Annie Elizabeth Stokes
1871-1961
“Grandma E”
Annie, my great grandmother, was born 2 Jan 1871 in Merstow Green, Evesham, Worcestershire. Her father Fred Stokes was a wheelwright. On the 1771 census in Merston Green Annie was 3 months old and there was quite a houseful: Annies parents Fred and Rebecca, Fred’s parents Thomas and Eliza and two of their daughters, three apprentices, a lodger and one of Thomas’s grandsons.
1771 census Merstow Green, Evesham:
Annie at school in the early 1870s in Broadway. Annie is in the front on the left and her brother Fred is in the centre of the first seated row:
In 1881 Annie was a 10 year old visitor at the Angel Inn, Chipping Camden. A boarder there was 19 year old William Halford, a wheelwright apprentice. John Such, a 62 year old widower, was the innkeeper. Her parents and two siblings were living at La Quinta, on Main Street in Broadway.
According to her obituary in 1962, “When the Maxton family visited Broadway to stay with Mr and Madame de Navarro at Court Farm, they offered Annie a family post with them which took her for several years to Paris and other parts of the continent.”
Mary Anderson was an American theatre actress. In 1890 she married Antonio Fernando de Navarro. She became known as Mary Anderson de Navarro. They settled at Court Farm in the Cotswolds, Broadway, Worcestershire, where she cultivated an interest in music and became a noted hostess with a distinguished circle of musical, literary and ecclesiastical guests. As in the years when Mary lived there, it was often filled with visiting artists and musicians, including Myra Hess and a young Jacqueline du Pré. (via Wikipedia)
Court Farm, Broadway:
Annie was an assistant to a tobacconist in West Bromwich in 1991, living as a boarder with William Calcutt and family. He future husband Albert was living in neighbouring Tipton in 1891, working at a pawnbroker apprenticeship.
Annie married Albert Parker Edwards in 1898 in Evesham. On the 1901 census, she was in hospital in Redditch.
By 1911, Anne and Albert had five children and were living at the Cricketers Arms in Redditch.
Behind the bar in 1904 shortly after taking over at the Cricketers Arms. From a book on Redditch pubs:
Annie was referred to in later years as Grandma E, probably to differentiate between her and my fathers Grandma T, as both lived to a great age.
Annie with her grandson Reg on the left and her daughter in law Peggy on the right, in the early 1950s:
Annie at my christening in 1959:
Annie died 30 Dec 1961, aged 90, at Ravenscourt nursing home, Redditch. Her obituary in the Droitwich Guardian in January 1962:
Note that this obituary contains an obvious error: Annie’s father was Frederick Stokes, and Thomas was his father.