in Shropshire on 21^st October 2000. Peter was born at Dartford in Kent on 13^th September 1963. He was the son of Leslie Francis Moore who was born at Townsville in Queensland, Australia in 1927 and his wife Doris Margery Whitehead who was born at Chatham in Kent in 1928.
48Q1	Ann Jane Collett who was born in 1954 later married Stephen Howard Danks in 1979.
48Q2	John Paul Collett was born in 1957. He later married Judith Margaret Cane in 1980 with whom he had two children.
	48R1	Jennifer Anne Collett				Born in 1988
	48R2	Victoria Grace Collett				Born in 1990
48Q3	Elizabeth Maysmor Collett was born on 25^th January 1960. She later married Mark John Trenchard at St Peter’s Church in Titchfield in Hampshire on 12^th October 1996, the exact same day on which her parents were married thirty-nine years before. Mark was born on 31^st July 1960 and was the son of meteorologist John Trenchard and his wife Valerie ‘Val’ Margaret Griffiths. The marriage produced a son for Elizabeth and Mark when Adam Luke Trenchard was born on 7^th April 2001. The naval history for her father Tony Collett, together with the family photographs displayed in this family line, have been kindly provided by Elizabeth.
48Q4	Nicholas John Collett, who is referred to as Nick, was born on 27^th April 1962. It was at Holy Trinity Church in Fareham on 21^st September 1991 that he married Susan Ann Young, known as Sue, who was born on 16^th April 1961, the daughter of Ellis Ronald Young and his wife Joan May Brunger. It was in November 2004 that Sue presented her husband Nick with their daughter Kristin.
	48R3	Kristin Jaye Collett				Born on 7^th November 2004