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sometime after 1881 Bessie Johns marries someone called Smith , moves to Wales to have John Henry R Smith and then moves back to Devon and we never actually see her with a husband, it says on 1901 she is married.

this is her in
1881
Name: Bessie Johns
Age: 16
Estimated birth year: abt 1865
Relation: Servant
Gender: Female
Where born: Bideford, Devon, England

Civil parish: Tormoham
County/Island: Devon
Country: England

Street Address: 12 Belgrave Ter
Education:

Employment status: View image
Occupation: Under Nurse

Registration district: Newton Abbot
Sub-registration district: Torquay
ED, institution, or vessel: 2
Neighbors: View others on page
Household Members: Name Age
Mary C. Winch 38
George B. Winch 12
Arthur B. Winch 6
Agnes B. Winch 1
Laura B. Winch
Bessie Johns 16

this is Alexander the youngest son of Bessie Johns /Smith in 1911 with his grandfather

1911 census transcription details for: Grange Farm Bideford

National Archive Reference:

RG14PN13438 RG78PN781 RD286 SD1 ED9 SN74


Reg. District: Bideford Sub District: Bideford
Parish: Bideford Enum. District: 9

Address: Grange Farm Bideford
County: Devonshire


Name Relation Condition/
Yrs married Sex Age Birth
Year Occupation Where Born

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LOUGHHEAD, Henry William Boarder Single M 65 1846 Private Means Co Antrim Ballymoney

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JOHNS, Richard Head Married
24 years M 75 1836 Retired Farmer Kirkhampton Cornwall

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JOHNS, Mary A Wife Married
24 years F 53 1858 Kirby Muxloe Leicester

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JOHNS, Geraldine Daughter Single F 20 1891 Assistant At Home Bideford N Devon

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JOHNS, Wilfred G N Son Single M 18 1893 Clerk Bideford N Devon

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JOHNS, Alexander Smith Grandson Single M 16 1895 Stable Boy Domestic Bideford N Devon

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CARVER, George Manly Boarder Widower M 76 1835 Private Means Kirby Muxloe Leicester

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CARVER, Frederick C Nephew M 3 1908 Cape Town S Africa

on 1891 it says Bessie's daughter Maud born Bucks Mills, Devon in 1882
this could be her in 1911

1911 census transcription details for: Bude Street Appledore

National Archive Reference:

RG14PN13444 RG78PN782 RD286 SD2 ED3 SN57


Reg. District: Bideford Sub District: Northam
Parish: Northam Enum. District: 3

Address: Bude Street Appledore
County: Devonshire


Name Relation Condition/
Yrs married Sex Age Birth
Year Occupation Where Born

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VAGGERS, Maud Yoirdear Wife Married F 29 1882 Devon Bucks Mills

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VAGGERS, Maud Yoirdear Daughter F 6 1905 Cape Town S a Resident

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VAGGERS, George Henry Yoirdear Son M 4 1907 Cape Town S a Resident

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YOIRDEAR VAGGERS, John Son M 1 1910 Appledore Devon

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WILLIAMS, Bessie Keenan Servant Single F 19 1892 General Domestic Appledore Devon

her marriage: Marriages Sep 1903 (>99%)
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SMITH Maud Riorde__ Bideford 5b 1063

VAGGERS Owen Nile R Bideford 5b 1063

Another possibility for where the Smith came in:-

Here are birth registrations for Reardon children in Bideford

Births Dec 1849 (>99%)
REARDON Caroline Bideford 10 60
REARDON Harriet Bideford 10 60

Births Jun 1854 (99%)
REARDON John Bideford 5b 503

Births Sep 1856 (99%)
Reardon William Bideford 5b 461

Harriet, John and William were baptised on 12th March 1858 to Thomas and Elizabeth Reordon. Thomas was a mariner.

In 1861 they are down as Smith and Elizabeth says she is the widow of a seaman.

1861 England Census
about Harriet Smith
Name: Harriet Smith
Age: 11
Estimated birth year: abt 1850
Relation: Daughter
Mother's Name: Elizabeth
Gender: Female
Where born: Appledore, Devon, England

Civil parish: Northam
Ecclesiastical parish: Appledore St Mary
County/Island: Devon
Country: England

Street Address:

Occupation:

Condition as to marriage: View image

Registration district: Bideford
Sub-registration district: Northam
ED, institution, or vessel: 8
Neighbors: View others on page
Household schedule number: 180
Household Members: Name Age
Elizabeth Smith 47
Sarah Smith 18
Caroline Smith 11
Harriet Smith 11
John Smith 7
William Smith 5

However, I can't see a remarriage in the Bideford registration district for Elizabeth to anyone called Smith and there are no burials in Appledore for Thomas.


And here they are in 1851 - down as Smith even though the twins - Caroline and Harriet - plus William and Henry, who were born after this census, were registered as Reordon!!! Elizabeth is listed as married and a seaman's wife.

1851 England Census
about Sarah J Smith
Name: Sarah J Smith
Age: 8
Estimated birth year: abt 1843
Relation: Daughter
Mother's Name: Elizabeth
Gender: Female
Where born: Northam, Devon, England

Civil parish: Northam
Ecclesiastical parish: Appledore St Mary
County/Island: Devon
Country: England

Street Address:

Occupation:

Condition as to marriage:

Disability: View image

Registration district: Bideford
Sub-registration district: Bideford
ED, institution, or vessel: 1a
Neighbors: View others on page
Household schedule number: 39
Household Members: Name Age
Elizabeth Smith 37
Mary Smith 16
Ann E Smith 10
Sarah J Smith 8
Philip G Smith 5
Caroline Smith 1
Harriet Smith 1


Even more curious - Thomas and Elizabeth are both married under the name Smith, even though the children are registered and baptised as Reordon!!!

Marriages Jun 1842 (>99%)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BECK Margaret Barnstaple 10 86
BLACKWELL Richard Barnstaple 10 86
McKENZIE James Barnstaple 10 86
>>>>>SMITH Elizabeth Barnstaple 10 86
>>>>>SMITH Thomas Barnstaple 10 86
WILLIAMS Ann Barnstaple 10 86



Just a point of interest - the address is Irsha Street, Appledore - my grandfather was born in Irsha Street, my great grandparents lived there until the 1930's and my great great grandparents lived and died there !!!

That marriage for Bessie is very interesting RutlandBelle.

In the Appledore baptisms there are another family of Riordeans - Daniel Lang Riordean who married Mary Perry in 1850. Daniel's father was Owen Nile Riordean - master mariner.

Surely these have all got to be linked somehow????

William Smith (1856) son of Elizabeth and Thomas switches between being plain William Smith and William Reardon Smith on the baptisms of his children.

yes I looked at the image and it appears to be Riordean.

It's all fascinating but not really helping Tracy discover if John Henry Reardon Smith actually married Mabel Caroline Pugh.

this is probably Harriet from above that you found in 1861
1911 census transcription details for: Bude Street Appledore

National Archive Reference:

RG14PN13444 RG78PN782 RD286 SD2 ED3 SN73


Reg. District: Bideford Sub District: Northam
Parish: Northam Enum. District: 3

Address: Bude Street Appledore
County: Devonshire


Name Relation Condition/
Yrs married Sex Age Birth
Year Occupation Where Born

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MITCHELL, John Head Widower M 74 1837 Ship Carpenter Retired Henton Pemderton

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SMITH, Harriet Reardon Sister In Law Single F 61 1850 Dressmaker Appledore N Devon

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MITCHELL, Lizzie Irien Daughter Single F 33 1878 Dressmaker Appledore N Devon

Tracy-hope we are not confusing you too much!

I agree. I'd bite the bullet and get the certificate if it were me!!

I'd bet my bottom dollar that the groom's father will probably be the John Henry Reordan/Smith from the 1861 census. Newport was a busy port and just across the water from Appledore/Bideford and I got a lot of my rellies turning up in Newport/Cardiff.

I've searched every which way I know to try and find the groom from the 1885 marriage registration for Bessie Johns - been through virtually every page of volume 5b and searched all the Smiths on the Dec qtr 1885 marriage registrations - no Smiths marrying in Bideford in that qtr at all. No Reordans or anything like it either!!

I have searched too, all ways but can't find a marriage for Bessie to a Smith

I assume this is the 2nd marriage for John Henry Smith to Mabel's sister:
Marriages Jun 1915
Smith John H Elsie M Pugh Cardiff 11a 1039

this is Elsie , Rosamund and family in 1911

1911 census transcription details for: 49 Ninian Road

National Archive Reference:

RG14PN32068 RG78PN1845 RD588 SD2 ED1 SN10


Reg. District: Cardiff Sub District: East Cardiff
Parish: Cardiff Enum. District: 1

Address: 49 Ninian Road
County: Glamorganshire


Name Relation Condition/
Yrs married Sex Age Birth
Year Occupation Where Born

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PUGH, Edith Occupying With Mrs Phelps Married F 42 1869 Trevethine Mon

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PUGH, Florence Daughter Single F 19 1892 School Teacher Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, Elsie May Daughter Single F 17 1894 Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, Brenda Emily Daughter Single F 16 1895 Apprentice Drapering Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, Reginald Alfred Son Single M 14 1897 Apprentice To Building Trade Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, Edith May Daughter F 11 1900 School Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, Kenneth Archibald Son M 9 1902 School Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, Rosamond Mary Daughter F 16 1895 Cwmavon Mon

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PUGH, Lionel Edward Vivian Son M 3 1908 Cardiff Glam

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PUGH, George Frederick Son M 2 1909 Cardiff Glam

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it says Edith had 12 children all living. Big house with 12 rooms. Mr Pugh not at home-probably needed a rest from all those children!

I am so blown away by the extra lengths you've all gone to in the hope of solving this mystery.....a huge THANK YOU :-)

I have not completely solved all of the mystery but have solved some of it and would like to share it with you. Due to ill health my financial status is not great but after receiving a tip from one of your helpers in an earler thread I started I paid for a months subscription to Ancestry and discovered one of the most touching stories regarding Mabel PUGH and her marriage to John Henry Reardon-Smith aka Capt Harry Reardon-Smith...Yes!!! his name is hyphernated and he is linked to the Reardon-Smith Shipping Co. somehow. I contacted the person who had their tree on Ancestry and this is the story of Mabel & Harry as retold by her for a thesis she did some years ago, all factual except for the conversations she conjured up between Mabel & Harry...I got goosebumps when I read it.....

(to be posted on next part of this thread just in case I run out of room)

A DEATH AT SEA
I thought I knew my mother and her family pretty well. Their stories were woven into the fabric of my childhood. But when I was about eight years old, I looked at my mother's passport and discovered I hadn't known her real first name. My father called her Molly, and her family called her Girlie; but here on this official document was her real name: Mabel. When I asked my mother why she never used Mabel, she said that it was so hopelessly old-fashioned that she always hated it. But her father had insisted on that name when she was born a few weeks after his beloved sister Mabel died at sea. She told me nothing more.
On a recent visit to the house of my Uncle Reg, I asked about Mabel, and he handed me a newspaper clipping from 1940. It told of his father's, Captain Harry Smith, and my great-aunt Mabel's fatal voyage. The story has haunted me.
In the summer of 1913, Captain Harry Smith, his wife Mabel, and their two boys, three year old Young Harry and the eight month old baby, Jack, set sail from Cardiff for Rio de Janeiro to deliver a large cargo of coal.
Whenever the little ones slept, Mabel spent time with her husband on the bridge. Evenings were best when they could walk on deck to the splash of the sea and the hiss of the breeze. Their talk was of the future and the past, of their plans and their memories.
Captain Harry was just eighteen when he first saw Mabel Pugh dancing at his cousin’s wedding. As they stood on the bridge during her last voyage, they laughed about his first visit to her house and his awkward attempt at polite conversation, while she had longed to know about his life at sea. They fell deeply in love and were married within the year. Mabel sailed with Harry whenever she could.
How do I tell this story? It was so long ago and I know nothing of the people involved or of ships on the high seas. How can I make meaning of this tale from across the years?
When I look at my Uncle Reg, I see Captain Harry, his father -- a man of the old school, wise and strict, but with a kind heart; someone who faces life with courage and humor; someone whom it is easy to trust, admire, and love. The newspaper also describes Captain Harry a tough little scrapper, but my uncle is not like that. He said his half-brother Jack, the baby who was torn from his mother, inherited their father's toughness.
After a few days at sea, Mabel took to the captain’s bunk with a pain in her side. At first she thought it was just the change of climate, but as the days wore on she grew hot with fever and the pain grew worse. Harry watched her when he could and worried when he couldn’t, but when she rambled on about the trees just outside the porthole, he knew it was time to summon help. He radioed a nearby Royal Mail ship with a doctor on board, and they sailed to a rendezvous.
The doctor diagnosed appendicitis and said he would have to take Mabel with him. He would do what he could in the limited surgery on the Royal Mail ship. So Captain Harry paid for his wife’s passage back to Cardiff and they transferred her to the other ship.
The next few days were a blur. The first mate took sick and there was double work for Captain Harry. He set up a safe area for young Harry to play and hurried about with Jack on one arm. When the baby was hungry he mashed the food and gave him water and broth to drink, but Jack tried to suck as the unfamiliar spoon or cup was thrust into his mouth. Captain Harry managed to get little bits down the baby’s throat, so he knew he wouldn’t starve. When the little ones were down for the night he hauled boiling water up on deck to wash the nappies and clothes, hung them to dry in the engine-room, and ironed them in the galley when the cook was done for the day. And all the while he worried about the fate of his wife.
One night they were hit by a howling gale. Captain Harry turned up the paraffin lamps in the cabin to keep Young Harry warm as he slept in the big bed surrounded by settee cushions. He carried the wailing baby Jack next to his heart, underneath his oilskins, as he made his way about the ship in the lashing winds and violent spray. Captain Harry piloted the ship into St. Vincent harbor himself, with the baby crying beneath the oilskins. There he received a telegram saying that Mabel had died and had been buried at sea, near Brazil. He wired her family with the sad news.
Mabel’s mother and sister Elsie came for the children when the ship returned to Cardiff. While he was in port, the Royal Mail wrote to Captain Harry refunding his wife’s passage money. They also sent a copy of the log entry with the coordinates where she had been buried. It was mid-June 1913. My mother was born six weeks later and given the name Mabel. ....continued in next post

Captain Harry continued to sail merchant ships, and two years after that fateful voyage he married his wife’s younger sister, Elsie. They had three more children, including Reg, my uncle. During the next thirty years Harry sailed all over the world often accompanied by his new wife and also by one or more of his sons, apprenticing at sea. He was a tough master who ran a tight ship.
The newspaper account from 1940 told me more than all my years of living in the family had done. A stranger looked at Captain Harry Smith, the sailor, and reported what he saw and what he heard. He saw a small tough man, master of British tramps for thirty years, who had many tales of subduing drunken sailors, listening to opera in Buenos Aires and Venice, visiting music halls in London and Cardiff, and being caught sailing with a German crew when The Great War broke out. On one voyage he sailed with a wild Arizona cowboy who slit another sailor's throat from ear to ear. They locked up the cowboy, then the Captain carefully sewed together the jagged edges of the sailor’s throat, his hands slippery with blood as the sea rolled their ship about. They landed him in the Azores, where the doctor admired the amateur stitches. Captain Harry was not a man given to fantasies.
Over the years Harry often carried coal to South America. On one voyage, just after midnight, when he worked out their position, the longitude and latitude seemed strangely familiar, but he just couldn’t remember why. He retired for the night, but tossed in his bunk chasing the elusive memory. Suddenly he heard a woman’s voice speak his name. He looked up and Mabel was standing by his bunkside. She was young and beautiful, just as she had been when they set sail from Cardiff twenty-eight years before. He saw, not an apparition, but a whole complete person present in his room. He sat up and spoke her name, but she vanished.
Agitated, he dressed, went out on deck and paced in the gray dampness. On a hunch he went down to the safe where he kept the ship’s papers. Amidst old souvenirs he found the log entry of Mabel’s burial place sent to him by the Royal Mail all those years ago. The longitude and latitude were the same as theirs that midnight. Dawn found the tough captain, for the first time in his adult life, on his knees in prayer.
I am not given to fantasies either, but when I read this account told by my great-uncle Captain Harry to the newspaper reporter, I felt a cold shiver. His story was so simple and so powerful that I was driven to set it down.
And now I wonder what other stories lay hidden in the gaps and silences of my family's history.

I hope you enjoyed that story.

I have yet another question to ask.....Where on earth would I find the newspaper article mentioned? Woudln't that be a treasure to have :-)

Tracy what a fabulous family story, this is what it is all about and not just adding names to your tree. Your 1mth sub to Ancestry was well worth the price. Thank you for sharing it wih us.
I have access to some newspapers including the Times so I'll have a look for you.

The other thing you could try is the local library near where 'uncle Reg' lived. Would this have been in Wales?
I recently contacted a library in Glamorgan and they found me a newspaper report of an Inquest from 1911.

Good Luck, Jennifer

Thanks Jennifer, glad you enjoyed the story......getting late here in NZ so will start googling the libraries tomorrow :-)

An amazing story Tracy - gave me goosebumps too!!

This little snippet confirms information about the Reardon/Smith families found earlier on in this thread!!

William Reardon Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Sir William Reardon Smith, 1st Baronet (7 August 1856 – 23 December 1935) was a British shipowner.

Reardon Smith was born in Appledore, Devon, and educated at the Wesleyan School there. He went to sea and obtained his master mariner's ticket before going into the shipping business. In 1905 he founded his own company, Sir William Reardon Smith & Sons Ltd, based in Cardiff, where he had made his home.[1] The company owned the St Just Steamship Company, Leeds Shipping Company and Cornborough Shipping Line. By his death the company owned twenty-eight ships.

Reardon Smith was also a major benefactor to the National Museum of Wales. He was created a baronet in the 1920 Birthday Honours. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Willie




I'm even more convinced now that the father of your John Henry R Smith will be William's brother John Henry - see the 1901 census information posted earlier - John was visiting with William in 1901.

Knew we'd get there in the end!!!!

Okay the 1891 census posted by PollyPoppet shows Bessie Smith with her children (no husband present), one of whom was the John Henry R Smith born in Newport.

Here is the Appledore parish record for a marriage for Bessie's daughter Mary Elizabeth R Smith

11th March 1908 - Appledore Parish Church

Julius Caesar Bethke aged 24, 2nd officer, born Appledore - father Julius Bethke

Mary Elizabeth Reardon Smith aged 23, born Appledore - father JOHN HENRY REARDON SMITH, master mariner.

Woo hooo!!!!!!!!


The conundrum now is - why did Thomas Riordean/Reordon change his name to Smith???

I assume Daniel Lang Riordean is his brother - his name stayed Riordean and yet Daniel's adopted son Lewis appears on the census as Smith Riordean. Their father Owen Nile Riordean stayed as Riordean.

Incidentally, I thought Owen's middle name should have been Niall and that he was of Irish extraction - turns out he was called Nile because he was born 'near the Nile' if the census entries are to be believed!!!!

All this extra info is just FANTASTIC :-)

I'm a little confused by the Riordean link to Reardon-Smith but once I've printed out all this and put it in order it'll fall into place :-)

I know I keep saying it but a huge THANKS to all who have helped.

Am now going to google search libraries as suggested by Jennifer (Rutland Belle) in the hope of gaining a copy of the interview of John Henry (Capt Harry) Reardon-Smith published in newspaper in 1940...what a treasure that would be.