William Henry Finch (1874-1949).
My 2nd great-uncle.
William Henry Finch was the son of Isaac Finch and Phoebe Ann Ward, born in 1874 in Reigate, Surrey. He was baptised on 12 July that year at St Mary’s parish church.
He grew up in the town with his siblings and by the 1891 census was working as a gardener/domestic servant. On 16 October 1898 he married Elizabeth Martha Yates at St Mary’s in Reigate. She’d been born in Chelsea, Middlesex, on 29 October 1870 to french polisher George Charles William Yates and his wife Elizabeth.
In 1901 William and his family were living at 4 Glovers Road, Reigate, along with his mother Phoebe Ann, and by now he was working as a carpenter’s labourer. Ten years later they were at 48 Allingham Road, Reigate, and he was billed as an under gardener. However, by the time of the 1939 Register he was working again as a carpenter and had moved to a house called Roselea in Slipshatch Road, Reigate.
William died after a short illness at home on 23 December 1949. His funeral at Reigate Parish Church and internment at Redstone Cemetery in Redhill was reported in the 6 January 1950 edition of the Surrey Mirror. Elizabeth had died on 2 December 1940 at East Surrey Hospital – her funeral at the parish church was reported in the Surrey Mirror on 13 December.
William left effects worth £134 14s 9d.
The couple had four children:
- William George Finch (1899-1971) lived in Reigate for most of his life and was living with his parents in Slipshatch Road at the time of the 1939 Register, when he was listed as a builder’s labourer. He married Bertha Holder in the town in 1928. He died in Reigate.
- Dorothy Louise Finch (1901-87) married Julien Louis Brems in 1948 having worked as a shop assistant. He ran the family radio business and was a refugee from Belgium, his family escaping from the Germans in 1914 (Surrey Mirror 16 April 1948). The couple lived in Redhill and he died in 1967.
- Arthur Thomas Finch (1907-1992). He was living in Reigate at the time of the 1939 Register, working as a bricklayer and married to Edith (although I’ve found no record of their marriage). They lived in Earlswood and Heathfield. He died in Eastbourne Hospital, Sussex, in 1992.
- Lena Elizabeth Finch (1910-2002). She married Harry / Henry Frederick Michael Cannon, who served in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in the Second World War.
Sources: Ancestry.com and Findmypast.com for census and BMD records, British Newspaper Archive, Surrey Family History Centre. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966.