Display Ancestors of
Florence Margaret Langridge		 Display Descendants of
Florence Margaret Langridge		 GD005581    Contact contributor     Contributor Number: 17

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Born 06/08/1870 at Hollington, Sussex
Died 24/11/1952 at New Plymouth, New Zealand
Father: James Langridge
Mother: Isabella Crossfield Titterington
Married Stephen James Dobson 07 April 1896 at Longparish, Hants
Children.

Notes: Our grandmother, Florence Margaret Langridge, was born at St Leonards-on-Sea on 6 Aug 1870 the second daughter of James and Isabella Crossfield Langridge (nee Titterington). Gran was trained as a school teacher and after teaching in her home area took up a teaching position in Longparish where she met our grandfather, Stephen James Dobson, the coachman at Longparish House, and they were married in Longparish on 7 Apr 1896. Their family was Stephen James Jnr b.23 May 1899, Isobel Harriett b.7 Aug 1900 and John (Jack) b.1 Aug 1905. They moved from Longparish to Barrington Hall at Hatfield Broadoaks in Essex, where I believe grandfather was butler, about 1908 and to the Fulham area of London around 1912. I understand that at that stage they were running a grocery business. In 1925 they followed my father, Stephen James Jnr to New Zealand.

On their arrival in New Zealand they joined Steve Jnr, living on a farm where he was working about half way between New Plymouth and Inglewood and in the early 1930s moved to the farm at Inglewood that Steve later purchased. On Steve’s marriage in 1938 they moved to a beachfront property at Fitzroy in New Plymouth. When grandfather’s health began to fail they moved into rooms in a large house where he passed away in Mar 1945.

From the age of about seven to twelve I spent all my school holidays staying with Gran in New Plymouth and spent many evenings listening to her stories of the exploits of past generations of her family. She was an expert on English history and a stickler for correctness so I have no reason to doubt the stories she told and I only wish I could remember them now fifty odd years later. As I have mentioned earlier much that I have uncovered in this research has jogged my memory on much of this. I recall her telling of burnings at the stake in the time of Bloody Mary, the holding of secret church services when discovery by the authorities could mean death and episodes from the Wars of the Roses and the civil war between King Charles II and Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary Roundheads.

Incidentally the wooden rocking chair that my sister Heather now owns came through her mother, Isabella Titterington, from her family in Westmoreland in northwest England. It was supposedly over 200 years old when Gran inherited it in 1917 so it would probably be close to if not over 300 years old now, a real family heirloom.

Gran contracted shingles in the spring of 1952, was hospitalised and died on 24 Nov 1952 and is buried together with Steve Snr in Te Henui cemetery in New Plymouth. Since I have become deeply involved in family history I feel a particular affinity with my grandparents and it is my intention that eventually my ashes will be interred with them.


Occupation: Schoolteacher 1891