1861-1935 Finding Emma Jane Carr Macnee
Preamble: Finding Emma
This is the grandmother we never knew. When I started on this genealogy I realized I did not even know her name. The only thing I ever remember hearing from Dad about his mother was that she had been interested in Rosicrucianism. He had a beautifully illustrated copy of a book that I understood to be some kind of a bible or manifesto. But I did know that she had been cremated, not long before Dad and Mum were married. That gave me a year, 1935, and Uncle John Harley gave me a location: Golders Green Crematorium. Sure enough, the record was there, supplying me with her name and the details of her death. She was Emma Jane Macnee, of Sea Grange, Westgate on Sea, Kent, had died on 5 April, and was cremated on 9 April 1935.
The next discovery was that she had married Robert Hamilton Macnee, our grandfather, in Brooklyn New York, in 1901. The marriage certificate identified her as Emma Jane Carr, living in a hotel on Broadway, but from Handsworth, England, the daughter of Deodatus Carr and Ann Robertson. Her age was given as 27, giving a (very inaccurate) birth date of 1874.
While I have learnt much of Emma’s family from that meager start, I can say very little about her, since she died before we were born. But I have traced her lineage further back than any other member of this family, so that is where her story goes.
The primary source on Emma’s birth and birth family is her marriage certificate (1901) which named her parents as Deodatus Carr and Ann Robertson and her birthplace as Handsworth, England. Her age was given as 27, giving a birth date of 1874. However census records of Deodatus Carr and Ann Robertson show that they had a daughter Emma Jane, who was born in 1860, and the birth of an Emma Jane Carr, born in Handsworth, was registered in the 4th quarter of 1860. This Emma Jane had a twin sister, Mary Evelyn, and both appear in the 1861 census taken on 7 April when they were 4 months old, in the family of Deodatus Carr and his wife Ann. They appear together in several other census records as well. In her will, written in 1933 Emma names her sister, Mary Evelyn Owens, as one of her legatees. Taken together the evidence suggests, that the information on the marriage certificate is accurate except for her age.
Birth and early years
Emma was born in December 1860, along with a twin sister, Mary. They were the youngest of seven children. The first, William V. was born in 1849, followed by Frederick C. 1852; Emily A. 1855; Datus V 1857; Ada M. 1858 and then the twins. When the twins were born the family lived on Hunters Lane in Handsworth, Staffordshire.
Deodatus was a grocer and wholesale provisions merchant, evidently successful, for they moved to the prestigious neighborhood of Edgbaston, where they were to live at 88 Gough Street for many years. William followed his father into the grocery business, Datus was a clerk at the age of 14, while of Frederick I have no information. In 1881 three of the daughters still lived at home with their parents, Emily presumably having married. Both Emma and her older sister Ada were described as teachers, but Mary had no occupation.
Deodatus died in 1890 but left sufficient funds that his wife was living ‘on her own means’ in 1891. Of the three daughters living with her, only Emma, a governess, was employed.
1901 Marriage in the USA
In 1901 Emma’s life changed. After living at home in Edgbaston, a spinster into her 40s, she was about to be married, in America. On March 31st, the night of the census, Emma was at home with her mother and sister Ada, as before. Six months later she was in New York, staying at a hotel on Broadway, and marrying Robert Hamilton Macnee, who lived at different times in New York, Glasgow and Liverpool. How they met is a mystery. Yet marry they did, on September 21, 1901.
Emma and Robert lived in Orange, in Essex County, New Jersey, from where Robert commuted to his work as an accountant in New York. Here, two years later, their only child, Douglas, was born, in February 1903. The family left the US for a journey to Great Britain in 1905, returning from Glasgow to New York on September 9, on board the SS Caledonia. Then the marriage apparently ended, and Emma returned to England with Douglas in 1907. Four years later, in 1911, Emma and Douglas were living in a boarding house, Ocean View Beach House, 314 Sussex Gardens, in Westgate-on–Sea, Kent.
I have found few details of the remaining years of Emma’s life. Robert and Emma do not appear to have divorced. There is some possibility that she visited him, since she was in Clarkston, near Glasgow in 1927, 1928 and 1934. However she was in Westgate, where Douglas visited her in May 1928, and again in July 1934. And it was in Westgate that she died in 1935.
Death 1935
Emma died on April 5, 1935, at Sea Grange, Sea Road, Westgate on Sea, Kent.
The death certificate is rather explicit. She died of Syncope (irregular pulse), Dyspnoea (shortness of breath) and vomiting, and had suffered myocardial degeneration for several years. There is very little additional family information, none about her parents or birth. Douglas, who gave his address as c/o Westminster Bank Hendon Central branch, was the informant and it seems possible that he knew very little of her family, though her sister Mary was still alive. Emma was listed, however, as the wife of Robert Hamilton Macnee, chartered accountant, retired.
Emma was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium four days later. The applicant for the cremation was a Lt. Col. Alban Arthur Flint. Interestingly Colonel Flint described her as widowed – imagine his surprise, perhaps, when Robert attended the cremation, where he began there and then a dispute with Douglas over Emma’s will.
The Dispute over Emma’s Will
Emma prepared her will in September 1933. At the time she was living at 3 Gordon Grove, Westgate-on-Sea. She was still married to – not divorced from – Robert Hamilton Macnee. Her personal estate was valued at £10,086 3s. 7d. (worth about £750,000 in 2019). Douglas, and Emma’s solicitor and friend, Walter Murray-Phelps, 102 Colmore Row, Birmingham, were the trustees and executors. She left £50 to the solicitor, £100 to her sister Mary Evelyn Owen, and £100 to the Rosicrucian Fellowship in Oceanside, California. The remainder she left to Douglas, who reluctantly allowed his father to deprive him of his inheritance. He felt that he could not afford to be embroiled in a legal dispute because he was about to leave England less than a month later for Australia, with his brand new wife Joan Harley. To the best of my knowledge Douglas never spoke to his father again.