Mary Ann Gilman Purdy
1880-1950
Mary Ann was my grandfather George Marshall’s mother. She died in 1950, seven years before I was born. She has been referred to more often than not, since her death, as Mary Ann Gilman Purdy, rather than Mary Marshall. She was from Buxton, so we believed, as was her husband William Marshall. There are family photos of the Gilmans, grocers in Buxton, and we knew that Mary Ann was brought up by them. My grandfather, her son, said that she thought very highly of the Gilman’s, and added the Gilman name to her birth name of Purdy.
The 1891 census in Buxton:
(Mary Ann’s aunt, Mrs Gilman, was also called Mary Anne, but spelled with an E.)
Samuel Gilman 1846-1909, and Mary Anne (Housley) Gilman 1846-1935, in Buxton:
What we didn’t know was why Mary Ann (and her sister Ellen/Nellie, we later found) grew up with the Gilman’s. But Mary Ann wasn’t born in Buxton, Derbyshire, she was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. When the search moved to Nottingham, we found the Purdy’s.
George Purdy 1848-1935, Mary Ann’s father:
Mary Ann’s parents were George Purdy of Eastwood, and Catherine Housley of Smalley.
Catherine Housley 1849-1884, Mary Ann’s mother:
Mary Ann was four years old when her mother died. She had three sisters and one brother. George Purdy remarried and kept the two older daughters, and the young son with him. The two younger daughters, Mary Ann and Nellie, went to live with Catherine’s sister, also called Mary Anne, and her husband Samuel Gilman. They had no children of their own. One of the older daughters who stayed with their father was Kate , whose son George Gilman Rushby, went to Africa. But that is another chapter.
George was the son of Francis Purdy and his second wife Jane Eaton. Francis had some twenty children, and is believed in Eastwood to be the reason why there are so many Purdy’s.
The woman who was a mother to Mary Ann and who she thought very highly of, her mothers sister, spent her childhood in the Belper Workhouse. She and her older sister Elizabeth were admitted in June, 1850, the reason: father in prison. Their mother had died the previous year. Mary Anne Housley, Catherine’s sister, married Samuel Gilman, and looked after her dead sisters children.
Mary Ann Gilman Purdy Marshalls recipes written on the back of the Gilmans Grocers paper:
