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Emma Eliza Brown   Old age

Enfield ca. 1881-1895

Eventually though, all the children left home and she and James were left with each other.  Most of the boys settled nearby  so doubtless they did the loving grandparent thing.  Their son James John settled in Wales, so I do not know whether they ever saw him again - or did they visit?  I have no idea whether people travelled so far in those days. 

And then in the autumn of their days it seems they became responsible for two of their grandchildren - Frederick and Isabel, the children of their widowed son Frederick.  In 1881 George is the only one of their children still living at home.  Alfred, although only fourteen is a working for and living with a local fishmonger, a profession he was to follow.   But also in the house are two small children, Frederick aged five and Isabel aged one.  Frederick is described as their son, and although this is just possible, a search for births to their son Frederick did indeed turn up a son of the right age.  Frederick’s wife Christina, died in 1880, the year that Isabel was born, so we can assume that she died in childbirth.  And her grandparents stepped into the breach and took the two motherless children in, whilst their father continued to work in London.  Although it must have been a sad time, it might also have been joyful - at last a little girl in the house.  And Isabel stayed with them, even after Frederick remarried and his son returned to live with him.  For all I know she was with them until they died.  She married in 1908, but her grandparents were both dead by then.

So let us hope that this little girl and her cousins, many of whom were girls, who lived just around the corner, brought Emma Eliza happiness and peace in her last years.

Her husband outlived her although so far I cannot find for how long.  He appears to be dead by 1901.  Eliza, herself died in December 1895, a week or so before Christmas, of acute pneumonia and heart failure.  She was 68, although the death certificate says she was 70.  Her daughter-in-law Emma (William’s wife) registered the death.  The death certificate states that her husband is a bricklayer, so still working and still alive, but he must have been somewhat devastated by her death and maybe did not last long.  They had been together for forty one years, and she was the only family he had ever really known.

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