Hi Bob,
My sister and shared a research project on a ‘lost’ side of our ancestry, and the Olivers appeared. The records led to some confusion about the extended Oliver clan, and we had not understood the correct spelling of ‘Brailsford’ and its variants.
Your information on the descent of Brailsford has helped fill in the origin of the family name Archelaus, among many other things. I now learn of the Leatherhead Brallsford/Brilsford/Bretsford Braislford, whose head was Archelaus, perhaps born around 1760. He seems to come down from the Derbyshire branch 'seated' at Egstow Hall.
What we know about our Oliver ancestry perhaps sheds a little light, or at least offers a possible interpretation, of the bell-hanging profession in the C19. I now suspect it was quite a desirable or lucrative trade, with entry restricted to family connections, and perhaps further restricted by a limited availability of positions.
Archelaus Brailsford Oliver (1840-1900), our Great Great Grandfather, was the brother of William Oliver (1842-1907), your Great Great Grandfather (we are therefore 4th cousins!).
Archelaus and William were the sons (with Frederick and Charles) of Charles and Ann Oliver, and grandchildren of Charles Oliver and Maria Brelsford/Brailsford.
In 1861 Archelaus and Charles were living in St Clement Danes parish, and Archelaus is a ‘violinist’ and Charles an ‘organist’. Their father is a clockmaker.
In 1882, when witnessing the marriage in Croyden of his daughter Lizzie to Duncan McNab Conner, he is a ‘Professor of Music’. This might mean a teacher, or a musician; it certainly doesn’t mean what it means today.
But nine years later, in 1891, he is a bell-hanger, living in Croyden. So it took him most of his lifetime to become a bell-hanger, in middle age. He died in Greenwich in 1900.
Archelaus seems to have fathered Lizzie nine years before marrying her mother, Eliza Beal, of Bristol. Perhaps it was hard making a living as a musician, and bell-hanging was more secure and better-paid.
Some of difficulty in untangling the Oliver tree arises from the 1841 census entry for Charles Oliver, carpenter, of Stepney. It has to be understood that a large family is living together, but two adult men are missing on census night.
His son, George, is a Founder – therefore works in a foundry, likely a bell foundry, likely Whitechapel. He has a brother, Charles, (christened in Leatherhead in 1809) who is absent on the night of the census. He too is a bell-hanger, in the 1851 census, now head of his own family – Archelaus, Charles, William, Frederick yet to arrive, in Whitechapel.
For some time, I had the impression that there were two Archelaus Olivers living in London at the same time, unlikely as it seemed, but now things are becoming clearer.
I had some connections with the Founders Livery Company and they helped me get information from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, who wrote to me that –
“Members of the Oliver family worked here continuously from 1738 until about 30 years ago. The last Oliver, Ernie, worked exclusively musical with handbells. However his forebears undertook most other tasks, including bell hanging.”
I feel sure that these multiple craft skills, showing up for various Olivers, were interchangeable in that they were all aspects of the trades carried on from Whitechapel Bell Foundry, or subcontracted. Moulds and bell frames were carpentry jobs.
Charles Oliver the clockmaker may have been making clocks for church towers rather than mantelpieces. This would also have involved foundry work.
That Archelaus and Charles were violinist and organist might connect them with church orchestras, or the church generally, where organs gradually displayed instrumental orchestras. I’m sure the whole community was intertwined.
I found a picture of Ernie Oliver on the internet. I remain very interested with all the connections to historic and present-day London that the Oliver dynasty represent, and I rather hoped to make a connection to the living descendants. I’d be very interested to hear more about the family from Ernie’s grandson and his father Robert.
Meanwhile, I have looked at the Brailsfords and they are quite a dynasty… They use the Christian names Hercules and Archelaus, which are in fact Roman and Greek versions of the same name, in alternate generations, presumably to distinguish one from another. I will do some more looking but would be grateful for information from others.
Regards,
Stephen