Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Cornelius Flower was Berkhamsted born, the son of Cornelius Flower the elder. Born at Little Heath Farm, his father died when he was four years old and seems to have left much of his property to his first family.

Cornelius Flower was a railway master, born to a ship’s captain living at Little Heath Farm, Potten End (then considered part of Northchurch parish).

In 1841 he lived at Bourne End with his mother and sisters. In October 1848 he married Emily Lane (daughter of Henry Lane) in Berkhamsted. Emily’s step-granddaughter Ninette Meek by her second husband is also buried here (plot 741).

Cornelius joined the railways in November 1847 as a clerk. By 1851 aged 26 he was a railway clerk and they lived at Royal Terrace Northampton, with one servant. His mother and sister lived nearby. 1851 He earned £100 a year, in the goods dept, Wellingborough.

Their first son Cornelius Henry was born September 1852, died October 1852 and buried in Northampton, but mentioned on the grave in Rectory Lane Cemetery. In 1855 their second son, Edward Harvey Flower, was born in Northampton.

In the 1861 census they lived at No 1 Ford Villa, Blisworth –  Cornelius (by then a railway station master), Emily, son Edward and 1 servant.

By April 1861 Cornelius was earning £140, and was due to go to Crewe. However later that month tragedy struck, when his 6-year-old son Edward Harvey Flower died on 22 April 1861 in Berkhamsted at the Kings Arms Inn, run by his Lane relatives:

At the King’s Arms Inn, Great Berkhamstead, on Monday the 22nd ult., aged six years, Hervey. Ed. Flower, the only child of Cornelius and Emily Flower, and grandson of Henry Lane, of Great Berkhamstead

Little Edward was buried here in Rectory Lane Cemetery. His grieving parents chose lines from “The Lost Darling”, a poem by American poet Lydia Huntley Sigourney, for the epitaph. Within months of Edward’s death, Cornelius’s health had broken. He died in Berkhamsted in May 1865 after three and a half years of severe suffering.

On the 5th inst, at Great Berkhampstead, after 3 1/2 years of great suffering, Mr Cornelius Flower, in his 41st year, late of Blisworth and Northampton

Cornelius is buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery along with his son Edward, facing towards his childhood home on Little Heath Farm. He left effects under £1500, Emily was one of his executors.

His widow Emily Lane was not buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery. The 1860s were hard times for her; she had lost her second son, and two months after the death of Cornelius, her father Henry Lane also died. In 1877 she married Edwin Barfoot a bookseller who had led rather a colourful life. In 1881 they were living at Lullingford Road, Penge in London. Edwin died in 1883 and left his money to Emily.

In 1891 Emily was living at 44 Waldegrave Road, Penge with Edwin’s niece Ann Hart and one servant. In 1901, Edwin’s daughter and Emily’s Irish-born step-daughter Jane Regnier had also come to live with them. Emily died later in 1901.

Jane married Edmond Victor Vital Regnier (1822-1886), a French adventurer. Regnier had lodged with Edwin Barfoot in the 1860s and he appeared to have several children with his housekeeper already. During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, Regnier was involved in a curious episode in which he pretended to be an emissary of the French Empress Eugenie, or was a go-between with Bismarck.

Jane and Edmond Regnier had a daughter, Nina Henriette, who married Arthur Cecil Meek and is buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery (plot 741).  In 1891 Victor had died, and Jane ran a French laundry

Jane obviously kept in contact with her step-mother Emily, as in 1897 Nina married Arthur Cecil Meek of Berkhamsted (Emily’s great-nephew) and in 1901 they lived at Potten End. By 1911 they had several children. Jane died 1929 and is buried in Rectory Lane Cemetery. She left £5 to her husband, Arthur, who is also buried in the same plot, 741.