Laburnum Terrace

Sarah Gerrish of 10 Gloucester Road

The 1871 census shows that a widow, Sarah Gerrish was living in number 10. 

We have found a Website that Sandy Goldsmith produced to show her family history research and this includes information about Sarah and her family.  It shows that Sarah was born Sarah Houlden on September 4th 1822 in the Temple area of Bristol.  She married George Gerrish on 13th January 1849.  They married in Clifton in Bristol where Sarah was living at that time.  However, George seems to have been born in Thornbury.  We have not yet seen his baptism record to confirm this.  We have learned that the 1841 census shows that George was living in Conduit Place in Bristol.  However from looking at the 1851 census it would appear that George and Sarah came to live in Castle Street in Thornbury soon after their marriage.

There is some confusion over George’s occupation.  In the 1851 census George was described as a general clerk in a solicitor’s office.  However in the baptism record of their first son, George in 1851, he was said to be an accountant.  He was described as a stationer when their daughter, called Sarah Rose but apparently known as Rose, was baptised in Thornbury Church on 21st April 1852.  He is later described as an accountant or as a law stationer. Perhaps he kept the books for a legal stationery business.  It seems that George died on 10th March 1871 just before the census.  The Scribe's Alcove Website says he was buried in Thornbury on March 15th aged 46. The death certificate apparently shows that George died pf paralysis and the person who officially reported the death was Thomas Hudson, the Inland Revenue officer who lived next door at number 8.

Sarah seems to have had quite a hard life as their son, George, had died only five years earlier in 1866 aged just 15 and another child, Jessy, had died only the previous May aged about 16.  It is possible that either Rose herself was in poor health or her elder daughter was, because the 1871 census shows that the only person in employment was the younger daughter, Florence, who was apprenticed to be a dressmaker.

It seems that Sarah had come to live in Laburnum Terrace from the High Street where she had been living in the previous census of 1861.  This census shows that they had another child, Charlotte Kate, baptised September 1858 as well as the four children that we had previously found.

Sarah and Charlotte Kate eventually moved to Lambeth in London where the 1881 census shows them living as lodgers in the home of James Robertson, a carpenter from Scotland.  Charlotte was 22 by this time and a qualified dressmaker.  Sarah's other daughter, Florence presumably came too because in 1876 she married Edward Grimstone Brewer in Brixton.  We could not find Sarah in the 1891 census but we have since learned that she must have returned to Bristol because she died at Kingston Park in Redland in 1890 aged 67 years.

This page was last updated: 12/05/2007