A commentary by Neil Gowlland, August 2007
The three pages of the Yeames Bible discussed below - click on the image for an enlarged copy
The originals of these three pages (there is also a fourth – the frontispiece to the New Testament) are in the safe-keeping of my sister, Janet Sturgeon, née Gowlland. The pages are referred to in the correspondence between GPG and our grandfather, Richard (click here for the letters). Janet also has the original of the family tree prepared around 1884 by our great-grandmother Mabel, née Cope, that is mentioned in the correspondence. This tree covers the descendants of Richard Symons Gowlland, our 4xgreat-grandfather, though much of the information is incomplete.
Richard Symons Gowlland started a tradition that the first-born son would be named plain Richard. The tradition lasted for four successive generations. For convenience, I refer in this commentary to the four Richards as:
Richard I (1795-1865)
Richard II (1823-1863)
Richard III (1856-1907)
Richard IV (1877-1944)
The bible originally belonged to Peter Yeames and Elizabeth, née Adler, who married in Dover in 1783 (click here for the biography of Peter Yeames and other family background). The date of 1787 at the top of the “index” page is presumably the date of acquisition, though the other dates on the same page are all those of the marriages.
These pages came into our family as the result of the marriage of Louisa Mary Yeames and Richard I (click here for his biography) though we do not know why that should have been so. Of the surviving Yeames children, Louisa Mary was not the eldest. In her will (click here), Elizabeth Yeames bequeathed her “large book of the new testament” to Louisa Mary but no mention is made of a family bible. I therefore believe that it must have given to Richard I and Louisa Mary at the time of their marriage in 1821 since the detail of the marriage and the marriage entry in the “index” page are both in Louisa Mary’s handwriting. Even so, this is no explanation of why the bible finished up with Louisa Mary and Richard I and not one of Louisa Mary’s older siblings. In the past I have wondered whether Peter Yeames had a professional connection with the sea (which could account for the family’s move from Dover to Great Yarmouth sometime between 1792 and 1798) and that, through her marriage with Richard I, Louisa Mary was the only one of the surviving Yeames children who maintained a similar connection, but this is pure conjecture.
It is not known why Richard I and Louisa Mary married in Paris. In a comment in Richard I’s biography, I speculated that he could have been in France in some sort of professional capacity. He was Chief Officer and later Commander of the Revenue Cutter “New Charter” between October 1820 and September 1824 and so was presumably on active service at the time of the marriage. Reference to the marriage certificate indicates that Colonel E McPherson and Mr Henry Johnson mentioned by Louisa Mary were the two witnesses of the marriage. The fact that the marriage took place in the Chapel of the British Ambassador and that one of the witnesses was a military officer seems to me to indicate that Richard I was in Paris in some sort of official capacity. Otherwise, why didn’t he and Louisa Mary marry in Great Yarmouth? That Peter Yeames had died in Villeneuf in France seven years before the marriage could be an alternative explanation but I very much doubt it.
Judging by the two different handwritings, Elizabeth Yeames maintained the details of her children up to the birth of Augusta in 1792. The births of both Louisa Mary and Clara Antoinette were recorded, obviously a lot later, by Louisa Mary herself. Whilst Louisa Mary initially got her birth year (1798) right she reduced her age by two years in the marriage section and, presumably as a result, had to do the same for the birth record of Clara Antoinette, who was in fact born in 1800 and not 1802.
Louisa Mary and Richard I must have established a tradition that the bible would be handed down to the eldest son of future generations and be used, by his wife, to record the births of their children only. The handwriting on the “index” page for the 1852 marriage of Richard II and Louisa Ann, née Mayes, must be Louisa Ann’s and that of 1877 marriage of Richard III and Mabel, née Cope, is definitely Mabel’s. (These two entries would, I feel, support my assumption that Louisa Mary and Richard I received the bible at the time of their marriage.)
It would seem that the bible remained intact at least until the marriage of Richard III and Mabel in 1877 (Richard IV was their only child). What then happened that only two frontispieces and two data pages remain? The marriage did not work out and I feel that the answer to the question lies there. Richard III was a black sheep and was never able to settle down. My father always said that he had married Mabel (who was a minor) for her money. I believe the separation (I do not think they were divorced) took place around 1887 since I think it was then (though I haven’t researched the matter) that Mabel and Richard IV left England to settle for four years in Solothurn in Switzerland. Perhaps Mabel did not feel like carting a large bible all the way to Switzerland and destroyed it, keeping only the pages of immediate interest to her and her son. Who knows?
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