Caroline Lumley or Lambley, dairymaid, glove-maker and laundress

Caroline Lumley was Ari’s 4x great-grandmother, born in 1834 in Rous Lench, Worcestershire. According to my tree, she was the third daughter of John Lumley, a farm labourer, and Ann Loyd, a “field woman”.

Rous Lench village green

The 1841 census shows the family living at Rous Lench, where John is an agricultural labourer.

In 1851, Caroline is sixteen and working as a glover. Caroline’s grandfather, Thomas Wright, is living with the family in Rous Lench. He is described as a pauper (labourer):

1851 census, Ancestry.co.uk

But if he is Ann’s father, why was her name Loyd? Had she been married before?

I turned to TheGenealogist website, which is very good for Worcestershire parish records, and found the marriage of Thomas Wright and Mary Loyd in 1803, plus two more of their children, John and Sarah. So it looks as though Ann Loyd was actually Ann Wright. I will come back to her another day.

Caroline didn’t get married until October 1861, so she should have appeared in the 1861 census under her maiden name. By this time her father had died and her two sisters had married, so Caroline was on her own. I looked for any Carolines of the right age living in Rous Lench. Neither Findmypast nor Ancestry could find her (and other people’s family trees also had a gap for her in 1861). Then I tried the FamilySearch website, with no surname and just Rous Lench as place of birth. Success! She appeared as Caroline Langley, about nine miles away in Hanbury, where she was working as a dairymaid for a farmer called Samuel Willson.

1861 census, Ancestry.co.uk

This is where she met Robert Butler, who was working as a cowman at a farm nearby.

Chicory flowers on a Hanbury footpath

They married at St Peter’s Church in Rous Lench on 27 October 1861.

Caroline, Robert, and their three daughters were living in Huddington in 1871. Caroline was listed in the census as a gloveress. By 1881 they were at Lower Crowle, and in 1891 Caroline was listed as a laundress.

We know how Caroline died because it was reported in the local papers in December 1895: