Nurse Family History – Robert Nurse of Hanham (Born 1821)

In the previous article in this blog series I described the life of Robert and Salley Nurse.  They had a number of children - Robert Nurse was the youngest son and he was my great-great-grandfather.

He married Ann Jane Taylor at St. Michael, Two Mile Hill on 30^th May 1854, two months after his father Robert Nurse died. [1]

Ann Jane Taylor, Robert Nurse’s wife, was a descendent of John Taylor, the Landscape Painter. John Taylor's father, Abraham Taylor was a prosperous Philadelphia merchant and friend of Benjamin Franklin, before the American Revolution.

It is through the Taylors that the Nurse family is linked to the Gordons of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania- a junior branch of the Scottish Gordon clan, and the Luther family of Kelvedon Hatch, Essex, an important family of that county.[2]

Robert and Ann were Innkeepers at the Rose and Crown, a public house in a fairly good area of St George, on the eastern outskirts of Bristol. [3] As discussed above, the licensed trade had long been a family tradition, and several members of the family ran public houses in the locality.

Robert's elder brother, Samuel also operated the malting and brewing business, which the two brothers had inherited from their father.

Over the next ten or eleven years, Robert and Ann Jane had six children, four of these children surviving infancy.

Figure 1 - Robert Nurse and his sons, William Richmond and Robert Francis (c 1870)		Figure 2 - Ann Jane Nurse and her daughters, Alice Mary Couche and Salley Jane (c 1870)

The family, although not rich, was fairly well off, running their own businesses and owning a moderate amount of land around the eastern outskirts of Bristol.

The boys, at least, were well educated, Robert Francis initially attended the local Church School, Two Mile Hill but both boys finished their education at Dr. Nunn's School, a private boarding school in Portland Square, near the centre of Bristol.

Figure 3  - The Family of Robert and Ann Jane Nurse

In 1871 Robert Nurse died. Ann took over as licensee of the Rose and Crown Inn [4] and also acted as co-trustee with Robert Willis Nurse (son of Silas Nurse and Robert’s nephew), in the running of her late husband's share of the malting business.

Figure 4 - Two Mile Hill, St. George (c. 1926) and the Rose and Crown Inn (rebuilt in 1905)

Robert had directed in his will that they should run the business until his eldest son, Robert Francis (my great grandfather), had reached the age of 21. [5] At that time he would be offered the opportunity to purchase the concern at a price to be ascertained by a fair evaluation by "some competent parties to be appointed by the trustees".

Ann eventually moved to Bedminster where she lived with her surviving daughters, until she died in 1912.

Bibliography and Notes

[1] I have a copy of the Marriage Certificate for Robert and Ann.

[2] I will go into more detail on the Luther, Taylor and Gordon history in future blog articles.

[3] Bristol City Pubs, 1856, www.gloucestershire-pubs.co.uk.

[4] 1871 National Census. Microfiche copy held at the Bristol Reference Library.

[5] The Will of Robert Nurse, dated 3 Jun 1871; Bristol Wills, vol. 38, Bristol Record Office. (see Appendix A on Page 76)