I found these 5 CDVs on eBay last summer. I just thought they would be an interesting family to research. I was right.

The first CDV is of Lucy Maria Payne née Edridge, taken c. 1861 by H. J. Whitlock.

He was one of the most important Victorian photographers working in Birmingham.

His full name was Henry Joseph Whitlock, and he came from one of the pioneering photographic families of the Midlands. 

The son of Joseph Whitlock and older brother of Frederick Whitlock.

Henry’s father Joseph Whitlock was the first person to establish a permanent photographic studio in Birmingham, in 1843.

In 1852 Henry Whitlock joined the family firm, while still a teenager, and three years later he left Birmingham to set up his own studio in Worcester.

He returned to Birmingham in 1862, after the death of both his parents, and founded the firm H.J. Whitlock & Sons of Birmingham and Wolverhampton.

Members of the Royal family, scientists, politicians, clergy, and many other notable Victorians. His surviving work shows a high standard of posing, lighting, and printing.

Some of the above information from NPG. See the National Portrait Gallery website for more photo examples from this photographer.

The Payne Family: From Hertfordshire to the New World

Lucy Maria Edridge was born on 20 February 1818 in the market town of Buntingford, Hertfordshire, the daughter of Charles Edridge and Sarah Pryor.

Her early years were marked by loss, for her father died when she was only a small child in 1821, leaving Sarah to raise her family alone.

In later years Sarah remarried, and when Lucy was fourteen she welcomed a half-brother, Alfred Cole, into the family.

Lucy grew up in rural Hertfordshire and by 1841 was living in Brickendon. Ten years later she was still in the area, recorded as the daughter of Sarah Cole, a reminder of her mother’s second marriage and the blended family in which she had spent much of her life.

Meanwhile, Thomas Payne had been born on 22 June 1824 in Willington, Northamptonshire, the son of William Payne and Elizabeth Prophett.

He grew up among several sisters, Eliza, Sarah and Emma, and experienced family sorrow when his younger sister Anna Maria died in childhood in 1836.

By 1851 Thomas had left Northamptonshire and was living in Chelsea, Middlesex, perhaps seeking the opportunities offered by a rapidly changing Victorian England.

The lives of Thomas and Lucy came together in Hertford. On 10 March 1852 they were married at the Friends Meeting House in the town. Lucy was thirty-four and Thomas twenty-seven. Their marriage marked the beginning of a family that would eventually stretch across the globe.

Only nine months after their wedding, their first child, Alfred Payne, 1852-1923, was born in Birmingham on 10 December 1852. The move to the Midlands suggests that Thomas’s work, he was a Tea Dealer, had taken the young family away from their Hertfordshire roots. A daughter, Lucy Maria Payne, followed in April 1855, carrying her mother’s name into the next generation. Three years later, in June 1858, a second son, Hector Payne, was born in Kings Norton, Worcestershire.

The family was settled in Kings Norton by 1861. There Thomas appeared as head of the household, with Lucy beside him and their three children growing up in the expanding industrial region around Birmingham. By 1871 they had moved again, this time to Bickenhill, Warwickshire, where the family was recorded together.

As the children reached adulthood, their lives took very different paths. Alfred proved the most adventurous. In the 1870s he travelled to New Zealand, where he married Alice Georgina De Gruchy in Napier, Hawke’s Bay, in 1876.

There they raised a large family of six children. Alfred’s life would later carry him even farther, first to Massachusetts in the United States and eventually to California.

Back in England, the family experienced both loss and change.

Lucy’s mother, Sarah, passed away at the remarkable age of eighty-nine.

Only two years later, on 2 September 1880, tragedy struck again when Thomas Payne died in Olton, near Birmingham, aged just fifty-six. After twenty-eight years of marriage, Lucy found herself a widow.

The 1881 census shows Lucy as head of her own household in Solihull, Warwickshire, with her unmarried daughter Lucy Maria living alongside her.

She remained there through the following decade, demonstrating the fortitude and independence of many Victorian widows.

Her son Hector had meanwhile established a successful career. He married Martha Boston in Worcester in 1884 and had two daughters, Beatrice Edridge Payne, named in honour of his mother’s family, and Olive Gladys Payne.

Hector’s work eventually took him to the United States, where he became a naturalised American citizen in Massachusetts in 1892. Later he returned to England, rising to managerial positions in engineering and manufacturing.

Lucy Maria Edridge, 1855-1932, lived long enough to see her family spread across continents.

On 1 November 1897, she died in Olton, Birmingham, aged seventy-nine.

Her life had spanned almost the entire nineteenth century, from the Regency era into the final years of Queen Victoria’s reign. Probate was granted the following month, bringing to a close a life marked by endurance, family devotion and constant adaptation to change.

Her children carried her legacy forward in different ways.

Alfred’s journey was perhaps the most extraordinary. Born in Birmingham, he married in New Zealand, raised children there, moved to Massachusetts, and eventually settled in California.

After losing his wife Alice in 1901, he spent his later years as a widower. He died in Butte, California, on 25 June 1923 and was buried in nearby Yuba City.

His descendants established a branch of the Payne family firmly rooted in the Pacific world.

Lucy Maria Payne, the daughter who remained unmarried, devoted much of her life to caring for and living with her widowed mother.

After her mother’s death she continued her own quiet journey, later living in Northamptonshire and then Cheltenham.

When she died in Leckhampton, Gloucestershire, on 7 July 1932, aged seventy-seven, she left an estate worth over £11,800, a considerable sum that reflected a lifetime of prudent management and security.

Sometime between 1871 and 1881 the family moved to Hertford House, Olton. As seen here on Hector Payne’s marriage and also on the 1881 census record.

Hertford House. The house stands on Old Warwick Road, one of Olton’s principal historic routes. Much of this part of Olton was developed with substantial villas and large detached houses during the late Victorian and Edwardian period, particularly after the arrival of the railway in 1869. 

Our last family photo is of the oldest member, Sarah.

Sarah Pryor: A Life Through Nearly Nine Decades.

Sarah Pryor was born in 1789 in the village of Stopsley, Bedfordshire, during the reign of King George III. She was the daughter of Christopher Pryor and Sarah Blindell and entered a world that was still largely rural, where most people lived their entire lives close to the place of their birth.

Little is known of Sarah’s childhood, but by her mid-twenties she was ready to begin a family of her own.

On 24 July 1815, shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and only weeks after the Battle of Waterloo, she married Charles Edridge at St Mary’s Church in Luton, Bedfordshire. Sarah was twenty-six years old and Charles was twenty-seven.

The young couple soon settled in neighbouring Hertfordshire. Their first child, Richard Edridge, was born at Layston near Buntingford on 2 May 1816.

Two years later, on 20 February 1818, they welcomed a daughter, Lucy Maria Edridge, in Buntingford itself.

For a brief period, Sarah’s future must have seemed secure as she and Charles raised their young family.

Tragically, that happiness was cut short.

Before 1821, Charles died at the age of only thirty-three, leaving Sarah a widow with two young children, Richard and Lucy.

At just thirty-two years of age, she faced the difficult challenge of supporting and raising her family alone in an era when widowed women often had few resources and little independence.

For a decade Sarah persevered as a widow. In 1831 she was living in Kensworth and was still recorded as widowed.

Then on 30 June 1831, she married again, this time to James Cole in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire.

Sarah was forty-two years old, and her second marriage brought renewed stability and companionship after many years on her own.

The following year brought another joy. On 3 September 1832, Sarah gave birth to a son, Alfred Cole, in Hertford.

More than sixteen years separated Alfred from his elder half-brother Richard, and fourteen years separated him from his half-sister Lucy Maria. Sarah was now raising a second family while watching her older children reach adulthood.

Throughout the following decades, Sarah’s life reflected the mobility of many Victorian families. In 1841 she was living in Brickendon, Hertfordshire, and ten years later she remained there with her family.

By then her children were adults, establishing lives of their own. Her daughter Lucy Maria married Thomas Payne in Hertford in 1852, while Richard built a long life of his own that would continue into the twentieth century.

By 1861 Sarah was living in Derby, Derbyshire, where she appeared as head of her household. Whether through widowhood once more or circumstances that separated her from James Cole, she was evidently managing her own affairs in later life. (I am unable to confirm James’s year of death, but between 1851 and 1861))

Even in her seventies she demonstrated a resilience and independence that had characterised much of her adult life.

By 1871 Sarah was living in Warwickshire as the mother in the household, surrounded by members of her extended family. It was a fitting final chapter for a woman whose life had been devoted to family through changing circumstances, remarriage, bereavement, and relocation.

Sarah Pryor died on 16 February 1878 at Bickenhill, near Birmingham, Warwickshire, at the remarkable age of eighty-nine.

Her life had stretched from the Georgian era into the high Victorian age. She had been born before the Industrial Revolution transformed Britain and lived long enough to see railways, factories, and expanding cities reshape the country around her.

Her legacy continued through two families. Through her first marriage to Charles Edridge came Richard and Lucy Maria, whose descendants carried the family into the Midlands and beyond.

Through her second marriage to James Cole came Alfred Cole. Most notably, through her daughter Lucy Maria, Sarah became the matriarch of a family whose descendants would eventually spread from England to New Zealand and the United States.

Sarah’s story is one of quiet determination. Widowed young, she rebuilt her life, raised children from two marriages, endured loss and change, and lived long enough to see several generations of her family flourish.

Here’s the family tree I have compiled on Ancestry: CharlesEdridge Family Tree

This last CDV is not a family member.

I’ve not been able to find any matches in age to these two names, even with variations, being in the area around the same time as this old photo was taken.

You can contact me either by commenting here or via email at lynnswaffles@gmail.com 

Till next time then……

But also look at the family above Lucy and Richard Edridge on this 1841 census record. Yes, it’s James Cole, School Master, and his wife, Sarah. So they were living next door to each other.

A renowned Descendant.

I love it when I research a family and find an amazing descendant. This great great grandson of Thomas Payne and Lucy Maria Edridge was Professor Sir Alec Skempton, he was an internationally renowned civil engineer and one of the founding fathers of modern geotechnical engineering. His pioneering research transformed the understanding of soils and foundations, establishing him as one of the most influential figures in his profession worldwide.

Professor Sir Alec Westley Skempton.

One of the founding fathers of soil mechanics. His parents were Alec Wesley Skempton Snr and Beatrice Edridge Payne. His maternal grandparents were

Here’s a link to just one of the many biographies about him: Sir Alec Westley Skempton

Here’s a link to a more in-depth biography, with a photo, he was an astonishing man, in PDF: From researchgate.net

Here’s the link to the family tree I have compiled for the Payne /Edridge family on Ancestry: