| You are here: Home > Family history > The
Goyder family > Sarah Anna Goyder > 4
Sarah Anna Goyder
(1823 - 1909)
In Wivenhoe, Sarah, now a widow and with only one child left alive, threw herself into
looking after her late sister's children. John Martin Harvey remembered her:
United at last, we were to realise something of home life. The days
that followed were happy, and we still think of our aunt's comely presence, her
shrewdness, her frugality, and her pawky Scots-like humour, with warm and grateful
memories.
Within a year another drama struck Sarah's life. This was her brother-in-law John's
bankruptcy, following a major fire at his shipyard in August 1872. You can read about the
fire in more detail here. Sarah was mentioned
in passing during the bankruptcy proceedings, and this brief sentence gives an insight
into the domestic arrangements: "his housekeeper used to draw from the cashier what
was required to keep the house."
The final tragedy to affect Sarah's life happened the following year in Australia when
her last remaining child, George, died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty.
From 1855, when he husband died to 1873 when he last child died, Sarah lived through
almost twenty years of loss. The rest of her life seems to have been much happier.
In 1877 John Harvey decided to send his son John Martin to King's College School,
London. It was a day school so he rented 3 Grove Villas, Hornsey Rise, and "Aunt
Sarah" (as she was known) moved to London to keep house for him. For the next few
years she disappears from sight...
In 1881 John Harvey decided to put his yachtbuilding company into voluntary
liquidation. John Martin Harvey made his first professional appearance on stage that year
and it seems likely that Aunt Sarah kept house for him. His younger brother Charles, aged
ten, was by this time living with his retired grandparents Thomas and Sophia Harvey, and
their son (my great-grandfather) Fred in Brightlingsea, a couple of miles down the River
Colne from Wivenhoe.
Her story continues...
© Chris Goddard, 27 November, 2004
|
