George Wellden
8 Lower Street
Occupation: Grocer
George married at the Congregational Church in Deal, to Mary Ann the daughter of Vincent Cornwell. Thomas, one of his older brothers, also married a daughter of Vincent Cornwell, Eliza, in Wingham and their younger brother, John Hudson, married at the Zion Chapel in Dover. The Wellden family seem then to be Non. Conformists hence the lack of a baptismal record for George and his siblings. Not all Non-Conformist records survive or are available on the main online sites.
George died in April 1860 leaving a young family then in September his wife Mary Ann dies suddenly in Upper Holloway. What she is doing there is currently unknown. Probate records state that George left under £600 and Mary Ann a few months later left under £450. This money would almost certainly have been used to support and educate their children.
Albert Terrace, London Road
Albert Terrace, London Road as it is today
The 1861 census tells us that both girls were at a small school run by a Maria Eastes at Albert Terrace on London Road, Deal. Young George, only four at the time, is living with his father’s brother, Thomas Wellden, and his wife Elizabeth who was also sister to his mother, Mary Ann.
By 1871 Christiana and Mary Ann have left school and are living with their uncles; Christiana with Thomas Wellden and Mary Ann with Edwin Cornwell, their mother’s brother. George by now is fourteen and boarding at Saint Peter’s Grammar School in Broadstairs. He later becomes a tailor setting up business in Ramsgate. By 1911 he and his family are living in The Drive, Tonbridge in a house named Elora, the same name that his Uncle Thomas had called his own house in Queens Street, Deal. George by then was working as a Commercial Traveller.
In 1925 George’s wife, Amelia, dies and he moves up to Warwickshire where we find him and his son, another George and also a tailor, living in Sutton Coldfield. George remarries in 1930; he dies in 1942 aged eighty-five years.
Mary Ann stays in Deal marrying, in 1875, Frederick Cottew the brother of Amelia who had married her brother, George. Their father, George Cottew, was a well-known builder in the town at the time. Christiana marries Ernest Wench in 1877 who at the time of their marriage was an assistant ironmonger and living a few doors down at 187 Lower Street. They moved to Middlesex soon afterwards where Christiana dies in 1922.