27/11/1851 –11/02/1918
Wife of Harry Brown Wilkinson, later of Franz Broenner
Relatives
Research:
Ida Agnes Broenner was born Ida Calder on 27 November 1851, the daughter of Colonel William Calder and Sophia Kennicott. Ida had a younger sister, Emily Calder.
Ida and Emily’s mother, Sophia Kennicott was born probably in 1818 in Dartmouth – herself the daughter of post-Captain Gilbert Kennicott, who aged 15 had narrowly escaped death at the Battle of Trafalgar. Ida’s father was William Calder, an Army Colonel born in 1797 in Woolwich (so his father was probably serving in the Military too). He was already 54 when Ida was born. William was gazetted Ensign in the 8th (The King’s) Regiment of Foot when he was seventeen, reaching the rank of Captain in 1835. He served at various stations – Malta[5], Ionian Islands, Ireland, Sunderland. When William was 44, he met the 22-year-old niece of a Military Knight of Windsor, Sophia Kennicott and proposed to her at Windsor Castle.
Ida was born in Limerick, Ireland, their fifth child. William and Sophia Calder had several children:
- William Dutton, (1842-1909) born in Egham, Surrey
- Sophia Wilhelmina (1844-1921) born in Limerick
- Clara (1847-1932) born in Limerick
- Edwin (1849-1921)
- Ida (1851-1918) born in Limerick
- Augustus (1854-1896) born in Limerick
- Emily Gertrude (1857-1939 and Ernest’s aunt) born in Dover
- Mary Elizabeth (1860-1940) born in Dover
In 1880, Ida married widower Harry Brown Wilkinson of Lambeth at St George’s, Hanover Square. Ida, aged 29, was marrying Harry who at 64 was 35 years her senior. In 1881 they were installed in Harry’s house at 91 Vassall Road. Harry is stated to be Cashier G.P.O, Civil S. He was a British Subject but born in Malta in 1817, the oldest in the family with four younger brothers and a sister.
Harry’s first wife Augusta Ethelreda Mark had died in April of the previous year. They had had at least six children together, three of whom died in childhood. Arthur Malcolm, his eldest son, had been born five years prior to Ida, and his youngest son Augustus James was only 6 years younger than her. So Ida was moving into the family home in Vassall Road where presumably there were also reminders of Harry’s first daughter Caroline, who had died, aged 6, a year before Ida was born.
Harry’s seventh child, Percy Sinclair, as named on his mother’s grave, was born in 1885, by which time Harry was 68 and Ida 33. So Percy’s father was clearly Harry Brown Wilkinson.
Harry died, and Ida remarried to Franz Broenner (1856-1925), a widower and Doctor of Philosophy living at Richmond. They married at St Stephens Church, Twickenham Middlesex on the 4th July 1895 – both described as age 39 (although Ida in fact was only 33).
Franz father, who had died by that time, had been a Professor, so there was clearly a strong intellectual and educational streak in his family. Franz had been born in Biodern, Bavaria, Germany, and had married his previous wife, Katharina Christine Bihn, in Heidelberg, Baden in 1887, but it is unclear when in this period between 1887 and 1895 she had died. Before the marriage in 1881 he had moved from Ireland and, aged 24, was boarding and working at Windlesham in Surrey as a Teacher of Music. But presumably he had then travelled back to Germany to marry her as he is not to be found in the 1891 Census, the inference being that he was still abroad at that time.
Ida Agnes’s surname is listed on the Marriage Certificate as WILKINSON, so as a widow this started to make sense of why her son’s name – Percy S. Wilkinson – should appear on the grave. A closer look at the Brighton Gazette also lists Master Wilkinson after Dr and Mrs Broenner.
The Calder sisters were acquainted with the British novelist Ernest Raymond OBE (1888–1974) , author of of forty-six novels – including Tell England (1922) and We, The Accused (1935) – two plays and ten non-fiction works. Ida is mentioned in his 1968 autobiography The Story of My Days; he describes visits by Ida to his house in Dunsany Road on Brook Green, London, where Ernest was living with Ida’s younger sister, Miss Emily Calder.