The Story of my Great Grandfather – George William Smith Howman
SOME FAMILY HISTORY stories begin with a comfortable home, a well-established family and a reasonably clear account of the generations that came before.
Others begin with unanswered questions, unexpected discoveries and circumstances that might have made life considerably more difficult.
The story of my great-grandfather, George William Howman, belongs firmly in the latter category.
Born in Norfolk in 1848, George entered the world in the Walsingham Union Workhouse at Great Snoring. His beginnings were hardly promising, and the records surrounding his birth reveal a family story that is rather more complicated than first appearances might suggest.
Yet, despite those early uncertainties, George went on to establish a home and raise a large family in Lincolnshire, eventually becoming a smallholder in his own right.
His story is one of perseverance, family and making the best of the opportunities life presented.
A Question of Identity
GEORGE’S BIRTH AND parentage provide the first mystery.
Civil Registration recorded his birth on 25th March, 1848 as George William Smith Howman, the son of Caroline Howman. Where the document would normally show the father’s name, there is a blank. Moreover, added to the mystery of paternity there is a further complication.
An entry in the parish register of Great Ryburgh, dated 14 December 1848, records George’s baptism. To give some idea of context, Great Ryburgh lies some eight miles from the Workhouse. Intriguingly, the register identifies George not as the illegitimate son of Caroline Howman, but of her sister, Honour, who was also unmarried at the time.
This is a significant disparity. George was subsequently raised and known as the son of Caroline, but the parish register clearly suggests that his biological mother was actually her younger sister, Honour.
Why this arrangement came about is something the surviving records do not explain. Perhaps family circumstances dictated that Caroline should assume responsibility for bringing up her sister’s child.
Perhaps there were other considerations of which we can only speculate. Whatever the explanation, the arrangement appears to have become the accepted family position.
The sisters eventually went their separate ways. Honour married Elijah Toll at Great Ryburgh in 1857, while Caroline married James Munson at Gedney, Lincolnshire, in 1870.
For George, however, the consequences of those early family circumstances would remain part of his story, even if he himself may have regarded Caroline as his mother.
Growing up in Great Ryburgh
THE 1851 CENSUS provides our first glimpse of George’s childhood.
At just three years old, he was living in Great Ryburgh in the household of his maternal grandparents, Robert Howman, an agricultural labourer and Mary Ann, nee Utten.
Also living there were Caroline, aged 27, and Honour, aged 23. Both sisters were unmarried and employed as agricultural labourers.
It is an interesting household. Three generations of the Howman family were living together, with the two sisters apparently sharing the responsibilities and circumstances of family life. George was recorded as a grandson in his grandparents’ household.
We cannot know precisely how the household functioned or who undertook the day-to-day care of the young boy. As both Caroline and Honour were land workers, that role probably fell to his grandmother, Mary Ann.
Nevertheless, the census suggests that, by this time, George was growing up within an extended family rather than being dependent upon the workhouse or some form of institutional care.
That is worth emphasising. Being born in a workhouse did not necessarily mean spending one’s childhood there. George’s subsequent appearance in the family home demonstrates that he was being brought up there, and that whatever hardship may have befallen the family in 1848 had since been overcome.
There is, however, a considerable subsequent gap in the surviving evidence. After the 1851 census, George becomes difficult to trace, and we lose sight of him for some thirty years. It is not until the 1881 census that he reappears in the records.
By then, he had moved to Lincolnshire, married and begun a family of his own.
A New Life in the Lincolnshire Fenland
THE 1881 CENSUS finds George William Howman living at Gedney, near Holbeach, with his wife Jane.
George was 33 by this time and employed as an agricultural labourer.
Jane, née Wand, had also brought a child from an earlier relationship into their marriage: Elizabeth Brittain Wand, who would later be known within the family as Lizzie.
Lizzie, too, had been born outside marriage. Following the area’s naming traditions, her Christian names, Elizabeth and Brittain, are potential markers to Jane’s own parentage.
There were, therefore, parallels between Jane’s background and that of George’s own family. Jane, the daughter of Elizabeth Wand of Rippingale, had herself been born out of wedlock. My research suggests that her natural father may have been John Brittain of Sempringham.
As a member of the Wand family of Rippingale, Jane was my half-great great-aunt. Through her marriage to George Howman, however, and the subsequent marriage of one of their daughters―Mary Ellen in 1910―she also became my great-grandmother.
Thus, when George and Jane established their married life together, their household was already a blended family. George appears to have accepted Lizzie as one of the family, and she grew up alongside the children subsequently born to the couple.
The 1881 census provides a snapshot of a busy household. Alongside George and Jane in their home on Fleet Road were Lizzie, Emma, Robert, George, James and Frances.
It was a substantial family, and one that would continue to grow. Between them, George and Jane would raise Lizzie and seven children of their own.
There is something rather touching about this aspect of their story. George, whose own beginnings had been complicated by questions of parentage, became part of a household in which a child born to his wife outside marriage was accepted and raised as a member of the family.
Perhaps he understood better than most that family relationships were not always defined by clear-cut circumstances of birth.
From Labourer to Foreman
BY THE TIME of the 1891 census, George and Jane were still living in Gedney, at Broadgate.
There had, however, been a change in George’s working life.
In 1881 he had been recorded simply as an agricultural labourer. Ten years later, his occupation was given as agricultural foreman.
This may seem a modest distinction, but it represents a significant step in his working life. Agricultural foremen occupied a position of responsibility, supervising work and often directing other labourers on the farms where they were employed.
For a man who had started life in such uncertain circumstances, this was evidence of a degree of progress and recognition.
George was still working as a foreman in 1901. He and Jane remained in Gedney, and their family had grown up around them. The years of raising children, providing for a household and earning a living through agricultural work must have demanded considerable effort.
The census records do not tell us whether George was particularly ambitious, or whether he simply took opportunities as they came. But his progression from labourer to foreman suggests that he had acquired experience and the confidence of those employing him.
It is perhaps the first indication that George had managed to establish something more than the uncertain existence into which he had been born.
A Change of Circumstances
BY 1911, GEORGE and Jane had moved away from Gedney and were living at Sutton St James, near Wisbech.
George was now in his early sixties and, although he had previously held the position of agricultural foreman, his occupation was once again recorded as labourer.
Whether this reflected a change of employer, a reduction in responsibility or simply the lesser opportunities available to an older agricultural worker is impossible to establish.
Agricultural employment was physically demanding, and the years of hard work would inevitably have taken their toll. Nevertheless, George remained in employment and continued to provide for his family.
The move to Sutton St James also marked another chapter in the couple’s life. Their children had grown up and were making their own way, and the household was changing as the years passed.
Also present at the time of the census was their one-year-old grandson, George, the son of their son, George William Howman junior, and his wife, Millie, née Dart. Born in Nottinghamshire, young George would later become a butcher.
By now, George and Jane had spent decades together, sharing the responsibilities of bringing up a large family and navigating the ordinary difficulties of working-class life.
Becoming a Smallholder
PERHAPS THE MOST interesting development appears in the 1921 census.
George, now 73, was recorded as a smallholder in the reclaimed-fenland village of Gedney, close by the shores of the Wash.
This is a rather pleasing final chapter in his working life. After decades spent working on the land for other people, he had apparently reached a position where he was working on his own account.
We should not necessarily imagine a substantial farm or a prosperous agricultural enterprise. Smallholders could operate on very modest holdings, and the census alone does not tell us the extent of George’s land or the nature of his activities.
Nevertheless, it represents a different relationship with the land.
He had begun his working life as an agricultural labourer, progressed to become a foreman and, in later years, was recorded as a smallholder. There is a sense of independence in that final occupational description which makes it a fitting conclusion to his working story.
George had spent much of his life in the agricultural communities of Lincolnshire, and the land had provided his livelihood for more than half a century.
The Final Years
GEORGE WILLIAM HOWMAN died in 1923, at Fleet Hargate, Lincolnshire, aged approximately 75.
We know nothing about George’s personality, his ambitions or his private thoughts. The census returns are silent on such matters. They give us occupations, ages, addresses and family relationships, but little indication of the character of the people behind the entries.
Yet, when we put those records together, a picture begins to emerge.
He had lived through a period of extraordinary change. Born in the middle of the nineteenth century, he had witnessed the transformation of agriculture, the arrival of the railways and the motor car, and the upheaval of the First World War.
There were, too, those personal changes that come with a long life: childhood, marriage, parenthood, the raising of a large family and, eventually, old age.
As we have seen, his own beginnings had been far from straightforward. Born illegitimate in a Norfolk workhouse, with uncertainty surrounding his biological parentage, he had been brought up within an extended family and eventually made his home in Lincolnshire.
Notwithstanding such a start in life, together with Jane he raised eight children, including Lizzie, Jane’s daughter from an earlier relationship. He also progressed from labourer to foreman, eventually becoming a smallholder.
We may never discover exactly why he was born in the Great Snoring Workhouse, or know with certainty has mother’s true identity; was it Caroline, was it Honour? Those mysteries may remain buried in the past.
But we do know what happened afterwards.
George William Howman made a life for himself, and in doing so helped establish the family whose descendants are still interested in his story today.
An unpromising start, perhaps. But not an unfulfilled life. Not by any means.
Author’s Note on the Illustrations
The images accompanying these articles have been created using AI. While I have taken care to achieve a generally authentic impression of the period, they should not be regarded as historically accurate representations.
Details of clothing, buildings, landscapes, objects and settings may be imaginative or anachronistic.
Where ancestors are depicted for whom no photographic evidence exists, the images are representations rather than portraits.
Where possible, I have drawn upon photographs and other images preserved within the family archives to suggest a family likeness, but the resulting appearance should not be taken as a true likeness of the individual.
These images are intended simply to illustrate and complement the narrative—to help bring people, places and circumstances of the past to life—and should be understood in that spirit.