The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.1 | June 2024

Member’s article

The Life of Frank Butler 1855–1922

Background Frank Butler’s grandfather, Thomas BUTLER , was born in 1781 in Ardley, Oxfordshire, and brought up there, a small village next to the present-day M40 at Junction 10. He married Mary SIMMONS in May 1804 whilst living in Kirtlington, a larger village a few miles to the south-west, and training to be a gamekeeper probably at Kirtlington Park, a property built by the baronet Sir James Dashwood; and at that date owned by his son Sir Henry Dashwood. In about 1806 he and his wife move to Ramsbury in Wiltshire. He had obtained a post as a gamekeeper on the Ramsbury Manor estate. This was owned by Sir Francis Burdett. In 1812 he is recorded as a licensed gamekeeper on this estate. Thomas and Mary’s first child is born in 1807 and they had two further children there before he becomes employed as gamekeeper in about 1813 on the Chilton Lodge estate in Chilton Foliat, about three miles away from Ramsbury, owned by John Pearse, an MP in the area and director of the Bank of England. He then has five further children, the fourth of which was James Butler (1820–1893). In 1829 John Pearse entertains the Duke of Clarence, who becomes William IV in 1831, to a hunting party on the estate. He moves from this job in about 1836, after John Pearse dies, to another gamekeeping job on Welford Park, owned by Charles Eyre, about eight miles further into Berkshire. Thomas’s son, James, follows him as a gamekeeper and they are both registered as such in the Boxford/Welford area until he retires and moves with Mary to Britford, Wiltshire, when James obtains a post in 1848 as gamekeeper on the Longford Castle estate of the Earl of Radnor, family name Bouverie.

Frank’s life James had married Elizabeth HAMBLIN , in 1843, at Great Shefford, a village about two miles from Welford. Elizabeth is always known as Betsy and appears as such in censuses, etc. Hamblin was a common name in that area. He and Betsy have a total of eight children, one of whom, Henry, is born and dies in early infancy in the autumn of 1847 when the family are still at Boxford. Three of these were born there, the remainder in Britford. Of these eight, only one was a girl – Ann Maria, who is the child closest in age to Frank Butler after Ernest Butler drowned age two in 1860 in a stream running near the Butler home in Britford. Frank himself is born on 11 September 1855. After the death of Thomas and Mary Butler in the 1850s, James Butler remains with his family at Britford until 1865 when he obtains a position as steward to the Wingerworth Hall estate in Derbyshire, running it on behalf of the Hunloke family. He is shown on the 1871 census with his family living in Wingerworth Hall along with his wife, three of his children, one grandchild and one servant. Frank Butler is registered as 15 years old, employed as a clerk on the Midland Railway, whose headquarters were in Derby. James is listed as estate agent and Harry, one of his sons, is working for his father as estate agent’s clerk. It is an important facet of the story that most of James’s offspring worked as clerks, both commercial and financial. Frank Butler at this time would presumably be employed at Chesterfield station, about three miles from Wingerworth, but the Derby is also possible. By 1871 he would have been living in the hall for about six years and would have met Emma BLAKE whom he would later

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