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

Member’s article

Southsea – Ed]. Then living, probably as a lodger, in her house in North End was Rodney Alfred DYER . He was 26 and his occupation in 1939 was recorded as theatre painter! It was he who married Doris May in 1947 and obviously explains how they met. Rodney had been born in Portsmouth on 13th December 1912 some five years before Doris May. His father was Alfred Dyer and he was born in Berwick St James in Wiltshire, thus sharing a common descent with the young woman his son was about to wed in 1947. Alfred Dyer’s mother was Eliza Dewey, born in 1855 in Salisbury but her Dewey roots were in Fovant in the Nadder Valley in Wiltshire. Whilst Fovant is quite close to East Knoyle in the county where Charles, the house painter’s roots are to be found, no connections between the Dewey families have been discovered until now. Doris May died in 2006 and her death was registered in Gosport but her husband lived until he passed the hundred mark and he

died on 31st December 2013 with his death registered in Southampton. Irene Beryl, Doris May’s sister, married after her mother’s death in 1952. Like her sister, her marriage was registered in Petersfield. Her husband was Jack P SMITH and he was 56, she was 31! He had been previously married but was a widower when he married Irene Beryl. His first marriage was in Portsmouth but his wife died in 1938. In the 1939 register Jack P Smith’s occupation was recorded as a milk salesman. He was then sharing accommodation with a Daisy May L Dewey. This relationship evidently ended before he married in 1952. Jack P Smith died in Southampton in 1960. Irene went on to live until 2006, the same year her elder sister died. Her death was registered in Portsmouth but in marriage she is likely to have lived in Southampton. James Dewey (Member #11167)

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