Who Saw What Part Three

William Eldridge is the earliest known Eldridge ancestor of Charles Albert Eldridge. There is no record of his birth or any other Eldridge births in Mortlake.

On the side of his mother, the line of Charles Albert Eldridge is to be found in the Clerkenwell, Islington area of North London, where Charles himself was to be born, just off the Goswell Road.

Who Saw What Part Two

Proceeding to the great-grandparents of Charles Albert Eldridge, a little more is revealed about the origins of the Eldridges, in Surrey.

The map below shows the move from Mortlake St. Mary, which holds the records of the first Eldridges in Mortlake, to Putney St. Mary, where the next generation of children were to be born.

Alfred Wombwell and his Descendants

Eastman, Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York, around 1900.
From Wikipedia. 

Alfred Wombwell was the second son of James Wombwell and Sophia Trigg and was born in the Lordship Road, Stoke Newington residence in 1844. He married Jane Taylor in 1867 in Hackney. Between the birth of their first child in 1868, and their second in 1870, the family packed up, boarded ship, and in what is becoming a familiar tale of Wombwell emigration, departed for New York. Alfred died in Rochester, Monroe, New York in 1884. The children of Alfred and Jane, x1 removed fourth cousins of Hetty Jane Owen, were:

i. Alfred John Wombwell (1868–1932). Alfred was born in London and died in New York. He married twice, first to Maude J, Martin (1872-1902), and then to Pearle V. Mayer. Their children were:Madeline Wombwell (1902–????) and Alfred Clayton Wombwell (1905–1995). Alfred's death is recorded by the US Consulate in Sydney, Australia.

ii. Sophia A Wombwell (1870–1948). She died in Rochester, Monroe, New York.

iii. George Wombwell (1877–1962). George too lived and died in New York.

A Visit to the Old Bailey

The next appearance of the two eldest sons of Zacharias Wombwell is in 1826 in an involuntary visit to The Old Bailey on charges of larceny. Both seem to have been acquitted. A suitably chastened William Wombwell made his way back to Stoke Newington where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He inherited the family cow-keeping business and lived and died at 11 Meadow Street, later to become Lordship Terrace.

Gravestone of William Wombwell in old St Mary, Stoke Newington, also of his wife, Ann Taylor, and two of his children, including Ann Charters, and, presumably, Susanna Wombwell. Wiliam is next door but one to Richard Wombwell and Maria West. The intervening grave has worn away, but may well belong to another member of the Wombwell clan.

The British History website reports that Stoke Newington was one location where eighteenth century butchers chose their cattle en route to Smithfield. By the end of the century, around the time the Wombwells arrived, the pastures of Stoke Newington supported some 120 cows. In 1851, William Wombwell would have been one of four cowkeepers, a number that was to decline and eventually disappear as urbanisation took hold.

William married Ann Taylor (1803-1840) in 1832, and they had six children, all born in Stoke Newington. After Ann's death, William remarried to an Elizabeth. The six children of William and Ann were:

i. Mary Ann Wombwell (1832–1833)
ii. Anne Elizabeth Wombwell (1833–1855). She married William Charters in Bordesley, Warwickshire, in April 1854 and died just months later.
iii. Thomas Westover Wombwell (1835–1905)
iv. Susannah Wombwell (1837–1855). She died in Stoke Newington, as did her younger sister, Charlotte Amelia.
v. William Wombwell (1838–1914)
vi. Charlotte Amelia Wombwell (1840–1841)

The two brothers, Thomas and William, meanwhile took a close look at their prospects and concluded that there must be more to life than tending cows in Stoke Newington, and emigrated to the USA.

The China Inland Mission

Hudson Taylor goes Chinese. He was in fact a
Yorkshireman, born in Barnsley in 1832.
He died in China in 1905

The 1881 Shanghai wedding certificate of Herbert Sowerby and Ann Fanny Wombwell reveals that Herbert was at this time a missionary with the China Inland Mission. Their first child was born the following year in Wuhan. 

The China Inland Mission was founded by Hudson Taylor in 1865 in Britain, with the modest aims of prioritising remote inland provinces whilst 'seeking to evangelize the whole of China.' With this in mind, Taylor proposed a novel methodology in which the missionaries would identify with the Chinese 'by wearing Chinese dress and queue (pigtail), worshipping in Chinese houses'. This was to cause quite a stir in certain quarters. Taylor also insisted on strict fiscal policies. There was to be:

'No solicitation of finance, or indebtedness; looking to God alone; pooling support in life of corporate faith'

For Ann Fanny Wombwell, the daughter of the bankrupted and reckless ex-menagerist George Wombwell junior, such admonitions may just have held a certain romantic appeal.

The first group of China Inland Missionaries set off from England in 1866, numbering sixteen in all, not including Taylor and his family. In 1872, the China Inland Mission London Council was founded. In 1875 Taylor asked the Council for a further eighteen missionaries, and then in 1881, for another seventy. His operation seemed to be gathering strength.

For whatever reasons though, Herbert Sowerby did not find the approach of Hudson Taylor to the whole-scale conversion of the Chinese entirely satisfactory. In 1882, it is recorded in Gray and Sherman's 'The Story of The Church in China' that:

Mr. Herbert Sowerby and his wife joined the Mission Staff. They had been previously 
connected with another mission and had a valuable knowledge of the Chinese language and people and were able to be of immediate service in the needy field at Wuchang (Wuhan). Mr. Sowerby was placed in charge of Boone School and under his able management the school improved greatly.

The mission in question was the Protestant Episcopal Mission or Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, and in switching missionary camps, Herbert and Ann Fanny had effectively transferred their allegiances from a British to an American missionary organisation. It would also seem from this report that the couple must have already been in China for quite a while, and may even have been part of Hudson Taylor's group of eighteen that arrived in China in 1875.