Bridgman Family

Townsend Mill, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire

Before 1914 and possibly around 1904-5. Hannah (Weaver) Bridgman and her children. Back Row left to right: Charles, Jabez, Dolly (Hannah), John, Elsie, Arthur. Middle Row: Annie, Hannah, Cissie (Mary). Front Row: Hilda and Edna. Father Jabez had died in 1898.

Bridgman Family – from the point of view of Roger Herbert  Nov 2019

My paternal grandmother was Elsie Bridgman, b 1882, d 1968.  She was one of 12 children of Jabez Bridgman and Hannah Weaver. She died when I was 16 and I have clear memories of numerous family visits to where she lived with my grandfather Fred and my aunt Winifred Herbert (Elsie’s fist child, born December 1906) at “Willowbrook”, Roughton, near Bridgnorth. Elsie married Fred Herbert in 1905 and they lived in West Bromwich. Fred ran a corn and seed merchant business with his uncle William Herbert, W & F Herbert located in Shaftesbury Street, West Bromwich. He may have met Elsie in Bromsgrove on a business trip to the Mill?

Amongst the family photographs passed down the generations there are group and individual photographs of her and her siblings in their prime.  Michael Bridgman, my second cousin (DNA match confirms), grandson of Charlie Bridgman, (one of her brothers who I met several times as a child), and I have shared these photos. One shows Hannah Weaver at the family residence, Townsend Mill, Tardebigge, Bromsgrove with 10 of her children, at sometime before the Great War.  Missing are Kate and Frank, who both died in infancy and father Jabez who died in 1898.

There are numerous sources which confirm the above, including living memory. Michael’s father John died in 2017 and Michael’s mother Hilda is still alive.  They knew a number of the Bridgman siblings.