Dear Jane
I too am related to FE Smith though not so closely as you. His maternal grandfather, Edwin Taylor (b 1811 in Manchester) was a brother of Charles Taylor (b 1818 in Manchester) and Charles is my g-g-grandfather. I think that makes me a second cousin twice removed of FE. My family has known about the connection for about 100 years.
I'm interested enough in FE to have purchased both parts of "Birkenhead by his Son" (FWF Smith). Having read there that Bathsheba possibly had Gypsy ancestry I've been trying pretty unsuccessfully to trace her roots. IGI says that her parents were James Green and Elizabeth and that she was christened in Millgate, Wigan – but that's about it. In his later book, "F.E.: the life of F.E. Smith, First Earl of Birkenhead" FWF Smith refutes the Gypsy connection and says he had taken too much notice of his elder sister, Eleanor, with her obsession with Gypsy culture and her over-active imagination.
I'm sure you already know that, at the time of the 1841 census, Thomas Smith was a teacher living in George Street, Birkenhead and Bathsheba Green was a school mistress living about half a mile away in Brook Street. Both roads still exist except that Brook Street used to cross Watson Street and continue along what is now Wood Close and Brook Street East. Judging by the fact that the 1841 enumerator had probably only just turned into Brook Street from Watson Street when he reached Bathsheba's residence, Thomas and Bathsheba may have lived only a couple of hundred yards apart – and they very likely taught at the same school.
You're probably also aware of the connection of the the Smith family with the Berry's, one-time owner's of the Daily Telegraph. That too interests me and I have a contact at the paper who remembers working under the Berry's.
I would be interested in sharing with you any further information you have about the family.
Robert Cutts,
bob@winton.me.uk.
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