Brick Wall

Octavius and Helen Ommanney (seated, centre) with, so far as it is possible to tell, many of their direct descendants and their spouses. On the basis of the apparent ages of those who can be identified, as well as Helen’s bouquet which suggests this must have been a significant event, it seems likely that that picture would have been taken at Octavius and Helen’s Golden Wedding Anniversary celebrations in September 1891. If so, it is very likely that it was taken at Bloxham.

Fewer than half those pictured can be reliably identified. Can you help?

1: unknown. There are few obvious candidates amongst Octavius’ and Helen’s direct descendants and spouses for a young woman of this kind of age in 1891. The most likely candidate would seem to be Constance, daughter of Emily Sophia (who may well be (15) below). Constance was 19 in 1891 and, her father having died in 1889, it seems likely she would have been here if her mother was. (22) then may well be her younger sister Margaret.

2: unknown.  My first guess would be Henry George Ommanney Kendall, son of Georgiana, but this feels pretty uncertain. Henry would have been about 25 at this time.

3: unknown, but evidently connected with (2) as they are arm-in-arm. There are no potential missing spouses for Octavius’ and Helen’s sons, and she is too old to be HGO Kendall’s eventual wife, Margaret Nunns, who was born in 1878. An enigma.

4: Sir Montagu Frederick Ommanney, husband (and cousin) of Charlotte (5). In 1891 his career was still a few years away from hitting the heights.

5: Surely Charlotte Helen Ommanney, as she is arm-in-arm with Montagu.

6: Presumably one of the two elder daughters of Montagu and Charlotte, Dorothy (born 1875) or Mildred (born 1877), as her arm is around her mother’s.

7: The Rev. George Campbell Ommanney, taking a day off from his tribulations at Sheffield.

8: By comparison with a much earlier photograph I believe this is Annie Maria Ommanney. It would make sense for her to be in black here, as her second husband, Samuel Sewell, had died in 1890.

9: Again by comparison with another photograph, this time much later, I believe this is Mildred Dunin Ommanney. Both photographs suggest that she was tall.

10: I have seen, but not verified, a suggestion that Edmund Bennett (husband of Mildred Dunin) was at some point in his life a clergyman; if so, this would seem likely to be him. I see little resemblance though with the man in a much later photograph of the couple, except that he is shorter than his wife (though on the evidence of this picture, wasn’t everyone). It also seems odd that he is placed on the right-hand side of the group, which otherwise appears to be reserved for direct descendants.

11, 12: unknown. It seems likely that one of these men would be Henry Broughton Kendall, husband of Georgiana. 12 looks not unlike Charles Henry Ommanney, who is a nephew rather than a direct descendant. Both uncertain.

13, 14: (13) is Ethel Mary Ommanney (née Harrison), wife of Lieut. Robert Nelson Ommanney, who is absent from the picture, presumably at sea. (14) is therefore surely Lawrence Frederick Nelson Ommanney who in September 1891 would have been six months old.

15: unknown, but most likely Emily Sophia, widow of Frederick (who died in June 1889, hence the mourning black). If (1) and (22) really are her daughters, that would strengthen the case for this being Emily – but we are propping up guesses with guesses.

16: A descendant believes this to be Kathleen Helen Ommanney, eldest daughter of Ethel (13). She would be 9 years old here.

17: Octavius Ommanney.

18: Helen Ommanney (née Gream).

19: unknown. On the basis of age, the likely candidates are Gwendoline, younger sister of the most likely candidate for (22), or Helen or Mildred, daughters of Mildred Dunin (see 9 above).

20, 21: On the evidence of the identified children of Octavius and Helen being arranged on the right-hand side of the picture, the two ladies at 20 and 21 are likely to be Georgiana and Octavia, eldest and youngest of the children. Given that Georgiana was born in 1843 and Octavia in 1856, though, it is surprisingly difficult to tell which is which.

22: unknown. Based on apparent age, the only likely candidate amongst the direct descendants seems to be Margaret, daughter of Frederick (deceased) and Emily Sophia (candidate for no.15 above). Margaret was 13 in 1891.

Latest update to 'Descendants of Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney'

An update of 'Descendants of Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney' (July 2024) is now available here.  

Rumours of Memorial’s Demise Greatly Exaggerated

On 30 June 1923 a visitor to St John’s, Westminster reported in Notes and Queries the following inscription on a tombstone:

Here lieth the Remains of Rear Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney who died the 26th day of March 1801 aetat 65. Also the Remains of Martha Ommanney his widow who died on this 18th day of March 1813 aetat 65. Likewise Edmund Woods Ommanney their grandson, son of Henry Manaton and Ann died 19th May, 1813, aged 2 years...

Fourteen years later, a correspondent to the same journal (27 March 1937) recorded that:

One of the most interesting of the memorials was badly broken in moving it, involving the loss of part of the inscription to Rear-Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney (died 1801). Fortunately this inscription had already been placed on record in ' N. and Q.' of June 30, 1923.

Reading these notes I rashly assumed that the memorial had been lost altogether - “badly broken” would seem serious enough to warrant disposal. Not so, it turns out. The stone is in fact still there, propped against a neighbouring building. And indeed the inscription continues beyond the excerpt quoted above, as follows (the material in square brackets is illegible or missing, but I add my assumed completion):

[Antho]ny Tenterden Hollist

[text missing] died May 6th, 1[837]

Hasler Hollist [text missing] 6th 1832, died May 1st 1...

[Cap]ron Hollist [born May 6] 1834. Died May [3rd 1836]

Cornthwaite’s granddaughter Frances Georgiana married Hasler Hollist (b.1799); Anthony and Capron were two of their children who did not survive infancy. It would seem likely that the Hasler Hollist referred to on the inscription is not in fact the father (for whom the date of the memorial would not make sense, and who was not in any case a blood relative of Cornthwaite and Martha), but another short-lived, but otherwise unrecorded child.

My thanks to David Bingham of The London Dead blog for spotting the inscription and taking the trouble to let me know. https://thelondondead.blogspot.com

Colorado

I have tended to pay more attention to those Ommannies who remained on the eastern side of the Atlantic (or went further east still) than those who drifted in the other direction. As anyone who has googled the name will know, however, there are certainly Ommannies in North America. This is the partial story of one of the earliest of them. 

Arthur Ross Ommanney was born on 14 May 1854 in Surrey. In 1872, at the age of 17, he arrived in the USA, seemingly on his own. What was he doing there?

I had no real leads until I identified him as the ‘young Ommanney’ (no first name given) who features in the journal published by Allayne Beaumont Legard under the name Colorado (1872).  You can find a copy online at https://archive.org/details/colorado00lega

 Legard was an Englishman who was serving in the army in Canada when he decided to embark on a three-month trip to Colorado. He arrived in New York in March 1872 intending to meet a friend, only referred to as ‘HPB’ in the journal but actualy Harry (later Sir Harry) Paul Burrard. On arrival, though, he found not Burrard but a stack of letters from him. Legard tracked Burrard down to St John, New Brunswick, where Burrard was supposedly looking after the 17-year old Arthur Ommanney (‘I all by myself, HPB positively declining coming even as far as New York, and saying that he had sent young  Ommanney, who had been entrusted to his care, on to Denver by himself… There is a beautiful mammoth hotel at St. John now, which is most reasonable in its charges. I, however, left it, and took up my quarters at a boarding house with young Ommanney, who had been entrusted by his confiding parents to the care of H.P.B. Had many and long talks with H.P.B. but failed to impress upon him that his conduct was in any way strange or different from what it should have been…’)

HPB (who was in St John to get married) somehow palmed Arthur off onto Legard permanently, and the pair then travelled on to Colorado.

The question is how Arthur had come to find himself alone in the US at that age. So far as we know, his parents were living in peaceful retirement in Putney.

They had an eventful trip to Colorado:

Left Denver at 7am on horseback…When we got in every atom of skin was blisterd off our faces, and Ommanney was nearly snow blind…

Ommanney went bull whacking to get a sack of flour, and encountered a ditch and a surly Yank. The former he had some difficulty in getting over. The latter utterly floored him, for seeing that he was new at work, with Yankee generosity stubbornly ignored the idea of helping him. He pointed out the bag of flour, and then collected his family to witness his (Ommanney’s) frantic struggles to get it to the waggon, while he indulged in sneering and vulgar remarks upon once having been an English gentleman himself, and the necessity of being able to work hard in this country. Ommanney, however, got the flour on the waggon and safe home…

Once in Colorado, Legard bought a 320-acre property in the Wet Moutain valley in Custer County, near Rosita. This he left in Ommanney’s hands when he returned to New York and embarked for Southampton in June 1872. (‘Got power of attorney correctly fixed up for Ommanney to act for me, and deposited it at the bank… Sorry to leave Ommanney to such a lonely occupation, but I think he really likes it. He is a good lad…’)

We do not know what happened to Arthur directly after that, but around 1880 he married Maria Wright. They had six children, the first born in Colorado in 1880. In 1890 there is a record of the family arriving back in the US after a transatlantic voyage from Glasgow. They were divorced in 1900 at Denver.

On 14 May 1907 married a Norwegian, Bertha Aandahl, and they had children.

By 1910 he was a chicken farmer at San Bernardino, California. In 1920 he was a miner living at Seattle. Arthur died on 1 March 1925 at Seattle.

A photograph of the younger George Campbell Ommanney

From the Church Portrait Journal, Vol.3 (1882)

The 1929 Ommanney tree

Some time ago - so long that I had forgotten until I was recently reminded of it - I saw a listing in a library suggesting that they held a large Ommanney family tree from the early 20th century. I had for a while intended to motor down there and take a look, but I never quite got round to it. No matter. I have recently received a series of photographs of this same document from an Ommanney descendant who also has a copy (my thanks to Jayne, and her brother).

It has set several hares running and I will be producing an update of my document Descendents of Admiral Cornthwaite Ommanney shortly. Somehow, once you have a tip-off in genealogy, it is much easier to track down further details. And the 1929 tree is a hatful of tip-offs.

What is most striking is just how accurate it is. Of course, in 1929 they were closer to the action than we are now. But I can sit here calling up all sorts of documentation from the 18th to the 20th centuries at the touch of a button; they had to pack a dozen valises and jump into the Bentley for a weekend jaunt down to the library at Portsmouth to achive the same thing. And yet almost every new detail on the tree is backed up by all the evidence I can muster. It is most impressive.

Genealogical Table Showing the Descendants of John Ommanney
Produced by Henry Mortlock Ommanney, 1929

John Ommanney was Cornthwaite’s great-grandfather. It seems though that every more recent Ommanney can be traced back to Cornthwaite rather than to his brothers or uncles.

Rev. Edward Aislabie Ommanney

The portrait below has recently been made available by the National Portrait Gallery.

A number of other Ommannies are in their collection but not yet digitised. These include Honoria Catherine Ommanney and three more shots of Francis Downes Ommanney. I don’t know what their timetable is but it looks like they are working their way through them. If they are doing it alphabetically, we might expect them very soon.

BA (1827) / MA (1831) Exeter College Oxford 

Deacon: 20 December 1829, London

Curate: 22 December 1829, Mortlake

Priest: 19 September 1830, Cantebury

Perpetual Curate: 14 December 1832, Mortlake

Later Prebendary of Wells Cathedral (1848) and Rural Dean of Chew Magna (1850).

On 15 July 1841 he married Anna Catherine de Hochepied Larpent (20 June 1819 – 14 December 1893) at Wandsworth.

Author of Plain Advice to Persons who have been Lately Confirmed by the Bishop (1863). His advice probably did not extend to family planning, as he had twelve children between 1842 and 1861.

Died 21 January 1884. An obituary was published in The Times on 24 January 1884