Aunty Kittie was my Grandmother’s maternal aunt, her mother Nellie Eaton Willis’s older sister. Kittie was remembered with affection by Grandma and also by my father. She had no descendants so it is up to me to tell her story. I was told that Kittie ran away from home to work in a hat shop, which I think was quite shocking at the time, this was despite having been more compliant and obedient than her sister Nellie to the strict Aunt who brought them up after their mother’s death.
I was also told that Kittie was obsessively tidy (unlike Nellie) and once threw a paper bag in the fire only to find out it contained a recent purchase of lace. I think this must have been much resented at the time for me to even know about it, or maybe it just fascinated me so I remembered the story.
Katie Elizabeth Willis was born in Chicago to English parents Thomas Willis and Rachel Halden there is no record of her birth and I was told this was because her birth certificate was burnt in the Great Fire of Chicago, in latter years it was discovered that she and her father disagreed about her age by one year and they had no way of proving which one was correct. She opted for the younger age as that suited her at the time! The 1870 census taken on the 13th June reports her to be seven years old and as her birthday (according to the 1939 census) was May 1st then I think we can take her birth as being 1863, not 1864 which seems to be the year she opted for.
Kittie was living with her parents in 1870 and a Katherina Willis who research shows to be her father’s half sister, probably visiting from England to help the family out. Sadly, Kittie only had one sibling who survived from a total of eight, this is something I have been told but again I have yet to find any records of the other children. My Great Grandmother Nellie was born in October in that same census year so maybe Katherina’s help gave Rachel the rest she needed to produce a healthy baby.
The family of four had paid a visit to England in 1873, I don’t know if this was simply a holiday or maybe part of a plan to return to the UK permanently. However, they did return to the USA and at some stage moved to Topeka, Kansas where Rachel’s sisters also lived.
In later years Kittie told the family her memories of their return to the UK after their mother’s death, this included her pushing five-year-old Nellie forward to provide entertainment on the boat “I can’t but my little sister will”. After arriving in London she took it upon herself to go out for a walk with little Nellie not realising the potential dangers of London street life and getting stares from passers-by.
The next census account of Kittie is in 1881 when she is not living in County Durham with either her father or sister but instead is in the Pancras area of London, (she had no fear of London clearly) so that is where she ran away. She is living at 88 Marchmont Street and working as a milliner, lodging with a butcher and his family. There is a Joshua Hubbard Milliner at 94 Marchmont Street, I wonder if he was Kittie’s employer.
By 1891 Kittie (or Kattie on the census) is back living with her father in Staindrop, County Durham, presumably keeping house for him.
Kittie married in 1896 in Darlington, her husband was James Henry Westcott and in 1900 their baby Norman Willis Westcott was born, my father was given Norman as his second name after baby Norman and it became the name he was known by. I wonder if the name that will make a comeback? Sadly, baby Norman lived for a short time and Kittie had no further children and my Grandmother was her only nibling (had to get the word in somewhere in the blog).
Kittie and James are living in Bishop Auckland in 1911 and again in 1921 but at a different address.
Records are sparse again but Kittie became a widow in 1935. I was surprised to find her in 1939 working as a housekeeper for an Emily Caroline Corps, by this stage Kittie was 64. A bit of investigation revealed that Emily Corps was Kittie’s sister-in-law who seems to have had a little money. I was totally unaware of this relationship as it was never mentioned by my Grandmother, I had presumed Kittie lived alone after her husband’s death.
Recently I ordered a copy of Kittie’s will, she left £100 each to her sister Nellie (my Great Grandmother), my Grandmother, my father, and her sister-in-law Emily Corps, my Grandfather received £25 and a niece from her husband’s family received £50, the remainder of her estate also went to Nellie, I doubt it amounted to much. Four years later my parents married, my mother was delighted by how much my father had to spend on her engagement ring, maybe his legacy from Aunty Kittie helped, I like to think so.
There is some controversy surrounding Kittie’s will, she left written instructions to sister Nellie, listing her items of jewellery and giving instructions for their disposal, but apparently this letter was never found. Maybe Kittie “tidied it away” or is there some implication that jewellery was stolen and the letter disposed of? Without the letter my Great Grandmother wouldn’t have been able to prove if anything was missing.
What else do I know of Kittie? Well I’m pretty sure she rode a bike as I have photographs of her on a cycling trip to the Yorkshire Dales and she apparently always pronounced the word squirrel with an American accent. She was a bit innocent, (I don’t mean unintelligent) when she heard advertisements on the radio, she would say “they speak well of it, don’t they?” But the best story and the reason I know I would have liked her, is that she let her Great nephew Norman (my Dad) teach her semaphore which he was learning at cubs. Apparently she waved her arms around energetically, getting it all wrong (probably deliberately) much to the amusement of the whole family, she would have been in her early 60s at the time. As they say, “what’s not to love”.
Siblings and niblings 