Elizabeth Ann Murfin was Ari’s 3x great-grandmother. She was the first child of John Murfin and Mary Ford, born on 22 September 1877 in the rural village of Mugginton in Derbyshire, just a month after her parents had married. At the time of her birth, her parents were living at Lane End, and her father John was a farm labourer. Her mother Mary registered the birth.
By the time Elizabeth Ann was thirteen, she had moved away from home and was working as a domestic servant for a young farmer called Thomas Pickering Wrench who lived at Old Rectory House in Mugginton.
This report was in the Derby Daily Telegraph on 2 October 1905:
When she was twenty, Elizabeth Ann married a wheelwright called John Edgar Pearson Wheeldon at All Saints church in Mugginton. The 1901 census shows the family at Little Hays in Alderwasley.
They had two children, Lawrence Edgar (2) and John Henry Francis (1). By 1911 Elizabeth Ann had given birth to four more children: Winifred Ethel was now 9, Arnold George was 6, Oliver Edward was 5 and Mary Elizabeth Ellen (Nellie) was 5 weeks.
The family’s address was 167 Lincoln Terrace, Nottingham Road, Belper.
In the 1921 census Elizabeth Ann was 43 and described herself as a housewife. The family were now at 189 Nottingham Road, Belper. Elizabeth’s sons were all working in the colliery at Marehay, and her daughter Winifred was a hosiery hand. A son, Lewis Mervyn, had been born in 1912 and died in 1913, and the eighth child, John Edgar, had been born in 1918.
They then moved further down Nottingham Road, and the 1939 Register records them at No. 28. Elizabeth Ann had been a widow since 1924, and she shared her home with her son John, who was a lorry driver like his brother Edward.
Derby Daily Telegraph, 7 October 1935. Image © Reach PLC
Elizabeth Ann died at 36 Penn Street, Belper, on 5 May 1941, the home of her daughter Nellie.
She was sixty-three and the causes of death were exhaustion, colotomy and carcinoma recti. Her daughter Winifred was the informant. I don’t know where she was buried.
Ari, this is how you are related to Elizabeth Ann:
