Our family knowledge of our Gillman origins was fairly limited and almost entire oral: there was a William Gillman and his wife Ann King who came out to South Africa from England with three grown sons in the middle of the 19th century, settling in Kalk Bay where they ran an hotel. Sometime in the 1870s they went up north to Namaqualand for the Copper boom. That was it.
Even this limited information came, I believe, via the wife of the youngest of those three sons (Charles’s wife Annie Wolstenholme), passed in turn to her grandson Charles Gillman’s wife, my grandmother Helene de Villiers, who passed it to her children and to me. Annie had lived the last 15 of her 99 years with my grandparents on their farm in Namaqualand and most of my grandmother’s Gillman family knowledge came from her.
Two years of research has filled out the story somewhat – but the details are still sketchy. The number of people in the story, though, has expanded exponentially, with William and Ann’s ancestors, and many descendants.
This post sets out what I have been able to find out about William and Ann’s family before they emigrated. I will follow up with their nine (not three) children and 24 grandchildren in a subsequent post.
Charles Gillman and Ann Hurrell – William’s parents
William’s parents were relatively easy to find in the Cape Archives – William’s Death Notice from 1878 reveals he was born in London in August 1804, to Charles Gillman and Ann Hurrell. He died on 11 June 1878 in Springbok, Namaqualand. His Death Notice was signed by his widow, Ann.
This discovery was a start, and has allowed me to track down his parents, assuming a date of birth of around 1780 for both.
I found the record of an Ann Hurrell baptised on 4 November 1780 at St Giles in the Fields, daughter of James and Ann Hurrell, which is almost certainly our Ann, as we know they are both from St Giles. This is not a full baptism entry, just a simple list of the children baptised that year, on that day. It just says “4 [November] Ann Hurrell of James and Ann”:
Charles Gillman married Ann Hurrell on 12th February 1805 at St Giles in the Fields, London. Both are “of this Parish”.
Before a wedding, Banns had to be published for three consecutive weeks before the ceremony – to allow for the community to register objections! Here is the entry recording the Banns:
I haven’t traced the original Marriage entry, but a copy made at the time to send off to the central records office. Where a document at the time required a signature from someone unable to write their own name, they were asked to make a mark (usually a cross) on the page, which is then labelled as that person’s mark, (and sometimes the mark is even witnessed by a another person). In this case Charles makes a mark, and it is described as such. This mark tells us that he was illiterate, even to the extent of being unable to write his own name. Ann however appends her own signature. (This transcript faithfully copies the original, even down to the “X”.)
William was Charles and Anne Gillman’s first child, born 12 August 1805 and baptized at St George’s Bloomsbury 11 January 1806. St George’s is a couple of hundred meters north west of St Giles, and all their subsequent children were also baptized here.
Then follow Eliza (born 24 October 1808, Baptised 2 April 1809 – last name on the list below),
Mary (1811),
and Jane (1814) .
Tragically Ann Hurrell dies on 31 July 1818 aged just 34 while giving birth to her next child, Ann, with baby Ann following days later. Charles, an illiterate labourer, is left to raise his 13 year old son and three young daughters alone.
From at least Jane’s birth they are living in Lambs Conduit Passage, in Holborn. Charles is described as a labourer in 1814 (Jane’s baptism entry) and a servant in 1838 (William’s marriage entry). I cannot find him on the 1841 Census, and I have not as yet been able to identify Charles’ parents. There are however a John and Mary Gillman who are having children in St Giles in the 1780’s who could be his parents and a James Gillman running a pub in Eagle Street just round the corner from Lambs Conduit Passage. But no direct links found … so far. More broadly, there is also a John Gillman baptized at St Botolph without Aldgate in the 1600’s (where there are also Hurrells). There are well established Gillman families in a number of areas outside London, the nearest being Canterbury and Norfolk, and also Gloucestershire. So it is possible that the family were longstanding residents of St Botolph or came to London during its rapid expansion in the 18th century.
William’s wife, who my family oral history remembered as Ann King, was in fact Anne King Currell
Thomas Currell and Ann Carter – Ann King’s parents
Anne King Currell (born 4 September 1816, baptized 26 January 1817) was the sixth of seven children of Thomas Currell (1776-1856) and Ann Carter (1778 – 1869).
Thomas, born in Deptford, the dockland area on the south side of the river, was a “biscuit baker” in the East End of London, around Stepney and Wapping, with close association to the churches of St Dunstan in Stepney, and St Georges in the East, Wapping and of course the wharves and docks of early 19th C London. From this we should assume he manufactured “ships biscuit” or hard tack – the essential bread substitute on long sea journeys.
Thomas and Ann were married in 1801 at St George in the East, with her sister Susan Carter as one of the witnesses.
Thomas and Ann had at least 7 surviving children: Elizabeth Currell, born 1803 ; Thomas Currell, born 1805; Henry Currell, 1807–1874; Thomas William Currell 1810–1896; Robert Currell, 1813–1876, Ann King Currell 1816–1899; Susannah Currell, 1819–1902.
Here is Thomas’ baptism entry (2nd entry from the top) 18th August 1805:
Two of the other children were also baptized on the same day in January 1817: Robert born in 1813 and my 3x Great Grandmother Ann King born 1816:
The last baptism record I have found for Thomas and Ann’s children is Susannah’s, in 1819.
The Currells in Wapping in the 1800s
The new London Dock (shown below – the picture is at right angles to the map that follows) was recently completed, and the Currell’s addresses show them occupying housing later demolished as slums between these new docks and the river.
The addresses on the Baptism records are shown below on a contemporary map. Thomas and Anne lived to a good age, living at Willow Tree Court for at least a decade between 1841 (along with their son Thomas) and 1851 (with their son Robert, also a baker, but apparently a merchant seaman when in his 20’s and 30’s). Thomas died in 1856 and Ann went to live in Cinnamon Street round the corner with her grandson Henry (Thomas’ son), where she died in 1869. The Currells seem to have been in the Stepney/Limehouse area for at least a couple of generations, and Anne King’s brothers later lived in Poplar. (This part of Wapping is unrecognizable today, with the docks built over and most of the street layout changed by wartime bombing and subsequent regeneration.)
The Carters from Great Baddow, Essex
Ann Carter herself came from Great Baddow in Essex (just outside Chelmsford) and it was her mother Sarah King who gave Ann King Currell her middle name. Sarah had married Stephen Carter (1745-1795) in 1768 in Great Baddow and the couple went on to have at least six surviving children.
Stephen was the son of Giles Carter (b 1724) and the charmingly named Love Allen (1722-1777) (daughter of Josh and Mary Allen of Roxwell in Essex.) Giles and Love had at least eleven children between 1745 and 1761.
William Gillman and Ann King Currell –
the progenitors of the South African Gillmans
William’s mother Ann Hurrell dies when he is 13, and we next come across him when he marries Ann King Currell on 11 June 1838 at the church of St Botolph Bishopsgate while living at 19 Bakers Buildings – just behind the church – and as it happens directly under the entrance to Liverpool Street Station on Liverpool Street today
Anne’s brother Thomas William and his wife Mary Anne are the witnesses to their marriage. (Thomas William was also a baker and he and Mary Anne had 8 children and they lived into their 80’s.)
As we can see, William’s occupation is given as Mariner. Here we find the probable reason he married so late at age 34. In all likelihood, following the standard practice of the day, he would have gone to sea at 14 or so, soon after his mother’s death. Presumably, therefore he had been at sea for two decades by the time he married. We can speculate what his career involved. What kind of sailor was he? Not an officer, certainly, with his background. What we do know is that paperwork in the Cape Archives shows that he wrote in a very practised handwriting – not what we would expect from the son of an illiterate father and a 20 year career as a rough sailor. His job on board must have involved writing – could he have been involved in provisioning the ships? It is interesting that William’s daughter Annette married a hotel-keeper, William Henry Cogill. His father, William Cogill , was William Gillman’s contemporary, and we know he started in the Royal Navy as a purser’s steward and then became an innkeeper in the Cape, just like William went on to do.
Did William sail for the East India Company to the East Indies? Did his ship put in at Cape Town or Simonstown? Did he put aside a nest egg from 20 years of wages to set up in Cape Town with his new wife? These secrets may lie hidden in the merchant seaman records at the Public Record Office – but that will have to wait for another time.
We can never know how Anne King Currell and William Gillman met, but it seems likely that while working as a sailor his ships docked in Wapping where her father ran his bakery. Did William source his ships biscuit from Thomas Currell? Or did William work with Robert Currell on the same ship? However it happened, he must have beguiled Ann with tales of his plan for a new life in the glorious Cape!
They marry in 1838 and almost exactly a year later their first child Annette Gillman was born in 1839 and christened on 19 June 1839 at Saint Dunstan and All Saints Church in Stepney, with their address as Ratcliff – just up the road from Wapping. Within another year William and his little family are living in Cape Town. This must have been the plan.
A summary of William and Ann’s family is included below.
Next post: The Kalk Bay Gillmans: did the Plan work out?
PS: Thanks to my uncle Mark Gillman for his comments and suggestions on the first draft.
