Sayers of Surrey

Family tree: Harold Sayers ancestors

My daughter’s great grandfather Harold Frederick Sayers was a hairdresser in Bishop’s Stortford and later a grocery shop proprietor in Haverhill.

Harold's father was Frederick James Sayers, a telegraph clerk and later postal clerk in Surrey.  Frederick married Susanna Victoria Garlinge with ancestors traced right back to the mid-1600s, one of whom died of smallpox in 1786.

Frederick's father was James Sayers who started his career as a shoemaker and later became a rural messenger or postman. His father was also James, a toll collector and road surveyor of Dorking.

The Sayers family was traced back via William and Richard of Capel, then John of Newdigate to Edward of Dorking, who married Elizabeth Cherington in 1693.

Harold Sayers

Dickinson of Wells & the South East

Family tree: Grace Dickinson ancestors

Harold Sayers married Grace Annie Dickinson who we think had connections with the papermaker, John Dickinson (coincidentally the place where the Caryl family worked).

Grace’s father and grandfather were certainly involved in the papermaking process as compositor and printer pressman.

To complete this branch are the Plummers of Middlesex and the Fosters of Newington Causeway, including a chap with the occupation of ‘cow keeper’, who would have been very proud to hold such a position ahead of all the agricultural labourers (ag labs) and would have worn his own special smock to set him apart from the rabble.

           Compositor at work

Lewis of South Wales

My daughter’s Nanny was Anne Grace Lewis, one of a family of nine children. Anne was separated from her eight brothers when their mother Gertrude died in 1937. Their father Seth could not cope and the children were put into foster homes.

Gertrude Phillips was born about 1899 in Llanelly in Carmarthenshire, daughter of John, a coal hewer, and Elizabeth. The family had moved to Ogmore Vale by 1900 when Gertrude’s brother Sydney was born.

Gertrude married Seth Lewis in Bridgend Registry Office in 1920. Seth was aged 27, he was also a coal hewer of Bridgend Road in Pontycymmer. According to the wedding certificate, his father was Owen Lewis, a colliery timberman.

Anne Grace Lewis in 1979