The Columbine parents and grandparents

The Columbine family history.

My thanks to Karen Haseldine – who is married to a great-grandnephew of Adeline Wells (nee Columbine) – for her help and advice in compiling this section.

This page concentrates upon Adeline’s grandparents James and Ann Columbine, and then her parents John and Elizabeth Columbine.

James and Ann Columbine.

Adeline writes ……. “My paternal grandfather, who lived at Mansfield, had two rooms full of stocking frames, and he employed a man for each frame. He took the work every week to a firm in Nottingham, and certainly made a very comfortable living, but I cannot say whether his men did the same”.

The paternal grandfather of Adeline was framework knitter James Columbine who married Ann Goodall at the parish church of Mansfield Woodhouse on December 7th 1812.
Their son John was born at Mansfield on July 15th 1823 and baptised at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel there on August 11th 1823.
In the 1832 White’s History, Gazetteer and Directory of Nottinghamshire, James gets a mention as a framework knitter of ‘Ratcliffgate’ in Mansfield and is in the same Directory of 1844 at the same address.

James and Ann Columbine continued to live at Mansfield with daughter Ann who married in 1850 to smith and fitter Andrew Valance.

Ann Columbine died in December 1864, aged 72, and husband James in 1881, aged 85.

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John and Elizabeth Columbine

On February 20th 1849 and still living at Ratcliffe Gate, John Columbine married Elizabeth Wells at St Peter’s ParishChurch, Mansfield, where his wife had been baptised. She was also a native of Mansfield, the daughter of stone cutter Solomon and Jane (nee Brailsford).
In 1851 the couple were living at Back Lane East in Mansfield, with young son, Samuel Webster Columbine, who died in that year, just before the family move to Ilkeston. Webster was a family name, being the maiden name of John’s maternal grandmother, and, like Brailsford, was used quite often within the Columbine family.

Even before the move from Mansfield, John had connections with Ilkeston.
He often visited the town as a preacher for the day at the Wesleyan Old Cricket Ground chapel off South Street, and would stay overnight at Samuel Carrier’s East Street house, almost opposite the Wine Vaults.
After the move from Mansfield, John and Elizabeth had several children, all born in Ilkeston….

John junior, born February 22nd 1852.
Elizabeth Adeline, born October 2nd 1854.
Lucy Eleanor, born Jan 13th 1857. (died July 6th 1858, of scarlatina).
William Brailsford, born April 24th 1859.
Martin Webster, born May 21st 1861.
Jabez, born Aug 24th 1863, (died May 4th 1865).

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During this time, John senior was variously described as book-keeper, manager or clerk at a lace factory as well as lacemaker. In the mid 1850’s and still at East Street, he was also advertising his services as agent for William and Henry Sills, stone masons and builders of White Bear Lane in Mansfield, a firm offering ‘the best Mansfield Stone on reasonable terms’.

From the Ilkeston News July 7th 1855

Below is the family in 1861 at Carrier’s Buildings in Queens Terrace off South Street.

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Ten years later the family was at 7 Queen’s Street, now joined by John’s mother-in-law, Jane Wells.

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John’s work necessitated a move to Nottingham and he makes his first appearance on the electoral register there for the period beginning October 31st 1880, at 10 Ossington Villas off North Sherwood Street.

The 1881 Census shows the family at 10 Ossington Villas.

Though John senior had left Ilkeston he still owned property there and in May 1883 he tried to sell his six houses in Chapel St East (Lower Chapel Street). They were put up for auction but withdrawn when the bidding failed to go above £800. At that time they were described as occupying 1108 square yards of land, yielding £70 annual rental income.
And by the time of his death in 1906 he had still failed to sell them. (see his will below)
At the same auction John junior also tried to sell five houses in the same street — 764 square yards and £58 10s annual rental income — but with the same result. They too were withdrawn .. the bidding did not go above £710.

John senior remained on the electoral roll at the same address until 1889 and then returned to Ilkeston to live at 6 Albert Street with his wife Elizabeth.

On February 25th 1899 the following appeared in the Marriages column of the Nottinghamshire Guardian; —

“COLUMBINE – WELLS – Golden Wedding. On February 20th 1849, at St. Peter’s Church, Mansfield, Notts., John Columbine to Elizabeth Wells, both of Mansfield, now residing at Albert-street, Ilkeston”.

and in Nottingham Journal, February 25th, 1899

John died at his same Albert Street home on March 3rd, 1906, aged 82. His death was registered by son Martin, then living at Dale Street.
He was buried in Nottingham General Cemetery on March 6th 1906, in grave 15749A.
Elizabeth Columbine died at the same family home on May 13th 1914, aged 91. She was buried with John in the same General Cemetery grave.
(The first burial in this plot was that of their grand-daughter Winifred Adeline Wells in 1890 … see below)

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A copy of the will of John Columbine, April 1st 1904 .  (Karen)

James Columbine junior, the older brother of John, was born about 1820 in Mansfield.
He married Sarah Percival, (the illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth?) at Mansfield Unitarian Chapel in 1846.
Like his father, James junior was a framework knitter and continued to live in Ratcliffe Gate, Mansfield after his marriage.
Several of his children were born there until the family moved to Ilkeston in the mid-1850s, where daughter Sarah was born on November 25th, 1857. She was followed by Rebecca (1860), Herbert (1862), Martha (1865) and Eliza Ann (1866). There were at least nine children in the family.

Saturday, June 29th, 1878, at the Columbine home at 26 Awsworth Road … and just after 3 o’clock in the morning James awoke … (was that his daughter shouting to him??) … to find that his wife was not in the bedroom.
He was very uneasy.
In the recent past Sarah had twice been temporarily housed as a patient into the Mickleover Lunatic Asylum. And in the last weeks her mind had been greatly troubled.
James dressed and hurried downstairs. A quick search around the house revealed nothing before James went out the back and saw that the stone lid covering the soft water cistern had been removed. As the lacemaker moved towards it he saw the body of Sarah, wearing only a skirt and chemise, lying in the water, face downwards, quite dead.
At the inquest held at the Commercial Inn in Awsworth Road on the same day, it was revealed that Sarah had previously threatened to drown herself.
The inquest jury returned a verdict of ‘found drowned in a cistern of water .. temporary insanity’.
Sarah was aged 56.
The incident was reported in the Pioneer as well as several other local newspapers (the Derby Mercury and Nottinghamshire Guardian for example) and further afield.

James continued to live in Ilkeston and died at 36 Abbey Street on February 15th, 1894, aged 73.
At that time he was living with his daughter Sarah and her family. She had married in May 1875 to Ilkeston coalminer John Stevenson, eldest son of miner Joseph and Sarah (nee Scattergood).
Another of his daughters — Mary Columbine — married George Wake Beardsley on Christmas Day 1874. He was the illegitimate son of John Wombell, printer and editor of the Ilkeston Pioneer, and Maria Beardsley.

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We can now move on to read about Adeline Wells nee Columbine