Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Samuel Edward Gower

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SAMUEL EDWARD GOWER; 1859 -1919

Samuel was born in Tring in1859. He was one of nine children[1] born to Charles and Zilpah Gower. The family lived in Pleasant Lane in Tring and Samuel’s father worked in Tring’s Silk Mill[2] as did his three older siblings Alfred, James and John who all worked as silk winders.[3]  By the time he was twelve Samuel too was winding silk in the silk mill.[4]

Samuel married on 2^nd August 1880 at the age of 21. His bride was 23 years old Jemima Saunders. Jemima was the daughter of a Northchurch grocer but had moved to Tring. The wedding was celebrated “…at Hope Hall, Berkhamsted by Mr Alexander,...”[5] Hope Hall had been opened in 1875 in Kings Road[6] as a meeting place for the Evangelists, a religious group which began its life in Berkhamsted as part of the Plymouth Brethren and  which traditionally had always been a lay ministry with no ordained minister. Samuel Alexander, a gifted teacher and lay preacher, had led the community since 1870.[7]

According to the 1911 census Jemima gave birth to 11 children, 6 of whom had died by 1911. It has only been possible to trace 9 of those children: Samuel Edward, 1881-1881; Nellie Emily, 1882-1963; Carrie Zilpah, 1884 – 1899; Bessie Edna, 1888 – 1946; Ashbel Edward, 1890-1963; Laurence Joseph, 1892 -1892;  Laurence Fred, 1894 -1964; Eva May, 1896 – 1896; Phyllis Josephine, 1900 -1988.

When the census of 1881 was taken on 3^rd April that year, Samuel and Jemima were living in High Street, Tring, next to Samuel’s brother John. Samuel was no longer working at the silk mill, his occupation being recorded as “bootmaker.” Jemima worked as a dressmaker and the couple’s first child, Samuel, was under one month old. Also living with Samuel and Jemina was Jemima’s sister, Emily, who is recorded in the census as being a “Nurse dom” i.e. a domestic nurse. She was probably helping Jemima and her newly born son. Sadly, however, infant Samuel did not survive long. He died shortly after birth.

Perhaps prompted by the death of their firstborn, Jemima and Samuel decided to make new lives for themselves in America. They set sail aboard the steamship Greece, arriving in New York on 30^th September 1881. Their next child, a daughter, Nellie, was born in 1882 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Whether life in America proved to be harder than expected, or perhaps feeling homesick, by 1884 they had returned to Tring where their next child, Carrie, was born that year. [8]

By the time their fourth child, Bessie, was born in 1888, they had moved again, this time to Chesham[9] and it is on Chesham’s High Street that the family was living when the 1891 census was taken. Samuel had set up in business as a “Gardener and seedsman.”[10]  A newspaper report in 1892 of an attempted theft from Samuel’s shop in the High Street, Chesham, indicates that Samuel was selling more than just seeds. Frederick Tompkins, the 11 year old would be thief, “…took an orange and some sweets off the counter…” The young shoplifter was caught by Jemima and as “Several of these shop robberies have been committed by boys of late…as a warning to this class of offenders, the defendant was ordered to receive six strokes of the birch.”[11]  In the 1899 Kelly’s Directory Samuel was described as a “seedsman” and in the 1901 census as “florist and seedsman.” Jemima worked as an assistant in Samuel’s shop.  

By 1911 Samuel and Jemima, together with their three youngest surviving children, Ashbel, Laurence and Phyllis, had moved to 79 Queens Road, Watford where Samuel opened a grocery shop, whilst also working as a jobbing gardener. All three of the younger children worked as assistants in the grocery shop. Jemima and Samuel supplemented their income by taking in boarders. In 1911 three elderly women were boarding with them at 79 Queens Road.[12]

A further move, this time to Berkhamsted, was made before 1919, the year that Samuel died. His address at the time of his death was 27 Queens Road, Berkhamsted.[13]