The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.2 | Sept 2023

Member’s article

A Portsmouth house painter and his family

The house painter, Charles DEWEY, was the eldest brother of my great grandfather, William, known in the family as Will DEWEY. Charles was born in Buckland in 1828 and baptised at Widley Church on 29th June. The church had stood on the site since the 12th century and was renovated in the 18th and 19th centuries. Had he been so inclined he could have traced his own Dewey ancestors almost entirely in Wiltshire and Hampshire back to 1623 with certainty, and with a considerable degree of probability, back another hundred years. He had other priorities including setting up a home with his wife Eliza SAINSBURY , a dressmaker by trade. She had been born in 1827 in Landport, Portsmouth as were their children. Charles and Eliza married in Buckland Chapel according to the rites and ceremonies of the Independents. Buckland Chapel was built around 1820 [Opened 22 Apr 1822 – Ed] in Kingston Road and replaced in 1869 by the church on the corner of Kingston Road and Queens Road. An interesting detail in their marriage certificate relates to the profession of Charles’s father. He is not referred to as a ‘Government Labourer’ as he was on the certificate for my great grandfather in 1866. On the certificate for Charles and Eliza he is recorded as an ‘Officer in Ordnance Department’! It is worthy of speculation. Was this evidence of social distancing? To support such a possibility, it may be significant that the two witnesses of the marriage come from the bride’s family. Incidentally the Naval Ordnance Department in Portsmouth has a base on the Tipner peninsular on the western

side of Portsea Island. From 1796 there was a purpose-built gun powder magazine on site. At the time of his wedding, Charles, was living at 10 Landport View and Eliza, in the next street, 4 Pye Row, later Pye Street, both off the north side of Charlotte Street. By 1861 Charles and Eliza were living at 8 Brighton Street. Eliza died in 1865 before she had reached 40. By 1881 he was living with two of his three surviving children, Alice Eliza and William George at 37 Glidden Street. Alice was working in the local corset making industry which provided much employment, particularly for women at the turn of the 20th century. William George, then a labourer, married Ellen Mary JUGGINS in 1891 at St Mary’s. In the following year they had a son, William Alfred Henry. Subsequently Wiliam George joined the army because in the 1901 census he is recorded as a private serving in the Hampshire Regiment at the age of 40 in the holding battalion in Winchester. The First Battalion was in India in the 1890s and later in South Africa in the Second Boer War. It seems, however, unlikely that Willam George ever served abroad during his service with the army. By the 1911 census he is recorded as a civilian working as a fitter’s mate. What he did during WWI is not known but it seems he continued to live with his wife at 144 Hertford Street near Sultan Road until she died in 1938. At the time of William George’s death on 11th July 1940, as a result of the first air raid on Portsmouth in WWII, he had been living at 51 Farlington Road, with his son’s widow Florence Emily Mary. She had married William Alfred Henry, William George and Ellen Mary’s only child. Florence survived the

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