Ellen Roberts - Highgate Cemetery

My Great Great Grandmother Ellen Littlewood was born on 28th (or 29th) August 1834 in Tickhill, Doncaster. The IGI has the former date, as has the 1937 family tree prepared by Charles Augustus Roberts. The IGI has her full name as Ellen Maria Littlewood, However there is no mention of this second Christian name in any other document. In every Census from 1841 to 1911 she is just Ellen Littlewood or Ellen Roberts (after she married John Shearwood Roberts on 20th March 1855 in Sheffield Parish Church). These include the 1861 and 1871 Census where all their children have their second Christian names recorded.

Ellen was the daughter of John William Littlewood, a Doncaster solicitor, and Mary Anne Pearson. It is unlikely that they would not have given her a second Christian name. Perhaps she hated the name? She and John had six children: Marianne Francis Shearwod Roberts, John Shearwood Roberts, Ada Ellen Matilda Roberts, Sidney Morton Pearson Roberts, Vincent Littlewood Roberts (my Great Grandfather) and Charles Augustus Roberts who compiled the 1937 family tree.

We know that Ellen left her husband and took up residence near to her son John Shearwood Roberts in North London. But when? It was after 1871 when at the Census of that year she was still living with her husband and their children where the youngest, Charles Augustus, was 5 years old. But ten years later at the 1881 Census she was a visitor to Ann Fisher and her sister in Hove, Sussex. By the 1991 Census she had her own residence in Clapham, South London and in the 1991 Census at the age of 76, she is living at 44 Roseberry Gardens, Crouch End, Edmonton. At both these addresses she has a servant living with her, obviously courtesy of her husband's fortune made in property.

It was here at 44 Roseberry Gardens that Ellen died on 5th May 1914. The death certificate records that present at her death was her son John Shearwood Roberts of 17 Woodland Rise, Highgate. And it was in Highgate Cemetery that she was buried on 8th May 1914. Her son is also buried in the same grave after he died nearly seven years later at the age of 63.

So on Thursday last week, I had made arrangements with the Friends of Highgate Cemetery to visit their grave.