Descendents Of Ann Bateman

My great grandmother was Ann Bateman, who was born to Thomas and Ruth Bateman (nee Roberts) on 27th November 1861 at Monmore Green, Wolverhampton, Staffs.

Ann was the eldest child of the family, on the 1881 census she was 19 years old and working as a Warehouse Girl in Wolverhampton.

Approximately 8 months after the 1881 census, on 19th November, Ann married Nathan Williams, who was born 1st March 1860 in Wolverhampton. Nathan was one of eight children and his father died when he was 10 years old. Nathan and his family stayed in the Wolverhampton area, living at addresses such as Steelhouse Lane and Eagle Street, streets that previous Bateman family members were known to have lived in.

Nathan worked as an Iron Worker or Roller, which I am sure would have been fairly hard work.

Ann, too was a hard worker, and I am told she supplemented the family income by selling vegetables and goods from her front room window. Later in her life she had three shops, one at 140 Bilston Road, Monmore Green, another at 77 Alexander Street Wolverhampton and a Beer Retailers at 34 Alexander Street, Wolverhampton.

Ann remained in one of her shops until a short time before she died, when she left Wolverhampton and moved South to live with her daughter, Lou (baptised Ruth) in Ottershaw, Surrey.

Ann and Nathan had four daughters and one son but only two of the children survived to full adulthood.

Ruth Williams known as Lou was born 1893 in Wolverhampton, Elizabeth Williams, my Grandmother, followed in 1888 then a son Nathan Williams in 1889 who unfortunately died aged about three, another daughter named Ann Williams followed in 1890, but she, too, died young at only eight months of age.

The fourth daughter, Polly Williams, was born in 1898, but she survived only until her late teens, dying of Peritonitis.It was indeed a very sad life for Ann and Nathan Williams.

The last shop that Ann had was, I am told, a sort of sell anything shop, a bit like the shop in, " Ronnie Barkers, Open all Hours" show. I remember my Uncle Tom, Mums brother, telling me that when he was about 4 years old he got into dreadful trouble one day when he went into the back of his grandmothers shop and turned on the tap at the bottom of the paraffin drum.

Apparently, paraffin ran all over the floor and out into the front shop, I think there may have been a sore backside that day.

Ann and Nathan's daughter Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, was my Grandmother. On the 20th December 1911 she married my Grandfather, John Spittle.

Lizzie and John had ten children, with eight surviving to adulthood. They lived in Birmingham, where their first five children, Gladys Spittle, John Alfred (Jack) Spittle, Thomas Nathan (Tom) Spittle, William Charles (Bill) Spittle and Constance Irene (Biddy) Spittle were born.

In 1921 they moved South to Byfleet, a village in Surrey. They lived in a two bedroom and a cupboard house, which had no electricity, no hot water and a toilet "out the back".

A couple of months after they arrived in Byfleet my mother, their sixth child was born and named Evelyn Isobel Spittle, two years later another daughter, Mary Caroline Spittle, followed by a son two years later, Christopher Brooke Spittle, who was apparently named by my Grandmothers sister Lou.

Today four of these children are still living, three still in Byfleet, and my Mother in Horsell, a few miles away.My mother Evelyn Isobel Spittle married George William Jay on 19th May 1945, they had two children, my sister Christine Elizabeth Jay born 1948 died 1997 and myself June Mary Jay born 1950.

On my Spittle family I cannot get back farther than my 3x great grandfather William Spittle born c1795, (according to age on death certificate in 1840). I believe he could be the William Spittle born 1792 at Wednesbury, to WILLIAM SPITTLE 1767 and HANNAH TONKS , but as he died before the 1840 census and married before certificates were issued I cannot verify the name of his father or where he was born.

However the William Spittle born 1792 in Wednesbury, does not appear on the 1840 census and descendants of this family do not have any trace of him, so I really believe he is my William.This is a short story of my Spittle/Bateman/Williams family. June Whitehouse (nee Jay)