With the help of David Secker I have been piecing together the marital arrangements on the Reverend Thomas. It seems he married Elizabeth Showler first, and with her had two children, Lizzie and Thomas. The latter, according to family legend, was the black sheep of the family and went away to Ohio having dallied with a chamber maid. Thomas W.’s descendents apparently visited Eldernell in the 50s. Lizzie is recorded as being at Thomas’s funeral in 1925, along with Ted.
There is a measure of doubt over Elizabeth Showler’s parentage of Lizzie and Thomas, as the former was born only three years before Fanny Georgiana, but the division of siblings along these lines was suggested in what has so far been an authoritative obit. of Thomas from the paper in Woodhall Spa. Perhaps, and here we lean on supposition only, Elizabeth died in childbirth? It would certainly explain why a man of the cloth would marry twice – particularly if his second wife could be mother to the motherless children.
Fanny Millgate Plumtree became Thomas’s second wife and bore him five children, who happen to be the forming inspiration for this site, including Fanny Georgiana (who we had mistaken as his wife before David’s good offices showed that she was the daughter). We are not yet sure which of the Fannys was the author of romantic fiction, but we do have reference to the elder being a school mistress – although whether that is indicative I am not sure.
Fanny Millgate had several siblings, and was the eldest of the brood, born only 3 months after her parents married. What has been lovely is to see how the name Georgiana was of Millgate origin rather than Plumtree or Dixon-Spain, as it is Fanny’s mother who originally bore the name (Millgate being her maiden name).
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