A GRANDFATHER’S NOTE
FAMILY NAMES: ELVIN : HILL : SPURGEON
Reproduced from an article published in the Society's Members' quarterly magazine Cockney Ancestor.
In 1981, my father-in-law, Lionel ELVIN, wrote “A NOTE ON OUR FAMILY” for his son and grandsons. There were strong ties with East London on both sides.
Of the Elvins he wrote: "My great grandfather, Samuel Phillip ELVIN, had four children. The eldest, George Edward, was a strict Baptist and a deacon and superintendent of the Sunday school in Spurgeon's Tabernacle, the religious establishment in East London of the famous preacher, W. H .SPURGEON".
Lionel Elvin had earlier written a short book about his maternal grandfather, George John HILL called HILL OF RATCLIFF HIGHWAY.
Only one copy of this book has so far been located (in the hands of Minnie Hills's Grandson, John TAYLOR in Cornwall, from whom I also received copies of several old family photographs). I have extracted some of his 1981 description of the HILL'S:
"The origins of both my maternal grandparents were on the Oxfordshire-Gloucestershire border.
A George Teil HILL was baptised in Little Rissington Church on March 12th 1818, although only the name George was then mentioned before Hill. His parents were George and Sarah HiLL, and as the infant's uncle was named TEIL his mother must have been Sarah TEIL before marriage and the child's second name given in honour of its uncle.
This Teil had gone to India, made a good deal of money in Kidderpore, the commercial and docks area of Calcutta, married an Indian lady and brought her back to England. He then overspent himself building a fine house off the Finchley Road in London, on what is now called Kidderpore Avenue.
Teil got into debt and went back to India with his wife. I expect she couldn't stand the climate. Most of the windows of the house face north, for some inexplicable reason. There was some dispute about a will, but no money came to his English relations and the family legend is that the Indian lady's family got it.
The house was eventually acquired by Westfield College. It is still their central building.
George Teil Hill became a tailor in Burford with one JENNINGS, from whose family came my maternal grandmother. Both men got "converted" and decided to become tailors of men rather than of garments. Hill was trained for the ministry in Glasgow and then became a missionary to seamen in the dockland of London, through a body called the Seamen's Christian Friend Society, of which he, his son George, and again his son George were successively Secretary.
He and his wife, Emily (nee' JENNINGS), had three children, all of whom I remember well. The first Mary, who married a Scottish sea captain, named David Hardie DALRYMPLE, sailing his ship out of Greenock. The ship was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands in the Thames Estuary, Captain Dalrymple going down with it.
He by then had two children, Tom and May, and my grandfather, a truthful man, said that in a dream that night, before they had heard the news, Dalrymple appeared to him, standing on the ship's deck, and calling our "George, look after Mary and the children".
Although he was getting a large family of his own, my grandfather did. His sister Mary lived the rest of her life under his roof and Tom and May grew up with his sons and daughters.
Great-aunt Mary was a most gentle and always kind person, but I suspect hardly ever exerted a will of her own. In this and in her black dress and, when she went out in her trimmed bonnet, she was like one of those good, almost characterless females in Dickens, but everyone was fond of her.
Their second child was my grandfather, George John HILL; he was born in 1844 and could remember the Crimean War. In due course, he succeeded his father in "The Society", as the Seamen's Christian Friend Society was called for short, in the family. It had hostels at various ports around the coast and its headquarters and chapel were in the Ratcliff Highway, a once notoriously wild district, now called The Highway.
Rev. George John Hill was a Bible Christian. He devoted his life to the Society. His income was small and how he managed to bring up so large a family on it and to maintain the standards appropriate to a Minister of Religion I just don't know, but he did.
Christmas really was a Victorian style family party: his own numerous children, Aunt Mary and her two, my mother and father with three of us, and often Aunt Minnie, her husband and three children. My grandfather somehow always managed to finish carving for everybody, and start his own meal before anyone was ready for a second helping, but of course.
This large and scant income meant that his children, with exception of the youngest son, Arthur, had no more education than the local Board School could provide, and that in those days was not much. My grandmother, Emily HILL, was greatly respected as a woman of character who, apart from bearing his many children, acted as a vigorous lieutenant to my grandfather in his work.
They were married in Christchurch, St. George's East, on Christmas Day 1866.
There were ten children of this marriage. The eldest, Minnie, married a commercial traveller named Harry TAYLOR. She was a spirited person, but was driven almost out of her mind by the unhappiness of the marriage.
The second child was my Aunt Sarah; she broke off her engagement to a young man named BECKETT Because she decided her was unreliable in money matters, whether wisely or not I often speculated; but aunt Sarah was a person of strong principle. She courageously set out to earn her own living. She passed her various music examinations, for the pianoforte, and set up as a music teacher.
After a boy who died when a baby, came my mother Mary Jane and I will say more of her later. Then came Anne, a women of ability who was frustrated by the family life and maddened when my grandfather married a second time, and capable of turning nasty on occasion.
Anne as a girl was once seen sitting on a park bench with a sailor and thereafter her reputation in the family was dubious. Born fifty years later she would have had a happier life.
The three younger sisters were Jessie, who went to Saffron Walden Training College and became an infant teacher, beginning her career with a class of ninety infants at the local Board School (a natural and happy infant teacher); Kate who got and kept a job in the Central Telegraph Office; and Grace, who worked in the Post Office.
These three and Sarah and Anne intermittently continued to live in their father's home. They would have scorned to be pitied, and indeed made something of their lives. The only one real escape for them would have been a good marriage. They, too, would have been more fulfilled had they been born later.
George and Emily had two sons who survived infancy: George, who was nearest my mother in age, and Arthur the youngest. My grandfather for much too long was surrounded by admiring females in his home. They accepted that, indeed with pleasure. The sons were less happy and it bore hardly on them.
George got his shorthand and typewriting and qualified himself for the duties of a clerk and secretary, he then followed his father in the Society and eventually became its Secretary, but he was never ordained as a Minister.
The youngest son, Arthur, was sent to Bancroft's School in Woodford and during term-time lodged with my parents at Buckhurst Hill, where we lived. Though no dunce, he was not at all interested in books. He was interested in electricity and what we should now call technology. His father did not rate him very high; but my mother and all his sisters were very fond of him.
He enlisted in the First World War. The last card we had from him was from St. Omer. He was killed in 1916, age 27, at Thiepval, France. My grandfather then seemed proud of him.
I have not yet mentioned my grandfather's younger brother, Justus, the painter. My grandfather persuaded the famous cartoonist Cruikshank (their opposition to Drink was no doubt the link) to say he would take him on in his studio, but Justus, the spirit of adventurousness strong in him, went off to China instead.
He came back and struggled to live by selling his paintings. He had some success: he exhibited in the Royal Academy and there used to be, in the Acton Park Library a set of paintings of Acton by him, when Acton was still rural. Justus had a fine baritone voice and his rendering of The Village Blacksmith in my grandfather's drawing room at Christmas was always an occasion.
Justus had an eye for a pretty girl and his wife was warned when they were about to marry that marriage with him would be unstable. "Don't worry" she replied, "I can hold him", and she did. One son Tommy, greatly admired my grandfather and after an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself in South Africa, worked with him in the Society.
My grandfather Hill's second wife was a cousin, Amy WILKINS, She cannot have been much older than his daughters, and this made for a little difficulty (perhaps that is why we called her 'Aunt' Amy), but this was soon overcome, except in the case of Anne, by the sweetness of her character.
Amy had been brought up in some kind of orphanage, but it must have been of a superior kind, for she was quiet and well spoken, had excellent taste and was well-read within a limited range, and had a genuine interest in painting and painters. She had come originally from the same part of the country as my grandfather and 'real' though unknown grandmother.
She told me that she had sat reading many of Scott's novels as a child in the ruins of Minster Lovell, that most charming of villages by the Windrush.
There is, or at any rate, a lane there called Amy's Lane, which was named after one of the members of her family who had the name before she did. Her role with her husband was, as I suppose the times still dictated, that of the junior helpmate, but she could reprove him, though only with a gentle (but usually effective) " oh, George!"
Of all the household at 255 Burdett Road, where they lived, she was the one to whom I felt drawn the most, though they were all good aunts.
My mother, Mary Jane HILL - Dolly - was born on April 30th, 1874, my father, Herbert Henry ELVIN on July 18th of the same year. They married on April 5th 1899, in the Seaman's Chapel, Wapping. They had met at the Chapel. It was during a Watch Night Service, to see the New Year in, that my father whispered his proposal to her and she had said yes.
They were both convinced Christians. My father remained so, my mother, not least from observing the attitudes of Christians of both sides during the First World War, began to question things and ending by giving up her religious beliefs.
The formal education of my mother was very limited, she left the local Board School when she was thirteen, but she came from a reading household and reading remained one of her great pleasures until the end of her life.
She read many of Dickens' novels (and at least one of Thackery's, Vanity Fair) out loud with us when we were boys. This was an experience of great value and delight, for we discussed each book as we went along and as we also took our turn at reading a chapter aloud, this must have helped our sense of language and our capacity to be articulate.
My mother perhaps did not have a trained mind, but she had a strong realistic sense and a readiness to question things, and above all she had great powers of imaginative sympathy.
She was a very good mother to us all.
To start their married life together my mother and father moved from the East End to Buckhurst Hill, Essex.
This article first appeared in the Cockney Ancestor and appears here with the full permission of the author, Dian Elvin Samara, Australia
Published April 2002
