[2GGP] Joseph James COWLEY & Eliza KEECH

My 2nd Great Grandparents were Joseph James COWLEY and his wife Eliza KEECH.

Joseph James COWLEY was born on 7th February 1859 in Stevington, Bedfordshire, England, and was the second of five children born to Jesse White Cowley, a cord wainer (shoe maker), and his wife Maria Theresa COX, a lacemaker and shoe binder.

Eliza KEECH was born on 3rd February 1852 in Turvey, Bedfordshire, England, and was the first of six children born to James William KEECH, a tailor, and his wife Joanna COTTON, a lacemaker.

Joseph, aged 22, and Eliza, aged 29, were married on 6th May 1881, at St. Paul’s Church in Bedford, and had six children between 1882 and 1895. The 1881 census, conducted four weeks before their marriage, revealed that both Joseph and Eliza were working as servants in Bedford. Joseph was lodging at 3 Duck Mill Lane and worked as a domestic coachman. Eliza resided just around the corner at the Swan Hotel on the High Street, employed by its owner as a nurse.

The 1911 census recorded that the couple had lost one of their children by this time, but no records have been found to confirm the child’s birth, death or name.

1. William James Cowley (1 Mar 1882 – 28 Jul 1958) m.1914 to Charlotte Gibbison Marr ~ Domestic Groom, Tobacconist Manager
2. Unknown Cowley (c.1885?)
3. Amelia Elizabeth Cowley aka Millie (4 Feb 1887 – 12 Apr 1937) m.1907 to Ernest Benjamin Mayhew
4. Samuel Jesse Cowley (14 Feb 1890 – 19 Sep 1919) Unmarried ~ Groom
5. Lilian May Cowley (29 Dec 1892 – 1978) m.1916 to Frank Gerald Adams ~ Electrician’s wife
6. Beatrice Alice Cowley (26 Dec 1895 – 1972) m.1920 to Reginald George Milton

The family remained in Bedford until the late 1890s, when they moved to Green End (near Kempston), Bedfordshire. Joseph worked as a coachman and groom for Captain William Pritzler NEWLAND at Kempston House, Green End, and the family lived in the Coachman’s Cottages (aka “The Stables”) from at least 1901. Both sons also worked as grooms. Captain Newland died in 1900, and Joseph continued working for his widow, possibly up until she died in 1927, when the estate was sold. He would have been in his late 60s by this time.

Their daughter Millie, age 20, was the first to marry, which she did in Kempston on 20th May 1907, to 21-year-old groom Ernest Benjamin MAYHEW (my 1st Great Grandparents).

Joseph and Eliza’s eldest son, William, moved up the country to Alnwick, Northumberland, after 1911, where he married Charlotte Gibbison MARR in 1914. Charlotte was the daughter of a tobacco manufacturer, with whom William was employed. William was 32 and Charlotte was 38, and their first and only child was born the following year. It is uncertain whether he enlisted during the war.

Samuel, Joseph and Eliza’s youngest son joined the Bedfordshire Yeomanry at age 24 on 9th August 1914, just 12 days after war was declared. He was sent to France ten months later and at the beginning of September 1916, suffered a serious injury to his left hip after being thrown from his horse. He was sent back to England on 25th September and admitted into The Lord Derby War Hospital in Warrington, where he remained for a little over a year before a brief eight-week stay at the 1st Eastern General Hospital in Cambridge. Samuel’s medical papers stated his case as “arthritis of left hip” and “tuberculated left hip“, which left him unable to look after himself. It is unclear where he lived after his discharge from the army and hospital on 30th November 1917, as his records don’t include this information. Samuel very sadly died from the injuries sustained during the war on 19th September 1919 at Bedfordshire County Hospital. His death certificate stated his cause of death as “Chronic Osteomyelitis of Femur 3y and Septic Arthritis of Hip Joints.”

Joseph and Eliza’s daughter Lilian married Frank Gerlod ADAMS mid-way through the war in the spring of 1916. Frank, an electrician by trade, enlisted as a sapper with the Royal Engineers in 1915, working in the Signal Service. He disembarked in France on 6th December 1915, but no further records have survived of his service. Absentee voter records show Frank was a Lance Corporal by 1918, registered at “Kempston House Stables,” Lilian’s family home. Frank was discharged in 1919, and their first and only child was born in 1921 in Apsley End, Hertfordshire.

Beatrice, Joseph and Eliza’s youngest child married in mid-1920 to Reginald George MILTON.

By 1927, Joseph and Eliza had eight grandchildren and remained living in Green End.

Joseph died of heart failure on 23rd August 1935, aged 76, at his daughter Millie’s house at Church Road, Biddenham, Bedfordshire (where Millie died just two years later). His death notice described Joseph as a “very well-known figure.” Eliza moved in with her youngest daughter, Beatrice, at Grange Stables, Kempston, and she died on 21st April 1941, aged 89. By this time, she was being cared for by her daughter Lilian in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, after falling into a prolonged coma.