Person:Catherine Llewellyn (4)

Penylan Road, St. Bride's Major, Glamorgan, Wales

There is a mystery early in Catherine Llewellyn’s life. Her date and place of birth, 5 November 1839, St. Bride’s, Glamorgan, Wales, are known from Canadian records. While no Welsh registration exists, this is not surprising. Compliance was poor for several years following the beginning of registration in July 1837, until fines for failing to register births were implemented. Her parentage is confirmed by the 1851 UK census. Catherine’s father was Philip Llewellyn of St. Bride’s Major, Glamorgan, Wales and her mother was Catherine who was born in Wick, Wales and was almost certainly Catherine Thomas, daughter of John and Ann Thomas. St. Bride’s is a very tiny village about two kilometers inland from the Bristol Channel. The closest significant town is Bridgend five kilometers to the north, Wick is three and a half kilometers to the south, and Cardiff is 28 kilometers due east. Exmoor Park is directly across the channel. Catherine would eventually travel to another continent but marry a man whose ancestral home was just to the east of Exmoor, in Somerset, about 62 kilometers from St. Bride’s as the crow flies.

While the 1841 census for St. Brides Major did not survive, in that year Phillip, Catherine and Evan Llewellyn, possibly along with one John David, were brought before the county of Glamorgan assizes on a charge of larceny. The trial was January 5th, 1841, and they were acquitted with a finding of “No Bill”, which means that no case (no indictment) was ever brought forward. Through these assizes, less fortunate citizens were found guilty and sentenced, in some cases leading to transportation. Larceny was a fairly non-specific legal term at the time and it is difficult to identify what sort of issue could befall the parents and their teen-aged son. Given proximity to the coast and the fact that St. Bride’s Major citizenry had plundered floundering ships in the past, investigating marine disasters in 1840 may illuminate the situation. Assuming that this grouping of Philip, Catherine and Evan represents the right family, they appear to have been experiencing some sort of specific difficulty during late 1840 and 1841 when Catherine was quite young. The next record of the family is the joint baptism of Catherine and her younger sister Eleanor on 25 May 1841 at the Parish Church of St. Bridget, St. Bride's Major in a ceremony performed by D. Jefferys.

The family is found on the 1851 census but not the 1861. They appear again on the 1871, still at Penylan Road (#5), with Eleanor the only child still in residence (aged 29) along with Catherine’s niece Louisa Thomas (aged 18). Philip is listed as a shoemaker in all official documents after the baptism of Mary in 1837 (when he was listed as a cordwainer). By the 1881 census, Philip, widower, is a shoemaker and Eleanor, aged 38, is working as a charwoman. It would be interesting to discover Eleanor’s fate after her father died between 1881 and 1891. Ann’s fate is unknown, but Mary ended up in London. Catherine ultimately traveled the farthest, seeing major cosmopolitan cities, living next to a wonder of the world, and creating a substantial family of her own.

An Unknown School in the 1850s

Catherine worked as a lady's maid for at least five years and her granddaughter Beth (born 1896) knew that Catherine was an exceptional seamstress who told stories of sewing her mistress into ballgowns for events attended by royalty. Therefore, she must have received some vocational training, likely in the early part of the 1850s. Where she received this training and how she obtained employment in London is currently not known. A potential clue is a bible inscribed with her name and the year 1856. It was printed in 1850 by the Oxford University Press and "sold by E. Gardner and Son, at the Oxford bible Warehouse, Paternoster Row, London; and by J. and C. Mozley, Derby." She kept the book her entire life and her children's birth dates were inscribed inside the cover. It could have been a personal gift, or, it may have been a graduation gift provided at a vocational school. Identifying potential schools may shed light on Catherine’s transformation, in the decade prior to 1861, from shoemaker’s daughter to lady’s maid, and her concurrent migration from Penylan Road, St. Brides, to 6 Hyde Park Street, London, 240 kilometers due west. Fortunately, the further six thousand kilometers she traveled in 1864 are fully documented.

6 Hyde Park Street, London

In 1861 Catherine Llewellyn was living at 6 Hyde Park Street, London, as lady’s maid to 65 year old Caroline Russell. This was the London home of George E. Russell, then 74 years old, retired from the East India Company, and included, in addition to his wife Caroline, an extended family and several servants. Russell, like his wife, was born in the East Indies (Madras in his case, “Mugglatore” in hers) to a very well established English colonial family. He had served the East India Company for 33 years (likely 1805-1838) and was briefly acting governor of Madras. In 1838, he was on the Council of Madras at the same time as Peregrine Maitland. Maitland was Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1818 to 1828 and responsible for the establishment of The Church of St. John the Evangelist Anglican in Niagara Falls. While she likely did not know it then, Catherine’s subsequent emigration was probably facilitated by joining a household with ties to an extensive network of colonial administrators and their families.

While the year in which she moved to London is unknown, she lived there for at least three years, 1861-1864. She may have seen the Crystal Palace when it was still in Hyde Park in 1854 or, in its later location at Penge Common near Sydenham Hill. Given her proximity to Paddington, it is extremely likely that she rode the first London Underground line, between Paddington and Farringdon, which used gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives and opened in January 1863 (incidentally, after immigrating, she would not see another subway in her lifetime).

Contemporary maps show Hyde Park Street running north from Uxbridge Road (now Bayswater Street) and also illustrate the extensive number of cosmopolitan amenities near this address. The structure existing at 6 Hyde Park Street in 2013 may be from before 1865 and current real-estate listings describe the residences within this cream brick set of terrace houses as six bedroom, five reception room, freehold townhouses. In 2013 Number 2 Hyde Park Terrace was listed for sale at 7 million pounds. The terraced flats across the street and running down to Bayswater seem pre-1865 and give a sense of what the neighborhood was like at that time when viewed in Google Maps Streetview.

The household appears to have held over a dozen people and what has been be recovered so far of their life stories provides a substantial picture. The housekeeper was a woman named Euphemia Simpson, 46 years old in 1861 and born in Dumfries. At least two, possibly three, of the servants were Scottish and this may be related to the fact that one of George Russell’s daughters was, by this time, wife of the 13th Laird of Cultoquhey. The cook was Isabella Gillespie, aged 30. The butler was Henry Moir, aged 39 from Warminster, Wiltshire. Alfred Yola was the 17 year old footman, originally from Farnsham, Hampshire. There was a housemaid, Annie Arthur, 29 years old, from Scotland, and a kitchen maid, Margaret Harbour, aged 23 from Middlesex.

Within the Russell family, in addition to George and Caroline, was Jane, their 49 year old spinster daughter, who was born in Calcutta during her father’s time with the East India Company. George’s spinster sister, Leonora, aged 80, who was born in Madras. Arthur F. E. Russell, George’s nephew, 15 years old, born Wells, Somerset, also lived at the residence in 1861 although it is not clear why. Russell P. W. Hill, George’s 13 year old grandson, had lost his mother, Emma Harriet Hill, wife of Capt. C. Thorold Hill, 29th Madras N.I., to illness on October 7, 1851 in Shanghai (presumably his father had died by 1861 as well and he had come to live with his grandparents).

It seems likely that Catherine transitioned from 6 Hyde Park, where she spent a minimum of 3 years and possibly as many as 10, to new employers upon the breakup or reduction of the household subsequent to the death of the patriarch early in 1863. George E. Russell’s 1863 death was registered from Kensington (the registration district encompassing Hyde Park). Her new employer was the prominent David Lewis Macpherson (1818-1896) family. David Lewis Macpherson was, like George E. Russell, a merchant and colonial administrator, although a Scotsman who emigrated to Canada rather than an English gentleman in India. He had made his fortune in the 1850s by participating in railroad schemes with Casimir Gzowski.

London, New York, Toronto

As a member of the Macpherson party, Catherine would have boarded the RMS Persia about 9th of May 1864, presumably in Liverpool (rather than Queenstown). Based on the manifest, the party consisted of Mr. D. Macpherson age 45, Miss Macpherson age 18, E. Macpherson age 12, Mrs. Macpherson age 40, Catherine Llewellyn, servant, listed age of 19 (in fact she would have been 24), and William Templeton, servant, age 38.

David Macpherson is listed as a merchant on the manifest for the voyage but would be elected to the Legislative Council of the Province of Upper Canada within 1864 and in 1867 appointed to the senate of Canada as a conservative, a position he would hold until his death in 1896. He was knighted for his service in 1884. The couple are known to history as Sir David Macpherson and Lady Macpherson. He had traveled the Atlantic crossing on the RMS Persia the preceding year.

The embarkation date is estimated at May 9th as the RMS Persia had been the record-holder for transatlantic crossing time until the previous year and could make the journey within 10 days. Persia was the first Atlantic record breaker constructed of iron and was the largest ship in the world at the time of launch in 1856. She was at one time the pride of the British merchant marine and one of the last paddle wheel propulsion transatlantic ships. For Persia, Robert Napier and Sons of Glasgow designed an iron ship with a two-cylinder side-lever engine that produced 3,600 horsepower (2,700 kW) and her normal service speed was limited to 13 knots (24 km/h) because of her high fuel consumption. The inherent inefficiency of high fuel consumption was a characteristic of paddle wheel ships that led to their obsolescence within the 1860s. She carried 250 first class and 50 second class passengers.

On-board the ship were several merchants, some gentlemen or women with servants, and a significant number of people listed as French, British and American military personnel, which is unsurprising given that the American Civil War had just entered its fourth year (incidentally, Persia had been used by the British to transport troops to Canada during the Trent Incident in 1861). The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, the second major battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee, occurred while Catherine was crossing from Britain to New York.

After reaching New York, the group likely traveled up the Hudson river by the New York Central Rail Road and then transferred to the Great Western Railroad to get from Niagara Falls to Toronto, or, they may have crossed Lake Ontario by steamer.

Chestnut Park

In the 1860s, Chestnut Park was the country estate of David Macpherson. Located on the east side of Yonge St. north of present-day Roxborough Road, a surviving photo from the late 19th century shows a cream-brick Victorian gothic estate house with extensive greenhouses and broad well-tended lawns. Today the estate houses hundred-year old city town houses and constitutes a large portion of the Rosedale neighborhood. While Catherine arrived to what would have seemed a near-wildness, a hundred years after her death the area now strongly resembles the Hyde Park neighborhood she left behind. Catherine's duties as lady's maid to Lady Macpherson included trips to the market and family lore has it that she met William Williams Tattle, son of Yorkville market gardener and florist George Tattle, at the St. Lawrence market, presumably in late 1864 or early 1865.

Marriage: Yorkville to Hamilton to Niagara Falls

Catherine and William Tattle were married in Hamilton, half-way between Toronto and Niagara Falls, on 14 August 1865 at Ascension Church, by the rector, the Reverend John Hibden. The witnesses were John Buchan (or Beecham) and T.H. Bampfylde. The significance, if any, of the couples' relationship with these witnesses is not currently known, but there were two Bampfylde families in Hamilton and Niagara at the time and at least one was close to the location where William and Catherine would make their home in Niagara Falls. The Bampfylde name is also associated with Somerset and Devon and there may be a familial connection. It is assumed that they proceeded directly from Hamilton to Niagara and shortly thereafter set up their home on the Jolly Cut.

Gardening, Children, and the Fenian Raids

Return to Toronto: 20 Acres at Spadina Heights

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This story builds on the work of Catherine's grandchildren Beth Pears and Harry Tattle, in particular a short MS dated May 1975 (just two years before Harry's death). Harry wrote in 1975 to all members of the Tattle family as part of his genealogical work and he remarked: “the idea is to locate these photos and articles and compile them into book form … “ which “would not have been possible until just recently due to the great advances in the photo-copy field.” He would no doubt have been delighted by the Internet. I wish that he could see how far genealogy has come in a phenomenally short time. Additionally, thanks to cousin RR, who undertook some research in 2003 which proved particularly invaluable to Catherine Llewellyn’s story.

1. ↑ #625, in Church of England. Baptisms Solemnized in the Parish of St. Bride's Major in the County of Glamorgan. (Glamorgan, Wales: Glamorgan Record Office)
   1841.

   May 25, 1841. Catherine, dr of. Philip & Catherine. Llewelyn. St. Bride's. Shoemaker. D Jeffreys.