Arthur Montague Murch, born 1878

Arthur Montague Murch was the seventh child of John Benjamin Murch and Charlotte Webb.  His birth was registered in the March quarter of 1878 (so he could have been born in 1877) in the Dover Registration District of Kent, England.

He appears with his family in the 1881 and 1891 censuses in Waterloo Cottage, Cambridge Road, St James (Kent).  His mother, Charlotte, died when Arthur was only ten.  His father, John, was a shipwright and, by the 1891 census, two of Arthur's elder sisters (Kate and Elizabeth) were teachers, while his eldest sister (another Charlotte) ran the house.

In the 1901 census, Kate has taken over the running of the house for her widowed father, while Arthur

remains at home as a 23-year-old commercial clerk.

By 1911, the family has moved to 34 Oakwood Gardens, Ilford, Essex.  Kate is still running the household at 42, younger sister May is a secretary for a barrister's office, and Arthur is still at home, still single, but now a bank clerk.

He features in the Murch Surname Study.  For further information including sources and links, see his WikiTree profile.

© 2019 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved

A-Z Challenge 2016: Reflections

April 2016's A-Z Challenge was a first for the Murch Blog.  More than just one first: the Murch Blog did not even exist before the Challenge!  I realised that it was all very well gathering piles of names and records about Murches in times-gone-by.  I needed to expand the horizons of the Murch Surname Study.

I had never quite been able to grasp the concept of telling stories about my ancestors.  For me, the raw data was the most important thing.  Stories and anecdotes were very nice if you happened to come across them, but they weren't to be made a priority.  In fact, I entered the Murch Blog into the A-Z Challenge with the vague idea that I would just put names and dates down in each blog post.  But each individual I chose to write about made me want to write more about them, to identify each ordinary name and turn it into an extraordinary person.  Because to me, being a secretary in a time when girls were supposed to stay at home until they got married - that's extraordinary.  Being written about in the local paper as being 'trustworthy and faithful' - that's extraordinary.

OK, so the blog didn't garner many views.  But I didn't expect that from this blog.  I had in my mind the picture of some desperate genealogist somewhere who had almost given up on finding Hephzibah, or Queenie, or Robert, or Violet - and then they came across my blog.

Happy researching! I'm glad I could help.

© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved

A-Z Challenge 2016: I'm a Survivor - Are You?

© 2016 Ros Haywood. All Rights Reserved