The search for Richard Rose’s father

by Derrick Papworth

reproduced with kind permission

originally published by the West Surrey Family History Society

When does a labour of love become a crusade? And when does a crusade become an obsession? In my search for Richard Rose’s father (who was probably born about 1690) I have passed through all these stages, and am now well on the way to being driven to distraction.

This is how it all happened...

My parents, William and Edith Papworth, kept a radio and bicycle shop in Bagshot.  During the war, as a young lad I was often pressed into service behind the counter or tidying up, and in the process got to know many of the customers.  Mother had been born in the village and knew virtually everyone; many of the customers were indeed her relatives, since the Rose family from which she stemmed had strong roots in this corner of rural Surrey.

Among the many callers was "Aunt Florrie", not a real aunt but a second cousin of mothers' who was a qualified nurse, a spinster, and a bit of a local character.  Nurse Florence Rose, to give her formal name, had the conviction that due to some semi-legal skullduggery in the previous century, her branch of the family had been done out of ownership of some valuable land in Bagshot presently owned by Waterers Nurseries.  From time to time I heard "Nurse Rose" explaining the complexities of all this to my mother, and I have memories of seeing impressive legal papers and charts spread out on the shop counter when business was a bit slack.

Needless to say, there were other things in life than Aunt Florrie's family history, and I left Bagshot in 1954 to work in the colonies.  It must have been nearly thirty years later when my older brother, Ed - now living in Australia - sent me a faded copy of a detailed family tree of the Rose family of Bagshot, and memories of Florrie Rose and her stories came flooding back.  A couple of years later, we held a family reunion at our home in Cambridgeshire, and to catch the attention of the 56 members of my family who attended from all over the world I "restored" the faded family tree, linked it up with the Family Bible, used all my draughtsman’s skills, and produced for display two pretty new Family Tree charts showing how all those present - and many more - had descended from one Richard Rose, born in 1713 and married in Surrey in 1737.

This simple exercise hooked me!  I was not only appointed "keeper of the family tree", but I wanted to know more, to fill in the gaps and in particular to unravel the mystery of who this Richard Rose was and where he came from.

The faded family tree which my brother had sent me was given to him by a distant relative in the district named Kenneth Rose.  Why Ken had it was not clear, but we assumed it was a copy of Nurse Florrie’s well-known document.  How wrong can you be!  In the corner of the Tree - a very large well-drawn piece of genealogical scholarship was the name of its author, Mr. G.C.B. Poulter. F.S.A. Scot. (whatever that meant!), and the date 30th July 1951.  A few enquiries revealed that friend Poulter was an important figure in sorting out the family history, and shortly afterwards I laid hands on a small pamphlet he had produced entitled "The Rose family of Pirbright and Bagshot".

The combination of the pamphlet and Poulter's Rose family tree had us all excited (well, me anyway), since they not only documented Richard Rose and his descendants but also proposed his origins.  Poulter indicated his belief that our Richard was a member of the "Rose" Clan from Nairn in Scotland, and he named Kilravock Castle (pronounced Kilrock or Kilrork) as the Clan headquarters, with a Rose family history dating back to - or before - the reign of King David the First of Scotland who ruled from 1124 to 1153.

Poulter said:

According to tradition, a clansman or a member of the family came south to the Pirbright district in the troubled times between the first and second Jacobite rising, when the first recorded Rose appears here.

He was Richard Rose, born 1713, said to have been of Scottish origin, who had a small farm or agricultural holding in Pirbright.  He was married at St Martha’s Church, Chilworth, near Guildford, at the age of 24 by licence dated 16th June 1737, to Anne, born 1714, baptised at Pirbright 4th May 1714, daughter of Thomas and Mercy Russell of Pirbright.

The Russells were a yeoman family farming Cowshot Manor, John Russell having been churchwarden at Pirbright 1672 to 1684.  Robert Russell, "bill man of ye best sorte" and John Russell, "bill man of ye second sorte" appear in the Pirbright Musters of 1572-73, when England was arming against her Spanish and other enemies. Richard and Anne had five children…

Just imagine finding not only one’s complete family history back to 1713, but also a clear link back through a genuine Scottish clan to 1124 or even earlier!  My cup was full and running over.  All I had to do was to find out which branch, of the Scottish clan Richard came from, establish his parentage and his parent's pedigree, and I could produce a Family tree to take ones breath away, with seven hundred and fifty years of continuous history. And with a castle, tartans, coats of arms, and titled ancestors all thrown in for good measure.  My search for Richard Rose's father was on!

That quotation from George Poulter's pamphlet gave me a good indication of his credentials as a genealogist, with names and dates and events all listed dearly and with obvious assurance, patently resulting from painstaking research.  What a magnificent start I had been given - my own contribution had been limited to identifying my own great-grandmother (Emma Rose, baptised on 13th January 1840, married Henry Taylor on Christmas Day 1857) on Poulter's original chart and entering her numerous descendants on my own particular version.

So how should I start the search for Richard Rose believed to have born into the clan Rose of Kilravock in Scotland?  I looked up the clan in the library, and wrote to Miss Elizabeth Rose, chieftain since her father died in 1946.  Miss Rose very kindly responded, but to the effect that she had searched for and failed to find our Richard Rose.  She also felt that "Richard" was an English name rather than a Scottish one, but kindly gave me the address of a Mr Dallas Rose in London, whom she thought might be able to help.

Dallas Rose was equally kind, but rather more dampening.  He very much doubted that Richard had been Scottish, at all, and he suggested that a belief in a Scottish connection was very common among the English Rose's, but generally without foundation.  He did go on, very generously, to give me a lengthy history of the area round Kilravock at the time when Richard was supposed to have left there, and gave details of library books on the history of the Rose family.

My enthusiasm found it difficult to survive this cold douche from someone who clearly knew a great deal more about genealogy than I did, but a few months later the trail was lit up again, in the form of a letter from a Mr Eric 0. Rose of Brookmans Park.  This was to say that he, Eric, had received a letter from a lady in Queensland, Australia, who was writing a biography of an eminent Australian veterinarian, Alfred Lionel Rose, whom she understood had an ancestor called Richard Rose, who died in Dorking in 1856.  Eric had contacted Dallas Rose who explained that I was already researching Richard Rose's in Surrey and might be able to help.  Hence Eric’s letter to me.

I made contact with Eric Rose, and he drove up to see us one afternoon.  It quickly became evident that here was a man who knew what he was talking about, a member of the Society of Genealogists, an absolute expert on the Rose clan of Kilravock, a very experienced researcher into family history, and certainly not someone who could look to me for advice; the very opposite was true.  We got on like a house on fire, and Eric was kind enough to admire the family tree I had produced. We agreed to work together, me to search for the father of Richard Rose of Pirbright and Eric to search for the family of Alfred Lionel Rose of Queensland.  From something the Australian lady had said in her letter, it seemed possible that two brothers had come down from Scotland together, one to Pirbright and the other to Dorking; if this was so, our work together and separately might be mutually beneficial.

When we first met, some six years ago, Eric was 82, but so very alert and active that the matter of age had no significance at all.  Two years later he bought himself a word-processor and proceeded to master the infernal device, and to put all his records on it.  As I write this Eric is 88 and has slowed down a little but he is still a powerful force in our partnership of exploration.

We went together to the Surrey Record Office at Kingston upon Thames, where I was introduced to the fascination of using one of the microfilm projectors, and was able to study clear photographs of every page in the Pirbright parish registers.  Here were the births, marriages and deaths of the Rose family, written in the hands of countless vicars over the centuries.  No record of the birth of Richard Rose of course, since he had only ‘appeared’ in Pirbright, and no record of his marriage to the local girl Anne Russell in 1737, but here were their children - eight of them, not just the five recorded by Poulter - and here were their children’s marriages, and so on for generation after generation.  And a prize entry, the burial of 'Richard Rose ye Elder' (he had a son called Richard too) on ‘June ye 19th 1784'.

Richard and Anne were not married at Pirbright but at St Martha’s church, Chilworth, near Guildford (said Poulter).  Sure enough, in the Record Office was a book listing early records of marriages in Surrey, and a note saying just what Poulter had written.  Not in fact a licence or an actual record of the marriage in a parish register (in another book I found that the registers for St Martha’s for so long ago had been lost), but a copy of an ‘allegation’ of marriage, which appears to be a written application for a marriage licence which would have been required if the bride or groom came from another diocese or if the wedding was not in the parish in which they lived.

But why did Anne’s parents decide to let their daughter go to a tiny church several miles away to get married?  The Russells were quite big noises in their home village of Pirbright, and there were four other weddings in Pirbright church that year (I checked).  I think I found the reason while studying the microfilms of the parish register; Richard and Anne’s little daughter was baptised a bare six months after their wedding.  Did a handsome young Scots lad arrive in Pirbright, did the pretty young farmer’s daughter fall for his charms, did the chemistry of love lead them on, and did her parents decide to whisk them away for a shotgun marriage in a remote little chapel some distance away from home?  It all seems very possible, though whether he was Scottish or English would have no effect on this reconstruction of their story, romantic though it is.

And why St Martha’s, Chilworth?  I looked that up in the Record Office too, and found that this tiny chapel standing in the woods on a hill above Guildford (which can actually be seen in the distance from Dawney Hill in Pirbright) had been sold to the Duchess of Marlborough after the bankruptcy of its owner, who was a Director of The South Sea Company and lost all his money when that infamous financial bubble burst.  Nothing whatever to do with the Rose family, but interesting!  But I read on: St Martha’s was thought to be one of three such chapels given by William the Conqueror to his half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux.  Where had I seen Bishop Odo’s name before?  Of course, in one of the library books on the history of the Rose family of Kilravock it said that the Rose’s (or de Ros's) were a family of Norman Knights who came over at the time of the Conquest with William’s half-brother, Bishop Odo!

Here was ample room for another flight of fancy.  Did the young Scot, faced with the wrath of Anne’s irate father, insist on being married in a 'family’ church at Chilworth?  And was a special licence needed because the wedding was in another parish and the groom was a stranger in the land?  How exciting - how very tempting to accept it all except that there was still no evidence that Richard was a Scot.  In fact, no evidence as yet of where he came from at all. Or who his father was.

Eric Rose and I ploughed on, writing letters, visiting family members, studying documents.  Eric found some possible links between my own Richard Rose and the Rose family in Dorking mentioned by the Australian lady, but it was all hypothetical and progress was slow.  Here and there we picked up another name or date which could safely be put on the family tree and we were quite excited when Eric unearthed (not literally) a "Richard Rose" in Cripplegate, just outside the City walls in London, who had a son at about the right time in 1712 or 1713. Off we go again; was this a branch of the Kilravock clan which engaged in sea-trade between Nairn and London? Eric was a fund of knowledge on the commercial links between Nairn and London in the late seventeenth century, and it certainly looked possible that our Richard could have been born into a Scots-speaking family living in London, and thus still have a Highland brogue to his voice when he came to Pirbright.  But no proof.

A random offshoot of our visit to the Surrey Record Office was the discovery of a booklet by a Mr R.J. Palmer entitled ‘Pirbright Papers.  A brief study revealed that Mr Palmer had studied the development of several families in Pirbright over a three hundred year period, and it seemed likely that he must have knowledge of the Rose family there.  I asked the librarian if she could put me in touch with Mr Palmer, but after a long delay it was revealed that this gentleman was dead. I was however able to make contact with Miss Watson, an elderly lady who was cousin to R.J. Palmer and who had the actual notebooks used by him for his research.  In due course I found myself staring transfixed at a huge pile of exercise books closely written and full of interest so far as Pirbrighters are concerned, but nothing of value to us except a useful copy of all the Rose family entries in the Pirbright parish register.

I had quickly learned that the question of names is very important to genealogists.  At the period of history we were researching, boys were usually given the names of their father, uncle, or grandfather, while girls bore the names of females, of their mother's family.  And since "Richard" was not a Kilravock name it followed - to Dallas Rose and Miss Elizabeth - that he did not come from Kilravock.  My own research slightly contradicts this, and I have found "Richards" in the Nairn area at about this time, and even in the clan a few years later so I am reluctant to deny the possibility.  And our Richard’s two sons were Richard (as you would expect) and James (as Scottish as can be, James) and one of his grandsons was Arthur, a very good Kilravock name.  So taking it all into account, the question of names neither rules out or in the possibility that Richard Rose of Pirbright came from the Kilravock clan.  If only we could find his father...

So what about some research in Scotland?  At Eric Roses suggestion I wrote to the Scots Ancestry Research Society in Edinburgh but despite some diligent searching they could not find any record of the birth of a Richard Rose in 1712 or 1713 in those parts of Scotland for which their records were available.  They did however say that the Mormons were busy recording baptisms from the old parochial records for the rest of Scotland, and although it would take a few years to complete, in due course another search could be made.

This reference to the Mormons fitted in with a foray which Eric made to their London headquarters, where he was known to the ladies who keep the records.  Apparently the Mormons are collecting together details of as many births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths as they can, all over the world, and are putting into place a computerised register which is available to researchers into family history.  About this time Eric obtained for me a set of photocopies of the Rose family entries in the county of Surrey; they numbered nearly one thousand five hundred! And included fiftyone Richard’s, of whom five pre-dated the birth of our Richard.

A cursory glance revealed that there were Rose’s from all over Surrey, and that they dated back to 1528, so now that it was clear that Richard’ was a family name of the Rose’s in Surrey, what possible justification was there for thinking that Richard Rose of Pirbright came from Scotland?  The purpose of the project had shifted a little - I was no longer seeking to establish which branch of the Rose clan at Kilravock had provided Richard’s parents; my first task was to discover whether my worthy ancestor was Scottish or English.  Which brought me back to my original question who was Richard Roses father?

The magnitude of the task now facing me was daunting - one thousand five hundred Rose family references in Surrey, and doubtless many more beyond the county borders as well.  And other pressures on my time as I came up towards retirement.  Holidays abroad for me and a long spell of ill-health for Eric also contributed to a slowdown, and it was only a few months ago that we were able to pick up the threads and start our work again.

Eric had used part of the interregnum to good effect and had produced on his word-processor a lengthy re­write of the history of the Rose clan of Kilravock, with more information on their complex affairs than I would have thought possible.  But the chapter on the Roots of Surrey was giving him difficulty, and in view of my own detailed work on Richard Rose's family Eric asked me to write this part of the story.  I ‘roughed it out, but soon realised I could go no further, since I had no reliable evidence that Richard was a member, of the Kilravock clan.

I read through all my earlier notes, and checked again that it was the Camberley historian George Poulter who had proposed the Scottish link, and that Aunt Florrie Rose had aided and abetted in spreading this story.  It was third-cousin Kenneth Rose, still living in Camberley, who had given my brother a copy of Poulter's 'tree’, so I made contact with Ken and his wife Brenda and paid them a visit to see what they knew about it all.  What a revelation it all turned out to be…..  

It was Ken who had commissioned George Poulter to research his family tree, and not Florrie as we had all believed, Kens father, John Rose, had recruited George Poulter's father (a local solicitor) into his squad of the neighbourhood Civil Defence organisation at the start of the war, and when Ken joined the R.A.F. he also joined in the gatherings in the rear parlour of 'The Jolly Farmer' public house and met up with Poulter father and son.  In fact, Ken had been roped in by Poulter junior to assist in some archaeological digging at the site of a Roman Camp on Bagshot Common before the war, and Ken confirmed that the letters after Poulter's name on the family tree stood for Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland.

Just after the war Ken worked as aircrew radio officer with Sudan Airways, and whilst on leave from the Middle East in 1950 met up with Poulter again.  Over a drink in The Jolly Farmer, talk turned to family histories and genealogy, and Poulter spoke about his interest in these subjects.  He asked Ken if there was any link between his own branch of the Rose family and the Rose clan of Kilravock in Scotland.  Ken was intrigued, and being flush with his overseas earnings promptly commissioned George to research the Rose family free on his behalf and report on his findings.  Ken went back to the Sudan, where Poulter sent him regular (and frequent) reports on his findings, culminating in a splendid family free chart and, later, a pamphlet on the Rose family of Bagshot and Pirbright.

So it wasn't Florrie Rose who paid Poulter to do the work, but Ken Rose.  And Ken had kept all his letters from Poulter, showing quite clearly that this was the case.  What splendid letters they are too; Poulter was hard-working, assiduous, tireless, and determined.  Step by step he traced the family back through countless great-aunts and great-great-uncles, with at least two reports a month to Ken, meticulously chronicling his movements his searches, and his costs.  His letters make great reading, and with the aid of topical comments on local personalities and events give an enthralling social record of the early l950s in this corner of Surrey.

But reading between the lines, and putting various extracts into context, it seemed possible that one of two alternative conclusions was available -

Poulter (who it was now clear was a great admirer of all things Scottish) actually wanted desperately to find a Scottish connection between Richard Rose and the Kilravock clan…..

with his great skill in searching out family histories in great depth, he literally 'scented' a Scottish connection and did his best to alert those concerned, and to at least put forward his hypothesis as to what that link might be.

The question was, which of these two possibilities was the right one?  Did George make it all up?  Or was he just being very perceptive?  The answer lay perhaps in Pirbright, or in the one thousand five hundred Rose entries on the Mormon Surrey register.  With a sigh, I decided to tackle the Mormon List first.

This meant that if some of the Rose’s were missing from the Mormons lists, so might others be, including - wait for it - Richard Roses father.  But wait - there was a Richard Rose on the Mormons list, born in 1713, the very year our Richard was born, the son of Clement Rose and his wife Elizabeth, of Chobham.  Chobham!  Five miles from Pirbright!  What on earth could be more likely than that our Richard of Pirbright came, not from Scotland, but from nearby Chobham.  At last - the mystery solved.  Richard Roses father was Clement Rose of Chobham, in Surrey.  At last Success!

Hang on a bit.  Clement and Elizabeth had nine children altogether and a quick check showed that five of their names were carried into the Pirbright Rose family, but not the important name of Clement in any of the subsequent generations.  And where did Clement come from anyway?  A check with the Scots Ancestry Research Society revealed that by now they had lists covering the whole of Scotland but a thorough search could not identify either a Clement or a Richard at the right time.  A trip to Pirbright had been on my agenda for some time, and since Chobham was so close I would go there too and study the gravestones in the churchyard to see if they could help me.

I took in Chobham on my way to Pirbright, and was delighted to see how little changed it was from my boyhood cycle rides there during the war.  I studied all the gravestones, but could find nothing relating to the Rose family.  A kind lady took pity on me and directed me to three different villagers of the Rose name, but talks with them, and to no sparks of memory and no knowledge of more than two preceding generations.  The parish registers were not available in the village and I resolved to check than in the Muniment Room of the Surrey Record office in Guildford at an early opportunity.

Then on to Pirbright a delightfully unspoilt village, where I had earlier arranged with the Vicar to study the gravestones and to see the church records, Reverend Strevens very kindly allowed me to sit in the vestry and study the superbly bound books in which copies of the early registers were bound, and also a treasure of village history, beautifully bound, in the form of an edited diary of a Miss Cawthorn, who had lived in Pirbright for something like fifty years until her death in 1931.  It seems that Miss C. was one of the lilies of the field who did not have to spin, and she spent a lot of her time chatting to the village folk as she passed them by on her daily walks.  She then went home and recorded in her diary much of what they had told her, a local historian of the day, Dr Curtis, edited the diaries after Miss Cawthorne's death, and had four copies typed-up and bound in leather, with useful charts, photographs, and references.

(An interesting historical diversion was provided by Rev Srevens who explained that Dr Curtis had married the widow of the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who had discovered and rescued Dr Livingstone in the heart of Africa. My own exploring of the past was on a much more modest scale!)

It took only a few minutes to realise that here was source of Poulter's reports to Ken Rose so far as the little stories and amusing footnotes were concerned.  Many of the lovely points of detail about the people on Poulter's Rose family tree were taken word for word from Miss Cawthorn's journal.  Nothing wrong in this of course, and splendid of him to have found his way to a copy of this gem of a book; it adds to, rather than detracts from, the validity of many of the notes on Poulter' chart, and I found myself smiling like a Cheshire cat as I sat there reading and recognising phrases I had become familiar with like ‘the Collins pear is small but of excellent flavour when stewed'.  Or 'George Rose, who was born in Pirbright in 1856, remembered watching the Collins graves in the churchyard in case body snatchers should raid them'.  (The Collins family came into the picture because one of Richard Rose’s soils married Betty Collins.)

The bit about watching the graves comes straight from Miss Cawthorn but the reference to 'George Rose', born in Pirbright in 1856 ‘is pure Poulter.  In fact there was no George Rose entered in the Pirbright Parish register in 1856, or for many years earlier or later.  Was it Poulter or Miss Cawthorn who had got it wrong??  Or even George Rose himself?  This man George Rose becomes very important indeed later in the story so keep his name in mind.

I skipped through the rest of Miss Cawthorn's book and became totally absorbed in, my study of the other old Pirbright documents.  In fact I only just extracted myself in time to leave for my other appointment that day.  This was with a Mrs Suter, a lady who had sounded kind on the telephone when I had contacted her some time previously and who was engaged in up-dating the, many Pirbright histories.  When I arrived at Mrs Suter's home I was greeted by the heady aroma of a Christmas cake a-baking; Mrs S. explained that she was in the process of baking no less than twelve Christmas cakes for the local Womens Institute Market - a Trojan effort indeed.

Mrs Suter then explained that she had arranged for the last surviving member of the Rose family in the district, Mr Leslie Rose and his wife, to join us and take part in the discussions about Richard Rose and his origins.  Sure enough, Leslie and his Lady arrived, a shade suspicious of this stranger perhaps, but within five minutes of our sitting down, to study my charts Mrs Rose dived into her handbag and produced a two inch square of red Rose clan tartan!  Imagine my excitement - the end of the search was in sight.  Needless to say, it wasn’t.

A brief discussion revealed that Leslie (84 years old) had knowledge of only his father and grandfather, and had no recollection as a boy of ever hearing stories of Scottish ancestry.  Mrs Rose did have a memory of their early days in Pirbright as a newly-married couple, when an old lady they were talking to said that 'the Roses came from Scotland and used to deal in illicit whiskey'.  As to the small tartan square, that was a more remote link and came from a Lady who Mrs Rose's daughter had met while on holiday in Guernsey some years before.  Talk had turned to family names and this lady had maintained they were both members of the Rose family; she even cut in half a piece of red Rose clan tartan which she carried in her handbag and gave it to Mrs Rose's daughter.  This was that piece.

This particular 'tease' ended the following evening when I had, phone call at home from the lady who had been on holiday in Guernsey.  Mrs Rose had been in touch with her daughter, who had kept the lady's phone number, and who had contacted her that day with my phone number.  This was Mrs Gladys Newlyn, of Woking who turned out to be a grand-daughter of Julia Rose of Bagshot a direct descendant of Richard Rose.  And Mrs Newlyn had a copy of George Poulter's chart and believed implicitly in the clan Rose connection, even to the point of searching out the tartan material.  So this little piece of excitement had gone full circle, and George Poulter's ideas on a Scottish connection had clearly taken root all over the Bagshot and Pirbright district.

By now I had become more than a shade suspicious about friend Poulter and I borrowed again from Ken Rose the bundle of letters from Poulter to him in 1950 -1952.  With (I admit), a slightly jaundiced eye, I picked out a dozen or more paragraphs at random which revealed beyond question Poulter's admiration for, everything Scottish, and his ever-growing self-conviction that Richard Rose was a member of the Kilravock clan.  But nowhere could I find any firm basis for this belief, and certainly no real proof that this was so.  I took my worries to Camberley to see Ken and he confirmed that it had been Poulter asking him about a possible Scottish connection which had started the hunt, and not the other way round.  In fact, Ken had never heard of a Scottish link until that time, and interestingly hardly knew Nurse Florrie Rose either.  Florrie was mentioned by Poulter in two of the letters not as another searcher into family history but in connection with a land ownership question which might possibly impinge on his father’s legal practice.

Ken had however made his own contribution to the search.  In the quest for Poulter's own notes and papers to see if they might help us (he had died in the early seventies).  Ken had been in touch with the curator of a small museum in Bagshot and had made an appointment for us to see him that very day.  Off we went and although we made no progress in finding Poulter’s papers we struck gold of another sort instead.  The curator kept a file on people who sent him enquiries on matters of local interest, and he had the names and addresses of several people who had shown real interest in the Rose family history.  And prominent among them was a gentleman who lived in Cambridgeshire like me.

Within a few days I had driven to Wisbech in the Fens to meet Alan Maryon, a great-nephew of Florrie Rose, and a keen follower of family history.  Alan had a copy of the Poulter chart and pamphlet, and had added a lot more by enquiry around his, own branch of the family.  Needless to say, both he and I had descended from Richard Rose and Anne Russell of Pirbright, and Alan was as keen as me to probe deeper into origins.  A slight difference between us was that Alan understood the Poulter chart to have been drawn for Florrie Rose (not Ken Rose, of whom he had no knowledge).  The Scottish story was well-rooted in Alan's side of the family based not only on Poulter's pamphlet but also on Florries own beliefs.  Alan had transferred all of his notes onto a computer and could call up any name or date at the touch of a button.  He specialised in adding stories and memories from family members to the cold facts of dates and places, and kept all his work in the most orderly fashion I have ever seen.

Back at home, I studied the list of others who had contacted the Bagshot museum curator, and decided to phone them to see what I could learn.  One of the comments which Alan Maryon had on his files which I did not know before was that Nurse Florrie, a spinster, had 'adopted' the daughter of a friend, and had brought her up in Bagshot as Edna Rose.  Alan believed that Edna had a son Robert soon after the war, and thought it possible that he might know where Florrie’s own family history papers might be.  I had already reasoned that since Ken Rose's letters from Poulter had been so revealing, if we could find Florrie's, letters from him too, we might learn a lot more.  So in telephoning the curator's contacts, I resolved to try to locate Edna and/or Robert and to seek out the whereabouts of Florries papers.

Within three days I had completed the task.  The first call led to a second, and I learned that Edna had died in 1990.  And that call led me to Robert Jones, Edna’s son, who had fond memories of Aunt Florrie, but who regretted he had no knowledge whatever of what had happened to her papers.  Robert then kindly put me in touch with a niece of Florrie's, Mrs Carolyn Woodhead, who lives at Bisley, who had, remembered, cleared out the house when Florrie died in 1978.

But luck didn't hold.  A few days later Carolyn revealed that the deed-box had been found.  But that no letters were inside it.  Disappointment!  There were some birth, certificates and the Poulter family tree chart, but no trace of letters.  The only consolation was the knowledge that there had indeed been letters, and that Poulter was working for Florrie as well as for Ken.

What now?  Had Poulter invented the Scottish connection, and promulgated it far and wide in such a way that dozens of Rose family members now believed it?  Or did Florrie know something that Ken didn't, and had she passed this on to Poulter?  I happened to pose these purely rhetorical questions during the course of a routine telephone talk with, my elder sister, Gwen' who made a quite unique contribution when she said she remembered Edna, and that Florrie Rose read about the death of the Laird of the clan Rose in a newspaper and believed the title wouId came to her nephew Kenneth.

Ho, ho!  A quick check showed that the only laird of the clan Rose to die at about this time was Miss Elizabeth's father, Hugh Rose, the 24th, Baron of Kilravock, in 1946.  In other words, Florrie Rose believed she was a member of clan Rose in 1946, long before Poulter began work for Ken.  I must comment that when dear old Eric Rose heard about Florrie's belief that Ken was next in line for the top job he very dryly remarked that this rather betrayed Florrie's lack of knowledge of the Kilravock situation.  Needless to say, Ken himself knew nothing at the time about his imminent elevation to the ranks of the Scottish nobility!  My other sister, Jean, also wrote from California to say that she too had heard this story from Florrie during a visit to Bagshot in 1952, thus confirming Gwen's memory of the tale being told.

So Poulter was exonerated from all blame, since it now seemed clear that whoever had started the Scottish story, it wasn't G.C.B. Poulter, F,S.A,Scot.  Unless...perish the thought....unless Poulter was working for Florrie in 1946, even though his work for Ken did not start until 1950.  Oh for those letters of Florrie's.

And then came another great leap, though whether forwards or sideways was not too clear.  The last name on the Bagshot curator's list was that of Mrs Olive Ford, living in Bagshot, and a grand-daughter of Julia Rose a direct descendant of Richard Rose of Pirbright.  Alan Maryon had also been in touch with Mrs Ford, and he kindly made the contact which put me on the road to Surrey once again.

Olive and her husband John, retired but fit, were kindness itself, and we were soon swapping family stories and news.  Olive had known Florrie well, and had even had the rare opportunity to copy the family tree which Poulter had drawn up for her.  The rolled-up document was reverently passed across the coffee table, and there at last all stood revealed.  Not Richard Rose’s father of course (that would have been heaven indeed) but something nearly as good -

Olive's copy of Florrie’s Poulter chart had a different date from the one I was familiar with, from Ken.  Ken’s was dated in Poulter's handwriting 30th July 1951 but Florrie’s was dated - also by Poulter - 10th March 1952.  And Florrie's chart had one vital addition that wasn't on Ken’s chart - Poulter had added to the note about George Rose's father in Pirbright watching the graves to guard against body-snatchers, an extra line or two reading -

George Rose still showed traces of his Scottish origin, and told stories of the days when his ancestors were in Scotland.

This then was the actual source of the legend that the Rose family of Pirbright were of Scottish origin.  But where had Poulter got it from?  Not from George Rose himself, since he had died in September 1936.  It could only be from Miss Cawthorn’s diary.  I recalled how I had been forced to only skim through this when I was studying it in the church vestry, and it was possible I had missed this vital clue.  With a bit of help I managed to obtain a photocopy of Miss C's famous book, but search it though I may, I can not find those magic words set out above. Yet someone must have written them!

I thought it through again; Poulter had put these important words on the end of a sentence he had copied from Miss Cawthorn's diary, and here was I reading the self-same document but with out the 'Scottish' words.  Was it possible that there were two different versions of the diary?  I went back to one of Poulter’s letters to Ken Rose, where I found reference to “a rare History of Pirbright which, Kenneth Faggetter has lent me.”  I knew that the diary was typed, not printed, and that four of the bound copies had been made; did Mr Faggetter's copy have a few more words in it than the copy I had seen in the church?  One thing was certain - if the words in question were genuine, then the story of Scottish connection pre-dates both George Poulter and Florrie Rose, and has infinitely more substance than before.  George Rose, born 1856, was in fact the father of 84-year-old Leslie Rose, whom I had met at Mrs Suter's house in Pirbright, George had married a local girl as a young man and the couple had no children; his wife died, he married again at the age of 44 and his second ‘wife had several children, of whom Leslie was the last but one.

This line of reasoning was just a shade too comfortable to be accepted, logical though it might be.  I went back over the work, and with the help of Olive Ford’s copy of Florrie's chart   (and then a precious photocopy of the original, thanks to Carolyn Woodhead) I was able to read again Poulter’s actual words:

Mr. Faggetter, Senior, Churchwarden of Pirbright. informed me in 1951 that he well remembered George Rose of Pirbright…   who still showed traces of his Scottish origin and to stories of the days when his ancestors were in Scotland.

So Poulter had put together two separate notes, one from Miss Cawthorn but the other from this Mr Faggetter.  So was this Kenneth Faggetter still alive?  Unlikely though it seemed, I had to find out.  My many contacts with Pirbright had given me seven kind people to contact and it was not long before I was talking on the phone with Mr Kenneth Faggetter, now living in Bognor Regis, aged well over eighty, and interested to talk.  Unfortunately, it was his father who had been churchwarden now long since passed away, and my Mr Faggetter had never heard of George Poulter!  But he had met old George Rose many years ago, thus at least confirming his existence!

The other great benefit from the visit to Olive and John Ford was the clear confirmation that Poulter had indeed worked for both Ken and Florrie, providing charts for both - at different dates - with almost identical information except for the extra note about George Rose's ancestry.  Thus those who had a copy of Florries' chart believed implicitly in the Scottish story because 1856 George said so, while those of us who had copies of Ken's chart had reason to be unsure.  Great relief!  Thank you Olive!  I made, one final check, and found that the first mention of Miss Cawthorn's book in Poulter's letters to Ken came after he had completed and dated Ken’s chart but before he finished and dated Florrie's.

Basically, all this means is that the search for Richard Roses father can now commence, but in Scotland rather than in England.  We may never find the final link with Kilravock, and may decide instead to follow the trail of Richard’s wifes' family.  In one of his letters to Ken Rose, Poulter refers to ‘the coats of arms of the Russell family’….    Now there's something that needs looking into…..

Derrick Papworth
Kimbolton
Cambridgeshire
July 1992

PART 2 LOOSE ENDS

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