Who Do You Think You Are - Emma Willis 3rd Aug 2017

[kiterunner]

On BBC1 at 9 p.m., and repeated next late Mon / early Tues midnight, also on BBC1. No episode next week because of the athletics, and I have heard rumours that this series is going to be split into two 5-episode chunks with a long break in the middle. Hopefully they will tell us whether this is the case after tomorrow's episode.

[Ann from Sussex]

I have noticed on the WDYTYA magazine list of this year's subjects, the ones after Emma Willis are all noted "tba". They did the same thing last year and it was months before we saw the remaining programmes or were even told when they would be on. I do find BBC schedulers a bit cavalier in their attitude to viewers at times.

[Margaret in Burton]

I enjoyed this one. I like Emma Willis anyway.

[Margaret in Burton]

After tonight's finished it said the next episode was in two weeks time. Next week it's athletics.

[kiterunner]

Yes, I was glad to hear they said it would be back in two weeks.

Will type up episode summary tomorrow.

[Guinevere]

I'd never heard of her until tonight but she seemed like a lovely person. Those photos looked like convict photos to me.

[Ann from Sussex]

Next episode the week after next - hurray!

I hadn't thought of convict photos Gwynne but I did want to know how a local historian came to have them. I presume the programme had found another descendant who supplied them. The production, out of the blue, of a birth certificate of a child for Mary Ann by another man could have done with an explanation too I felt. Again, I presume they traced her by use of her maiden name (which I found hard to read: it looked something like Geb) but as we hadn't been told that name, it remained a mystery as to how and why they had alighted upon that particular Mary Ann. It was, after all, one of the most popular female first names in Victorian times.

I vaguely knew of Emma Willis as a tv presenter but didn't know anything about her. She came across as a really nice, unaffected person but oh, she did irritate me by getting all emotional over being shown death certificates for people who hadn't died in tragic circumstances but after having lived full and successful lives long ago. Given we we talking about people who lived 150 years and more ago, I wanted to say " of course they died dear"!

It was a good programme though and it was nice to see Dublin looking as beautiful as ever. Those marble altars were spectacular.

[Olde Crone]

I didn't know who she was either, but once she got over herself and stopped posing, I warmed a bit.

Some silly stuff again - how did anyone know the youngest child wasn't living at home? Census only shows where you were on census night. Child could have been on a sleepover at granma's! Then the assertion that it was rare for couples to split up and start again with someone else. I wouldn't call it rare, in my experience and the genealogist should have known better.

What a stupendous talent Michael Kirwan had. I would like to have known how that was discovered and how it was fostered but I don't suppose that kind of thing is ever recorded.

All in all, interesting.

OC

[JBee]

Carl Chinn is a well known local historian and was until fairly recently I believe a Professor at one of the local Universities.

He also produces a monthly magazine where there's loads of photographs and information about old Birmingham. I know someone who wrote to him some years ago about finding her father's grave (I think) and he wrote back with an old photograph of the cemetery (long since gone).

Here's a link to his webpage.

http://www.carlchinnsbrum.com/

.................................................. .....................

As an aside the last two programmes have people living in Birmingham and I keep trying to recognise whereabouts they're living in Birmingham but without success lol.

[kiterunner]

Episode summary:

Emma Willis, nee Griffiths, grew up in Birmingham with her mum and dad and two sisters. She is married to Matt Willis of Busted, and they live in Hertfordshire with their three children.

Emma went to Birmingham to visit her parents, who showed her photos of her paternal grandparents, Bill Griffiths and Edna nee Gebhard, who got married in 1950; Edna's parents Evelyn (Eva) and Martin James Gebhard, a plasterer; and Martin's mother Alice Maud nee Gretton. Emma's father showed her the marriage certificate of Martin and Alice, dated 1878 at Aston, Birmingham, with their ages shown as 26 and 18 respectively, and their fathers as John Gebhard, tailor, and James Gretton, hair merchant.

Emma found James Gretton listed in an old street directory of Birmingham, as a horn and hair merchant and dealer in sizing, at 6 Lower Trinity Street. She went to Lower Trinity Street and met a local historian there, who showed her photos of James and his wife. The house at no 6 was not still standing, but they did see some similar houses which have been turned into a museum. The 1841 census had James, age 14, as a brushmaker. The brushes would have been made from horn and (animal) hair, hence his later occupation as a horn and hair merchant (e.g. on the 1851 census). "Sizing" was the glue used for these brushes.

Emma was shown a local newspaper report of a legal case brought by the Inspector of Nuisances against James Gretton for creating a nuisance with his business, with 100 neighbours supporting James.

The 1861 census showed James, his wife Mary A, and several children, but Alice was not with them. She was with her grandparents Abraham and Hannah Redding at Heath Mill Lane.

Emma was then shown a notice of James's bankruptcy from the London Gazette. She went to Birmingham Library to meet a genealogist, who showed her that on the 1871 census Alice was with James but he had a new "wife" Helena, aged 22, and the youngest child was a daughter Lily. The birth certificate of Lily Helena Gretton born 10 Mar 1868, showed her parents to be James and Helena, and Emma was also shown the birth certificate of one Mary Ann Kilby, born 18 Jul 1867 in St Martin in the Fields, London, daughter of Joseph Kilby and Mary Ann Kilby, nee Gerl, apparently the same Mary Ann who was Alice's mother.

James's death certificate showed that he died on the 6th Feb 1899 in the Workhouse Infirmary, age 72, of senility and exhaustion, with the informant being his son Clifford Gretton, in attendance at the death.

Emma went home and found that her father had sent her details of the birth of Eva's mother, i.e. his great-grandmother, Margaret Kirwan, born in Nov 1862 to Michael Kirwan and Harriet nee Fowler. Emma went to the Registry of Deeds in Dublin, where she met a genealogist who showed her Michael and Harriet's marriage certificate - they married on the 22 Oct 1861 at Dublin Register Office, probably because Michael was a Catholic and Harriet a Protestant. Their fathers were shown as Michael Kirwan sr, a marble mason, and Richard Fowler, gentleman.

Emma was then shown an announcement from 1835 in the Leinster Express, of Richard Fowler esq of Dunlavin, County Wicklow, and Harriet of Merrion's Town. She was also shown the marriage settlement of Richard's parents, Richard Fowler and Abigail Alcock, dated 1790, which mentioned lands outside Dunlavin, including 43 acres called Boherboy. Emma went to Dunlavin and met a genealogist who told her that Richard Fowler sr also owned an inn there.

A Nov 1797 edition of the Union Star newspaper (produced by the Society of United Irishmen) referred to "____ Fowler, a distiller in Dunlavin, a notorious informer and one of those privileged murderous Orangemen". Another newspaper, "The Press", had reported that Richard Fowler was one of the people who had attacked a father and son named Egan, blacksmiths, thought to be making weapons for the Irish nationalists, and taken them to the guard house where they had tortured the son. Richard Fowler was charged and the case went to court, but Emma wasn't told the outcome of the case.
Emma then went online to look for information about Michael Kirwan, marble mason, and found that he had made an altarpiece for the Franciscan Church in Limerick. That church has not survived, but another of his altarpieces still exists, at St Saviour's Church, also in Limerick, so Emma went to look at that, and was shown a newspaper article from 1862 about the building of the altar. She was told that in 1866 Michael Kirwan had a workshop and showroom in Dublin, and was shown an article from 1851, from the Freeman's Journal, about a meeting of the Manufacture Movement where Michael was proposed as a member.

Emma then went to Trinity College Dublin, where she met an historian who told her that Michael was politically active and a leader of the trade union movement, which caused disagreements with Daniel O'Connell in 1837, but that Michael was listed as one of the contributors to the O'Connell National Statue in 1862, 15 years after O'Connell's death. Emma went to O'Connell Street to see the statue, and read an obituary of Michael Kirwan praising his work and saying that he was the first to establish the marble altar-building in Ireland.