Tag: Canada

Honest John Arkell

Another day, another churchyard…

The Grade I listed church of St Margaret’s in Stratton St Margaret retains elements from the 13th century despite many later additions and a partial rebuild in the 19th century. The churchyard has also been extended several times, but I chose to take photographs in the oldest section around the church. Here I found the rather magnificent memorial to John Arkell, founder of the Kingsdown brewery, and his son Thomas buried with various members of their families in a large plot.

Last year the family brewery celebrated its 180th anniversary and with more than 80 pubs across Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Hampshire, the Arkell name is well known. But it could have been a very different story.

Crippled by heavy taxation and an agricultural depression, John Arkell (1802-1881) gave up on farming and, with his cousin Thomas, left England in 1830 for pastures new.

The pioneering group, which included other members of the extended family, landed in New York during the winter of 1830/1, but their eventual destination was the uninhabited plains of ‘Upper Canada’.

Cousin Thomas stayed but John returned to England three years later. He established the Kingsdown brewery in 1843, and the rest, as they say, is history.

John died on October 21, 1881 aged 79 and is buried with his two wives and several of his children in the large family plot pictured below.

Albert and Elizabeth Beak – safe in the arms of Jesus

Albert George Beak and his wife Elizabeth (Eliza), devout members of the Baptist Church, died within 12 hours of one another. They were not old; he was 35 and she was 44. Without ordering their death certificates I do not know their cause of death. They left four orphaned children – Herbert 12, Albert 10, Clara 6 and four year old Sydney. I had hoped they were taken in by family members, but this does not appear to have been the case.

I discovered the two younger children Clara and Sydney on the 1901 census living in the Mueller Orphan Houses, Ashley Down Bristol. The Mueller orphanage was founded by Prussian born evangelist minister George Mueller. Mueller founded his first home for orphans in Wilson Street, Bristol in 1836. By 1870 the number of destitute children had increased to such an extent that Mueller built additional homes to accommodate more than 2,000 children.

The two older boys were more difficult to trace. I discovered two boys fitting their description on board the SS Sardinia with a number of unaccompanied children and young boys bound for Quebec on June 27, 1895. Could Herbert and Albert have been among more than 100,000 “home children” sent from Britain to Canada between 1869-1939 as part of a child emigration movement?

What happened to them is difficult to discover. There is a Herbert Beak who died in Devizes in 1909 aged 27. Could this be the elder brother, returned home? It would seem that Albert remained in Canada until 1946 when a man named Albert Harry Beak born ‘1 Feb 1883 New Swindon’ arrived in Buffalo NY.

Clara remained in Bristol where she died in 1907 aged 21. However, there is more reliable information available concerning Sydney, the youngest member of the family who was just 4 years old when his parents died.

Sydney Beak joined the Wiltshire Regiment as a tailor (most probably a trade taught him in the orphanage). He married Louisa Webber on August 2, 1917 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was 29 and she was 22. Sydney died in Plymouth in 1962 aged 74.

Two in One Grave

A Sad Incident at Swindon

On Saturday last the funeral took place at New Swindon, of Mr and Mrs Albert George Beak, a married couple each about 40 years of age, who died almost within twelve hours of each other at the beginning of last week, leaving a family of four little children. Such an event as a double funeral, as theirs was, is not often seen in Swindon, and the ceremony at the graveside in the Cemetery was witnessed by something like 1,500 people. In addition to the relatives of the deceased, there were about 100 other mourners. Both husband and wife were ardent members of the Baptist Church, and the first portion of the funeral service was conducted at two o’clock in the Baptist Tabernacle by the pastor the Rev F. Pugh. There was a crowded congregation, and the service was very impressive. It commenced with the singing of a favourite hymn of the deceased persons, “Safe in the arms of Jesus.” After reading a portion of Scripture, the Rev F. Pugh offered a few remarks appropriate to the occasion, and then another hymn, “Oh, how sweet when we mingle with kindred spirits here,” was sung, and the concluding portion of the service conducted in the Cemetery.

Extract – Swindon Advertiser, Saturday, July 1, 1893.

Albert and Elizabeth Beak of 131 Princes Street, were buried together on June 24, 1893 in a public grave B1847, which they share with two others.