The mystery of Annie Gidley, mother of VC hero Allan Leonard Lewis: now solved

This detailed post requires a post of its own.
Phil Nichols, in his December 2019 comment on the post about Allan Leonard Lewis VC of Hereford, had noticed on the censuses Frank Boswell, a photographer in Lyme Regis at the right time to be the parent of Annie Gidley, Allan Leonard's mother. He also noted that Frank Boswell had moved away to Frome, Somerset, by 1881, and that the children of Frank and his wife Mary were registered as Boswell, with the mother's maiden maiden name given as Gidley. They were:
1. Alice born March quarter 1867 Axminster registration district (this included Lyme Regis).
2. Elizabeth born June quarter 1868 Axminster registration district.
3. Frank born December quarter 1969 Axminster registration district.
4. Lucy born December quarter 1873 Axminster registration district.
5. Frank born June quarter 1875 Axminster registration district.
6. Emily born March quarter 1877 Axminster registration district.

However, none of the children are called Ann(ie).

1. Alice was christened in Lyme Regis on 25 December 1868. She can be followed through the censuses until 1911 when she is in Lyme Regis. She died in Axminster registration district in 1927.
2. Elizabeth was also christened on 25 December 1868 in Lyme Regis. She was apparently adopted by William and Elizabeth Mansfield, a cabinet maker and auctioneer in Lyme Regis, although in 1881 she is with her father Frank and his new partner, Emily, in Frome. The Mansfield couple also has three of the Boswell children resident with them in 1891, but not Elizabeth Boswell. She vanishes.
3.Frank died September quarter 1870 in Axminster registration district.
4. Lucy can be followed through the censuses to a pupil teacher training college attached to a religious industrial school in Wantage in 1891 and to a marriage to an organist, Frederick George Lloyd, in Middlesex in 1900. She died in Somerset in 1966.
5. Frank became a cabinet maker in Lyme Regis and died in Bridport registration district in 1961.
6. Emily appears to have become Mary by 1881. In 1901 she has moved to Bradworth, Devon, where she is a nurse at the vicarage. She was married as Mary Boswell in 1913 in Hackney, London, to Herbert Edwin Bell.

I think Elizabeth Boswell must for some reason have called herself Annie Elizabeth Gidley when she married, thence becoming Allan Leonard's mother, known as Annie.

So who was the mother of Elizabeth/Annie Gidley, partner of Frank and mother of the Boswells? We know her name was Mary Gidley, that she was 24 in 1871, so was born about 1846 or 1847, and in Devonshire, place not known (or at least whoever gave the details to the census enumerator didn't know). There were two Mary Gidley possibilities born in Devon about then. One was the confusingly named Mary Gidley Gidley (FreeBMD). But she turned out to be Mary Gidley Clampitt, born  in the June quarter 1846 in Okehampton, who died unmarried in Exeter in 1905. In 1871 she was a parlourmaid in Budleigh Salterton, and therefore not living with Frank in Lyme Regis.
That left Mary Gidley, daughter of  William Gidley and Miriam Sanford. William was born in 1822 in Christow, Devon, one of the Gidleys of Winkleigh, although this particular branch had fallen on rather hard times. William was married twice. His first wife Mary Ann Reed Board, whom he married at the age of 18, died after only two years of marriage. Their surviving son James (born only three weeks after his parents' marriage) doesn't ever seem to have lived with his father and his stepmother Miriam, and eventually emigrated with his wife Susan and their family to Australia.  To return to William Gidley, father of Mary "Boswell", his occupation was variously recorded as farmer, agricultural labourer, butcher and cattle dealer.  By the 1860s he had moved to Exeter, and had several brushes with the law, including for larceny (acquitted) and using obscene language and riding his horse furiously up and down the street (fined 10/-).  He died in 1898 in Exeter.
Mary's mother Miriam died in 1879. Mary was the oldest child. She had three sisters and one brother. John Gidley, her brother, died unmarried in Plymouth in 1933. The next sister Elizabeth married William George Payne in 1882 in Exeter.  Sister Miriam married Joseph Cashaldine in Calcutta, India, in 1879, and the youngest Annie married Walter Clarke in Exeter in 1893.
I had already tracked Mary Gidley's career through the censuses, except for a missing year - 1871 -  when it now seems she was with  Frank Boswell in Lyme Regis. For whatever reason she left Frank Boswell and her children between 1877 and 1881, when I had already found her working as a parlourmaid in Bideford. Then the two clinchers: I had already discovered her in Clyro, Herefordshire in 1891, which should have alerted me. She was a servant to Conrad Finzel of Lower Caebalva. Elizabeth/Annie must have joined her mother there, as her residence in 1893 on her marriage is given as Clyro. Then in 1893, at the age of 47, Mary married in Herefordshire Robert Carpenter, a blacksmith from London in his sixties. They remained in Hereford, where Robert died in 1920, and where Mary died in 1940. In the 1939 Register she was living with a master blacksmith and his family in Kingsway, Hereford. She had managed to accrue £176 19s 5d in her estate, which was probated by Mary Bell, married woman, her youngest daughter.

With grateful thanks to Phil Nichols for his research which put me on the right track. And an honour for Mary Carpenter nee Gidley to be the grandmother of a winner of the Victoria Cross.

Unpleasant crime in Park City, Utah

As reported in the Salt Lake Herald 24 May 1907.

Park City, Utah

"Last night, between 11 and 12, W A Gidley, city sexton of Park City, was robbed while on his way home and a sum of money taken from him amounting to $11. Mr Gidley had been in the cemetery until after 10 o'clock and coming home by way of town, stopped and talked with some friends until the time stated, then started home by way of the "China Stairs". According to Gidley he had gone but a short distance from Main Street when he was struck down and the next thing he knew he was lying on the ground with his pockets turned inside out and his money gone. [He was probably] told to throw up his hands, but the sexton is very hard of hearing, so [the assailant] struck him probably with a gun."

Grass Valley, California

W A Gidley was William Alexander Gidley, born in Grass Valley, Nevada, California, in 1855. He was the son of  William S Gidley, with the S almost certainly standing for Simmons, his mother's maiden name. Together with the mining background, that puts him on the Cornish Gidley tree. The California gold mines attracted hundreds of Cornish miners, who had the skills from the defunct tin mining industry at home to pump water out of the deep mine shafts in California. William S Gidley died in Grass Valley in 1865 and Jane, W A's mother, married again. By 1880 William A is living with his sister Mary Jane McDermott and her family in another mining town, Virginia City, Nevada, where he was a labourer.

Virginia City, Nevada

The silver Comstock Lode there was fully mined by 1898, and by 1900 William A had arrived in Park City, yet another silver mining town which developed from the 1870s. He was elected as the town sexton in January 1900. William Alexander fortunately recovered from the attack in 1907. The Salt Lake Herald records he was fit enough to take part in a 60 yard dash with another 55 year old in 1910. He continued in his role as custodian of the Park City Glenwood cemetery until at least 1920. He died there in 1924 and has a lovely and imposing memorial stone in his "own" cemetery. He and his wife, Annie Lindsay, had 7 children, and many descendants.

W A Gidley, Glenwood Cemetery

The adventurous life of William Gidley, stage driver in the Wild West

I've already written a little about Bill Gidley, known as "Gid" or "Old Bill" who never smiled again after he accidentally killed a friend at a turkey shoot. This is how it was reported in the Grand Forks Daily Herald.
"The name of Bill Gidley was as familiar as that of Col. John H Stevens is to the Minneapolitan. Bill was a stage driver - one of those great big, good-natured souls, whose face dilated between s broad grin and a hearty guffaw...His arrival at a stage station was the signal for merriment - omnipresent from the office to the kitchen, from cellar to garret - he was a privileged character. Bill Gidley, notwithstanding his rough, unpolished character, was always the gentleman, and had as tender a heart as ever beat in human breast. Gidley's friends little thought that a cloud would sweep across the life of the big stage driver which would forever hide from view the smile which had been for many years a light along the route. Thirteen years ago, on Thanksgiving day, there was a turkey shooting match at Bismarck. Bill was there; he went to see the sport, and while not an expert shot " 'lowed [sic] he'd just kill off what few turkeys these 'ere fellers have got". After a number of unsuccessful shots, Bill's friends began to make sport of his marksmanship. One of them, pointing to a little outbuilding standing some 30 rods distant, remarked, "Bill, you can't hit that shack over there". Gidley clapped his rifle to his shoulder, pulled the trigger, the door to the shack swung open and Bill's best friend fell at the entrance, shot through the heart. That was 13 years ago. Gidley is still staging it in the Black Hills country, but his old-time friends would hardly recognise him. The face once wreathed in smiles is a picture of sadness; no more pleasantries that used to lend a light to the station. A heart-broken man, he passes his leisure time in comparative solitude."

But Bill's life didn't lack other incidents.

Miners' cottages, Mineral Point

Born William Joseph Gidley in Cornwall in 1841, the youngest child of Thomas Gidley and his wife Nancy (Ann or Nanny) Richards, he emigrated at the age of four with his entire family to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, whose TravelWisconsin website says "A walk down Mineral Point streets evokes a stroll through a Cornish village. Miners from Cornwall, England were among the first to settle here." The miners arrived to work the lead and zinc mines in the area. By the 1840s, news of these rich deposits had reached Cornwall. The early immigrants possessed advanced mining skills as well as expertise in stone building construction. Bill's father Thomas Gidley was a smelter in Mineral Point in the 1850 census, but had died by the 1860 census.

Bill was a labourer in Mineral Point in 1860, but left a year later to go West. It was reported in the Salt Lake Herald of 12 December 1891 that he started driving in 1861 for the Northwestern Transportation Company, and stayed with them for 28 years, becoming a prominent driver in Minnesota, Dakota and Wyoming. The same article records the following incident.

A Concord stage coach

" During his career on the hurricane deck of a Concord Mr Gidley had many thrilling experiences. He has participated time again in battles with red and white renegades and has many scars. He came out of one engagement with 6 ounces of buckshot in his anatomy and wears the lead on his watch chain. Gidley recalls his worst adventure the one that left him gray-haired - an engagement with wolves in the bad lands of Dakota. He was driving 6 horses and had a full load of passengers. It was midwinter, intensely cold, and with 2 feet or more of snow everywhere. A pack of wolves made a determined assault on the outfit for three hours. It was a desperate battle for life. No less than 30 wolves were shot down. Finding destruction was almost certain, Gidley tied the lines to the brake and, walking out on the tongue, leaped on the back of one of the "swing" horses. From this perilous position, with the wolves snapping at him, he managed to loose the team of leaders. The wolves took after the liberated horses and the coach was brought into a station safely."
This adventurous life did take its toll. The same article records a realistic nightmare, after Bill had fallen asleep in the boot of the stage where he had become wedged in among the mail bags.  Thinking he was bound and gagged (by a "monstrous" chew of tobacco in his mouth), he was fortunately awakened from his nightmare, but by an over-nervous passenger shouting "Oh, God", alarmed at the "rough riding".
Bill did not apparently find peace in his home life. I have found two, possibly three wives for him, and three children. One daughter Mary was born in 1867 in Minnesota, who in 1870 was in St Paul with Bill and her mother. Then by 1880 there was a son Frank born in 1869 to possibly another wife in Dakota Territory. Frank died aged 20 in South Dakota. There is a recorded marriage to Almeda B Ham in Minnesota in 1867,  but no further sign of her, unless she is "Mary" in the 1870 census, the mother of Bill's daughter Mary. It is reported that Mrs Gidley, wife of J. W. [sic] Gidley, wife of the Superintendent of the Northwestern Stage Company, committed suicide at Rapid City, Dakota, by taking arsenic and chloroform in August 1885. She was formerly a well-known resident of St Paul, Minnesota. Then in 1907 the Los Angeles Herald on 18 September of that year reports a story from Kansas City, Missouri.
"Grace Gidley, daughter and heir of William J Gidley, an old stage line driver who died in Montana in 1896, has been located here after a search of 11 years. Gidley operated through the Wymore hills in the 1880s. When he died he left his estate to his child whom he had not seen since the day her mother deserted him when Grace was a baby. Grace Gidley is now the wife of Charles T Depew, a Kansas City painter." Note: Grace married as Grace E Sharpe, but I can't find her in any census before 1910 under any name. She was apparently born about 1888 in Wyoming.
And a good deed is reported in the Omaha Daily Bee on 18 February 1888. It seems that the Bismarck - Black Hills stage hauled gold bricks from the Homestake Mine, often amounting to $200,000, an obvious temptation to criminals. Suspicion fell on a man named Hank Wall. However, W J Gidley, "Gid", agreed to bring Hank Wall's nephew from Bismarck when his mother was very ill. In return, Hank no longer held up the Northwestern Transportation coaches. But see the 2020 update below.
Not only a driver, but also the manager of the line between Gillette and Buffalo, "Ole Gidley" was a member in 1890 of the commission to ascertain the amount of the Dakota Treasury indebtedness (Bismarck Daily Tribune 24 Jan 1890).
Bill Gidley was buried in Custer Cemetery, Yellowstone, Montana. His memorial stone sums it up:"Pioneer Stage Man".

There is a very good report of Bill Gidley's life on the FindAGrave website at William J Gidley

2020 Update:

The Bismarck Tri-Weekly Tribune of  22 December 1877 reported that the Cheyenne Sun of the 9th of that month had published a sensational article charging the Bismarck Stage Company with complicity with Blackburn and Wall in their depredations upon the Cheyenne and Sidney lines. The article states that the highwaymen were bribed by Supt. Gidley to confine their operations to opposition lines, and declares its ability to make the allegations good. Mr Hall, agent of the Bismarck Company, pronounced the charges "utterly and maliciously false", and that immediate prosecution has been ordered.