In the summer of
2016, we found a beautiful ambrotype at a local car boot sale. Exceptionally bright and very well preserved
it shows an extremely elderly lady in all her best mid-Victorian finery. The most exciting aspect of the photograph is
on the back though. On the mount someone has annotated by hand “Martha Colver
Aged 80 years” and beneath that, possibly in a different hand “Taken July 14
1859”.
So the little
old lady who was seated in front of the camera when that plate was exposed, and
whose bright little face still looks out at us today was born in about 1779,
probably got married at around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) and
raised her family between then and the Battle of Waterloo (1815) when she would
have been about 35.
The back of the frame and mount as found. The information on the back is as precious as the image |
So often the
people in ‘found’ ambrotypes and cartes de visite are anonymous. Perhaps if the images are inscribed or
annotated they are more likely to be preserved within the family, particularly
with the recent intense interest in genealogy, and so less likely to fall into
the hands of collectors. With just those
little titbits of information to go on – a name, and a date – I decided to see
how much I could find out about Martha Colver.
As well as a
date, the ambrotype also gave us a rough geographical location. The cartouche on the mount is from a photographer
called Atkinson’s, of 103 Devonshire Street, Sheffield.
The most useful resource for this kind of research is census data,
which I accessed though a subscription to Ancestry.co.uk. The earliest published census is that for
1841, although the data on it is fairly limited (just name, age, gender,
occupation and place of birth). Later censuses
taken every ten years from 1851 onwards include ‘relationship to head of
household’ which is the most useful detail for unraveling relationships.
As the
annotation on Martha’s photograph indicates it was taken in 1859, and that she
was already 80 years old, I decided to look for her on the 1851 census, making
the working assumption that she lived somewhere in or around Sheffield.
Bingo! There she was, on the first set of results,
in Grimesthorpe, a village near Sheffield.
The census says that she was aged 70 and a widow, living with her 30
year old son Edward and two servants.
Edward Colver’s occupation is given as “Builder & Farmer of 32 acres
employing one indoor labourer”.
So perhaps Martha
was not born in 1779. If she was 70 in
1851 then she was born in 1781. It’s likely
that she didn’t know how old she was, or exactly when she’d been born. Registration of births, marriages and deaths
was only compulsory from 1837 and despite her photographed finery she may not
have been well-to-do, or particularly well educated and she may not even have
been literate.
I tried to find
out some more about her.
On the 1841 census
I found Martha immediately again. She
was living in Grimesthorpe, but this time with Robert Colver whose age is given
as 65 years old. Martha is shown as 55,
which would make her date of birth 1786.
I think it is safe to assume that Robert is her husband, although this
early census doesn't actually give us that information. Robert's occupation is recorded as “Indp”
which is census-shorthand for “independent” or “of independent means”. In other words, Robert has a private income
from savings or investments. This
doesn't necessarily mean that he is wealthy, but it does mean that he doesn't
need to work.
We can probably
assume that Robert's private wealth was reasonably substantial though, because
in 1861 I found Martha again, still in Grimesthorpe, but now her occupation is given
as “Fund Holder”, which again means that she has private wealth. Mary Holmes, her unmarried grandaughter (29)
is living with her, and Martha is now listed as 81 years old (b.1780), which
ties in more closely with the inscription on the ambrotype. Martha’s private wealth was not referred to
on the 1851 census because it would have been assumed that she was supported by
her son who was treated as Head of the Household.
There is no
record of Martha on the 1871 census, which is not very surprising, whichever
version of her age you believe. A search of FreeBMD.org lists the death of a
Martha Colver in the Sheffield area in the first quarter of 1862. She would have been between and 76 and 82
years old.
I wondered what
happened to Martha's son Edward with whom she was living in 1851. I found a record of his marriage towards the
end of 1851, and in 1861 he was farming 110 acres in Butterthwaite, a small
village now almost under the M1 on the outskirts of Sheffield. Living with him were his wife Elizabeth,
their 4 year old daughter Clara, two servants and an 18 year old called Robert
Colver, described as Edward's nephew.
I could now
assume that Martha and her husband must have had at least three children –
Edward, a daughter who was Mary Holmes's mother, and another son who was Robert
Colver (junior)'s father. I returned to
the 1851 census to search for Robert at the age of 8, and found him with his
family – father William, a mason and builder, mother Charlotte, five brothers and
a servant – living at 10, Nags Head Yard in Sheffield.
I now had a basic family tree for Martha, and using one of the search facilities in Ancestry.co.uk which allow you to match your research with that of other people, I got the most astonishing breakthrough. On a vast and detailed family tree where some diligent researcher has added copies of photographs, I suddenly found the familiar face of Martha Colver looking out at me again. At first glance the image was identical to the ambrotype which had been on my desk throughout this search, and I wondered initially whether the other researcher had owned it at some point. But then I realised that the images are not identical. Martha's hands are positioned slightly differently, her head is at a very slightly different angle, and her shawl and sleeves are draped slightly differently. So when she sat in Atkinson's studios in July 1859, at least two plates were made.
I now had a basic family tree for Martha, and using one of the search facilities in Ancestry.co.uk which allow you to match your research with that of other people, I got the most astonishing breakthrough. On a vast and detailed family tree where some diligent researcher has added copies of photographs, I suddenly found the familiar face of Martha Colver looking out at me again. At first glance the image was identical to the ambrotype which had been on my desk throughout this search, and I wondered initially whether the other researcher had owned it at some point. But then I realised that the images are not identical. Martha's hands are positioned slightly differently, her head is at a very slightly different angle, and her shawl and sleeves are draped slightly differently. So when she sat in Atkinson's studios in July 1859, at least two plates were made.
Thanks to that
other researcher, what I now know is as follows. The bright little fierce looking lady in the
image was born Martha Swift, probably towards the end of 1779. She
became Robert Colver's second wife in February 1806 (four months after
Trafalgar). Between 1806 and 1813 Robert
and Martha had six children – a daughter, Hannah, and five sons, William,
Joseph, Robert, James (died in infancy) and Thomas. Joseph died in 1816 (just 6 years old) and
then a further son, Edward was born in 1820.
Both William and
Edward seem to have traded as builders and masons, and there was a Colver’s
Yard in Grimesthorpe which may have been connected with the family.
Robert Colver –
the grandson of Martha who was living with his uncle Edward in 1861 - became a
leading figure in Sheffield; head of the Cutlers Company, and a partner of the
steel firm Jones & Colver.
Martha Colver is
buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Ecclesfield, just outside Sheffield and
her grave seems to be marked, and extant.
The other
researcher seems to have traced William Colver's line, so I'd like to think
that the image on Ancestry.co.uk is of the ambrotype which he was given as
Martha's eldest son. Perhaps there were
more than two plates – perhaps Martha presented one to each of her surviving
children in 1859 (Hannah, William, Thomas and Edward). Without a monumental amount more research, it
is impossible to deduce to whom “our” image belonged or how it fetched up in a
car-boot sale in Hampshire in 2016, but at least we now know a little more
about Martha and her family.
Finally, as a
footnote, what about Atkinson's, the photographers? References to Atkinson's Atelier Photographie
(“replete with every convenience”) can found on the internet. Devonshire Street in Sheffield city centre
still exists, but 103 cannot be identified (although it is very likely that the
street has been renumbered since 1859).
An internet
source giving a list of Sheffield photographers and the trade directories in
which they advertised suggests that Edward Atkinson operated from 103
Devonshire Street in 1864, and the 1861 census shows him living at 54 Cobden
View Road with his wife Sarah, and their children. He is described as a “Photographic Printer
and Publisher”.