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This time Bob has decided to research one of his favourite photograph's, probably known to many of you as just a delightful boating family taken at Tipton early in the 20th Century.
Old photographs are my passion! In particular those showing canals, boats and people. This evocative picture at Tipton Turn in about 1905 shows the captain of a loaded Shropshire Union R&CCC, horse drawn boat with some of his family and it has been used widely.
The photographer is unknown, but it is one of a set of six Black Country pictures produced as postcards and the caption reads "A bit of the Black Country". I came across it in about 1985 - sadly too late for inclusion in the second addition of "The BCN in Pictures" produced jointly by the BCNS and I.
All anyone knew at the time was that his name was "Charlie "Flimpy" - so called because he was known to deliver goods and packages "on the side". It was the late Fred Heritage senior, who had worked for Alfred Matty and Sons Ltd for 40 years, talking to me in his mid 80's, who said that Charlie's surname was Chew - incidentally a name I had never come across before.
So I became determined to know more about Charles Chew, boatman, and his family who worked the BCN a century ago. Albert Harman is a well-known and much respected waterways character and good friend to many a boater, operating locks for them all over the Midlands. I knew that he had researched the history of his own parents and relatives who were working boat people going back a long way and I asked him for his help with the history of Charles Chew.
This lead ultimately to many long hours of genealogical research in libraries and record offices at Stafford, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. I also approached my eldest daughter Carolyn who lives in Solihull who is an accomplished family historian working online through the internet. Between them we now know a lot more about our Charlie 'Flimpy' and his family.
At this time Albert invited me to his impressive home in Shenly Fields to see all his canalia and his treasured collection of memorabilia, some of which was left to him by his mother, the former Annie Davies. He ceremoniously and very carefully emptied the contents of a box onto a table.
There were many photographs, newspaper cuttings, letters etc, and then to my total astonishment I found the very same Black Country postcard showing the Chews at Tipton Turn - and with it was a memorial funeral card given to the mourners at Charles Chew's funeral on October 27th 1926 in Bilston.
The printed verse is quite moving. Albert's mother knew the Chews and had attended the funeral!. In the meantime my daughter Carolyn went on the Genes Reunited web site and discovered that a Jane Barton living in Stockport near Manchester was also researching the Chew family history. Albert and I drove north up the M6 to meet Jane who turned out to be a great niece of Charles Chew and we exchanged much useful information. Albert presented her with a mounted copy of the Tipton Turn photograph and a replica we had made of the memorial card. Jane was visibly moved by the occasion.
We know now that Jabez Chew (b 1849 in Audlem, Cheshire) married Mary Boulter (b 1853 in Whitchurch) in 1871. In 1871 census he was described as a 'horse driver and vessel collector' - therefore a boating man, and they had a large family starting with: Charles Boulter Chew (our 'Flimpy') (b March 1877) and was given his mother's maiden name as his middle name which was quite common at that time: then followed Cornelius and Eliza Ann (twins), Ernest, Jabez, Isaiah, William, Jane, Elizabeth and Ambrose (who died young) over the next decade.
1. The twin' gene has carried down through Isaiah, Jane Barton's maternal grandfather, and she also has twin boys Matthew and Benjamin aged 29.
2. We discovered from records that the Chews' younger daughter Violet married a George H Hollingshead in Wolverhampton in 1921. We immediately thought of our own Joe Hollingshead, the much respected retired BW man and fender maker from Compton on the Staffs and Worcs Canal, and operator of Tug NANSEN for BW. Were they related?. Sadly Joe says he has never had a 'George H' in his immediate family but I'd like to bet there would be a family connection not too far back along the Hollingshead family line.
3. I wonder how Charles would have felt had he known that the origins of his family name of Chew are well documented and go back to AD 1050 when the de Cheux's came over from Normandy during the Norman Conquest. The name Chew is recorded in the Doomsday Survey and closely-related spelling variations recur down the centuries. There is a River Chew as well as places like Chew Magna and Chewton, all in Somerset. I think our Charlie 'Flimpy' would have been mightily impressed to know all this.
4. And the word Chew means winding water - just how appropriate is that for our working boatman?
My grateful thanks to Albert Harman, my daughter Carolyn, and to Jane Barton for their many hours of research.
The picture shows Charles Boulter Chew and his wife Sarah (left) with elder daughter Alice holding a child and her sister Violet behind her father:
With below Charles Chew memorial card.
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