1950 US Census

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=777145

Gidleys in the American census of 1950 are presumably a reflection of American society of the 1950s. A very rough, brief and unscientific analysis of the Gidley entries reveal the following initial impressions: 

A surprising number of Gidleys still worked on farms, either as owners or as helpers. From Alabama to Wyoming there are 27 Gidleys farming, and this doesn't include their families who no doubt helped in various capacities on the farm. 

The number of people employed, or associated with, the automobile industry, had grown. There were automobile salesmen, machinists, managers of service or gas stations, welders, mechanics, repairmen, and those working in the office, such as book keepers. 

There were a few professions being followed, such as two vets, five teachers, a lawyer, a banker, an accountant, a professor of pharmacy and a chemist. 

Of the women's occupations, the beauty industry makes a first appearance, with two practitioners, both of whom were divorced. 

There were only two maids/hired hands, both of whom were widows. 

The seven secretaries/typists/stenographers comprised single, married and divorced women, as did the six waitresses. 

The total number of Gidleys/Giddleys in the USA in 1950 was 852, an increase from exactly 800 in 1940.

The population of Gidleys in California had doubled from 28 in 1940 to 57 in 1950. 

The number of Gidleys who were divorced had grown from 12 in 1940 to 16 in 1950.

Wilmot Gidley who married John Yealland in 1699

 

Gidley Bridge, the boundary between South Brent and Dean Prior

Photo taken by Derek Harper and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons licence. Gidley Bridge is situated in Harbourneford, west of Rattery, Dartington and Dean Prior.

Many thanks to Ruth Waldron, one of Wilmot Gidley's descendants, for raising a question about Wilmot Gidley and finding the original recognisance for Wilmot in the Devon Heritage Centre. She has sent me a copy of the original document but copyright restrictions mean it cannot be published on the internet. The catalogue reference is to Willmott Yalland of Rattery, widow, guarantors being William Gidleigh of Dartington, yeoman, and Robert Gidleigh of Rattery, yeoman, S/4/1741/MIDSUMMER/RE/14.

Ruth says:

I am descended from Wilmot Gidley, who married John Yealland in Dean Prior in 1699. I have been unable to find a baptism record for Wilmot but I visited the Devon Heritage Centre whilst on holiday in Devon last week and came across a 1741 Quarter Sessions record which linked Wilmot Yealland to a William Gidley of Dartington and a Robert Gidley of Rattery (all 3 were charged £10 each and bound over on condition that Wilmot attended the next Quarter Sessions on suspicion of felony - I think!). Wilmot Yealland died only a couple of months later.  Based on the death dates I have found for the two men, I think they may have been Wilmot's brothers and wonder if all 3 were children of Hercules Gidley of Buckfastleigh.

So, was there a Robert and a William who could be linked with Rattery and Dartington at about the right time? The ones I came up with who spanned all three criteria were:

1. Robert Gidley christened in Dean Prior in 1712, son of William Gidley and wife Mary Winter. Robert was described as "of Dartington" when he married Margaret Burt in 1738, and a Robert Gidley was buried in Rattery in 1771.

2. Robert's father William, christened in Buckfastleigh in 1686, was buried in 1750 in Rattery, when his residence then was Dartington, according to the burial record.

Wilmot's guarantors were probably close family. Could they be brother and nephew of Wilmot? 

William Gidley christened in 1686 in Buckfastleigh was the son of Archilaus Gidley and his wife Joan Lane, who married in Staverton in 1671. There was then a gap before I found children between 1678 - 1692. Wilmot could well have been born in that 1671-1678 gap if she married in 1699. And one of the other children of Archilaus and Joan was a Robert, christened in 1686. I found nothing definite further on him, and he would have been very old if he were the Robert Gidley buried in Rattery in 1771. Not impossible, but but it was such a common name amongst the Gidleys of that branch, that he could well have been confused on the family tree by me with another Robert Gidley, or his burial may not have been  recorded.

So I conclude that Wilmot was almost certainly a child of Archilaus and Joan. Whether Archilaus and Hercules were the same person I think is quite possible, as I have seen Hercules recorded as Harculas in parish registers, but it's not conclusive. And that William and Robert, her guarantors, were probably her brothers, but Robert was possibly a nephew.

The lane to Gidley Bridge, taken by Derek Harper, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence

John Gundry Gidley, boat builder of Ontario, Canada, written by his great great grandson, Bryan Gidley

John Gundry Gidley 1829 – 1893

John Gundry Gidley was born in Camborne, Cornwall, England, 27 Dec 1829, to John b: in Breage, Corwall, England and Jane (Kempthorne) b: in Sithney, Cornwall, England. He was christened in Sithney, 16 Jan 1831.

In the 1851 Census of Sithney, he is listed as a copper miner.

John and Mary Ann’s Marriage certificate 15 Sep 1854

Married Mary Ann Warren in Copper Harbour, Ontonogan Michigan, a place on the northern tip of the state as it juts into Lake Superior. Mary Ann was the adopted daughter of James Gilmour Warren who was apparently of native descent and it was likely an elopement. She was supposedly betrothed to an English lieutenant back in her home town of Penetanguishene, Ontario, Canada. A distance of some 650+ miles by land or water. Witness Charles Parker was born in Ontonogan, he was a prospector, mineral land broker and a mine promoter.

John’s business took him away from Ontonogan at times and the family lived at Fairbault, Minnesota, USA for a brief spell.

John and Mary stayed in Ontonagon until after April 1861 when Agnes was born and before Henry was born in April 1864. In all there were 10 children, in order, John Gundry, James Warren, William Kempthorne, Agnes Christina, Henry Edward, Edith Jane, Clara, Mary Elizabeth, Alfred Howard and Earnest Gilmour. William's obituary stated that William was born aboard "his father's passenger vessel at Kewenawa sic (Keweenaw) Point Michigan.

John was a fisherman in 1871, mariner in 1881 and boat manufacturer with rank of Sea Captain in 1891.

William - owned the Midland Boat Works

Henry - owned the Gidley Boat Works Of Penetang

James - moved to Vancouver and 'made a fortune'

John’s six sons, Henry is in light suit)

Alfred Gidley Picnic Island, Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada

Owned by John.

Vessel Name SAUCY JIM

Build Year 1887

Official Number C92305

Original Owner John & James Gridley (sic)

Type at loss : propeller steam tug, wood

Build info : 1887, A. Morill, Meaford, Ontario, Canada

Specs : 84x17x8, 93gc 63nc

Date of loss : Nov 18 1910

Place of loss : Christian Island., NW of Midland, Ont.

Lake : Huron

Registered out of Collingwood. 1891 Owned John Gridley (sic), Collingwood.

1897 Owned Frank Scott, Collingwood; harbor tug.

1905 Pushed the still burning CITY OF COLLINGWOOD to her final resting place at Collingwood.

1910, 26 Nov Burned at wharf.

Lease portion Midlands Government to J. G. Gidley and Son etc. of other portions of the same wharf to the Georgian Bay Shipbuilding and Wrecking Company - Actg. Min. M. and F. [Acting Minister of Marine and Fisheries] 1919/10/08

Order-in-Council Number: 1919-2143

Date Introduced: 1919-10-15

Considered Date: 1919-10-16

Approved Date: 1919-10-18

Reference: RG2, Privy Council Office, Series A-1-a, For Order in Council see volume -1-, Access Code 90

Register Number: Series A-1-d, Volume 2815

Captain John Gundry Gidley’s son Henry, was the owner/operator of the Gidley Boat Company up until the year 1915 at which time he sold it to Art Grew. The boat company has an illustrious career with some interesting history. At one time all six sons were involved in the boating business.

John Gundry Gidley died on 2 May 1893 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His granddaughter Violet (Gidley) Jeffreys replaced the original marker with the one shown about 1989.

Intimation for John Gundry Gidley

Copelands Hill Cemetery Penetanguishene, Ontario

Gidley One Name Website now live

 The Gidley One Name website is now viewable at 

Gidley One Name website

Regard it at present as a giant index to Gidleys all over the world. There is still much I can add to the Most Wanted, for example, or the Albums, but at present I have used the simplest template I could find and I shall still also use this blog to update any new research.

In case you are puzzled as to which branch your Gidleys belong, my reference number is included in each entry. The prefix Bu refers to the Buckfastleigh branch, for example, Ped to the Winkleigh branch. There are possibly fuller details for each branch on my home PC, and living family members may be included on the trees on my home PC but should definitely not be on the website.

If you are stuck, use the contact details to get in touch. And contact me for any complaints or comments on errors or omissions! I'm expecting some - it's inevitable.

The 1921 England & Wales census is now live, but expensive, so I haven't updated any trees yet. The 1950 U.S. census will also go live later this year, so there will be plenty to add in the future.

Meanwhile I really hope this will help Gidleys everywhere get a sense of where they belong. 

Website building, and some bigamous marriages

 I decided to build a website during the last lockdown. It will be hosted on the Guild of One Name Studies website and is still under construction, so not yet live. Fortunately I don't have to know any coding etc. as the Guild does all that, but I have had to do a lot of tidying of my data. 

All the family trees have been loaded into one huge tree, so at the very least it will be an index to all the Gidleys in one place. I have already found this useful myself. Looking at the trees as a whole enabled me to link at least 3 together. And I hasten to add, only deceased Gidleys will be found on the website. Anyone still living has, I hope, been made private, and that has taken a lot of time. So the individual trees of each branch on my own PC at home will still hold more data. 

As time goes on I hope to add more feature articles to the website, but I have to get to grips with that part of the program first!

I have also created a Guethle tree for those members of the Guethle family who anglicised their name to Gidley. I know many people know far more about those families than I do, but I did want to include them in the main tree on the website. It was interesting that the Guethle/Gidleys in the USA are not closely related (not since the 18th century) to the Guethle/Gidleys in Australia, although they did both originate in Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

Meanwhile, here are two victims of bigamy and, to redress the balance, a bigamist herself. These events took place many years ago and we can never know the exact circumstances. Bigamy was always called "the poor man's divorce" when divorce for the ordinary couple was almost out of the question. I believe that after seven years' desertion by a spouse many people considered they were free to marry again. There has been a tiny number of more recent bigamists, but I have no intention of recording them.

In Australia in July 1896 a lady named Jane Galloway brought a charge of bigamy against John Purvis, a slater. She claimed he married her, after declaring he was a bachelor, on 29 April 1895 in Redfern, New South Wales. All the time he already had a wife in England, who was still alive. It was ruled that there was insufficient evidence of the previous marriage, but a week later Jane brought a lesser charge of wife desertion against John Purvis and he had to pay 5s a week for the next 12 months with 5s 10d costs. The previous wife, and victim of the bigamy, was born Alice Gidley in Grimsby in 1860, the daughter of successful trawler owner John Gidley and his wife Elizabeth Allen. Alice married John Purvis in 1881 in Grimsby. They emigrated to Australia the following year, but by 1891 Alice had returned to England with her three children, all born in Australia, and they were living in Grimsby with her parents. In 1901 Alice was a cook with a family in the West Riding of Yorkshire, calling herself a widow. At least one of her children remained with their grandparents in England.

Violet Victoria Gidley, daughter of Robert Andrews and Sarah Kate Gidley, was the victim of a bigamist during the First World War. A soldier, Amos Carpenter, of the A.S.C., stationed nearby, married her in Norwood, Middlesex, in 1916. However, a few months later his first wife brought a charge of bigamy against him, producing evidence of their marriage in 1910. Amos claimed he had been told his wife was dead and that he was surprised to find her alive. He received a light sentence in 1917: imprisonment for two days. Violet later made another marriage and emigrated to Canada.

The bigamist herself was Henrietta Hester Daniell who was born in 1843 and married Richard Gidley of Throwleigh, Devon, in Exeter in 1863. Richard was at first a grocer and druggist, then moved into assisting his father, but at his marriage was described as a writer. It's not clear if he suffered from ill health, but he evidently didn't follow one successful occupation throughout his life. In 1871 he and Hetty were living with his father Gustavus, an innkeeper and cooper, at the inn in Wonson, near Throwleigh with two of their children. Richard had no occupation. He and Hetty stayed together till at least 1873 when their youngest child, a daughter who died at the age of 2 years, was born. The same year (1875) his father died, and perhaps those two events were the trigger for the split. By 1881 Hetty had moved to the other side of England with two of the children, claiming to be a widow. She was employed as a schoolmistress in Bedfordshire. In 1891 she was living in Walthamstow in East London, and the following year married again. Her marriage certificate shows she considered herself a widow. She used the name Gidleigh in 1881, 1891 and at her second marriage - possibly to avoid detection.

But Richard was still alive, though moving around his native county of Devon. In 1881 he was an agent, supposedly unmarried, lodging in a pub in Broadhembury. By 1891 he had moved to Honiton where his brother Gustavus was based, and made his living as a toll keeper, a "single" man, but that was another short-lived occupation.  By 1901 he was again unemployed and living, again "unmarried", with his younger brother Gustavus. He died in 1905 aged 72.

 I have included a photo (from Geograph, licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons licence) of the Northmore Arms in Wonson, Throwleigh, which I suspect must be the pub where Richard began life, where his father Gustavus was an innkeeper and cooper, and where he and his family were living in 1871. It was known as the New Inn when they lived there.

I haven't found any direct evidence that it was the same building, though Wonson seems too small to support more than one inn.

More news on the website will follow when it's all tidied up, fit to be seen and gone live.

A new Gidley family discovered

 It's very rare now to discover a complete new family of Gidleys, but it was nice surprise to discover this particular family, who were well concealed in the United States under the name Yeldig. It took a little while for the penny to drop (Gidley spelled backwards of course) and their existence was no surprise to Ancestry who had linked them to their Gidley originator, nor to the transcriber who had entered the details on the Find My Grave website and also found the original name. I had assumed Yeldig was just a mis-transcription of Gidley from a particularly poorly hand written entry, but no, it was clearly Yeldig, So I investigated. As the descendants of the man who originally changed his name still use the name Yeldig, I shan't go into great detail of the more recent family members..

William Albert Gidley born in Masschusetts in 1889 was the son of Charles Gidley, a house painter, and Sarah Simmons. They parted, and both married again. By 1910 their son William was living in Providence, Rhode Island, with his widowed mother. He was a jewellery polisher, having apparently been fascinated by jewellery from a young age. He married that year Charlotte Tew, a few years older than himself, and it seems the marriage was not happy. According to his obituary he moved to Indianapolis, Indiana (approximately 900 miles away from Providence) in 1918, although he is found in the 1920 census still in Providence, Rhode Island, still called William Gidley and still with Charlotte (she died in New York in 1931). But a daughter was born that same year of 1920 in Indianapolis to William, who was now using the name Yeldig, and Annie Elizabeth Todd, who came from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Two sons followed. 

William and Annie also seemed to have problems, as by the following census in 1930 Annie has moved 50 miles away from Indianapolis to keep house for a man she later married. William Yeldig is a divorced roomer (we would probably call him a lodger in the UK), still living in Indianapolis. There is no sign of the children. By 1940 there is a happier outcome: William has married Lillian Whitehurst and has the children living with him. Their mother Annie had died in 1935.

William kept his occupation of jewellery polisher and plater until his retirement. His obituary in an Indianapolis newspaper in 1954 records he worked for Reis & Co. Inc. for 30 years. His descendants in the male line still use the name Yeldig.

Obituary for William Albert Yeldig in the Indianapolis News 26 Jan 1954.

John Gidley, 1632 - 1712, surgeon of London

 John Gidley is as well-known as his brother Bartholomew, partly because of the medals struck in their honour. John Gidley had two different medals struck to commemorate his 50th birthday in 1682, and these occasionally come up for sale in auction rooms. The Wellcome Library in London also has the medal commemorating his service as a surgeon.

John was born, according to his medal, on 21st May 1632, and christened in Winkleigh, Devon on 3rd June 1632. His parents were Bartholomew Gidley and Thomasine Richards, who were married in Exeter in 1609. They had a large and apparently healthy family of eleven children, of whom at least eight survived to adulthood. John was the youngest of four sons. His oldest brother Bartholomew was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and I have seen a reference to John gaining an M.A. there in 1660. This seems likely for a future doctor; however John does not appear in the printed index to Oxford University Alumni. John must have shown an aptitude for a specialised education, as his other two older brothers, George and Samuel, became country gentlemen and moved away to Dunsford and Spreyton in Devon, respectively. Their offspring were passed over by Bartholomew Gidley when, childless himself, he sought an heir to his Winkleigh estates and to the right to bear the coat of arms granted to him in respect of his service in the Royalist Army.

Charles Worthy in his book on Devonshire Wills (London: Bemrose, 1896), has the following to say:

"... John Gidley had married Rebecca Dunning of Winkleigh, in which parish he had inherited an estate called Beuford ; he was a Court surgeon, and resided chiefly in London, but his will is dated at Winkleigh, 21st September, 1712. He left his eldest grandson the Beuford property, and his silver plate, hangings, and other furniture in his house in London to his second but eldest surviving son, John, and to his daughter, Rebecca, after their mother's death."

Beuford is presumably better known now as the hamlet of Beaford, near Winkleigh. By his will John's wife Rebecca inherited all the goods left at John's house in London, and he lists them: silver plate, tapestry and other hangings, bedding, beds and table "linnen", pewter, and brass. On her death these are to pass to his surviving son John Gidley and his daughter Rebecca Graham. His wife does not inherit goods kept elsewhere. These go to his grandson Bartholomew Gidley, together with the income from the Beuford estate, on condition that he pays one shilling on the first Sunday of every month to the poor of Winkleigh. Unfortunately this Bartholomew Gidley, a spendthrift, would not even maintain his grandmother Rebecca, and had to be ordered in 1717 to support her. There is an intriguing reference in John's will of 1712 that his daughter-in-law Elizabeth Gidley should deliver to the executors all the goods now in the Solomon Grandy, presumably a ship in which he had an interest.

We know little about John's career as a Court Surgeon to William III, who became godfather to Bartholomew Gidley, John's grandson. He may have owned a house in Broad Street in St Peter le Poer parish in the City, where a John Gidley paid rent in 1692 and 1704 (London Land Tax Records), but there was at least one other John Gidley in London at a similar time. He certainly claimed immunity in 1692 from inquest service after being summoned by the Mayor and Corporation of London, by virtue of being a Freeman of the Barber-Surgeons' Company (reference from the Wellcome Librarycatalogue).

John Gidley was buried in Winkleigh on 28th September, 1712.