Catherine Spilsbury's Family

This directory contains information and documents about the children of Catherine Spilsbury-Cheeper ( (c.1836-1906) and Anthony (Jacques) Clarke/Cheeper (1837-1918).

For details of Catherine, see her own page.

For further details of Catherine’s very interesting husband Anthony, including his families with other wives, see the AJCheeper/Clarke directory.

Catherine and Anthony had 10 children. We know 3 died as infants, and that 1 had no children. We're fairly confident that 5 others had no children. The third, Albert Jacques, was the only one who appears to have sustained the Cheeper name. It lasted until 1965, when the last Cheeper, Ruth, married and changed her name. (A stepson of Albert's son Hunter adopted it, and is still alive; but he carries only the name, not the blood or genes, and he had three daughters but no sons).

In the case of children 2 and 3 and 6, we have enough information to warrant a separate file, which is linked to below. The limited amount of information that we have about the other 7 children is recorded within this page:

  1. Anthony George Cheeper (1859-1859)
    Anthony (already the fourth in the line to carry that name) was baptised on 19 Aug 1859, at St James in Gravesend, Kent.
    His father Anthony is shown as Gentleman (which is rather different from 'merchant's clerk' on their marriage certificate 10 months earlier, and a change in an unusual direction).
    Anthony junior died the same week, and was buried 27 August 1859, at the same church
  2. Catherine Lisabel Cheeper (1860-1938)
    Catherine was also born at Gravesend.
    She became a nun, Sister Janet Mary, lived most of her life in London, and had no children
  3. Albert Jacques Cheeper (1862-1937)
    Albert was born in Islington (North London).
    He had 8 children by 2 wives, in Scotland, Northumberland, and again Scotland.
    His was one of only two lines that gave rise to Cheeper children (the other being in Canada).
    But in the next generation there was only one who produced a child.
    And Ruth, being female, ceded the name on her marriage in 1965.
  4. Charles Spilsbury Cheeper (1863-1911)
    His birth certificate shows that he was born on 24 Dec 1863.
    The registration was on 8 January 1864, at Crawley, East Grinstead, Sussex (even now, just beyond the south-west outskirts of London).
    He wasn't in the household in the April 1871 census (when his parents were in York).
    Although he was only 7 at the time, in the 1871 Census, he and Albert were at school in Gravesend in Kent – with his surname spelt as Cheaper, and his birthplace wrongly shown as Suffolk. (He may well have been uncertain!).
    We haven't found him in the censuses of April 1881 (at 17, by which time he was very likely at sea), or 1891 (at 27).
    In the 1901 census (at 37), he was a boarder at 340 Dumbarton Rd, Sandyford, Glasgow, occupation 'Marmid' – ED: 16, Household schedule number: 8, Line: 20, Roll: CSSCT1901_298. He is again shown as Cheaper. ('Mar...' could be Mariner?)
    Anne surmised that he was a seaman all of his adult life, and in 2009 found this evidence:
    Anne had found a death certificate early on, showing that he died on 26 Sep 1911, at 47, in the Seamens Hospital in Gravesend, from Sprue exhaustion. (This seems to have something to do with a celiac condition, an intolerance to some foods). He was shown as a seaman on the 'Bendin' of Bombay. The registration date was 9 Oct 1911, and the informant was E.D.Hawthorn, Steward of the Seamens Hospital.
    We've found no evidence that he ever married, and he appears to have had no issue (although, being a sailor, one needs to append 'to speak of').
  5. Ellen Florence Cheeper (1865-1959)
    Her birth certificate shows that she was born on 10 October 1865.
    Her father was shown as a Commercial Traveller.
    The family's address was shown as 20 Wyndham St, West Plymouth (now a highly congested area).
    She was baptised on 18 Aug 1870, but by this time the family was in St Helen York. This is the old district immediatelty south of the Minster.
    She is with the family in the 1871 census, aged 5, at 44 Annaken’s Court, Blake Street, St Wilfred, York. This is in, or adjacent to, the St Helen's area.
    We haven't found her in the 1881 census, when she would have been 15.
    She married William Underwood, on 19 November 1890 at the Register Office, Leeds.
    She was 24, a spinster, milliner, of 12 Ellen Tce Leeds.
    H e was 40, the divorced husband of Ruth formerly Groves, father Joseph Underwood (deceased), farmer.
    She appears with him in the 1891 census (with her 17-year-old sister Daisy also in the household), and in the 1901 census.
    William died in 1936 at 86 (Dec Qtr 1936, Yarmouth 4ab 24).
    Ellen died in Jun Qtr 1959 (Acle 4b 352), at 93.
    We've found no evidence of any children
  6. Anthony Sidney Cheeper (1867-1902).
    Anthony was born in Aston.
    He migrated to Montreal in 1883 at the age of 16, married and had 6 children.
  7. Arthur Patrick Cheeper (1869->1871->1891?)
    He was born on 21 Sep 1869, in Dublin.
    The family's address shown as 16 Upper Gloucester St, North Dublin.
    He was later baptised at St Helen's York.
    He is with the family in the 1871 census, aged 1, at 44 Annaken’s Court, Blake Street, St Wilfred, York.
    We've found no confirmed entries for him after that, and no evidence of children.
    We haven't found him in the 1881 census, when he would have been 11.
    The family was briefly in Ireland when he was a child, so possibly he returned there as an adolescent or adult.
    Anne's considered that possibility that he is the Arthur George Cheeper, who is in the 1891 census in Hampshire, in the Army, and claiming to have been born in Devon.
    This person is the right age to be Arthur Patrick (21), and no Arthur George is visible in the public record, even as a birth. (If you were denying that you were born in Ireland, you might well also deny that your second name was Patrick).
    Alternatively, he may have gone to sea (perhaps from Yarmouth, where the family was when he was 7), or migrated.
  8. Ernest Teakle Cheeper (1871-1871)
    His birth certificate shows that he was born on 19 Jun 1871, when the family was at Blake Street, St Wilfred, York.
    The father was shown as a commercial traveller. (Teakle was Anthony's step-father's surname).
    His death certificate shows that Ernest Teakle died on 5 Aug 1871, at 6 weeks, of diarrhoea, at 30 St Paul's Square, Bishophill Jnr, Micklegate in the City, York, with Jane Simpson in attendance.
    York Cemetery advised Anne in 2005 that "Ernest was buried in second class grave 2885. A second class grave is one stage better than a public grave in that the number of occupants is limited to 8 and the executors are entitled to 6 lines of inscription on the slab that eventually closes it".
    The apparent penury is bemusing because, in the April 1871 census, Anthony's household included two servants (one of whom is known to have existed, because shortly afterwards she started mothering children to him) – although he did enter into an arrangement with creditors a year later in April 1872.
  9. Alice Daisy Cheeper (1873-1962)
    Her birth certificate shows that Alice was born on 2 November 1873.
    The family was at 30 St Paul's Sq., St Mary Bishophill Junior, York.
    His father was shown as a commercial traveller.
    In the 1881 census, at 7, she appears to be the Alice H. Cheeper at 82 Downham Rd, Islington (literally just around the corner from where her family had lived in 1862).
    The error in the second initial appears to be only one of a large number of errors in the entry for that household that evening.
    Alice is visible in the 1891 census, at 17, living with her elder sister, Ellen, then 26, who had been recently married to William Underwood.
    In the 1913 Kelly’s Directory of Kent, on p. 662, she appears as Alice Daisy Cheeper, Miss, Milliner, and p. 664 at Page & Cheeper, Milliners, 53 High St, Sittingbourne, Kent.
    We haven't found any evidence of children, and it appears unlikely that she had any.
    Her death certificate shows that she died on 25 December 1962 (Dec Qtr 1962 Fakenham 4b 493).
    She was shown as a spinster, and retired shopkeeper, aged 86 (actually 89).
    Her address was shown as Gordon Road, Melton Constable, Walsingham in Norfolk, 50 miles from Yarmouth where she'd lived as a child, and presumably a popular place for retirement, given that it's only 2 miles from Great Snoring).
    But the informant was someone from the Loo Water Nursing Home, Heacham, King's Lynn
  10. Eva Rose Cheeper (1877-1877)
    Her birth certificate shows that she was born on 16 March 1877.
    The father was shown as a commercial traveller, by that time almost 40 years old.
    Catherine was 40 or 41.
    The family's address is shown as 28 Crown Rd, Yarmouth, Norfolk.
    Eva died in the same year.

We're missing a lot of information; and we'd love to know more!

Most of the information on this page came from Anne's research, with a little from Albert's grand-daughter Ruth. A breakthrough lead on Anthony Sidney in Montreal came from George, an unrelated researcher who contacted Anne via the Genesreunited site and drew her attention to Anthony Cheeper's migration to Quebec on 'The Polynesian' in 1883.

This a page within Roger Clarke's Family Web-Site

Contact: Roger Clarke and/or Anne Kratzmann

Created: 14 October 2005; Last Amended: 1 September 2006 rev. 19 August 2008, link to the new Anthony Sidney Cheeper page on 31 December 2008, plus Charles Spilsbury updates on 16 August, 24 September and 1 October 2009