When I received an e.mail from Mark Sanderson back in September, telling of his great grandmother’s emigration in the early 1880s as a young married woman to the Manitoba prairie, I was intrigued to learn more. I asked Mark if he had any photographs of Eliza Jane and her family. It was four months before Mark replied but with an amazing set of pictures!Eliza Jane was born in Bloomsbury in 1856. Her mother was Sarah Wallwork Adkin (top picture). Eliza Jane’s father, Robert Isaiah, died when she was three-years-old, and her mother remarried although she herself died in the 1860s. Eliza went into service as a lady’s maid. In 1882, she married Thomas Tuttle, a coachman, and they moved to Canada to become homesteaders in Manitoba. The second picture shows Eliza and Thomas with their eight children – four boys and four girls. The third picture is a portrait of Eliza taken at the beginning of the 20th century. The fourth picture is of Eliza’s brother James (Jim) Adkin in his hardware store in Manitoba. Jim was born on 9 July 1850 and was baptized on 28 July at St George, Bloomsbury. He also went to Canada around 1882. After making his fortune there, he returned to England in 1926 and died in Devon in 1938, aged 88. Eliza’s sister, Alice Avonell Adkin, born 9 November 1854 in Bloomsbury, seems to have moved to Devon as a young woman. The fifth picture is a portrait of her taken in Exeter.
Mark also sent me a newspaper cutting of Eliza Jane on the eve of her 90th birthday, which I’ll feature in the next blog. Mark writes: ‘It was really great that you posted her story on your blog. My family was very pleased. Actually, at the present time I live in the Philippines, but I was born and raised in the USA. I lived in Canada for about 18 years. I’m a missionary here.’
