Ann MILLER [1294] ²²¹³

  General Notes:

At the 1851 Census, Ann was 9 years old and living at Newland Street, Higham Ferrers. Her occupation was given as lacemaker. At the 1861 Census, her address was Higham Ferrers and occupation was Bootcloser. At the 1871 and 1881 Census she was living at High Street Higham Ferrers with no occupation recorded.

FROM THE RECOLLECTIONS OF ROBERT BERNARD BLACKWELL IN 1987 (GRANDSON)
I've just picked up a letter from the ex Ivy Kemshead, Ivy Smith and she gives a bit of information here about Dad's family. She said to Gilbert, "Do you want to know who Grandma Blackwell's mother was. She was a Miller. I don't know if you remember Uncle Jim that lived under the old walnut tree, he was Grandma Blackwell's brother. Then there was Nell Johnson and Jane Burdett, two sisters and I think there was another brother but cannot call to mind at the moment." She said mother used to take us visiting her grandmother. They lived up on old (yard ?) .. Well I can't remember Uncle Jim, I was too young. Anyway that was part of it. They came from the bottom end of Higham where there was the old village green that they used to have years and years ago…… Usually a triangular strip of ground with a road running along one side and two on an angle leading to another street out the other end. Well that's where they lived. The main road to London went past the front and then there was the one angled on the left hand side, one on the right, they angled…..,.made like an equilateral triangle and down where the two other roads these very narrow lanes met they entered a road which went down to the river and ???????????? but anyway that's where they lived. And there was this enormous walnut tree, it was an enormous thing, I think hundreds of years old, been there for god knows how long. With a great triangular strip of ground, it grew in the middle and these houses ran down there. There was about five houses on each angle. Old stone houses with thatched roofs.
The Council there had occasion one time to dig up this green, put a trench across it and we kids of the village were in our element. We went down there, and I know I bore in triumph home to my mother a human skull, minus the bottom jaw, but it had the top jaw in with the teeth, and Gilbert he had a leg bone, finger bones and that sort of thing. We thought they were great. Mother chased us out of the house, threatened she'd damn well tan our backsides if we didn't take them back and put them where we got them. Anyway we took them back, we didn't like doing it but we had to. Took them back there and there was a great stack of them; skulls, leg bones, thigh bones, anything you could mention, it was all piled there in a heap. The story went around that it had been a battlefield a couple of hundred years ago, but I think more than likely it could have been an old grave yard, I don't know Geoff. Anyway, the bones were all decently re-interred into a fresh spot. But I'll never forget that, all these white bones, all sorts.
Well these old thatched cottages, well that's where I think the Millers lived, down there that was the bottom end of Higham [Ferrers] . But as I say, I was so young when I lived in Higham, when we left there I was barely 8……so my memory of things is not really brilliant and the relations, I do know Geoff that in Higham, practically every second person that we met was a cousin or a relative by marriage of some kind, there was dozens of them there. But I never met I was too young to know and even to be interested. ...................................

Ann married Alfred BLACKWELL [1295] [MRIN: 396], son of John BLACKWELL [1319] and Ruth CLARKE [1318], on 25 Dec 1864 in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, England.²²¹² (Alfred BLACKWELL [1295] was born on 2 Mar 1840 in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, England ²²¹⁷, christened on 16 Aug 1840 in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, England ²²¹⁸ and died on 26 Apr 1917 in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, England ²²¹⁹.)