William Bartlett, his wives Martha Gregory & Annie Gullick, and their descendants

I would like to make contact with anyone who can tell me more about any of these people, and especially their descendants, as they will be a cousin to some degree of mine.

William Bartlett (senior) was born in b 1870 in Ashwick, Somerset. He was the third of the eight children of thatcher John Bartlett and and his wife Mary Ann Panes (sometimes spelt Mary Ann Paines). They moved from Ashwick the short distance to Emborough, Somerset, and that is where William was brought up. He was worked as a coal miner and like so many others he moved to south Wales coalfields when the Somerset mines ceased to be viable .

It was there, in the Pontypridd district, that he married Martha Ann Gregory in 1893. I don't have Martha's history, but there is a distinct possibility that she, too, was born in the same area of Somerset as William came from. If she had followed the young men from Somerset to Wales then she certainly was not the only one to do so! Their son William Albert Bartlett was born on 18 March 1895 at 16 Morgan Street, Pwllgwaun, Pontypridd, Glamorgan.

William's brother John had married Mary Louisa.Gregory in 1888 so there is the intriguing possibility that the two brothers had married two sisters.

William and Martha's marriage appears to have been short-lived, for, by the 1901 census their son William Albert was living with his paternal grandparents in Emborough, and William senior was a boarder in Rotherham, Yorkshire, still a coal miner and putting himself down as unmarried.

William junior would appear to have been brought up by his grandparents in Emborough. He is named on the WW1 'Roll of Honour' in Emborough's little church. But whereas most such Rolls record only those who made the ultimate sacrifice, William is recorded as having been invalided out. His medal record shows him as Private 16045 in the Somerset Light Infantry, that he had served in France and was discharged on 1 July 1916.

William senior's landlady in Rotherham in 1901 was recently-widowed Annie Mary Gullick and her two young children

Thomas Alfred Gullick (born 1895)
Doris Irene Gullick (born 1900).

Assuming that what she told the census enumerators in 1901 and 1911 is correct then we know that Annie was born in 1870-71 in Abersychan, Monmouthshire. She may well have been born Annie Mary Gullick in 1870, the daughter of Jonah Gullick and his wife Ann Gill, and married Oliver Gullick in the Pontypool district of south Wales in 1891. If so then her husband, Oliver Gullick, was born about 1843 and died in 1900 in Rotherham. These details do all appear to fit together well, but I do not have the evidence to be sure.

From the names of the children, as welll as Thomas and Doris, it seems probable that Annie and Oliver also had

Edith Annie Gullick born 1892 died 1893 age 0
Edwin Oliver Gullick born & died 1894

William Bartlett may well have been a boarder in Annie Gullick's house in 1901, but their relationship soon became rather more intimate. Their first child was born in 1903.

William and Annie lived together as man and wife, and represented themselves as married. On the 1911 census they indicated that they had been married for 8 years. It is reasonable to assume that they would have married but for the fact that William could not - he was still legally married to Martha. Divorce was not a viable option for ordinary people and the situation they adopted of acting as if married was the only option and was not that uncommon.

All their children were registered with the surname Gullick (as was correct) and with a last Christian name of Bartlett. A device often used when naming illegitinate children to identify the father, either maliciously or, as is almost certainly the case with William and Annie, to make it easy to simply omit to use the children's proper surname and thus appear to the community around them be a regular, married, family.

Their children, all born in Rotherham district, Yorkshire, were

Ernest Bartlett Gullick born in 1903
Frank Bartlett Gullick born in 1906
Walter Bartlett Gullick born is 1909
Gwendoline Mary Bartlett Gullick born in 1915

We have to recognise that they probably never used the surname Gullick.

Annie's first son Thomas Alfred Gullick, born 1895, enlisted as a gunner in the army's Royal Garrison Artillery, was posted to France and died less than a year later on 3 Aug 1918 from injuries received.

William Bartlett and Annie Mary Gullick eventually married in 1940 - presumably once his first wife had died and he was free to do so.

That is my knowledge about William Bartlett and his families.
I would love to hear from anyone who can tell me what happened to any of the people mentioned here, I would be espacially pleased to hear from any of William' Bartlett's descendants as they will be my cousins of some degree.
I would also like to hear from anyone who has evidence of the pedigree of Martha Ann Gregory or Annie Mary Gullick.