John Smith's Family Tree Website

Wyatt family

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Part 3: Elizabeth Tippett Wyatt (1839 - 1917)

Elizabeth Tippett Wyatt was the fourth child of Samuel Wyatt and Mary Ann Tippett. She was born in 1839 in Modbury, Devon, and baptised 09 August the same year in St George’s Church. She attended school and was listed as a scholar at age 11. It is not known how long she stayed at school. It was not until the Education Act (1870) that education became compulsory for those aged five to thirteen.

In a small place like Modbury, there were not many work options for girls like Elizabeth. At some point she moved away to Plymouth. In the 1861 census, out of a population of some 10 million females in England and Wales, almost 1 million were described as servants or domestic servants [1]. This included Elizabeth who was working as a servant for three sisters who ran a lodging house at 11 Alfred Street.

She married labourer William Mason (c1842 - 1914) 14 July 1861 in Charles the Martyr Parish Church. Elizabeth was in the very early stages of pregnancy when they married and spent much of the next twenty years being pregnant, giving birth to ten children altogether: Annie Elizabeth Jane Wyatt, Fanny, Bessie, William Isaac, Elizabeth, Ellen, John James, Laura, Rose and Ernest Frederick. Sadly five of their children died young. (More information about William and their children appears in the Mason section.)

It seemed William had ambitions to pull himself out of his rural labouring class roots, becoming part of the civil service within ten years. Elizabeth would have led a more comfortable life than her female forebears. Elizabeth and William were married for 53 years, spending the rest of their life in Plymouth, until his death in 1914. Elizabeth died only a few years later, 26 December 1917, aged 78.

Footnotes

[1] Reports from the 1861 Census of England and Wales, A vision of Britain through time website (www.visionofbritain.org.uk/census/1861)