Reuben Nereus Smith and Mary Ann Smith lived in Beaufort Cottage from at least 1874 when their baby son Henry Bernard was born there. Sadly the infant died the next year.
Reuben was the collector of rates and assistant overseer for Marlow for many years, the agent for the Harleyford estate, the Managing Director of the Marlow Water Company, Chairman of the Wycombe Chair Company, Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Chair Company based in Marlow, a house agent and the clerk of the Great Marlow Parish Council. He had many of these roles at the same time. When did the man ever sleep? More on the Buckinghamshire Chair Company and Reuben's involvement here
Reuben started off his working life quite humbly as a teenage shop boy working in London. He was born circa 1834 -36, according to the census this was in Marlow. Reuben may have worked as a tax collector in London too. He spent the years c1854-1862 in Australia before returning home with a good amount of money behind him. Five years later he was appointed inspector of nuisances for the Wycombe board of guardians, and in 1872 he became the collector of parish rates, only relinquishing this role in 1899.
His brother Robert Hayes Smith** was a hairdresser come printer/ bookseller/ newsagents who had premises in Spittal Street Marlow, then later the High Street.
We can presume Reuben's youthful leisure activities did not include skinny dipping as he was one of those, along with his father, getting into a flap in Marlow in 1877 about the younger generation's way of bathing in the Thames. There was he said "an infestation" of young men running along the riverside at Marlow without a stitch on. It was still a problem decades later so Reuben didn't win that round. (More on the swimming here!)
Lawrence Joseph Smith son of Reuben and Mary Ann was also bookseller and stationer by 1893 when he applied for a alcohol license for his premises and became a spirit merchant too. Those Smiths liked to keep busy! Did I mention that he also later had a role in the Wycombe Chair Company and the local parish too just like his dad?
Angela* Theresa their daughter was a student at Northampton School of Sciences and Art. She was an art student, their best pupil in 1893, and passed examinations qualifying her as an art teacher, though I have found no evidence she actually took on that role.
In 1899 the fact that she, as a female, was one of the winners of a football results prediction competition ran by a local paper generated an incredulous (but good natured) article from that said paper.
Angela was Reuben and Mary Ann's second daughter. Their eldest Celestina died aged only in her 30s in 1902. Against social norms of the day she had set herself up in business -as a furniture dealer and coal merchant- and headed her own household as a young unmarried woman. She lived as such in Dallington Northampton on the 1891 census with her younger siblings Angela and Reuben junior as her assistants. Angela had quite an unusual career path then. There can't be too many young women who went from assistant coal merchant to art student! On the 1901 census Angela had no listed occupation probably as she was about to be married to William Davis of Northamptonshire.
Celestina is on the same census as a resident in an Isle of Wight boarding house living on her own means. So no more furniture or coal dealing. Given that she died a year later it is possible her residence on the Isle of Wight was for reasons of poor health- it was a popular destination for that. She died at Beaufort cottage and is buried in the Catholic churchyard.
Reuben died in 1915. I am unsure as to Mary Ann's death. Unfortunately I can find little about her as a person except that she came from Inverness-shire Scotland.
* Name registered at birth as Angela but she is referred to elsewhere as both Angela and Angelina. Unusual names ran in the Smith family- Reuben's mother was apparently called Ledger. Angelina is a name that is predominantly Catholic in use at this period.
** Read about a theft at Roberts shop, and the surprising perpetrator here
Some research Sources:
Censuses my transcription of images on microfilm.
Newspapers held by the British Library and accessed from the BNA August 2020: South Bucks Standard 10th February 1899, 10 March 1899 and 25th August 1893. [Football competition, Angela's art success].
As above but accessed March 2021: Bucks Herald 23rd June 1877. [Nude bathing].
Marriage certificate and birth certificates obtained from the GRO. Death registration indexes on the GRO website, death certificates.
Researched and written by Charlotte Day. Additional research by Kathryn Day.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to reuse this research for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog and link here.
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