Biography:
Rosa Ellen Potter (956)
1869 –20/01/1938
Rosa Ellen Potter (956)
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Plot 956 Rosa Ellen Potter (nee Hawkins) (1869-1938)
Rosa was born 1869 in Alexandra Road, St Albans to carpenter David Hawkins and his wife Eliza, a straw hat sewer. She was their fifth child and third daughter. By the time of the 1881 census she had five younger siblings, so it was probably a necessity for the two oldest boys to be working, one aged seventeen as a carpenter and one aged fifteen as a butcher’s boy. (Her mother bore thirteen children, eleven of whom were alive in 1911).
In 1891 Rosa was the oldest of the five children still living at home. Her occupation is given on the census as ‘machinist’ and it is probable that she was sewing straw hats, as this is how she was employed in 1911.
In 1921 Rosa was living with her sister Annie and her husband Fred, a postman at 23, Burnham Road, St Albans. She was a “fore lady” in the “straw hat trade” employed by Days Ltd of |St Albans.
Rosa married widower Ralph Edward Potter, a painter and decorator, in 1922. Ralph had four children by his first wife, Hannah, who is buried in plot 700.
Ralph and Rosa lived at 79, Charles Street.
Rosa died 20 January 1938 aged 68 in West Herts hospital and is buried here with Ralph who died in 1941.
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Plot 956 Rosa Ellen Potter (nee Hawkins) (1869-1938)
Rosa was born 1869 in Alexandra Road, St Albans to carpenter David Hawkins and his wife Eliza, a straw hat sewer. She was their fifth child and third daughter. By the time of the 1881 census she had five younger siblings, so it was probably a necessity for the two oldest boys to be working, one aged seventeen as a carpenter and one aged fifteen as a butcher’s boy. (Her mother bore thirteen children, eleven of whom were alive in 1911).
In 1891 Rosa was the oldest of the five children still living at home. Her occupation is given on the census as ‘machinist’ and it is probable that she was sewing straw hats, as this is how she was employed in 1911.
In 1921 Rosa was living with her sister Annie and her husband Fred, a postman at 23, Burnham Road, St Albans. She was a “fore lady” in the “straw hat trade” employed by Days Ltd of |St Albans.
Rosa married widower Ralph Edward Potter, a painter and decorator, in 1922. Ralph had four children by his first wife, Hannah, who is buried in plot 700.
Ralph and Rosa lived at 79, Charles Street.
Rosa died 20 January 1938 aged 68 in West Herts hospital and is buried here with Ralph who died in 1941.
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