DEARMAN & MOLLETT

The portrait is French - by Jean-Claude Millet, but the young woman (one Catherine Lemaire - his wife) has a universal look about her.  Life is hard for this young lady one feels, and so it must have been for Emma Eliza Brown.  The young lady in the portrait also looks sad and although Eliza’s life must have been hard, there is no reason to believe that it was sad - as a whole that is - because there were tragedies, as there are in any life.

Christened Emma Eliza and occasionally, officially, described as such, she seems to have gone by Eliza rather than Emma.  At least most of the census records have her listed as Eliza.  Daughter of a shoemaker, married to a bricklayer, we are not yet quite sure whether she outlived her husband or not, as his death has not yet been found.  She lived all her life in Enfield, indeed in the same small part of Enfield, which sounds terribly restrictive.  But she lived at a time of great change, so the Enfield she was born into would not have been at all the same place by the time she died, with the twentieth century only a few short years away.

A mother of sons - no daughters who survived - her life would have been tough but not as tough as many.  Her father and her husband had skilled jobs which would have paid a little more than mere labouring.  She would have had a lot in common with Jane Evans in Wales - her Welsh grandchildren’s other grandmother.  I wonder whether they ever met?