My Wonderful Parents and their children By Theo Granger
William Robert Granger was born in Hope Street in West Hartlepool on 12th April 1862 and soon after his parents, Captain Phatuel and Mary Granger, moved to East Hartlepool and brought up four sons and four daughters of the fourteen children born to them. About this time the Rev. Henry Gray came to Tower Street Baptist Church, West Hartlepool, as Minister from London where he had worked with the London City Mission. He brought with him his wife Hannah, his seven daughters and his two youngest sons. The two families met and William Robert quickly fell in love with Helen who, in his estimation was the most beautiful of the girls. But his brother, Phatuel, had other ideas and chose Helen's sister Adah while Leonard tried, without success, to attract Salome.
William and Helen were married on Christmas Day 1883, by the bride's father, in the little Tower Street Church, which afterwards became the schoolroom when the new and larger Church was built. They started their married life in East Hartlepool where ten children were born to them, five girls and five boys. One of the boys, Phatuel, had died when he was 14 before the family moved to West Hartlepool where their last child, Angus, was born. While living in East Hartlepool the family attended Regent Street Baptist Church during the ministry of Rev. C.W.Vaughan.
On 26th November 1884 their first child, a boy, was born and was called Henry Gray. After leaving school he started work with the Post Office as a telegraph boy. At Regent Street Church he was baptised and when he joined the Christian Endeavour movement his badge was pinned on by Mary Stark who some will remember as Mary Russell, the mother of Jennie Merrick, Cyril, one time Secretary of Oxford Road Baptist Church, Marjorie Pike and Mary Snowball. When he was eighteen he decided to emigrate to South Africa to work for the Post Office and later transferred to the Inland Revenue Department where he worked for the rest of his working life finishing up as Assessor of Revenues and Collector of Taxes in East London, South Africa.
His work for the Post Office took him to Umtata where he met Henrietta Leighton who was to be his wife and the mother of his two daughters, Mary Naylor, born in 1913, and Kathleen Helen born in 1917. Henrietta or Hettie as she was called by her family, was a nurse and a member of the Presbyterian Church which Henry then joined. Henry brought his wife and daughters on a visit to his home town of Hartlepool in 1928 and during their holiday Mary, then aged 15, was baptised by Rev. C.V.Pike at the same time as his own two children, Vera, who later became a missionary and Jack, who became a Baptist minister. In 1938 he brought Kathleen and his wife on a second visit to his home town leaving Mary, then Mrs. Bennett, behind in South Africa with her husband and small children. During this visit Kathleen fell in love with William Atkinson, a member of Oxford Road Church and a bass singer in its choir, and in spite of the war, returned to England the following year to marry him. Only a few years later she contracted multiple sclerosis and died at 31 leaving two small children. Henry and Hettie did manage to come to England to see their grandchildren but both died in South Africa, Hettie in 1969and Henry in 1976. While she was alive Henry's mother wrote to him every week and the whole family looked forward to his replies. William and Helen had cause to be proud of their eldest son.
Their second child, Helen Maude, was born in August 1886. At an early age she had already decided her future career. On her way to school each day she passed a large house with a shiny brass plate on the front door which said 'Certified Midwife'. "That's what I am going to be when I grow up.", she informed her family. But although Maude proved to be a clever child she had to leave school at twelve years old when her mother's eighth child was born.
At eighteen she moved with her family to West Hartlepool and with her parents joined the Cornwall Street Baptist Mission, an offshoot of Tower Street Baptist Church, which met in a terraced house. Its leader was Mr. G.J.Bell and Maude's father became organist. Her mother taught the oldest class of girls on Sunday afternoon and Maude ran the first Sunday morning crèche in the largest bedroom of the house where the only floor covering was a large clip mat.
She started attending St. John's Ambulance classes and did so well that she was chosen as one of a team which went to Windsor to be reviewed by Queen Alexandra. During the 1914-18 war she served as a nursing auxiliary at the Cameron Hospital in West Hartlepool and, to her great delight, was able, in 1917, to go to York Maternity Hospital to start her midwifery training. For this course she had to pay the tremendous sum of £20, but she had no regrets, she was achieving her life's ambition.
She never forgot the many babies she brought into the world but a good part of her later life was spent housekeeping for her family. She nursed her mother, who lived to be 92, for nine years and she herself lived to be 90.
William Ewart, their second son, who was born in March 1888, was clever enough to win one of four scholarships to the Henry Smith Grammar School. He became fluent in French and on more than one occasion took teenage boys to France on holiday. For many years he taught in the Sunday School of the Cornwall Street Mission, training the young people during the week in his own home for the Scripture examination. His younger sister, Grace, would join the class, though too young to sit the examination, which all of the others passed with not less than 98% marks. He continued his education by starting a course at Armstrong College in Newcastle but gave it up in order to start work as a railway clerk, which would enable him to marry Mary John who also taught in the Sunday School. Ewart, as his family knew him, and Mary were married in Tower Street Baptist Church by Mr. G.J.Bell in December 1914, just before the Mission moved into its new building in Oxford Road. Their first house was in Caledonian Road just opposite the Church and the young couple were soon asked to take charge of the the weeknight young people's meeting. They organised outings each bank holiday to places on the Middlesbrough to Whitby railway line. The party would alight at one station, perhaps Egton Bridge and walk on to Grosmont were Ewart would have a meal organised for them before the return train journey to West Hartlepool. Many romances started on these outings. Three years later, having risen up the railway promotion ladder, he was working in the York offices of the LNER and living in Acomb where their first son John Howard was born. It was eleven years later when their second son William was born at Grangetown where there was no Baptist Church so they attended a Methodist Church which he served until his death in 1969.
On October 9th 1889 their son Phatuel was born, but his life was to be a brief one. One day, while his parents were away, he went out to play with his friends and hit his head when he fell off a swing. He suffered badly from concussion but his sister, Maud, looked after him and he was able to start work on the drawing office staff of a local builder. He had shown himself to be very artistic and would draw anything he was asked. As a little girl of four I remember him drawing cats for me. A few weeks after the fall he developed meningitis which proved fatal. His school teacher called one day to deliver a prize which he had won in a drawing competition, thinking he had left school to start work, and was shocked to find that he was dead. My father recorded that day, September 1st 1903, “My son Phatuel died.”.
Mary Alice was the next child and she was born on the tenth of November, 1891. She was clever enough to go to the 'upper grade' school and for this privilege her parents had to pay sixpence a week. Alice was the only one of the family to receive music lessons and she used this talent to play the little organ which was taken out to accompany the singing during open air meetings. She also had a very good contralto voice and enjoyed singing in cantatas and oratorios often taking solo parts. In her early twenties she was manageress of the Co-op greengrocery department and finished work at midnight on Saturdays but waiting for her would be her young man John Howells. When they married in February 1916 they were the first couple to be married in the new Oxford Road Church and were presented with a bible to mark the occasion. John was a railwayman and moved with his family to many parts of the North East. They had three children; Rhoda, born in 1922, died of diphtheria when she was eight years old but she had already written to her minister, Rev. C.V.Pike, telling him of her love for the Lord Jesus. This letter was shown to Alice and John only after Rhoda had died. Thomas Granger, their second child, was born in 1924 and after serving in the army during the 1939 - 1945 war, became a probation officer in Cumberland where he died of bone cancer in 1975. Their third child, named Theodosia after Alice's sister, was born in 1925 and is now Secretary of Grange Road Baptist Church in Darlington and has given a home to her namesake aunt who is, at the time of writing, 95 years old. John, Alice and their family were, in 1944, founder members of Scunthorpe Baptist Church where John became Pastor, always supported, assisted and encouraged by Alice. On retirement they moved back to their home town of Hartlepool and John soon became a Deacon and then Secretary of Oxford Road Church. John died in 1966 soon after their move to Whitehaven to be near their son, and Alice lived only four years longer before she too died in 1970.
Robert Vivian, born in March 1894, was a law onto himself. He was only 13 when he defied his parents, preferring to stay at his old school with his teacher, Miss Polly Williams, who happened to be a staunch member of Tower Street Baptist Church, than move to the newly built Elwick Road School. He found himself a weekend job at a local grocer's for a wage of half a crown and a bag of broken biscuits. His next craze was to work for a cobbler and his parents found themselves supplying the tools he needed including a last. His next escapade was, without consulting anyone, to leave school and start work as surgery boy to Dr. Strover at Dudley House in Stockton Road. There he helped with minor operations, like the removal of tonsils, which were performed at the surgery. This gave him a taste for things medical and he joined the St. John's Ambulance Brigade class. After two years at the surgery he became a railway clerk working at various locations but he always tried to be home at the weekends to attend his Church. He was baptised at Tower Street Church along with, if my memory serves me right, Arthur and Charlie Bell, Edward Murdy, Jack Lax and Roland Smith. I think that it is possible that their girl friends, Lucy Dow ( Bell), Mary Reed (Granger) Emma Jolly and Annie Cockroft were also baptised at this time. Most of them were teachers in the Sunday School. When war was declared in 1914, he enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and became the first member of the Church to enlist. In 1919, when he returned home from the forces, he found that the Sunday School had grown; three hundred and twenty children and more than thirty teachers crowded into the Oxford Road Church building. Robert Vivian said to his Father, the Sunday School Superintendent, "We ought to buy an old army hut - they are going for a hundred pounds - and erect it on the land at the back of the Church."
Dad said "Where do you think we will get a hundred pounds?"
"It will come." was Vivian's reply; and come it did but I don't know how. The hut, as it became known, meant that the Sunday School could be divided into Primary, Intermediate and Seniors. It was used for many other activities, including Robert Vivian's wedding reception, when he married Mary Reed who wore a wedding dress made of silk brought specially for that purpose from India by her fiancé.
Vivian had a lovely bass voice and, although he sang many solos, he confessed to feeling very nervous before the event. His greatest joy was to preach and expound the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and when he married and settled in Middlesbrough he helped the churches there. Because of his health, affected by the time spent in India, he moved to Witton-le-Wear to work and often preached at Wolsingham, Crook and Hamsteriy Baptist Churches. When he moved to Leyburn where there was no Baptist church he helped the other Non-Conformist churches. On one occasion he was asked to preach at Oxford Road and I well remember his text - Matthew 27, verse 36 - 'and sitting down, they watched him there'.
When he retired from daily work he was asked to take over the pastorate of the dying Congregational Church at Trout Beck Bridge, near Windermere and it was while he was there that he became interested in the Cheshire Homes. Finally he and his wife, Mary, went to live in a flat which was part of his daughter's large house in Harrogate and it was in that town that he spent the latter years of his long life. He remained active, although blind, until he died in 1988, aged 94.
My parents seventh child named Irene Annie, much to her disgust, was born on August 12th, 1896. She was bright and very clever at school but she sat the scholarship examination in the days when a pupil must pass all five set subjects. Irene failed in drawing and so missed a High school education, yet later won a prize for French. In later life when she faced the Health Visitors examination she declared that if she had to draw a 'U bend' she would fail. She started work in the office of the Ice Company but, on the day that Hartlepool was bombarded during the 1914-18 war, travelled to York where she was examined and accepted as a railway clerk. She continued to live at home and it was during the next eleven years that she taught in the Sunday School at Oxford Road and became its indefatigable Secretary, attending all the Sunday School Union meetings and reporting back to her fellow teachers. She taught herself music and, although she always declared that she could not sing, she took great pleasure in accompanying Arthur Bell and Fred Bates of Esh Winning, a soldier stationed for a time in Hartlepool, as they played their violins. Her life was to change completely as a result of helping the doctor when her sister's first child was born and, at the age of twenty nine she decided on a nursing career. After gaining her SRN she went on to qualify in midwifery and then as a Health Visitor. At the beginning of the second world war she moved to Weardale where she spent the remaining years of her working life. She was centered at Stanhope but walked for miles to reach many outlying farms and villages or went by taxi if the distance was too great. Many of her friends and relations remember holidays in Rectory Cottage and accompanying her on her rounds. On retirement she returned to a small house in Hartlepool but ended her days as a resident of Gardner House.
On the 26th November 1898, my eldest brother's 14th birthday, another girl was born - that was me. I found out a little while ago that I was probably named Theodosia after Theodosia Angus, whose married name was Hutchinson, and at one time a member of Grange Road Baptist, Darlington, the Church which I now attend when I am able. The Angus family were great friends of my parents.
The first four years of my life were lived in Old Hartlepool but then the family moved into a much larger and newly built house in Windermere Road, West Hartlepool. When I was first taken to the Sunday School in the Cornwall Street Mission, I did not like it because the table in the classroom had no tablecloth. On Sunday evenings Leonard, Grace, Irene and I would play Sunday Schools but we always spread a tablecloth on the table and another over the stool which became the pulpit from which Grace would preach to us. By the time I was ready to be baptised at 15 years of age, the Church was meeting in a joiner's shop in Oxford Road, jokingly called the Parish Hall, for the houses in Cornwall Street had become too small for the growing congregation. The baptistry used was later transferred to the new Church and was the one in use until being replaced only a few years ago. When I came out of the water I was saying to myself, ' There, I have told the world that I belong to Jesus Christ'. My world was a very small one then and I never thought it would one day expand to take in so many parts of Great Britain.
I was unable to sit the scholarship examination for the High School owing to an attack of scarlet fever and the next year I was ill with diphtheria. So, later, I went to night school and passed the Royal Socy. of Arts examination to qualify as a bookkeeper while working during the day in the office of the Ice Company and it happened to be my job to pay the men who unloaded the ice from the very last sailing ship to enter Hartlepool docks. I later worked as cashier in the ship store section of the same firm which unfortunately had to close during the hard times of the nineteen twenties. I was offered the post of part-time secretary for the head of the firm, Hans B. Olsen, keeping this job even after his death in 1937. For perhaps three years I continued to work for Mrs. Olsen only giving it up to go with mother to my cousin's farm near Kirkby Lonsdale in Westmorland which was considered to be a safer part of the country. I stayed there, helping on the farm - including the book-keeping- until 1944. On returning to Hartlepool I went to work at Tilly's the solicitors and finally finished my working life in the office of S.T.Coulson, stockbrokers, retiring in December 1961.
From the age of sixteen I taught a class of young girls in Sunday School and was allowed to keep them year after year. At one time we heard of Indian babies dying in the early morning cold and so my girls met weekly at my home to make vests for them out of woollen stockings. Later Mr. Marsden organised the preparation of such gifts which were sent in great packing cases to India and Congo for distribution by the missionaries. This led to the formation of a group of the League of Ropeholders - a movement started by the Baptist Missionary Society to interest children in the work of missionaries - and I had the valuable help of Vera Pike, Graham Pearce, Sidney and Dan Nichols and Ruby Bate. This organisation was inspired by Carey's words – “I will go down the mine, but you must hold the ropes”. In 1922, as my girls were growing older, I started a branch of the Girl's Auxiliary to the Baptist Missionary Society. The Oxford Road branch of GA became so helpful and so popular I became determined to see that there be a branch in every Baptist Church in the North East of England. This was almost realised when the war changed everything and the girls were scattered all over the country. I served as Northern Group Secretary of GA, attending executive meetings in London, and as National Treasurer between 1930 and 1933. I was a Deacon of Oxford Road Church for a number of years and, with Mr. Charles Bell, represented the church on the General Committee of the Northern Baptist Association. From that committee I was asked to serve on the BMS General Committee which met in London. This was a privilege and a great joy to me and I was disappointed when ill health caused me to resign. Later I was pressed to form a branch of the Women's Missionary Auxiliary which ran successfully for many years. Fifty years ago I organised the very first Saltburn Conference, a residential weekend at Brockley Hall, when women who were Missionary minded, met to hear more of the work of missions and enjoy a time of worship and fellowship together. It is a great joy to me that this annual Conference is still held today and it pleases me that Oxford Road Church still supplies organisers like Edith Morris and Anne Turner.
Increasingly I became aware of advancing years when arthritis and duller hearing meant I was unable to do as much as I had previously. But it was when my sight failed that I found the help and friendship of Mr. David Balfour who has, since I was forced to give up my home and come to live with my beloved niece Theo in Darlington, kept me in touch with my home Church at Oxford Road, Hartlepool, often bringing some of my many friends to see me.
Then, two years after my birth, came my beloved sister Grace. We two were bound together for life, sleeping in the same bed until she went to University. Grace did well at school, passing the examination which gave her a place at the girls' high School. There she excelled in English, French and Latin and was urged to go to France to study further but she was too shy. Like her brothers and sisters she had taught for a while in the Sunday school but, on getting a post as a pupil teacher, she was worried that the familiarities of her Sunday pupils would undermine discipline during the week. After a year or two pupil teaching she was accepted for Liverpool University where she gained a first class honours degree in English. At that time there was a rule which prohibited high school pupils returning to take up a post in their old school and, in 1919, men were returning from the forces and looking for jobs - two factors which meant that Grace spent a full year out of work. It was then realised that the ban on high school jobs had been lifted and a teacher uncle urged her to re-apply. This she did and was accepted immediately - but she was asked to teach maths., which she hated. When a vacancy occurred at the Elwick Road Central School, to teach French and History, she applied and was accepted. Feeling the need to practice French conversation she answered an advert from Madame Helene Barnett and so began a life long friendship with her and her daughters Aline and Mimi. In order to further improve her French and to see if she could bear the separation from home, she spent a month in a French convent. That gave her the courage to apply to the Sorbonne University to take a year's course in French history. Her stay in a foreign country was made happier by being able to live with relations of Madame Barnett. On her return she continued at Elwick Road, teaching French for the remainder of her thirty-nine year career. She was content to rise no further than the post of deputy head which she accepted only with great pressure. It is no wonder that there are many in Hartlepool who owe a great deal to Grace who has been described as a most gracious lady.
Although she was the only one of the ten children who was not baptised it became evident as she grew older that she had a firm Christian faith which influenced her life and the lives of the girls she taught. My mother realised this and stopped trying to make her attend the church yet there are still those at Oxford Road who acknowledge their debt to her.
John Leonard was born on the 21st April 1903[i] and was completely different from his elder brother, Robert Vivian. He was always thoughtful and sympathetic and I can never remember him needing to be scolded. Only once do I remember him refusing to do as he was told -"No, it will make my hands dirty" he said! I remember very little of his early school days and it seems that he was not very strong physically for he often had days in bed but I recall he spoke of the strictness of 'Gaffer Gatenby' as the lads called their headmaster. Twice when he was being interviewed for a job he was told, "With your height you ought to join the police force." but this would have been quite alien to his gentle nature. He found a post as a clerk in the offices of the Weardale Coal and Coke Company and I well remember travelling to work with him each morning in the tram. Later he, like some of his brothers, joined the London and North Eastern Railway as a clerk.
He was baptised at Oxford Road Church, teaching in the Sunday School for many years; after his death an elderly member of the Church paid tribute to his former teacher. He had a lifelong interest in the work of the London City Mission and very often went to the Tunstall Homes for the elderly in West Hartlepool on Sunday afternoons to lead a service of worship for the residents. I sometimes went with him and remember being invited after the service to take tea at the home of Mrs. Carr and Miss Heather, the mother and aunt of Mrs. Parsons. Later, Leonard joined with John Howells and Geoffrey Knott in starting the cause at Billingham but difficulty in finding premises stopped the work for the time being; all three pioneers rejoiced when, twenty years later the work was revived.
Leonard was very fond of music but never learnt to play an instrument. Many hours were spent listening to his friend Lesley Allen playing the piano; a friendship cemented when Leonard was asked to be Lesley's best man. Leonard, too, had one or two romantic affairs in West Hartlepool but it was at a BMS Summer School that he met Edith Wells who was to become his wife. Edith was a Londoner working in the BMS offices and so Leonard applied for a London based railway job. But the bride to be came north with her mother to be married in the bridegroom's church by the Rev. C.V.Pike. They returned to set up home in Woodfall Avenue in Barnet and never moved from it. They were founder members of Underhill Baptist Church where Leonard was Secretary for over forty years and Edith, at 92, is still a Life Deacon. Sadly, they had no family and after almost fifty years together Leonard developed Parkinsons disease and died in 1983.
In 1904, two years after Leonard's birth, Dr. Swanick, our family doctor, told my mother that she had breast cancer. I well remember the morning when we younger children were taken to a friend's house for the day because Dr. Swanick was to operate on her at home. Dr. Strover came to administer the anaesthetic with Nurse Keble to assist the two doctors. A neighbour loaned her kitchen table and it, with our own table were well scrubbed and set up in the bedroom which had been thoroughly cleaned and the curtains removed. When the mastectomy, an enormous operation in those days, was complete Nurse Keble stayed to look after the patient at nights but my eighteen year old sister Maud nursed her mother during the day. For this wonderful operation Dr. Swanick, who always visited his patients in a hansom cab which the firm of H.Mason and Son kept for his use, charged £20! Grace and I used to throw paper pellets from our bedroom window at the driver to see if we could hit his high hat. When, two years later, feeling unwell, mother called in Dr. Swanick , he was able to give her the joyful news that the cancer had not returned - she was to have another child. So on August 22nd 1907 Angus Macdonald was born. On that day we younger children were taken to Sheraton, to the home of Jonathan Angus, and on our return home were enraptured to find mother in bed with a cherub in her arms. As the weeks passed we younger girls would argue as to whose turn it was to take out our new baby brother, well wrapped up in his big white shawl.
Angus was very different from Leonard, who never liked to
get his hands soiled; - Maud called him a little mud-lark. One of his great delights was to collect soil together and make his own little garden. When he was grown up he made some wonderful gardens in his various homes.
Although he always went very willingly to Sunday School he objected strongly to joining in the Whitsun walk when all the Sunday schools processed behind their banner. He, like Leonard, attended Elwick Road Central School but when he was old enough to leave, in the early 1920's, there were no jobs to be had. So he spent his time doing what he loved best, gardening. He poured over catalogues and planted the garden with roses and bushes given to him as birthday presents by his sisters who were working. Angus was very fond of children and joined me at this time in organising long walks for teenagers; one of the most memorable was the eight mile trek to Castle Eden, through the Dean, up Jacob's ladder and along the upper path to the Garden of Eden for tea. Some walked back home along the road but others, like me, took the bus.
I do not remember anything about his baptism but I can recall an incident connected with it. He was then about sixteen and working for the railway away from home. He was only able to get home for Saturday afternoon and Sunday and I remember the two Church members appointed to visit him met him coming from the train. He was completely unprepared for the interview which took place at the entrance to the station. Naturally he came home most distressed. I suppose Dad advised the visitors to arrange a proper interview for this is what they did. He may have been baptised at the same time as three friends; together they called themselves the 'Bachelor's Club'. They were Cyril Russell, Ted Law, Alfred Mason, and Angus and all were later to give up their bachelor state.
As a railway signalman he was stationed at Kirkby Stephen and, having made up his mind to train for the Baptist ministry, he studied Hebrew with Rev. T.O.Morgan and Greek with Rev.Dr.Bernard Manning who had retired to Ravenstonedale. He transferred his membership from_ Oxford Road to the °Baptist church at Crosby Garrett where Rev. Morgan was minister. He applied for a place at Rawdon Baptist College in Leeds and, after a week long examination, was accepted for the four year course. It was at the Baptist Union Assembly meetings that he first met Dora Drake whose sister was a friend of mine. When his training was completed he and Dora were married. Sunnybank, Huddersfield was his first church where his only child, David was born and his last church was at Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. On retirement he took charge of the Congregational Church at Long Compton and it was there that Dora died. While minister of Chipping Norton Church he was also responsible for the Baptist Church at Little Compton where the Secretary was Mary Coleman whom he married after Dora's death. He spent the last years of his life with Mary at Little Compton enjoying his garden, his dog and watching the development of his two grandsons. One of his happiest days was when he was present at the wedding of Robert his eldest grandson. He died in August 1993, just four days after his 86th birthday. Sadly, Mary his wife, who was much younger than he, died the following May, the day before she had been due to come to stay with me.
So now I am left, the last leaf on the family tree. I am indebted to niece Theo for editing and typing this account of my family.
[i] John Leonard’s birthday shown as 21st April 1902 in the original text, but BMD records show Qtr 2 1903!
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