Month: July 2020

Volunteer blog – ‘A Man of Many Parts: The Family Man’

Posted on by wwwinterheritagetrust

In this last blog of the current series Joanna links up the different parts of Winter’s family:

I think it is probably known that Mr Winter married three times. First to Sarah Ball the widow of Emanuel Nicolas Charles who opened the first studio; secondly to Emily Pakeman a sadly short marriage which had lasted barely a year when she died of TB. His third marriage was to Hannah Ruddle by whom he had three children. This marriage lasted 35 years ending with Walter’s death in 1924, Hannah passing away six years later. I intend to leave this part of the story for another time and refer in this piece to the Winter family into which Walter was born.

Walter is descended from an East Anglian family which lived in the area around the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Walter’s grandfather John was an artist in stained glass. He had twelve children and among these and their children there were artists and photographers. Walter’s father Cornelius Jansen Walter Winter was his fourth child. Cornelius was an artist and photographer and Walter worked alongside   him before moving to Derby in 1862. Walter’s mother was Anna Shipston the daughter of a local butcher. Walter was the eldest of the four boys and two girls. Sadly Neville died aged one and Anna passed away shortly after the birth of Ellen.

From family letters we learn of the close relationship with his father throughout his life. The pair sent work to each other to be sold or finished when Walter was established in Derby. Cornelius exhibited at the fine art exhibitions held at Walter’s studio between 1884 and 1890. Walter travelled to Norwich to be at his father’s side when he died. Walter also sent money to him, his brother Holmes and sister Ellen known as Nellie. Walter’s brother Arthur and sister Elizabeth died as young adults. We also know that Holmes and possibly Cornelius and Nellie visited Derby. It was to Nellie that Walter wrote about his intention to ask Hannah Ruddle to marry him and asking her (Nellie’s) opinion! Walter sent Nellie’s daughter Coralie gifts of an almanac and a quarterly diary. One of his prize winning portraits was ‘Coralie’. Unfortunately this has not yet been traced. Holmes also wrote regularly with family news and presumably Walter reciprocated sending him frames to help him with his artistic career. Later, letters written just before Walter’s departure to Canada relate the problems that he (Walter) was experiencing.

One of Walter’s aunts married a photographer in London and their son Arthur was a well-known photographer in Preston. Other aunts, uncles and cousins also found their way to London and it is wondered whether Walter spent time in London with them before settling in Derby. Certainly Hannah Ruddle was born in London and we surmise that the two met there.

This will be the last blog for a while. Hoping all readers have had a better summer than we thought we may have. Keep safe and I will resume our news at a later date.

Volunteer blog – ‘A Man of Many Parts 3’

Posted on by wwwinterheritagetrust

This week Joanna continues to delve in to Winter’s public life:

This week I will write about two aspects of Walter Winter’s life which illustrate ‘Winter the man’. When doing family history I always try to find out about an ancestor other than a birth, marriage and death as it makes for a fuller and more interesting picture. One does have to be prepared to find skeletons in the cupboard however, and I appreciate that not everybody’s ancestor led as full a public life as Mr Winter!

Mr Winter – the freemason. The United Grand Lodge of England Freemason Membership Register available on the Ancestry website shows that Walter Winter was initiated into the Arboretum Lodge in 1869. The meeting place was at the Arboretum Hotel on Osmaston Road, Derby. Members included William Abney (photographer), Michael Thomas Bass MP., and Thomas Roe, friend and fellow council member. When the Masonic Hall was opened in Gower Street in 1876, Walter is listed as having ‘withdrawn’. There are glass plate negatives and prints of freemasons in their regalia in the Winter’s collection.

Mr Winter – the Volunteer. This information is the result of finding a newspaper article about Mr Winter’s attendance at a dinner given by members of the Litchurch Branch of the Working Men’s Association in 1878, and reported in the Derby Mercury.

Loyal toasts were duly honoured an ‘the Army, Navy and Reserve Forces’ was proposed by Mr W. W. Winter who as an old volunteer expressed his own willingness and that of many others who had passed through the ranks to shoulder the rifle again should the necessity arise.

His obituary in the Derby Daily Telegraph in 1925 mentions that Walter joined the Norfolk Volunteer Force as a young man in Great Yarmouth in 1859. The Volunteer Force was created in 1859 in response to the threat of war from Europe. It called for rifle and artillery corps to be set up. East Anglia and its ports were seen as being particularly vulnerable, and Great Yarmouth was fortified with twelve guns at the time. Volunteers were expected to attend twenty four times a year for drill and exercise. Over the years the Volunteer Force became increasingly integrated into the British Army and became the Territorial Force in 1908. Although not as a Volunteer, Walter Winter enrolled as a special constable at the time of the Fenian Rising in 1866-7, which sought to bring about the separation of Ireland from the United Kingdom.

Next time I will take a look at family matters.