Barton & Barker
Family History

Last updated 24th March 2000

My maternal grandmother 1896

This page is about the families of my maternal line, and includes BARTON and BARKER. They are giving me exceedingly great trouble!

I found a Charles Henry BARTON, born 1859 in Hastings, the son of Thomas Henry BARTON and Mary Elizabeth PYKE. Curiously, an old family yarn suggests that one of the BARTONs had two families - one in Hastings! Am I on the track of a bigamist in the family?

Unable to find my Charles Henry BARTON on the 1881 census, I eventually discovered why. Charles Henry joined the army in 1877 and was stationed in Malta at the time of the 1881 census. He subsequently served in Cyprus and Egypt before returning to this country and finally being discharged in 1889.

Contrary to family legend, though, he was not the youngest sergeant in the British Army, but finally attained the rank of Lance Sergeant as an army cook.

5' 5½" and 10 stone, Charles Henry had fair hair and, according to his military records, his habits were temperate and his conduct very good. However, his medical record suggests that the moral standards of the average soldier of the time were not quite what one might expect of the Victorians. Suffice it to say that he spent some time in various military hospitals suffering from several unmentionable 'social' diseases. I suspect that my strict Baptist great-grandmother knew little of her husband's colourful past!

BARTON

Charles Henry BARTON and Ellen BARKER married in Regents Park Baptist Chapel, Marylebone. At his marriage Charles lived in New Street, Marylebone and he was described as a house painter. By the time his first child was born some ten months later, he was a poultry salesman!

Charles' father Thomas Henry was originally a cabinet maker and later became a grocer, but he is described as a retired builder on his son's marriage certificate. Charles' mother Mary Elizabeth PYKE, born near Newbury, Berkshire, was the daughter of John PYKE, a shoemaker.

BARKER

My only recollections of my Great Gran, Ellen BARKER, are of a frail little bed-ridden lady surrounded by Baptist tracts. She must have been nearly 90 by then. Her birth proved remarkably hard to find!

Only through the name of a witness on her marriage certificate, her brother Buttriss BARKER, have I managed to discover that Ellen was probably the daughter of William BARKER, Police Constable No. 112 in the Essex Police Force from 1863 to 1891.

Even so, I cannot yet be 100% certain that I have the right Ellen, as her deceased father William BARKER was described as formerly a Club Steward on her marriage certificate in 1895. At the time of her marriage she lived in Dorset Square, Marylebone, but Dorset Square (once the site of the original Marylebone Cricket Ground) was not yet fully built at the time of the 1891 census and that address was not yet in existence.

If indeed this is the right Ellen, I have been in contact with a number of other Essex BARKER descendants, who have led me back to a blacksmith called Nathaniel Buttriss BARKER who lived in Wimbish near Saffron Walden around 1800. Watch this space!